20114

"That spot looks good to me," said Petunia. Back with the flock, she 
had been able to take comfort in sleeping on the hilltop while at 
least one or two others were up to graze at all or most parts of the 
night. Now, however, they were only three. They would have to sleep 
in a quiet place like this and hope to pass through the night more or 
less unnoticed, or trust to their ears and noses to alert them.

Thyme ran over to inspect the grass by the trees.  No flutterbys were in residence, though she startled a grasshopper and several flies.  Nothing here that could hurt anybody.  She saw a flower and put her nose down to smell it -- and sneezed when the yellow pollen covered her nose.

"Bless you," said Petunia, hearing the lamb sneeze. She went over and
found Thyme's nose covered in pollen. "Ooh, looks like you found a
tasty flower! Enjoy. Not many left at this time of year."

Petunia searched the area for any that Thyme might have missed

Thyme sneezed again.  How could she eat anything that just made her sneeze?  How silly! 

Finding no other flowers of that type, but a few dandelions gone to
seed. Petunia nibbled them and settled down to sleep in the place
Thyme had found. She made sure there was room for the other two and
figured that she might as well catch a nap now if they were staying
up a little longer.

Fluffy sat down and looked around, looking a bit (and feeling) dazed. She was worried...Worried about what was running through her mind and refusing to leave her alone until she obeyed...

 Thyme kept exploring around the trees for a while. She wasn't too sleepy,
though she might need to sit down soon enough. They had walked quite a ways,
after all.

Her throat was dry. She started snuffling around -- where was the lake
hiding?

Thyme found some water and drank herfilol, then looked around.

It was quiet Too quiet. Where were Petunia and Fluffy? There were
lots of trees around, but ...

"Petunia?" called Thyme, "Where are you? Fluffy?"

Thyme heard some strange noises from the woods and swallowed. They
did not sound like happy ones.

A red streak fell down and splashed into the pond she was drinking
from. A strange-looking pokemon with a red and white pelt and a
floppy,conical red head surrounded by the white fur of its face
laughed. It sounded like a male.

Pickng himself up, the strange Pokemon shook himself dry with a ho-ho-
ho and bared his teeth at her. The teeth were not those of a
predator; still, Thyme backed away, ready to bolt if it attacked.

The strange male put his - hoof? -- on the side of his nose and
winked. Then, he pointed. "Your friends are over in thst dirction,"
he told her. Then, he reached with his strange hoof into a pelt-
covered pouch and brought out something small and white. He offered
it to her.

Thyme was ready to run. Still, the strange Pokemon seemed harmless
enough, and what was that white thing he held out to her? She
approached, stopping at each step to keep a careful eye on the
strange Pokemon.

She stopped, lowered her muzzle and sniffed at the small white thing
on his hoof. It smelled good. She tasted it with her tongue.
Sweet. Before she knew it, her teeth bit into the crunchy
sweetness. She savored it, allowing the strange Pokemon to pat her
muzzle. Then, a wind sprang up from nowhere and wafted him into the
sky and away.

Strange, that he did'nt look like either a jumpluff or a bird-type
Pokemon. He did call back to her "Merry Christmas" before the wind
carried him too far away from her.

Very odd.

Thyme looked towards the trees he'd pointed out to her,then trotted
towards them. It was as good a direction as any. Soon, both Petunia
and Fluffy came into view. She went and curled up by the trees for a
nap herself.

Thyme's calling woke Petunia. She opened her eyes in the sun and
stretched up out of the little grassy niche between bushes. She
flexed her tail and smoothed her wool. "Good morning," she said to
Thyme and Fluffy, with a pleasant smile.

An odd smell sat over Thyme's wool; a human? A strange pokemon?
Petunis sniffed at that mareep's snout. Thyme had eaten something
very sweet.

"What did you find?" she said, as she sniffed the wind for any
enemies; maybe there was more of whatever that sweet stuff was.

Thyme sniffed at the air.  "I'd never seen it before that strange red and white pokemon offered one to me, but he gave me something white and sweet.  I thought it was the only one, but I seem to smell them all over the place.  Do you think they grow on the lake?"  She went over to a well-grown tuft of grass, intending to graze at it, and then stopped.  "I think I see anohther one here, if you want to try it, Petunia."  Using her hoof, she gave it a careful nudge out from the grass.  Yes, it was the same kind of thing that the strange pokemon had given her.  She started to look around to see if there were any more hidden in the grass around them.  She was pretty sure there were, but she didn't know where -- just that she could smell them. 

Petunia picked the strange white thing up out of the grass, turning
it in her flippers and peering at it with caution. She sniffed,
licked, then nibbled it, finally popping it into her mouth. It had a
sweetness like she'd never known. Not even sweet feed the farmer gave
them back home sometimes, compared. Not even red clover!

