~ p a n d e m o n i u m ~ (starts where Voltorbs leaves off)


No Crazy Lights, no distant tail light down the water. Chirin was 
alone with River-deep and the dark spaces. Thoughts poked up here and 
there among the rubble of his shock, always dipping back down into 
the ever-swirl of chaos in the middle of his head. The confusion was 
like a black background against which the water folded and furled, 
gently about his paddling limbs. His body was weak and wounded but 
felt little pain. That, too, was part of the collective foam of 
confusion that his soul had fallen down in and not stood up yet.  
Some part of him was tired, some part desperate, some part grateful 
and renewed. There was no separating all of it...the result a 
numbness, a partial escape from fear of the dark.

He would stop, then start, then stop swimming again. He blinked his 
lights to remind himself that he was still here, trying to ground 
himself in a place somehow. He was almost through here. Soon he'd see 
the day and the weather again. He hauled himself out of the opposite 
bank and sat there breathing, glad for the rhythm of breathing in his 
ears and throat. His body still moved. 

He sat still perched on the ground where back met tail, trying out 
his gift again. He was so battered up that he didn't know where to 
begin, and what little healing he managed to accomplish didn't make 
much of a difference. He was too tired to ponder the hole of dark 
that he sauntered into, the cavern the voltorbs had said would lead 
him outside at last. He limped past the scape of recesses and 
formations, flowstone wavering as he walked by. In the places right 
behind him, in his blind spot, things of stone moved and spirits 
whispered, rock and bone formed faces with mouths locked wide open. 
Clusters of lost ones, forgotten in the slippage of years, bone to 
stone, frozen, their voices heard just under the surface of this 
realm.

Chirin encountered an upward slope and climbed on with aching limbs, 
everything he did a  painful chore. He found his flippers slipping 
and his vision flashing in and out. He knew he had reached the end of 
his consciousness and his soul was screaming out to flee to the dream 
world. He needed sleep so badly but he could not sleep here. If he 
did he would hear those voices, screaming in the wind of the cavern's 
bloodstream. "I hear you, I see you," he said to the rocks. "I won't 
let you take me...I didn't come all this way to let you have me." 
Light flashed away the dark holes, shadows retreated but always 
lingered down the way. He would never conquer them. No light could 
reach forever. 

The climb was endless, flippers hauling him up, foothold after 
foothold, hooves holding steady on the rock. He was no longer even 
sure if his lights were shining...his vision was inconstant, 
flickering between caverns and stars. He kept his eyes closed when he 
didn't absolutely need to see. The spirits circled around their prey, 
waiting to blot him out, waiting to paint him dark while he slept. 

Chirin would not sleep. He bundled his dream-thoughts and sent them 
away ahead of him in the spirit realm. He would not sleep until he 
was out of these caves. His feet climbed on, foot up to hand up to 
the next rock, crawling through passages, balancing along narrow 
ledges. The progress was upwards, there must be an end. Where he had 
been did not matter, nothing had meaning but where he was going.

He climbed through a wasteland of caves. Bones hung from the ceiling, 
thunking against each other with hollow music. Wind and bone carved a 
song and Chirin climbed on. The inhabitants of the cave began to 
whisper, then speak. 

*Fight your fate, fight your hate
As you tumble through the gate
Leaving shards of you behind
What do you lose, what will you find
Past love written in your breath
You send frail prayers to stave off death
There is no why, there is no reason
To the circles or the seasons.*

"That's not true," Chirin panted and puffed as he labored up the rock 
wall. His flippers reached for rock but found a bone, the skull of an 
ampharos. With a bleat he dropped it, then realized what he'd done.

"No," he reached to grab it but it fell away down the cavern-cliff 
face, glinting briefly with the reflection of his own lights, a light 
that brought the jewel to brief life. Mure sang and cubones howled, 
stone bones rattled, faces scowled.

The caverns came to life, but a life beneath death, blooming downward 
from the other side. The wind, unfelt but heard, howled the spirit 
voices, which moaned softly, fluting with whispers over unoun voices. 
He must defeat the unoun, but he could not, he was only kicking in 
the womb. The unouns were too many, they were too wise, too embedded 
in a greater being that seethed under the waters. Embedded at once in 
there and in him. Chirin must shed that part of him...

"I'm not me! I'm not me!"

The howl-winds pulled at the wool he did not have. They pulled it 
from him again, and although nothing showed he felt the pain and 
smelled the blood like he had on the sand that sunny morning. His 
mama shrieked, tears spilling down her face for what had happened to 
the lamb she had birthed on the grass and called Chirin-chirin. The 
youth climbed on, though he didn't know what direction he was 
supposed to go. Dozens of caverns offshot from all directions, every 
way he climbed. There was no one way to go...there never had been...

How had the cavern spirits gotten him? He had tried so hard to escape 
their madness, but they had tricked him...

"You tricked me!"

The voltorbs were trailing after him, he was traveling uphill and 
climbing as wuickly as he could but somehow whenever he looked behind 
him they were rolling closer. His hands in front of him scrabbled on 
the rock, pain printed on his face. The cavern had turned its will 
against him. Its innards churned and then came the howls, sounding 
from all those caves and hollows whose tongues had been held. Chirin 
heard drowning cries of pokemon near death. Voices of unouns, chasing 
demon screams. The shrieks of Kurohi declaring spirit 
death...mournful moans from desolate dens and the beds of the river 
gurgled bloodily. Chirin had been plucked from near-escape and flung 
into the realm where all the imagined sounds went. There had to be an 
escape somewhere. He was still climbing upwards...He called for Crazy 
Lights, the only one who might hear him. "Crazy Lights! Crazy 
Lights!" The wind stole away with his words. Crying, weeping, pokemon 
spirits sounded out from abyssal depths. 

"Crazy Lights! Crazy Lights!"

The wind and the voltorbs spurred him on, the voices coming to get 
him. They were after him and this was his last chance to escape. Part 
of the lamb left behind him in the dark recesses bleated against the 
howling. When he slept, when he woke, they would be standing in a 
circle around him, they would be waiting. If he did not get out 
now. "Crazy Lights!"

A denryuu alone in this cavern abyss, Chirin shone his lights but the 
dark swallowed them. The caves too big, the walls too distant. 
Incomplete spirits, half-formed rock and misshapen bones dashed 
against each other. The exiled spirits, lost ones howled out. They 
clutched at him, desperate, save me, save me. Against them he 
screamed. "Crazy Lights!"

Howling, screaming, wind tossing his ears, running screaming clinging 
to the rocks... he climbed and he tumbled, nothing made sense, 
nothing meant anything. The howls of a thousand broken souls crashed 
together in Kurohi's voice.

"*CRAZY LIGHTS IS DEAD!*"

He leaped at Kurohi with his mouth open. His *denki* broiled the 
water they struggled in, buzzing around them, echoing snarls and 
grunts. Splashes filled the air joining the wind-ripping screams. He 
was living or dying, jumping or falling, swimming or drowning, it did 
not matter, nothing meant anything. Then Kurohi was gone, it was 
Chirin alone in the river deep, he floundered in a stream that flowed 
upside down, sideways...in the air itself, a shaft of flowing water. 
The only thing louder than the wails of the world were the rasps of 
his panting lungs, scraping the air, hissing in and out in his head.

Crazy Lights--who was Crazy Lights? Who needed a light when the gray 
was constant and it hurt to breathe, what did it matter if you died? 

Chirin fell out into a gray dark day, it was twilight or dawn beneath 
an overcast sky, he didn't know which. He staggered through a winter 
wasteland, but at least he was out...or was he? The twisted trees, 
contorted and barren, splayed crooked crowns to the roofs of caves. 
The sky was not a sky, not a sky, but a cave, many caves, he was not 
out and there was nothing more to climb on. Staring at the caves 
while the wind howled anguish, he realized he could climb forever and 
never be out. The only difference was that he had changed, he could 
see things as they really were, the bowl of the sky showing its true 
nature. 

*But I pine...* Nothing meant anything.

*A brand new morning...* Another day of torment.

*And I find...* It was all an illusion.

"*Crazy..Crazy...Crazy Lights...*" Chirin called the words but had 
forgotten why. He screamed just to have something to scream and his 
voice joined the millions. He screamed cause he could, he was not 
being preyed upon, not being tortured. He was not out of place, he 
was not different, he was oamong the howling ones, his voice had 
dripped in among them, loudening the din. He was one with the world's 
lament. He had just never known it.

"NO! NO!"

Stale air caught in his lungs, tortured screams bit at his ears. The 
winds slowed and strengthened, breezing at times, heightening to a 
howling crescendo until his bones vibrated with the wails. The 
caverns throbbed, the gales pummeled him with his own mad screams, 
every noise his own sent back to him off the walls. 

wind and water blood and breath, no escape from these caves when 
they're all you've ever known...seek the light but the light is a 
shadow, everything is nothing, everyone's insane. 

~

Chirin awoke lying on his side. Leaning, rather... he had fallen 
asleep on a ridge while climbing. He had thought it was all over but 
he had returned--but to what? 

The voices were silent, the only noise a drip-drop here and there 
from the caverns around him. No escape... but no, there must be! "I 
can't let those spirits--the cave spirits get me down. Crazy Lights, 
are you there?" He waited a couple of pulses, suspense tensing him. 
What if... no, no, he couldn't think like that! What was it that he 
had always used to call his friend by? Long ago he had always done 
something...He wracked his splintered mind, searching through shards 
of a life that seemed to have passed away from him forever, blocked 
by a wall of everything that had happened to him since that awful day 
above.

That was it! "That's it! I know now! I always sang a song...and it 
went a little different every time but it was always kind of the 
same, it was the same spirit, just changing, now I remember. I 
remember!"

Chirin sang and the caverns created a chaotic harmony, echoes never 
dying.

"What do I see in the endless night?
What are those blinks through the shadowy haze?
Come to me blinking a lightning craze,
Run to my calling...

"Crazy Lights!"

Chirin nearly wept. So refreshing it was to 'see' his imaginary 
friend hanging from a nearby, just-out-of-reach, stalactite, by his 
feet and tail! 

"As it happens, I'm here," said the genie, and he let go, did a 
double flip and landed with a flourish on the ledge just up ahead of 
him. Grinning Chirin hoisted himself up, getting a hand from his 
friend. "You went to an awful place in your dream-journey," said 
Crazy Lights. "I was there, I heard you screaming, I kept calling 
back but I couldn't get free."

Chirin stepped up onto a larger ledge and hugged him. "I know...it 
was so scary, they were all telling me that there's no light and...I 
still hear them, I can hear them screaming in my memory." They were 
out of direct hearing now but very, very real. Would they ever go 
completely away? Would he ever know silence again? 

He was ravenously hungry, but kept his light bright as he and Crazy 
Lights climbed out onto a level stretch of tunnel. Light made all the 
difference. 

"I can't believe I forgot about the song," he said, making 
conversation as soon as he sensed the spirits sneaking in towards 
them. "I've known you for such a long time now, I guess I got 
accustomed to your being easily able to find me."

"Ah, I wouldn't let you forget the song, now especially since I'm 
busy sometimes. I have a lot of stuff I do in all the different 
realms and things."

"Like what?" Chirin asked, then let Crazy Lights sort of give the 
thoughts to his head, which was how he had always talked to 
Chirin. "I'll be you're someone who's been a lot of places."

"I am. There's a place where the grass goes on forever and is always 
delicious. That's where I love to go a lot of the time. I'd bring you 
back some if I could...it's grass for the soul not the stomach, but I 
think it can go a long way. But just now, I was still stuck in the 
screaming caves! Your singing helped me pull out of there. Thanks."

"Oh," Chirin stopped to hug him again. "Thank you, for being there. 
And anyone would have sung the song for you...you know that if you're 
ever in trouble you can sing a spell-song to me too. It works really 
well between us, since we're so close in spirit." He squeezed Crazy's 
flipper. 

"Thanks. I'll remember that."

He had Crazy Lights to thank again for helping him out of darkness. 
But this darkness was more tenacious than anything he had ever 
known...he couldn't shake the memories of the dream and the screaming 
even when he smelt Zubat guano just up the tunnel, interspersed with 
the smell of fresher air from up above. He headed along faster but 
kept watch around him...enemies worse than any predator lurked all 
around him. They all wanted to kill him and they all knew his name, 
they knew of every dark deed he had ever done. And the splintered 
souls wailed on with him, to the beat of his footsteps, how long, how 
long.

~

The bat pokemon, whose smells signified that Chirin was approaching 
the bridge between upperland and underland, were asleep in their 
roosts on the cavern ceiling as Chirin passed underneath them. Scat 
encrusted the floor; Chirin stepped around it as best he could, 
sensing a piece of self-preservation floating back to him through the 
echoes of his pandemonic dream. 

He heeded the message of quagsires and denryuu alike, all underscored 
by Bua's voice of elements. They were after him...out to get him. He 
must remain concealed. He was on the run anywhere he went on Mother 
Megga...the trees branches would whisper to each other above him, the 
clouds passing on the news of where he was...the grass would watch 
him approach over ground and every pebble was an eye. 

The stench of zubat receded as he passed into a colder chamber. He 
wasn't as used to winter wind anymore, but the promise of food didn't 
let him hesitate. Chirin took steps on colder stone, his soles 
pressing on the icy floor. He wasn't sure what he would find when he 
surfaced, but he would not find out by lingering down here a moment 
longer. 

The first light from outside threw a wash of winter cold around him. 
Chirin shivered, his body answering with a fuzz of static firings 
over his hide, burying it in bursts of heat. He nuzzled his shoulder 
and sifted his surroundings with all of his senses. The spirits had 
good moments and bad moments, good places and bad places--he wanted 
to avoid any that would speak of him. It was sometimes possible, if 
you tuned in well enough, to pass through an area while the spirits' 
backs were all turned. He could essentially become invisible, even 
though he knew no spells to make himself invisible, as Chenja had 
once known. The magic was there all the time.

Seeing the diffused light of an overcast day sent energy from 
Chirin's eyes down to his feet, which were suddenly stronger, the 
daylight and the beings within it injecting energy down his spine. He 
half-sprinted, half-staggered from stone to stone. The caved behind 
him had all held their mouths open to show black maws, cast into dark 
by his bulbs. The one ahead of him sang of  pale daylight. Chirin 
felt his being sing back, and the dream recede. 

He treaded towards the cavern's edge, climbing up into where dark 
gave way to light. He walked gently, sniffing and gazing around. A 
forest received him, evergreens with needles hardened to the chill 
and other trees with their branches bare. 

"Hi," he said to the forest, with a shaking, wary voice. He could be 
sure of nothing. Anything could turn on him...anything could look at 
him, say, this was Chirin-chirin, the one the evil wanted. They might 
hide out of fear...or out of an equal fear, hand him over. 

Or they would try. The end of his tail rotated, twitched and 
flickered. The machine had  clawed at him and the caverns had 
screamed for him but neither had kept a hold on him. They would never 
have a hold on him...no one ever would. Damn the unouns and damn the 
*pandesmos,* *exibos* to the great machine. Chirin was running and 
hiding.

Feeling pale and frail in the open, Chirin fled into the forest, 
afraid of the open, afraid of being caught in someone's light.

He found refuge nowhere. Everything had turned on him, the spirits 
were subdued under the cloudy sky. Chirin could not approach his 
flock. He couldn't approach anyone--he would endanger anyone he 
touched or set eyes on, or they would be a danger to him.

Food was foremost on his mind. Further off lay thoughts of Amara, 
alone again in the caves. She was better off that way than with him. 
Anyone was. He was cursed, he had been cursed from birth with this 
gift that had made him a target of darkness. It had embedded itself 
like burrs in his skin and his whole body crawled, his stomach turned 
and sickened with the feeling like he would never get it out of him. 
He couldn't shed his gift or the manyfold curse it had struck him 
with. 

Pine needles made his first meal in a long time, poking his tongue a 
few times as he ate the less than desireable food that was, 
nonetheless, sustenance. He moved from there to tree bark, stripping 
a trunk that had already been dined on. Stantler had done the work, 
judging by old turds here and there. The lone ampharos's lights 
lilted low while he ate, still weak and injured. He was very 
vulnerable out here...but he had faced the shadows from hell down 
there. Let the enemies come and try to hurt him...

He was stripping back off a pine tree, keeping his ears perked and 
finding a speck of enjoyment in the downing of food into his hungry 
stomach. He was chewing the tough food, minding his own business, 
when the crying hit him. Some spirit whacked him over the head or 
slapped him in the eyes--something. Chirin burst into tears, falling 
against the tree trunk and wailing. 

"*Aaahhh...*" 

His mouth locked open and his eyes closed, wet half-chewed back 
tumbling from his tongue. He felt like his soul was trying to push 
something out through his curling face, something that was too big to 
fit, trying to expel a burden that would not come up. 

He thought he heard a noise and sobered up, holding still and 
listening, then bursting out, limping quickly round the tree trunk 
and throwing light-blinks to confuse the spirits trying to sneak up 
on him. They would not get him. 

He didn't know where he was going or what he would do...nothing 
seemed to fit or make sense. This forest was another world altogether 
from the flock...he knew where he was because he had traveled here 
with Selden. He was south of the lake and east of the river. But he 
was still in another world, because it felt so different from the 
place and time he had last been with his friends and dear Gunya. The 
way things felt were as important, if not more so, than where your 
feet physically stood. It told so much more of a story. It gave him 
more of an idea of where things really stood. These feelings were 
more concrete to him than the bark he ate or the ground he walked on 
as he wandered through the winter wasteland. While he had been below, 
Mother Megga had gone to sleep. 

A pidgey flew overhead and far away he heard Houndours. Chirin dimmed 
his lights and kept to the shadows.

Time was not going to sit still for his flock. He wanted to see them 
again...thoughts of them returned while he hunkered down under a 
pine, chewing cud. But he could do nothing until he healed. And not 
until he had more knowledge and answers... But where could he get 
them? Whom could he run to now, when everyone was after him?

The rest he had had inside the cave, while he had wandered the realm 
of pandemonium, had granted him fresh energy. Strangely enough, even 
sleep that brought the soul to horrible places still seemed to give 
the body rest and strength. The soreness still made the whole of him 
throb, but his *denki* was quite replenished, and now that he was 
eating again, it would become even more so. 

Chirin set to healing himself while keeping a look around. When a 
sentret scurried around a nearby tree he started, watching it 
intently until it darted away. Everything was suspect--and at the 
same time he felt terrible for casting such suspicion on everything 
around him. Why had this evil one had to awaken and turn everything 
bad? 

The healing came slowly, as it had underground. But Chirin noticed a 
distinct difference between his gift before he had gone down and his 
gift now. Everything moved more swiftly, easily and efficiently, 
handling connections in greater numbers and concentration than ever 
before. 

He remembered the warnings...just wait until spring. He sat healing 
alone, afraid of everything and everyone. His gift remained out at 
all times, sieving the air for the other gift--the evil one. Was 
there a way to challenge him without putting his flock in even more 
danger? What he really wanted to do was find his flock and steal them 
away. Could he run with them, away to a place where the evil wouldn't 
get them? Was there such a place? If it had touched him both here and 
down at Pharos, was there anyplace at all he could escape to? He felt 
cornered no matter where he was. 

Bruises slowly receded as Chirin worked busily away at healing...he 
wound up eating and resting in between and leaving the healing job 
unfinished when his gift ran too low. The bruises and cuts were 
greatly lessened though, enough for him to move without much pain. He 
could move through these woods and survive if attacked--by a normal 
enemy. 

The wind blew devoid of songs, his mind strangely empty and full at 
the same time. Nothing seemed to bounce around happily like it once 
had. Everything was muted in the forest and sky, everything hid or 
dashed furtively around; the only brightly colored thing nearby was 
himself. One more reminder that an ampharos was not made to live by 
hiding. Chirin walked through the forest stopping to nibble when he 
felt like browsing, and to rest when it got too much for him. His 
stamina was far from fully recovered; feeling fully back to normal 
might take days. He didn't know where he was headed or what he would 
do, and followed his whims as they came to him from the signals of 
the forest, its moods towards him. Something led him northward, and 
soon he reached the edge of the woods. 

With his lights low he watched the lake surface ruffle in the harsh 
gusts out over the water, under the sky with the cloud cover like old 
cotton. Out on the water stood the unown island with its spire of 
dark. Chirin watched the wind-ripples sail past it and lap on its 
shore... he watched. Just one more injustice in the world, one more 
innocent victim. He growled over the bushes. "I can't do it all...I 
can't, Mure, I can't Mama."