Thyme found another one and brought it over to Fluffy. "Here!" she said
cheerfully. She sniffed around and found several more, piling them up. She
nibbled on one of the sweet, crunchy things contendtedly.


Petunia nosed around, looking and sniffing, and found a few more. After
finding no more candies, she turned to Thyme.

"Should we continue on? It's a beautiful day, and that fire looks
like it was just a brush fire. It seems to be dying down. The rest of
the lake area should be safe."

"That sounds like fun," agreed Thyme. "Also, we have to find new friends for
Fluffy, right?"

Petunia smiled, giving them both an encouraging nod. Anything to take
her mind off her being in season... with no rams anywhere. Her rotten
luck! Why couldn't this have happened a few days ago?

"Of course," she said, smiling at Thyme. "That's why we're on this
trip, after all. Way back on the farm, I once heard rumors that
across the lake, on eht eastern side, there were other mareep farms
everywhere. And they were much bigger than our own farm...so the
stories went. I think what we could maybe do, is try looking over
there."

She stepped into the forest, hesitant and listening. To go any nearer
to the lake they would have to brave the dreadful forest.

Petunia sensed that they were close to the farm. They had passed near
here a long time ago. she got the urge to go there and check, but it
was only half there. She didn't want to live on a farm anymore. There
was only so long that farm life could entertain you, and even back
when she had lived there she had been bored. It was the main reason
why she and probably everyone else had jumped to follow Chirin, and
not some rumour of a human threat. She'd thought she was doing it
because of that, maybe she had partly done it because of that...but
there had been another reason. They'd been bored.

Cracking twigs and stepping through shadows, Petunia wanted to just
turn around and stick to the grasslands. But she had smelled
something, faintly but growing stronger, that made her change her
mind, shut her mouth and walk faster. A ram. Goodness, how she wanted
to breed!

And a ram meant a flock, or at least a companion. If he was friendly
and well able to protect Fluffy, perhaps their journey would be over.
She just had to get clear of this forest and find the lake first, for
she had a feeling that mareep or flaaffies wouldn't be hanging round
in a forest.

But Rye...would he forgive her? Could she breed here and return to
him? Maybe...if she could hide it, fake it...but no, there was no
fooling a ram's nose. She knew that the right thing to do would be to
find Fluffy a new flock and simply wait to do anything else until she
got down south. It would be hard, but she resolved to resist
temptation.

"I think I smell mareep, maybe, how about you?" said Petunia with a
cheery voice, smiling over her shoulder.

"Me, too -- kind of like when I first found you and the others," agreed Thyme.  "Is that from a farm?  I've never seen one." 

Actually, that rammy smell was quite unlike the ones found at the
farm, but maybe Thyme, with her mind NOT pickling in hormones, was
smelling other sheep besides the as yet unseen and unheard ram. They
were close to the farm. Had some of the other mareep returned?

Now that she tried her nose on other things, Petunia did indeed smell
homey old farm scents...including more mareep. It only made sense
that the ram would be there too. Perhaps the farmer had taken up
keeping flaaffies too!

"There's a farm not far from here," said Petunia. "It's the one
Fluffy and I grew up on. If you'd like," she included Fluffy in the
talk, "we could stop by there, just to see it."

"Why not?" said Thyme.  "Since I never grew up on a ranch it's a strange, new place to visit.  Even if you're used to it, which I'm not, since you haven't been there in some time." 

"Wonderful," and Petunia continued heading towards the small mareep 
ranch that lay on the outskirts of Lake Eerie Village and supplied 
the little settlement with much of its wool. Or had before they'd all 
left. Petunia supposed that the humans had switched to getting wool 
from the farms east of the lake, places Petunia had never given much 
thought. They had all been a part of the world beyond the farm, and 
as curious as Petunia had been as a lamb, even that curiosity had 
been limited to wondering what was inside this very forest and other 
places she could see from the other side of the fence. 

She wonder what she would find when she came back to the farm. What, 
really, was she expecting?

"Gee, do you think there will be any big, creepy monsters there?  Or maybe mareep who can use magic spells?" asked Thyme.  "Maybe we'll have an adventure or two yet, on the farm!" 

Thyme just avoided stepping on another of the sweet, white crunchy things in -- err, in time, yes.  She picked it up and savored its sweetness before crunching it into little tiny pieces. 

"I don't know if we'll actually go *on* the farm," said Petunia, not 
wanting to build false hopes in the mareep. "But maybe. It all 
depends."

She followed the trail's course eastward, and realized that she had 
led them in an almost direct course straight for the farm, ever since 
they had left the flock down south. Deep down she'd always known she 
would one day come back.

"Is it nice on the farm?  Are there a lot of Pokémon?  Do they let the mareep and others eat enough?  What kind of shelters do they have -- do they live under trees?  After all, trees have strong roots so they don't blow away so easily as flowers and stuff." 