He began to shake with sobs. If he didn't do it who would? At least 
Goldie was safe and secure on that island, a far cry from whatever 
his flock had or was experiencing. At least she could wait and still 
be there to rescue later. The idea of putting everyone on a sort of 
list disgusted him. As if some were more impotant than others...but 
no one compared to his flock, no one. Except maybe that ewe he'd once 
known, with the high nasal voice and big words and blushing light. 
And she was far gone from him now.

He watched the lake a long time, ducking to browse the bare berry 
bushes. Last time he had stood here and looked out at it it had been 
early fall...he and Selden had traveled up through the forest and 
played together. Chirin sobbed harder, though the only sounds he made 
were gasps. He  scraped the ground with his hooves, he fought to tell 
himself that things would be that way again. The last time he had 
been here he had wandered up from the southern forest, southeast of 
here with Selden after meeting with Mure in the sacred little place 
by those rocks...

Mure! 

Chirin's *denki* twinkled in his lights and he leaped up and dropped 
down. He placed his nose to the ground, trembling. "Thank you 
Selden," he sent to his young friend that he loved. "You've given me 
the idea...now I know where to go and what to do."

He got up and started heading southeast, towards the place where Mure 
had met him and saved his life. The sacred ground, a shrine where her 
spirit had appeared, would surely bring her back to him again. Mure 
was the one he needed to talk to. She had told him to use his gift.

~

"We've been walking a long time," said Crazy Lights as Chirin and he 
tramped past brambles, Chirin making a lot more noise than Crazy 
Lights. Chirin was going straight for the place, heading in the 
direction he remembered. He knew where it was, his *denki* told him. 
The trees had changed and so had the scents in the air but the place 
would still be there, the little outcropping of boulders where he had 
died and come back. His friend's complaint made him realize that he 
had been traveling pretty hard and fast.

"I'm sorry. Are your feet sore?"

"A little."

"Here...let me use my gift for you, to heal you." And he reached out 
with his gift towards where Crazy Lights' feet were, according to his 
imagination. There were no cells or bones or anything there that he 
could sense easily, but the more he studied the currents in those 
places next to him the more they gave hints--tiny ones, but still 
real--that there was indeed someone walking there. Chirin applied his 
gift the same way that he did to himself when healing, and found that 
while Crazy Lights moved it was too hard to do. "How about we stand 
still or, here," he said, "let's sit down together, even." Chirin and 
Crazy Lights sat with their legs splayed in front of them, a 
comfortable way for an ampharos to sit. 

"Ahh...that feels much better," said Crazy Lights as Chirin let his 
healing ministrations flow into where Crazy Lights' feet would be. He 
took the same care there as he then began to do to his own self, 
beginning another session of healing his body. The house of his soul 
needed thorough care. He only got one, and experience had taught him 
that if he treated it well it rewarded him with wonderful and amazing 
things. He had to remind himself of the pleasures in life as he sat 
there facing Crazy Lights, but it was never hard to. He was on the 
way to Mure's special place and he could give of himself along the 
way...Ysgard was always willing in him. The ram who was him and his 
father simultaneously, had given him a bounty of energy and 
fertility, smiling one moment, roaring the next.

From distraction to distraction he found his way to healing himself 
and Crazy Lights. The two of them got up, refreshed and renewed, and 
started walking again side by side, the same height but one with a 
longer tail and lights on his ears...and who was never constant, 
always changing and rarely walking steadily in one place for too 
long. Crazy Lights delighted in jumping from treetop to treetop, but 
nowadays he also enjoyed long deep conversation about the nature of 
the world. 

"I do?" said Crazy Lights. "Well, I suppose I could try to talk about 
all those thinking things, Chirin," said Crazy Lights 
uncertainly. "But I think you do a better job thinking them than I 
could talk about them."

"Do you ever just...wonder about everything?" said Chirin. "anyone 
can do it I think. All it takes is a thought, or something you see or 
find...and it gets you thinking."

"That's right," said Crazy Lights slowly as Chirin remembered to look 
for signs on his way towards the sacred place of Mure. It was a sure 
sign that Mure must have poked him on the shoulder right then, or 
handed him the reminder, for at that moment Chirin's gaze, skipping 
over the desolate brown ground ahead of them, caught on a pale pebble.

"Ohh..." Chirin bent down and picked it up. It was not just any 
pebble. It was white with a pink blotchy stripe on one side...Where 
had he seen this pebble before? Azalea--something about 
Azalea. "Azalea...did you show me this?" Chirin felt himself on the 
verge of tears as he turned it in his flippers and sniffed at it, 
then rubbed it lightly on his sensitive upper lip. She had shown it 
to him in a dream--somewhere in a field--or a forest? And she had 
been evolved. It had been the two of them alone. He couldn't remember 
any more but that she had given him this very pebble. She was giving 
it to him now in this realm, and changing everything. 

He clutched the pebble against his chest. It was a precious 
gift....from her. He could not lose it. But with no spinaraks to give 
him thread to string an apricorn around his neck, how could he keep 
it with him? He held it close to him and alighted his spirit's light, 
the lightscreen ability that had first come alive on the night he had 
attacked and killed Calima. Azalea felt much closer suddenly, once 
again, even though it had been so long ago since he had seen her. She 
was back and alive. He even looked about him now, hoping, very 
vaguely, that she would somehow step out from behind a tree or bush 
and relieve him of loneliness, just like that day in the rain. She 
was someone he would never fear. So different from him, and yet she 
and he had stood out to each other almost as soon as they had met. 
There was no mistaking a soul mate.

"Azalea," he said, suddenly standing with his soul light radiating 
around him, alone with her. "Azalea...please be here, please don't be 
gone forever, Azalea...I know that..."

He sighed. "I know that we've been apart so long...I'm still me and i 
hope you're still you...even though you're probably a free spirit 
now...passed into another part of...even though you're probably 
d...probably not alive--"

"No," he paced in a circle with the pebble held out in front of him. 
Where his eyes couldn't miss it, as he convulsed, awash in awakening 
memory. "I remember the dream--you had antlers...or a skull with 
antlers--But that can't mean you're gone, it can't...Azalea...please 
talk to me..." He kept stopping and looking at the sky's old-cotton 
light. 

"I asked for a sign of Mure...I get one from Azalea. What does it 
mean..." He looked straight forward, as if she were there, and he 
suddenly felt her there, for real. 

"Azalea, I...I wonder if I heard your voice in the howling hell where 
I was pulled into when I dreamed...I wonder if everyone's despair 
goes there...maybe the words I'm saying now would be there then...I 
sometimes want you back so bad it hurts." He walked back and forth, 
on the trail, he stopped to nibble a bush--

He snapped his head up, looking around, yes, he was still alone with 
her. "Oh, for a moment there I thought that--"

He sighed..."uh... Azalea...thank you so much for the pebble it's 
helped me to remember that you're--"

He gave an exasperated sigh and scratched his hoof on the ground.

"Azalea..."

The woods whistled.

Azalea... I...--

I love you."

He swallowed as his blood seemed to swell tight in his veins. Every 
part of him floated strangely.

He stared not at the trees ahead but the imagined form of 
Azalea...his arms hugged himself. "*Dennn...ryuu, yuuu.*" 

He shook with sobs again.

"You'll find her," said Crazy Lights. "If she's to be found, you'll 
find her."

"That's why I'm crying," said Chirin in a broken whisper. "I think 
she's beyond me by now." Such a joining of ram and ewe, not often 
done among his kind...something had broken it and he would never know 
why. Something beautiful killed when just budding. He loved her now, 
when all she was was dream-visions.

"No. I can't think like this. I--I have a flock to rescue here, I 
have...things to..." He looked down at the pebble just before his 
eyes blurred it away again. It was the one piece he had of her. A 
clue--she had given it to him. A gift. 

Chirin clutched the pebble and walked on. Ducking to the ground to 
speak to Azalea through it seemed superfluous, because she had 
already spoken to him so loudly--and he had spoken to her. Had she 
heard his flickering voice racing across the distance--were her 
lights--he was sure she had evolved now--were they blushing?

Night fell on a cleared sky and Clef rose full, her tail ball tinted 
orange. She was blushing too. It was Clef herself sending a message 
to him--him! She shone over all the world, but she was blushing! She 
was telling him something! He did not remember harvest moons from 
last fall and winter, this was something he had not seen in all his 
memory. 

"*Amphaa!*" Chirin ran and leaped in the moonlight, "*Ampharaaa,*" 
energized by Clef, the messenger for Azalea who had heard him say he 
loved her. What had he sent her? Tears fell as he bounded, he bleated 
between laughing and crying. "Falling feathers...step upon pebbles, 
I'll see you and feel...red light!"

His lights became more visible as night crowded twilight and the 
chill grew, running chills on his skin and nipping at his ears and 
nose. Night was when the woods watched closer, when the shadows 
plotted and planned. Chirin had experienced a long long night in the 
caves...he had not expected to feel so afraid when it came again up 
above ground. But when leaf litter rustled and twigs cracked he would 
turn up his lights and whirl towards the noise. He usually missed 
what it was. 

Chirin kept on his travel, stopping to sit and chew with Crazy Lights 
or browse whatever foliage he could find. He kept the pebble from 
Azalea in his hand, lacking anything to  wear it with. He did, 
however, make a little bit of cotton and wrap it up to keep it warm 
and comfortable. 

The moon kept company, another light besides his own to encourage him 
to keep going. His natural rhythm of sleep and waking was off, thrown 
awry by his time down below in the ever-night. It was growing darker, 
but he knew that he could keep going a long time under Clef's light. 
He and Crazy Lights walked on. 

What would he say to Mure? What, really, was he going to ask of her? 
Could she really give him advice about how to get his friends away 
from those possessed ones? He knew that defeating Bua was beyond him. 
He had once thought to challenge him after training himself but that 
was before learning of the sheer power and sway over so many pokemon, 
held by the sheep-spirit. The best Chirin could probably do was get 
his loved ones and other acutely threatened ones away from the evil 
one's clutches. But every single member of it was also a victim, 
weren't they? Even if only a victim of their own wrong decisions? 

He rested by a bush and chewed cud thoroughly, letting his thoughts 
linger on Azalea--that always helped take his mind off the screaming 
caves and the stalking forests, the whispering shadows tucked out of 
the moonlight. The evil spirits that sizzled beneath the trail he 
walked. He had been fond of Thyme for a little while but now she was 
simply another friend he loved, like he loved Gunya and Selden. He 
supposed he had grown frustrated at her being unevolved, with no 
signs of evolving soon; he loved to run and play and be ever-
traveling, she liked to take things more slowly. They preferred 
different paces, that was for sure. He sent her a wind-wish to give 
her strength against the evil that had caught her. She'd been frail, 
troubled by one dark thing after another...would she survive the 
horrible horde that Boro had seemed to associate with Mure? 

"I think we should ask her if she knows anything about that, Crazy 
Lights," said Chirin aloud to his friend as they sat side by side in 
the twilight, alone together in the woods. "Why Boro used her name 
that way. I'm not sure what he meant--but he escaped me in death. I 
wonder if Bua killed him right then, actually--the poor thing, I'm 
thinking he never had a say."

The woods seemed to grow taller and Chirin smaller as the night 
called forth the forest's powers,  morning for them but night to him. 
Beyond his light's reach, past the darkening bowers, wind turned to 
wails in his mind. They were after him. Never stopping for more than 
a moment to nibble and figure out where to go next, he felt the air 
clutching his tail, after him, the mad ones hissed in pain, singing 
terror, after him, every electric twitch seemed to turn to Bua's gift 
in the air, after him. Chirin knew that trees could move, bushes 
could shift and grass could scurry. They were sneaking in, after him.

Shadows sat shoved in between pine branches, empty black eyes peering 
from under pine-bower brows, following him. Chirin could not return 
to his flock or to anyone he had known...or even to a stranger. His 
being Chirin endangered them all. Where could he go and who could he 
turn to, what could he turn to if he was the wanted one who called 
danger because they were after him? 

Wind-wishes of distant pokemon breezed in and past him and Crazy 
Lights, over their heads as stars came out to shine. He dined on tree 
bark and dry grass, seeds and debris, anything edible as he passed. 
Everything watched him, high and low; he expected at any moment to 
find yet another one, another group, coming searching for Chirin-
chirin with the gift. Chirin knew his gift better than he ever had 
now. He could heal himself--very slowly, in most cases, though it 
sapped his energy and *denki*. He could use it to fight, to fly and 
swim and burrow all at once, exploring many elements. And as he 
explored further with it, he would only gain more versatility, a 
farther reach and greater focus. All for naught. What could he do if 
all he did was hide from everyone and everything? Chirin had always 
liked some time to himself, but alone all the time was to a denryuu 
unbearable and he knew that even Crazy Lights would sustain his mind 
for long. 

A denryuu alone was nothing like one in a group. In a group it was 
bold and confident, confronting anything (except for a marowak or 
other such dangerous ground type) with its *denki* and feeling safe 
and secure knowing that the numbers of its flock could overpower 
anything that dared to ignore their warnings and attack one of them. 
They kept to the open where they could see all around them any 
enemies approaching, night or day. 

Alone, Chirin felt nothing like he had with his flock. He was hiding 
and afraid...without others to join senses and *denki* to his he was 
much more likely to be attacked, less able to defend himself. The 
fear reared up, the enemies were frozen in the gaps between trees. 
Frozen into contorted shapes that morphed in the back of his head, in 
the place where his blind spot nestled.  Trees and enemies, rocks and 
breezes, the flames and vapors of lost spirits all came alive in his 
blind spot, where his eyes failed to close the almost complete circle 
of sight. A hole, a gap that he put into all circles he drew, for 
that was where dark spirit energy flowed most thickly. The place 
where the lifelong vigil could not reach. 

Chirin headed furtively towards the special Mure-home place, stealing 
down trails and through thicket. They were after him and he must find 
a way to lose them...

~

He pictured the trail fragmented, he even doubled up trails that 
branched away, to throw hunter-spirits off his scent. Chirin was a 
fugitive from evil. It was not as much of a surprise to him as he 
might have expected it to be. From the start he had been running away 
from the big bad dark. He could rear up angry at himself for not 
standing to fight--but how could he fight something so big and 
powerful? No...the only option was to hide and do what he could while 
hiding. 

He was bright yellow...and in addition, in the chilly air he kept on 
lighting all over with sparks to keep himself warm. And that on top 
of both his light-orbs. A denryuu was the last thing that could hide 
anywhere. It walked loudly and moved slowly, and now was when musks 
were their thickest--and he was turning out to be of particularly 
rammy odor. Anyone who had met him and had any sense of smell would 
remember him the moment the wind passed it to them. He was maybe the 
last creature who could hide here. These evils had forced him to rub 
against the grain of his species' nature, but they wouldn't get him. 
They wouldn't defeat him. 

The trail behind them was left with the memory of his footsteps, 
vague impressions in debris. Chirin thought of fireflies and 
bugbeets, summer's high as he stole through the woods towards Mure's 
sacred special haven. He had been enlightened here once and he needed 
it so much more now. 

Chirin nibbled some pine branch tips, quite close to the place where 
he had slept and awoken with great gifts of knowledge and wisdom from 
the ancients in his blood. Whee his gift had saved his life from the 
perils of too much pokénip. He had felt the sting of the unouns' 
warnings back then; they seemed to have curled deep down somewhere 
inside him, dormant beneath his thoughts.

The pandemonium stirred in its sleep. The howls scratched at a prison 
just under the surface, a realm teeming with screams, too much pain 
and torture for one realm to hold. It pressed the lid of his past 
dream taut, trying to spill into him as he felt over the memory of 
the dream-journey, fascinating in its horror, so terrible to look at 
that he couldn't turn away. 

Among those voices had been his own. Had it really all been a place 
separate from everything or did he cry out in soul like that many 
times? Every time he'd sparked his fists in frustration a part of him 
had gone there. It was a terrible place to be but not as new to him 
as he might want to think. And imagine, if all the evil went away 
from other realms, that cave-place might fall silent. 

Chirin pulled a coat of warm sparks over his back as he headed on, 
dodging the dangerous things in the dark. That would never happen. 

What was becoming of him? What was he turning into? Was he facing 
truths or giving up? 

"I'll never give up...Mure, I'm almost there."

He approached the place like a foreigner. The last time he had found 
this place it had been on a warm early-fall day, full of leaf-
changing, swirling sunshine. Tonight the winter scraped the tree-
trunks raw and slapped him in the face. Only the rosy moon gave him 
some sense of hope. Azalea's blushing moon. 

"Azalea, I'm almost there."

Tears fell warmly down his freezing face. If he found Azalea he 
couldn't be with her if he wanted her to be safe. They would trace 
him to her. Wherever she was was safer than she would have been with 
him. The evil had succeeded in taking him away from his friends, from 
companionship. It was hideously clever.

He leaned into the gust of wind that tried to freeze his eyeballs 
open. He squinted and hugged himself, pebble pressed to his flank and 
nose pointed towards the special cove of trees and rocks. He 
remembered it. It felt strange coming back...he sensed what a 
different sheep he had been once.  All that he had lost, how far he 
had fallen. 

He did not plead the spirits... he dodged and averted them, throwing 
false lights to distract them as he made the last few steps towards 
the rocks.

~

He stood in the spot where Mure had come to him. 

"Mure?" He sifted the place with his gift, so much more richly than 
he had once been able to. He sensed no other *denki* presence apart 
from the usual twinges of wind-souls, little sprites that raced and 
played, chasing each other in the cold, not caring a whit about some 
denryuu out here freezing his lights off. 

This place no longer hummed with the magic it had before. Hoping it 
has simply retreated from the cold, he sat down, he felt the rocks, 
he pressed himself against the stone and sat with his back to it just 
like he had that day. He sang to the winter and whispered her name, 
Mure, Mure. But her loving voice was gone. This special shrine felt 
lackluster and lifeless like the forest, and made him feel silly for 
all the imaginings of Mure's voice calling him to the spot with 
singing, or her teardrops trickling in the stars. He stared at the 
sky a long time through the trees, chewing his cud and fighting his 
own tears. He paced in the spot...there must be a reason she wasn't 
answering. She had told him she had to hide. 

Chirin placed Azalea's pebble to the side, warming the rock where he 
would put it before he laid it on there, resting in its little knot 
of cotton. He sat down again with his back to the stone, assuming the 
position he had as a flaaffy. He called the memories back as strongly 
as he could, taking a brief look around just before he closed his 
eyes. His lights were dimmed, leaving him nearly blind beneath the 
trees that blocked Clef's still-flushing face. He called to Clef, she 
had carried Azalea's love to him tonight from wherever it came and 
perhaps she would answer again and call Mure.

The wails scratched their nails down the insides of skulls. He 
blinked his eyes and gave his head a shake.

His trance led him down a trail of unouns. He could feel his blood 
and the electricity inside his spine like he never had been able to 
in the waking realm. The waking realm was the one he'd always 
pictured as being in the middle. Everything else radiated out from 
it, but was that the case? How did he know there wasn't some other 
realm in the middle? Or was there a middle...

"Mure, Mure, take up the dance
Find my seashells shaking for you
And follow my song, swoop with me.
Usokkis dance and paint me someone
Paint me someone..."

There in the depths of his relaxation, in the song he had found in 
the quiet peace-places, he saw a spark. Usokki...paint me someone... 
The mouths of tunnsl hung open with howls more felt than heard. 
Pandemonium and night.

Chirin would never know if it had been Mure or someone else who had 
given him the idea, or if he had dredged it up all by himself--which 
was most likely. Like he had dredged up Chamadis from the murk of 
scorn. He dragged himself up now...he knew what he must do. 

Thank you Mure, thank you...someone, he tried to find a spirit to 
thank, but he had done this himself. This was his idea and it was 
mushrooming into shape, like a sad tree whose blossoms drooped. The 
idea was a sad one, but he knew that he had no choice. 

"Thank you Clef," he said, "for giving me Azalea's light and helping 
me a little while I meditated. Thank you." There, that seemed right 
to do. He drew up an offering of a form on the ground where he had 
sat and gotten the idea. It would help it take further shape in him, 
the form drawing magic from the place where he had been inspired. 
This was a place of strong magic indeed. You just had to try a little 
harder to find it sometimes. 

It hadn't yet fully dawned on him what the idea meant. He knew it 
would hurt when it did, the mourning and the sobs swirling like an 
echo down a dark vast chamber.

Blushing Clef, the blood in the moon would provide extra magic for 
the spell to take place. The idea demanded so much preparation, so 
much magic, but he was sure he was capable of it. He had never been 
taught formal magic by Chenja or Lararu or any other elders, but what 
he had instead discovered was magic picked up from Mother Megga 
herself and so many other beings dead and alive. He would use this 
magic now to do something he did not want to do, but must. 