You could never ask enough questions, thought Thyme. Were farms 
fun?

"Um, well--" Petunia tried to sort out all her questions. Thyme was 
younger than she had first thought, it seemed. "The farm's nice, but 
after a while it got boring. We stayed in a barn at night--that's a 
closed-in place the humans made, kind of like a burrow but above 
ground and much bigger. And in the daytime the farmer let us out and 
we ate the grass on the pasture, inside a fence. We couldn't get 
through the fence, until Chirin's nidoran friend dug under it for us 
to get out. The farmer probably fixed the hole though.

"You lived inside something?  Wow!  Where I grew up, we only lived under the trees - although you could say we kind of lived inside the woods at that," said Thyme, giggling.  Then, her face took on a confused expression.  "What's a fence?" 

"A fence is...wood posts with wires running along them, to keep us in 
and enemies out," said Petunia. Thyme's questions were beginning to 
irritate her, but she kept her voice pleasant. She had to understand 
that this was a young lamb.

"I guess you could say that...a farm's nice, but there's not much 
room for doing anything on your own. You're safe, but every day 
becomes too much the same. I don't know quite what it is but I feel 
much more alive since we left the farm."

She smiled over at Fluffy, who had been very quiet lately. The 
setting sun worried her--she wanted to get out of this forest by 
nightfall. Yet they would emerge by the farm--and the farmer had a 
gun.

"We were kind of safe under the trees too, even with some of the stuff Dad talked about -- like pray daters or something like that.  I never saw one, myself."  Thyme 
looked more closely at Petunia.  "How colud you feel more alive now?  I thought you were either alive or you weren't -- how can you be moreso?" 


This confused Petunia. If Thyme had gone though all those things with 
Chirin and his flock before arriving with Petunia and the others, how 
could she have never seen a predator? Perhaps she had just been lucky-
-and not considered quagsires predators, and well, they weren't 
really predators of sheep, as far as she had gathered from those 
who'd taken the rather wet trip into their home. Thyme seemed to have 
shed her old, shy personality completely and in fact Petunia felt 
like she was talking to a completely new mareep. 

<> 

"I think we're getting closer -- or is that smoke from the forest fire?  If it is then it's awfully small."  She watched the thin tendril of smoke waft up into the air.

"No," said Petunia, already smelling farms and fireplaces. "The 
fire's up north and it seems to have burned out. It was probably just 
a brush fire. The farm's just ahead, that's the farmhouse. The humans 
keep a little fire inside to stay warm." She pointed to the areas of 
sky and open field showing through the web of tree branches.

Thyme stared at the plume of smoke.  "But d0oesn't that make the fire spirits angry?  Why do the humans have to trap them?"  

Fire spirits? Goodness, Thyme must have picked up some of Chirin's 
preachings during her long and treacherous journey with him. "Not 
really," said Petunia, not up to arguing the case of fire having a 
spirit or not. Besides, she could be right. "The humans take good 
care of fire. They give it wood to keep it burning."

"S othey keep fire spirits like pets? They must have powerful magic," said 
Thyme.

"That they do," said Petunia. "Humans have powers that no one else 
has."

Petunia was coming up to the edge of the clearing now. Their tail 
lights showed the way, and she stepped out of the woods between 
bushes. She looked out at the farm fence for the first time in what 
seemed like forever. The fence looked a bit smaller.

"It is a big fence, isn't it? It does not look like anything we couldn't 
jump over, though." Thyme walked up to the fence and sniffed at it. 
"There's nothing here now, though -- except maybe rattata, I think."

She saw no mareep, but the place smelled rife with them. As well as a 
trace of Growlithe...or some kind of dog. Had Striper come back? That 
would surely be a reason to visit! As well as see Kiku, too. 

"Well, we're here," she said, sniffing around. The rammy scent seemed 
no stronger here than it had been before. It wasn't coming from the 
farm. It came from somewhere north, or by the lake.

Should we stay, or should we take a chance and continue on?" Thyme looked up 
at the ever-darkening sky. "I'm not so sure it's safe here, after all, and 
we can find better forage in the forest than in a place which seems to be 
cursed with a living death. Perhaps the fire spirits have cursed them after 
all."

Definitely an influence of Chirin there, thought Petunia, or maybe 
all wild mareep were like that. Still, it was a good point--Thyme 
must be referring to the predator smell. Petunia stood by the fence 
and looked about--no mareep, but the nibbled grass and prevalent 
smells said that they had been here very recently--today. The farmer 
might have gotten more mareep and started over once they had left. In 
that case, what were Petunia, Thyme and Fluffy to the farmer now? One 
wild and...no, three wilds. She couldn't conceive of returning to a 
life behind that fence.

"We can continue on," said Petunia, intent on tracking that rammy 
smell to its source.