Dead vines waved under stars like groping arms, like a weed on fire 
without a flame. Chirin's soul was moaning. Pandemonium and 
forlornness.

Chirin would do it right here in Mure's special place, except that 
Mure was not here, so it was both of their places. He embellished the 
form with a small thanks for Mure too, remembering that she had saved 
him and this place had called him back to it. Maybe she had indeed 
been the one to give him this idea, but then he could second-guess 
himself forever that way.

It had been his idea because it would involve taking the whole of 
himself and doing something so radical with it that he would not 
survive in his present state. He kissed and nuzzled Azalea's pebble 
before he left. She might miss him someday. Pandemonium and a lonely 
heart.

~

"Come on, help me Crazy Lights," said Chirin as he dug his flippers 
into icy-cold mud. A puddle gave generously, he left a gift of a form 
by its side as he drew mud from the shrinking reservior of rainwater. 
He was surprised the stuff wasn't frozen, and it probably would 
freeze later tonight. All the more reason they must work quickly. His 
flock had no time to lose. He paused every so often as he worked 
shuttling mud from the shriveling puddle to the rock-shrine. Any 
thanks to spirits he left outside the shrine now...to avoid 
attracting ny of their presence to the little hollot itself. No one 
must be in there who could possibly be evil and these evil ones he 
dodged were also of denryuu. Therefore his lights would only attract 
them. 

In the dark he worked like a thief stealing, gathering dead leaves 
that attracted his eye with a strange beauty in their curled forms. 
Other debris he gathered--grass and dead brush-twigs. He piled it all 
carefully in the shrine and then left to get more. He would know when 
he had what he needed. 

Chirin ran and paced the premises, touching down on the trail with 
frustrated feet. He was still missing something...what? What? He 
walked in mad circles, pandemonium and desperation.

He cast cotton, fluffy and full, and let most of it land in the mud. 
He took the mud-soaked cotton spore into the shrine as well. This and 
that, old shriveled berries and many dead vines he hauled in. The 
spot where he would work became surrounded by piles of dark dead 
forest-stuffs. 

In between working he nibbled from branches and bark, ever hungry. 
Never was it more important to eat than now. 

He came upon a waterlogged sunken patch of ground where high grass 
grew in clumps above his head. The grass-stalks were topped with dark 
reddish-tinted plumes, and he was so engrossed in gathering them up 
that he had not noticed the bleached bones lying half-sunk in the mud 
until he stepped into the stantler's scrambled ribcage.

"*Amp!*" 

His bleat filled the forest. The grass plumes fell in a scatter as he 
dashed back. The dead thing...long, long dead...he had stared into 
the empty eye sockets of a once great buck. Chirin paced on the other 
side of the grasses, in the forest, praying, waving his tail to ward 
off the dead that were after him. Pandemonium echoed in the wind that 
whispered with a voice in the skull and bones...pandemonium and fear.

"Crazy Lights?" He wasn't there, he had been scared away. Chirin 
straightened his tensed, half-crouching legs. He had to get those 
grass plumes back, but as he made his furtive winding way,stealing 
towards he site of the skull and bones again he knew he had not come 
back here to pick up the harvested plumes. The skull of what had been 
a very large and powerful stantler rested with its molars in the half-
dried mud. Its many-pronged horns gleamed in patches of Clef's silver 
as the grass stalks shook in the wind, admitting shards of the 
moonlight. Chirin was in the presence of the dead but now the dead 
would help him. 

He carried back with him, among the leaves and grass-plumes, a thing 
he had never thought he would be able to touch. He embraced it in 
shivering, sweating flippers and the object warmed to his hug, cave 
howls fluting faintly through. 

Chirin-chirin of the beacon flock of Pharos bounded down the forest 
trail with his bounty, he ran and he walked and he sang and he sobbed 
and he breathed, for the last time.  His idea, his plans were all his 
own, they would be his end and a beginning. His mouth curled into a 
distant smile. Pandemonium, and madness.

*Evolution in the darkness, twist and swing
Clutch your *denki* against the sting
Tunnel through and dance and sing
Cry pandemonium, cry energy.

In the body, chambers unlocked
Itching, twitching, swelling with shocks
Time rushing fast, the heart a clock
Yelp pandemonium, yelp instinct.

Steam wisps up and sweat beads down
Pain's pulse bobbing under the skull's crown
A toothy smile, a straining frown
Groan pandemonium, moan emptiness.*

The bony trees moved around the little shrine where Chirin had 
entered, cupping it in leafless embrace. Inside began a spell of 
brown mud and black, of red plumes and pale grass and crunching 
leaves. It wove itself around an ampharos who had left himself 
behind. Night's cold sunk its teeth and tore at the toughened forest 
while within the hollow grew a form of earth and bone.

Pandemonium, and freedom.

~

Clef rose above the trees, overseeing the last pulses of autumn. 
Brittle leaves fled in a tumble across a bleak forest trail. They 
scuttled around tree trunks and bushes, always on the verge of taking 
flight. Past the hollow caged by bare tree limbs, where the figure 
emerged. 

It was a dark beast of the forest and the swamp, seemingly formed by 
great spirit hands grabbing up clumps of brush and tree and ground 
and sculpting them together. The forest-beast waddled on feet of 
black mud and dead leaves, trailing skinny vines from its body. Dead 
leaves fell like molting feathers, but most stuck. Among the messy 
web of vines hanging on its limbs and neck were twisted clumps of 
brown muddy cotton. Here and there, streaks of lighter tan and almost-
white showed, like pus leaking from a wound. 

Trees swayed and swooned winter despair. The demons howled in silent 
screams about the animal that looked like it had erupted from a brush 
pile, or been animated from the bottom of a compost heap. Somewhere 
under there was a skeleton and muscles, and in a faint red light 
gleaming from the creature's tailtip its outline showed, the frame of 
a tall, lanky ampharos that it might have once been.

But its head was something else altogether, and unlike the dark 
blacks, browns and greys that covered most of the rest of it, the 
head was mostly white, only lightly mudstreaked, and mostly on one 
side. Giant antlers branched from a dirty white skull and a faint red 
light lit the eye sockets, intermittently--flickering up and then 
away. 

Beneath the heavily layered skin of his magic disguise, an ampharos 
ram wandered snug under the insulation of drying mud, and clean 
cotton under that, against his skin. It made up for not using *denki* 
to keep warm. The memories and desires and thoughts of a ram named 
Chirin-chirin dwelt under the skull-masked head. But he was not 
Chirin anymore. He had left that one behind in spirit, to dwell in 
the little grotto with Mure--among the swirls of the last form that 
Chirin had made on the ground, circle in circle in circle, connected 
by swirls and spikes like the caves that had spawned the one he now 
was. He was madness and wailing and silent cries, he was running and 
hiding, but he was freer--if Chirin was dead then they could not 
catch him. He knew that Chirin, who could navigate the realms well in 
life, would in death easily skip anywhere he desired, with the rest 
of the flock taken by the humans. That young ram fill of exuberance, 
seeing shapes in puffy clouds and splashing around in water games 
with Calima, would never die. He was safe now.

He whispered to himself. "*Ic, Pandemonium...na pandesmos, Pande na 
thukos.*"

The monster marched on northward, foul dark standing mud blurring his 
signature musk. He was despair and desperation, he was Pandemonium. 
His songs remained inside him, dashing against a profusion of 
thoughts as he walked, ever alert for enemies, though who would 
attack this horrific looking thing of death and hell, he found it 
hard to imagine. 

When he stood still, he was the forest, when he moved he was one with 
the trees and rocks that shifted in the night and committed deeds 
good or evil, or neither. He kept to where the trees were thickest. 
No longer were the close woods his nemesis. He had been reborn into a 
creature that was such a part of them that the thought of running in 
the open frightened him. Huddling among bushes like one of them, the 
trees above his head kept snaring his antlers, fortunately the skull 
fit snugly on his head, quite like Bangaa and his marowak spawn... he 
was able to shake them loose. He stopped to nibble on a few succulent 
bush branches, figuring out how to eat from under the mask, pull food 
into his mouth around the shelf of bone coming down to shield his 
face from view. He was new to this body, but he was learning.

Wind howled, ruffled the vines that trailed from him. Pandemonium 
stalked in silence. Beneath the skull he gave in to a slow procession 
of tears. 

The wind picked up and so did he. Leaves flew behind the forest demon 
thing as he charged the night, wind whistling through the bracketed 
eyelets of antlers whose illusions had gone dead.

~

The newly born hybrid of desolate caves and wind-beaten winter woods, 
stalked north, hiding, eating whenever he found food. Chirin his 
predecessor and maker had created a form and done a spell that had 
transformed him...it seemed the culmination of all the forms he had 
made in life.  Pandemonium thought whee to go next, he knew already. 
His white bone nose pointed up the trail as around him the forest 
retreated into itself, fleeing the cold in nooks and crannies. There 
would be no hibernation for him, he had only just been born. 

He thought sadly back on his former life as the dancing yellow 
denryuu and looked forward to seeing his lambs be born and grow. But 
first he must save their mothers. Inside his mind began the songs, 
the trail of singing had died but picked up again, superimposed on 
him by the pokemon he had once been. 

Hell's caves where his soul had tumbled out still echoed to him. He 
wasn't afraid of them anymore. 

He shot up a stretch of straighter trail, vines and leaves rattling 
against each other. A meadow grew at its end and he ventured to its 
edge only to eat. Stantler grazed in the meadow, maybe the ones who 
had once known the one whose skull he now wore and whose soul he had 
woven into himself. Pandemonium stared, dead grass  flapping on the 
elaborate bone branches of his antlers. The stantlers saw him and 
fled. 

So did he, pulling back into the dark forest. He must move while it 
was still night and he could still hide easily. Rather than upset the 
rhythm of sleeping that had altered from day to night while he had 
been underground, he was embracing it. 

Crazy Lights was gone, run away somewhere with Chirin in the spirit 
world. The two should always be together. Pandemonium pictured the 
two of them, one a normal denryuu, the other full of lights and 
stripes, side by side in summer foliage, running over those meadows 
whose grass never died. Part of him longed to undo the spell he had 
been made from, but this world wasn't safe for Chirin anymore. To do 
so would be to put the ampharos in danger, and anyway there was no 
undoing it. Pandemonium could not conveive of going back... he felt 
himself altogether different now, Chirin was gone.

What would he do, when he found those stinking denryuu who had taken 
the flock? He didn't know, but violent thoughts boiled in the back of 
his mind. Chirin would probably not have thought them, but he didn't 
need to abide by that. He was not Chirin. Pande gave vent to the 
blood in his mind, broiling it to higher heat when he thought of the 
innocent faces of Thyme and Phebes, Selden and Petunia. They would 
never see Chirin again, but by all the trees on Mother Megga's back, 
they would see freedom.

~

Pandemonium gave his gift freedom to roam over and throught the 
woods. He had gained the ability to sift through many places around 
him at once, always concentrating and controlling every connection. 
It was like he had a million tiny fingers. His gift would help him 
when his new form hampered his other attacks... but even more so it 
would help when other *denki* had never been able to...he could work 
from hiding. He had to avoid seeing anybody, whenever he could. It 
was why Chirin had fled and left this demon born in his place. 

Feeling a twinge of an old familiar haunting, the demon stopped, a 
small monolith of debris and black mud. Under his mask his senses 
came alive...he had had to alter the skull itself not only by 
scraping with a stone, but also with his gift, and that had been 
perhaps what had taken the longest. Holes for his leaf-covered ears 
and a changing of the eye sockets to allow him greater range of 
vision, slight change for size and shape, even--it had been an 
activity strangely similar to healing himself (which still took place-
-he had inherited the core of the formerr Chirin's body). It gave him 
an even more ghastly appearance, of an unnaturally large stantler's 
head. 

Pandemonium stood and felt the air for the other gift. It was there, 
and it had caught his trail and he could not run. He struggled to 
breathe freely as panic squeezed his chest. 

"I am not Chirin."

*You run, Chirin...you throw up a disguise...quite beautiful in its 
ugliness...I remember the days when I made forms,* the leaves hanging 
aout his own ears made the sounds of Bua's words as they rasped and 
crumbled against each other.

Pande bunched up as his heart jumped higher. His throat pulsed 
tightly. His gift shot out, twining about the older one's invasion in 
an intricate grapple, like two corals come to life and fighting. 
Static smeared the air in the trail and around trees as the two gifts 
fought. He would not let this Bua follow him now!

The older demon pulled away from the escalating fight. Furrows of 
frustration raked over the ground as invisible claws seemed to drag 
themselves over the dirt. Pandemonium watched the lines appear, the 
signature of his defeat.

*Don't think I don't have more to give,* sneered the fraying bark of 
exposed tree roots as the ancient presence clawed and tore at them. 
Filled with anger at the hurting of the trees, Pande attacked it 
again, "no," repeatedly stabbing at the invisible electric runners 
concentrated into claws. Sweat dampened the cotton lining of his new 
skin as the young demon fought the old. 

The gift-presence of Bua sank into the ground writhing with hatred. 
*I will see you when I am born again.*

Pande watched a leaf flutter from his body to the ground as the other 
presence disappeared. It knew who he had been and there was no hiding 
from him. 

He ran up the trail, hurtling towards the lake and the brink of the 
forest. His gift filtered its branches out through the air in the 
forest again, reigning freely over the bleak night world. But he felt 
far from triumphant.

~

Pande reached the forest's end quickly, where it peeled away from the 
lake giving way to a long stretch of grasslands, as far north as he 
could see with only the moonlight. It was no longer safe to use his 
inborn radiance unless absolutely necessary, and in the nighttime it 
limited his vision. If the moon had not been full, he would probably 
have been blind. 

The blood moon was his mark, he was sure that under any other moon he 
could not have transformed so thoroughly. He resisted the urge to 
bound through the windy fields...he could not go north this way. He 
would have to turn around and go through the forest, northwest. 

Drawing up to the forest's fringe, he smelled his own kind. Pande 
wondered if the evil ones had led the flock here? If they had plans 
to lead them anywhere--if, he dared to think more fearlessly now, the 
sheep he loved had not been slaughtered and left to rot on the 
slopes? 

He himself was only here because he had taken an underground 
shortcut. The dripping shadows and grunting souls had spirited him 
here. Bua could have spirited the flock anywhere, though, at any 
time. His powers seemed to have no limits. Pande had thought for an 
instant just before, when he'd driven the evil down into the ground, 
that he had finally gained powers to match it. But that had been a 
mere scuffle. Boro had shown much greater gift-strength and Pande 
doubted he could defeat that ram if he were still alive. And did 
death mean anything? Bua had said he would be reborn...Pande had no 
doubts he meant the springtime.

The paddock was empty as he ventured among the scrub and peered out 
past the wire fence, looking frail with thin vines the color of 
moonlight and the strength of Boulder. This was a much higher fence 
than the one around Farm, west of the lake. But this fence too was 
human-created.

On the other side of the fence was still-green grass and, as his nose 
told him even through the frosty air, grain fallen and probably still 
in, a wood structure he didn't know was a feeding station. Pande let 
his *denki* sense feel over the structure, groping around for human 
presence or souls that would whisper to them. Finding nothing here 
and feeling his mouth flood with water at the smell and sight of the 
grass...he stretched his gift and wound connections round the wires, 
unstringing and unraveling them. He did not like human-made borders. 
The wires came gently unbound.

Stepping into the open he felt the wind pull at his antlers, singing 
through them and maybe giving off a ghost of their former powers of 
illusion...the powers that had not saved their owner in the end. 

Vines trailing lightly over the grass, he grabbed great mouthfuls, 
getting used to the challenges of grazing around his mask. He 
couldn't nibble down as close to the ground as he could without it, 
but the grass here was still lush enough anyway and if he found a 
good bit, he just slid the skull up for a moment. 

Stepping around the feeding station, ever alert for any movement, The 
demon pandemonium nosed into the low-hung troughs, in which hung 
clouds of mareep-smell, and cleaned out the residue of grain there, 
licking at the wood when the seeds were gone and then moving down to 
savor what had fallen on the ground. Another station could be seen 
down the dark field but he was too afraid to move that far from the 
forest. Even now he sensed he was too close to humanity for it to be 
good. There was still plenty of grass here, so he set himself to 
filling up on that. The mareep must have filled up on the grain and 
left the grass mostly alone. 

Pande ate hurriedly and furtively, always glancing all around in case 
a human or other pokemon should see. The ground hummed with human 
energies, whispering to them even now. Pande shushed them and 
continued to eat. He must fatten up as much as he could...he knew he 
wouldn't find much food this good anywhere in the woods.

His light blinked a subdued cherry red as he shiffled over the grass 
in a mottled mound of debris, with a pale smeared head. Only the wind 
spoke to him and it had a harsh voice. He felt small and lonely.

~

The demon of the howling hollows grazed the quiet paddock, shielded 
from the wind's bite by the deathly hide he had donned. Memories of 
voices tumbled around in his head, ricocheting between his ears as if 
they wanted release from his mind. The spirits haunted him from 
within and without. He had gone from a light-creature chased by dark, 
to the dark haunted by light. What would he dream about now? What 
would he fear? 

He knew what he feared, actually, he thought as he downed a tuft of 
tough but half-alive grass. He feared everything. The wind had ears 
and mouths, and wings to fly their messages anywhere. 

"It sure is quiet here," he said to no one, except any spirit who 
wished to listen. 

"It is," said Crazy Lights. Pande picked his head up and looked 
around to see the whimsical little soul turning circles in mid-air, 
riding on wind and getting a bumpy trip. 

"Crazy Lights--I mean, well..."

"I couldn't let you be all alone like this," the invisible friend of 
Chirin explained, flinging his flippers out. "I never have, you know."

"But--wouldn't you rather be with Chirin?"

"Chirin doesn't need me now," said Crazy Lights, "he's off 
somewhere...last I saw he had his head in up to the jewel in the best 
grass you can imagine. But he told me there was someone in need of a 
little bit of company, he did. Said a demon of some kind--and it 
looks like that, would be you...he described you well. Said you were 
born inside him?"

"I was," said Pande, "But...I really don't want to talk about it."

"All right, that's fine with me," said Crazy Lights. "Chirin said you 
probably wouldn't want to.  He told me they're all after you?"

"Yes," said Pande, "and I don't want to say any more."

"Fine with me, I understand," said Crazy Lights, drifting alongside 
Pande as the demon shifted his head to consume another patch of the 
juicy grass. The moon mounted higher into the sky as he finished his 
eat. 

Pande got up, looking all over as he rose to his full, antler-
branching height. Far off by the farmhouse a dog was barking. 

With no more than a glance into the forest, he slipped back through 
the hole in the fence--where the wires had been curled into spirals, 
rolled up into forms all the way to each post. He cast a last swath 
of his gift over the grass, thanking it for a good meal, then swept 
with a swirl of loose vines into the dark woods that swallowed the 
beast again. After him came Crazy Lights, bounding on the vestiges of 
the wind in his wake. 

He had one thing on his mind and it was to find those denryuu. No 
sight or smell of them here... maybe from the lake he would catch 
sight of their lights on the mountain. His antlers framed the 
moonlight and fondled Yuki's breath. "Wind speed me on through Clef's 
blood gaze...night make me strong through the forest's maze. I move 
with the howling, howls follow me, pandemonium and pursuit."

~


He tried not to think about Selden's hug round his leg, he tried not 
to think about Petunia's embrace or Phebe's cry of Ysgard as they had 
mated. He tried not to think of the play-fights with Gunya, sweat and 
crashes and laughing. He tried not to think about Karama and Ko. But 
he marched through a forest trail strewn with their screaming souls, 
the noise piled onto the din in his heart. 

His gift was helping his body's natural healing abilities to clean up 
the last of his wounds and weakness; he marveled at what he had 
survived down there. Chirin might have thought that his ancestors had 
come through for him, but Pande knew better. The all-powerful 
ancestors and other ancient spirits had not come through for that 
denryuu or his flock when they had been savagely attacked. They had 
not come through for Chirin when he'd tumbled down into that cave and 
been set upon by horror after horror. It had been resolve and a will 
of stone, maybe some spirit help thrown in there, passed to him by an 
entity every so often, as Chirin had fought the uphill battle and 
won. Pande thought on the whole nightmare with bitterness. Chirin had 
survived because he had wanted to that badly. After all his prayers 
and offerings, all that energy given, so much time and care and 
creativity--where had it gotten him? Alone, hunted and wounded, and 
terrified. 