"That might be a good idea," Thyme agreed.  Aside from which, she wasn't tired yet.  Also, Petunia seemed more than a little restless about something -- maybe she wanted to find the other mareep soon?  They had to be close. 

Petunia sensed danger if they stuck around here too long. She 
remembered how fiercely Bub and family guarded the farm from wild 
pokemon. Bub wouldn't recognize her and Fluffy anymore. 

She nibbled some grass and glanced at Fluffy, hoping the little 
flaaffy was okay to head a little further towards the lake. Letting 
her nose be her guide she started north again, bidding the farm a 
silent goodbye. It was no longer home to her, even though when she 
thought of "home" it still sometimes came to mind.

"Well, let's be off! I know we can probably get near the lake and 
find somewhere to sleep around there," she said, "where it isn't so--
foresty. Hm, I wonder if that's a word," she said chuckling as she 
continued on, making sure she wasn't leaving the two of them behind.

"Or woodsy," agreed Thyme.  "Also, if we can find a good spot, we can make sure to have plenty of forage space." 

"That's what we'll need," said Petunia. "I assume that wherever that 
ram is there'll be good sheep country and probably other sheep as 
well."

Petunia headed on, leaving the farm behind as she turned north.


Thyme sniffed at the air as they went along -- maybe there were some more of those white and crunchy treats to find! 

Thyme sniffed at the air.  She thought she caught a scent of one of the candies, so she foraged around a bit until she found it.  She found three of them, actually -- almost as if whatever had left them (could it have been that strange red-and white Pokemon?  Was it like a Jumpluff?  She didn't feel sorry about eating these, if they were seeds -- something this good was meant to be eaten and shared) had traveled this way.  She ate one and then brought the other to to Fluffy and Petunia.  

She cast a worried glance at Fluffy.  The flaafy remained silent.  It was hard to tell how she felt lately.  Was she ill?  Still, she grinned at both of them as she passed along the treats.  "I found some more of those yummy, crunchy sweet seeds." 

Petunia took one and sniffed at it anew, turning it in her flippers. 
That Thyme was so quick to trust them worried her a little. They were 
some kind of human thing--she knew no more than that. Thyme was, 
again, very young, perhaps unaware of the trouble strange foods could 
cause. They were clearly not poisonous, but the fact that they had 
recently been strewn over here--in the woods, some distance from the 
farm now--as well as down south on the woods' edge--worried her more. 
The first time she'd just enjoyed them as a lucky treat, but 
now...she felt an edge of threat, the fear that came from something 
unnatural and unfamiliar surrounding you wherever you went. That it 
was in itself harmless meant nothing. There were factors at work here 
that she could not sort out. 

"I don't know what these things are all over the place, but I'm 
heading on. I don't like it, Thyme. It makes no sense." 

Petunia sniffed the autumn air extra carefully for enemies. Sparks 
zigged up and danced on her tail orb. Time to head to the lake more 
quickly now. She had been considering staying here for the night, but 
would never bed down anywhere around these candies, evidence that 
humans had been here, the same one or ones who had somehow been down 
south too, so near them yet going undetected. "Come on, Thyme, 
Fluffy...we're getting closer. Not far now!" She smiled to cover a 
grimace of fear, then headed on.

THyme shrugged and continued on.  The strange Pokemon had apparently meant for her to find the treats and now she saw the fear in Petunia's eyes from them.  She knew she had nothing to fear from thesecrunchy treats, any more than she had cause to fear that stranger red-and-white Pokemon.  What, did Petunia think they came from a human?  She had heard something about humans, but never that they blew away in breezes.

Well, more for her, then.  She continued on behind the two of them.  Maybe if it scared Petunia so much, she better not tell her about when she found some more of them.

After all, you should never look a gift ponyta in the mouth.  Especially if you were a plant Pokemon.  She smiled at the thought.

Petunia tread the trail along the forest's edge carefully; they were 
passing close enough to Lake Eerie Village that she could smell their 
fireplaces and even see the lights from some of the houses, way in 
the distance. She pursued the ram scent like a rope connected her to 
him and she was pulling herself in, tug by tug.

With luck she would reach him tonight, before her heat faded. She 
didn't know how she knew but she could tell it wouldn't last much 
longer. Driven by instinct she pushed forwards, though she was 
getting tired, a part of her was more awake than ever.

Only the stars and their own tails provided light. Petunia kept out 
of the forest, grateful to have open space on at least on side of 
them. Out ahead, to their east, a fresh lakeside breeze blew and 
carried with it all new scents. She stepped out from the bushes and 
out onto the grassy stretch covering the upper part of a long spate 
of beach.

She stopped and looked, shining her tail light brighter to reveal 
what lay ahead. Petunia had never seen a beach, or a lake, before. 

"I think we're here," she said.

(20888)