The tears flowed down his face inside the eye sockets of his mask. 
Donning this thing, taking on this existence, had enlightened him and 
the truth was uglier than he was, from any angle. The spirits were 
not something that it paid to throw out gifts to. Perhaps they too 
were just trying to survive. Heaping prayers and offerings to every 
pokemon you met--and *bowing* to them, for Phos's sake--would earn 
you--what? They would know that they were dominant over you in the 
deepest way possible--in soul. That they were better than you. That's 
what.

Pandemonium growled, hooves scuffing the ground and throwing leaf 
litter behind him. He trembled with a longing to vent the screams he 
had been born from...

The shadow-wrapped ampharos threw back his horned head and screamed.

~

He headed swiftly through the forest, fleeing the scream and those 
who might have heard it. He was alone and no one here was on his 
side...it was like down in the unown cave, him and Selden and Goldie 
alone together against those black things' wrath. Pande spat cud and 
a curse on the ground to his side. He waved his tail behind him to 
throw the projections of his pursuers away from him, feeling vines 
and dead grass crinkle and itch on it. He pushed them back, covering 
himself up in his mind. The spirits would do nothing for the flock. 
Only he would.

The angry demon reached the edge of the woods to peer out over the 
lake. And he saw something that made his lights rise up inadvertantly-
-another light. A flaaffy's blue tail buulb was shining down from the 
mountain. And as he looked longer he could see it was Mimishi's.

Emotion bulged inside his chest cavity, pressing against his ribs as 
his eyes watered. It flooded head and neck, his throat squeezed 
almost shut. His heart thundered up and heat rushed his skin. 

"Mimishi...it is me, I..."

Pande cut himself off because he had been saying that as Chirin, and 
Chirin was not here. Chirin was far away, he said in his thoughts, 
pushing away the evil spirits and diverting their course from the 
sheep's soul. Let Chirin rest in innocence and games. He watched the 
tail light sadly, longing to answer with his own, but Pande was one 
who had to hide. He watched lightless from the woods that watched the 
shore. No others appeared--was she coming up, at risk to herself, to 
lash a distress signal to anyone who might see? 


Pandemonium darted back into the woods and pushed on, soul scrabbling 
on stones of despair as it kicked down forms and stomped on 
offerings. And screamed through prayers.

~

He wrecked his way through bushes and vines, the forest appearing to 
fight itself as he hacked his eway west with swinging 
flippers. "Where were you?" Pandemonium's voice was deep and growly.  
His glare was an obscenity under his mask. "Where were you all you 
spirits? Where were you when I was pouring my sweat out in offerings, 
when I sojourned to the top of a mountain to speak to you? When I--
when Chirin found himself in hell?" He aimed his glare at the open 
jaws of the dark trail ahead. Sparks buzzed darkly on his dead muddy 
hide. The demon blasphemed on from a mouth that had once praised, a 
mind that had once dreamed.

"I'm not afraid of you..." Pandemonium swore with every step, his 
mind and body brimmed with feelings there were no words for. Each 
seemed to force another tear out his eyes. "I'm not afraid of you." 
The spirits were going to abuse him no matter what he or Chirin or 
anyone did. If there were any good ones out there... they were too 
weak to help. Pleading to them would only torment them. Everywhere, 
at every time--everyone was just trying to survive. Throwing their 
weight against a wall too high.

Everyone good was overpowered by the corrupted, the evil, those who 
squatted on their dominance and didn't care who they hurt. Everyone 
was insane.

He raced on with Mimishi's signal beacon light in the back of his 
head. He could find her and make sure those evil ones didn't hurt a 
hair on her head--he would make sure. Boulder...she had been afraid 
of Boulder. Chirin had thought it was possession, but Pande knew he 
was a stinking traitor. Boulder's rumbling voice and wise words made 
the demon's blood sour, building with rancidity in his veins. Boulder 
had obliged..."as you wish, as you wish" with his overburdened words. 
Words heaped upon words in a spell that had soothed Chirin's sensible 
thoughts to sleep. 

Pande stopped because he had to. The sobs would not stop coming. The 
beast of hell and torment crumpled into himself and gave vent to the 
sobs that pounded his ribs and the tears that flowed like a hot 
syrup. "Traitor...I trusted you," came a high, small blubbering voice 
that one would have not thought this monster could make. Pande's mud-
encrusted flippers curled against the ground, numb from cold. His 
breath puffed in frosty clouds vaguely illuminated by light from his 
head jewel that escaped through his skull mask's sockets.

He rolled as the screams tormented him, not with sound, but truths. 
Antlers dug at dirt and tail thrashed the air and leaf 
litter. "Traitor...traitor."

He fell silent and still, tangled in himself, tuning back into the 
air. The world was twisting into uglier and uglier shapes. Nothing 
was sure or constant; Chirin had uttered wisdom about everything 
changing without really knowing what it meant. 

Clef cried blood and the bushes snickered. The trail lay mocking him. 
So this was what it was like, being a demon. 

Pande got up and ran again, vines snapping from around him as he 
tilted forward into the charge, blasting down the trail. 

"I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!"
 
~

He slowed when his breath ran dry and paced, half sobbing, half 
laughing, half catching his wind. Pande found a seat by a tree and 
found a comfortable position, a bit more difficult with his new form. 
Giving up, he just threw himself down. What difference did it make?

He must rest for a moment, to do...something...he was losing himself 
from this realm, when he couldn't. Boulder had betrayed him but he 
had dne it to the others too. If they were stil alive they needed al 
the help they could get. Pande was coming. The good spirits of the 
world might not be but he would no longer follow their example--if he 
ever had. 

Pande took the deep breaths like Chirin once had and forced himself 
to put all these flaming feelings aside. He didn't like how they felt 
anyway...and they were doing him, the forest, everyone whom he wanted 
to help, no good. He must give this half a chance. "You're not doing 
it for any spirits," he grumped to himself, "you're doing it...for 
your flock." To get himself prepared. Pande closed his eyes and for a 
few heartbeats there, pretended that he was still Chirin-chirin. 
Meditation was like a cool bath on a day hot as Rizaa's fire. Pande's 
sobs subsided, his body's taut strings began to slowly come unbound, 
and his closed eyes saw a glimmer of light forming in a field of ever-
change.


It was a light he was tempted to take with a cautious stance, a 
guarded flicker--but wasn't he already feeling so much of that 
already? His soul was weary and wanted a light. The demon allowed 
himself the peace of traveling towards light--he was doing this for 
himself and his flock, the flock that had returned his love with 
theirs--not to spirits who had ignored him, betrayed him and 
continued to treat this world with nothing but cruelty and the desire 
to hurt things. It was a world Pande had become a part of, in being a 
demon, but he wasn't following the demon's code any more than he was 
any other spirits. They'd turned their backs on him and he was doing 
the same to them. 

The angry aggregates of negative thought clenched his stomach and 
hoisted his soul unceremoniously out of the gateways of peace that 
the meditation had begun to bring. Pande gave free reign to more 
tears and then settled back into deep breathing, spasming every now 
and then with a leftover sob as he sought to get back in. He had to 
try, he had to...his *denki* sense fought down the monsters that tore 
at his will, he fought them with a stubbornness born of knowing that 
if he didn't fight he would be their slave, and so would anyone he 
might have been able to help if he had not given up. Demon or no, if 
there was no light there was no reason to live and he had not come 
this far to die.

His mind slowly opened and his breathing slowed, there against the 
truck of the pine tree with its lower branches draping down around 
him the monstrosity of debris and death meditated in the dark. Wishes 
and desires, worries and passions, all mingling into background as a 
thing of light was born slowly inside of him. It oozed into view and 
the sight of that tiny light was stronger that gazing straight at 
Phos. He knew it was the first of many battles he would fight, but he 
was ready. 

Outside him things would always change, but inside of him there was a 
place where he could never let them find him. Nothing changed there 
but that which he changed by himself.

"Chirin-chirin," Mama cooed, as inside the demon's head she rocked 
her child. Her milk trickled blissfully down his throat, warm and 
sweet...warm against her great body that held him tight against the 
cold and the wind. Her milk gathered in a hug inside his stomach, it 
flowed into his veins and Pande found his eyes stinging with it, 
tears like milk, "Chirin, chirin, sing the song of Phos," she had 
whispered with him curled against her belly, "Keep us safe all 
through the night, and from the darkness save me."

~

Stars trickled in twin streaks down the inside of his mind, Mure's 
tears shining at the ghost of Chirin's thoughts in the mind of the 
mad howling-wind dark ampharos. The light--a feeling, more than 
anything he saw--flowed to him like a promise long kept, and 
everything inside of him released its claws. Pande lay completely 
relaxed against the tree, his breath reaching slowly to every corner 
of his lungs. Just for a little while he would sit here and let 
himself enjoy this feeling, when Haru's desires and pain of wounds, 
tiredness, anger, all sat churning in a random soup below his soul, 
which floated high like summer in the light. 

He opened his eyes, stood up and gave the tree that had propped him 
up and might have guarded him, a thoughtful stroke. Pande stepped out 
from under its boughs, stood nibbling the needles for a few bites. "A 
friendly tree you are," he said to it with a movement of his mouth 
that was almost a smile, and he sensed that it felt warmer towards 
him. He knew he looked scary, but things like that didn't frighten or 
throw off trees, it seemed.

He padded on, finding food as he went, eating even though he wasn't 
particularly hungry. You never knew with the weather turning so 
nasty, if the forest would continue to provide. 

Small pokemon fled before his approach. Pande reminded himself that 
it was better for them if they feared him. It was part of why he had 
chosen this new essence for himself. Maybe someday he could be Chirin 
again...but right now it felt false to dream about it. He was on a 
mission...

...and that mission was ground to a halt as he heard, then smelled, 
then stepped onto the bank of and saw, the river. Pande looked 
quickly around before he ventured down the bank, feeling naked and 
exposed. The antlered pokemon dipped a hoof into the cold current. It 
was so icy that his toes seemed to freeze apart from the rest of his 
foot the moment it was submerged. He pulled it back. He had to swim 
it--there was no bridging it and the flock was on the other side. But 
how? 

He thought back on his bitterness towards the spirits. "Show me a 
sign, if you want to help me out," he said simply, knowing he 
couldn't plead them to help him if they weren't going to do it. He 
sent forth his own spirit energy... pausing a moment to linger on the 
old hope that maybe his prayer would broadcast it further... but it 
was short lived. Pande picked up traveling in the forest not far from 
the bank. He wasn't going to stand there and wait to be shown 
anything. Those evil denryuu--and Boulder--were certainly not waiting 
for anything themselves.

The wind wafted the fragrance of burning wood from across the river. 
Humans' lights stood sentinel far beyond the opposite bank. Pande 
retreated further from the river. He couldn't swim across into the 
midst of the humans' nests...he would be jumping from one flock of 
evils to another. He gave a shiver and a small spurt of sparks peeked 
from under his coat.

Human presence made him nervous...he feared those pokemon who could 
make strange and evil forms and do such awful things to other 
pokemon. Forcing them to fight, containing them behind fences, always 
trying to rule the lives of others. If Pande was a demon and he could 
see the wrong here very clearly, why couldn't they? Was it possible 
to fall so far out of the light that nothing remained of the ability 
to know when you were doing evil--or good? It must work both ways...

The burning smell put him on edge as he hiked past the village. He 
wondered if Rudy and Striper and the others had gotten safely out of 
there. It had been a long time since he'd seen them...as Chirin, 
anyway. He sent a wish to them with his whispers, flying through the 
char of wood. 

More fires burned than he could know.

~

The river did not narrow and he found no bridges across it. Pande 
would have to swim.

He remembered what it was like swimming with his shaggy coat and 
Selden had nearly drowned from his wool. There would be no swimming 
with this on. But it was not an issue of removing and remaking his 
new form. He knew a denryuu was beneath it...and that the skin was 
made by the powers in his mind to visualize and form them. It was an 
issue of whether he would make it through the icy waters without 
drowning, disguise or no. Denryuu were equipped with flippers and 
some blubber, but they were not made for icy swims in rivers with 
rather strong currents. He'd swum this before and it was a challenge. 
But he didn't really have a choice...well, he had survived far worse 
down in the caves. Was an icy river really going to stop him after 
all he had been through? 

 He began to peel it off, unlashing vines and  stripping away cotton. 
Mud remained on his flippers, feet and tail, but that would quickly 
come off as well. One thing he never removed was his mask. It wasn't 
necessary. He kept his lights dim as he worked. As the disguise came 
off, the cold air hit him like he had just been born. Sparks quickly 
moved over his body, lighting him up like a fire of electric blue. 
That *denki* would have to keep him warm as he swam across. 

With vines still trailing down his neck and back and some cotton 
still stuck, Pandemonium braved the cold current with a quick wade 
and plunge. 

The chill grabbed him immediately, stinging him so hard he bleated in 
surprise. He should have tried to figure out how to use his gift to 
cushion this...he must figure something out now. But he couldn't 
figure out how to make water warmer...there were perhaps some things 
it just couldn't do. 

"Mother Megga--cold isn't it Crazy Lights!"

Pande gritted his teeth as he paddled as hard as he could towards the 
opposite shore. Shivers gripped him. His heart pumped hard like his 
limbs, fighting the pain and frigidity that tugged him downwards. The 
water's bite was seeping into his body, numbing it, and everything 
was confusion, the winter cold entering his mind and making him 
wonder why he was crossing at all. 

Above the surface a stantler's skull was seem, partly crusted with 
drying mud, moving over the water slowly but steadily. Its dark 
sockets stared into the forest it would soon haunt. 

Pande's legs fought the onset of the cold inside them, weakening him 
as he worked towards the other side. He was moving to the left more 
than forwards as the current took charge. The flock, the evil, the 
screams and the squeeze...Boulder's stone grip around him as he swam. 
He emitted electricity around him to try and stave off the chill, but 
to little effect. It was him and the river now, the river trying to 
claim the demon, but Pande paddled on, forcing his limbs to keep 
moving... he was made of stronger stuff than that which would drown 
here tonight. 

He pulled himself out of the water in a shudder, unable to get warm 
and barely able to walk. Hypothermia gripped him and his body came 
alight with electricity again, his *denki* releasing sparks all over 
himself without his even trying to. He lay there in a sparking curl 
for what felt like the longest time, just thanking Mama and Dah for 
having given him a body able to make it. He thanked Azalea...it was 
the dream of her that he had partly been born from. Spirits had their 
dark sides and they had largely failed him, but to think there was no 
connection between this skull and the one Azalea had worn in that 
dream--he remembered now that she had worn it when giving him the 
pebble--was definitely in ignorance of facts. He had stuck that tiny 
pebble to the inside of his mask with sap from a pine cone. She had 
seen him across. 

Pandemonium pulled himself up at long last, able to move again of his 
own accord. He still shivered violently. Hugging himself he looked 
down at his body, washed clean by the river. It looked so small and 
tender, it was a wonder he had made it so far as he had, but it was 
also a beautiful thing, smooth and brightly colored and hiding 
greater marvels on the inside. He looked at it a little sadly. Part 
of him didn't want to have to cover and hide what Mama had made. But 
the hiding was protection. He told himself it would still be there, 
but guarded from those who wanted to destroy it.

"Watakko's blessing fill the air around me," he murmured in a 
quivering voice and he called cotton spore up. He grabbed as much of 
it as he could, which the wind made difficult. Still in the grip of a 
chill he sought out the same kinds of debris and mud that he--or, 
rather, Chirin--had the first time. At the bank's edge and in a 
standing puddle further in he easily found the mud. He caked it onto 
cotton and such, his flippers pained and tingling with the work. A 
cotton lining, held on by mud and vines, followed by the application 
of mud-soaked stuff, then the vines and pine needles and dead leaves 
and more mud...piling it on into a guise that took shape slowly but 
with definite direction, like any other form that he had made in his 
past as Chirin. 

Pande sang fragments of a song quietly as he worked, looking to the 
moon and drawing energy from her. The song transformed him, Clef 
transformed him, the spell weaved itself again as he shrouded his 
body in forest. Mud slap by mud slap and patch by patch, he began to 
feel like himself again. 

He had rather more pine needles this time. They bristled in the wind, 
sticking out at odd angles from the mess of mud and leaves. Mud-
colored cotton flapped down over his feet this time, and he had lined 
the inside more thickly. He slowly caught his warmth again inside the 
insulation, grunting as waves of shudders shook him, and after a 
nibble on some bark he headed on, enjoying the feeling of warming up 
with spells of chills. 

Pande heard and smelled houndours, and quieted his movements. If he 
was attacked he could defend himself well, but it would draw 
attention to this place...he would be seen and heard.

The demon of screaming desolation stole like a rogue wind through the 
dark woods, shy and afraid but burning inside. Patches of moonlight 
dappled the thing of death as he passed under the trees, the shadows 
his allies.

The rustle of his disguise made it harder to listen for strangers' 
approaches; his gift became all the more important, helping him pick 
up what his ears missed through the crunch of crisp leaves. 
Pandemonium was still shaken by chills under the warm coat of cotton 
and mud, the icy swim had left its mark on his blood. The dark demon 
of wailing caverns headed through the night with his mission driving 
him forward, the chills pushing him towards the heat of exertion, as 
he tried to escape the ice inside him. It was one more thing on his 
tail. 

The houndours were close. Pande dodged around tree trunks, smelling 
their recent passing. Their tracks and scent-markings told the 
ancients memories inside him that here were his enemies. But he felt 
closer to them anyway--like they were both of the moon and the night. 
His new demon form was rubbing off on his mind. As Chirin he would 
have never thought it would come to this...but anything was possible.

The woods thinned as he headed west. This was all a bit familiar to 
him, he'd been here with Selden a long time ago. He knew that after a 
while the woods would give way to grasslands. Pande browsed as he 
traveled on anyway. He would see what he could see when he reached 
the end of the woods. 

Among the bare spindles of the pines' lower branches, among the naked 
shrub twigs, two branches moved in the dark. Pande's antlers shifted 
through the dark forest as he headed westward.

His gift, ever swirling around him now and more vital to him than his 
eyes, expanded forward, sensing what lay out west of him. A silent 
horde of current runners felt through air and pine boughs.

Other denryuu...his gift felt through the air very distant from here, 
but nowhere near the stretch that he had gone to find goldie that day 
on the mountain. Pande stopped and the leaves and debris ceased their 
rhythm of crunching brushing sounds. The forest was silent as the 
wind slowed and his gift sped...there, to the north, he focused on 
it...denryuu. They were easy to sense with the gift because of their 
strong electric field.

He couldn't sense much, mere splatters of impulses that might very 
well turn out to be a pikachu when he got there. But it was something 
at least. He could head on westward with no clue of where to find 
anything, or he could follow this one lead.

Denser thicket tugged at the tendrils of his demon form, pulling on 
vines. He yanked them away and moved faster, to his hot breath and 
crunch of leaves, the snapping of twigs as the demon moved. He 
focused his gift to catch an electric glimpse of them again--but he 
had lost them.

His legs picked up speed, hurtling him into a run. Currents flew 
ahead of him, trying for the trail again. His breath was fire and his 
tears were his mother's, Mama's eyes and her long gone milk. Her face 
loomed before him. He slowed to a walk, ears crunching leaves stuck 
to them as they perked, listening. He picked up again, keeping the 
inconstant pace.

*Blood moon, and blood flows hot... under her gaze I will find you 
all.*

~

Up ahead was a clearing, he saw the moonlight touching down on it. 
Pande padded over forest ground that gave and crunched under his 
hooves. He headed towards the lonely road with its faint stenches of 
petrol and death...unfortunate victims of human malice. Dead pokemon 
were something he had almost always found by roadsides, on the few 
times he had approached them. 

Fears maybe older than the caves that had borne him crowded his head 
and *denki* as he peeked into the gentle moonlight. Pande looked both 
ways--not for enemies, but to see if the road curved away. He didn't 
want to have to venture out first into the bit of field girdering the 
street and then onto the street itself. This sheet of strange tinking 
rock reeked of humans and their powers. Chirin inside him recalled 
the loss of his family. Seeing no choice, Pande stepped out towards 
the road, trailing debris. His gift spread over and around him like a 
grand tree and touched down onto the asphalt. He disliked the feel of 
his hooved as he stepped onto it--he never really had liked anything 
about roads. Stepping into its middle he stopped again, feeling the 
smells rise all around him and settle into his coat. Pande fought the 
feeling, he laced his gift about the air and himself to try to shed 
the human powers. Spirits leaped about him, strangled souls with 
nowhere to turn to. Was his flock among them? 

"No," he growled, whirling on the entities behind him. "You will let 
them go."

His connections filtered through each twitch of strangeness. He 
couldn't cross before he knew...

He tried to shed the grip that old flock still had on him. Pande was 
not of the beacon flock of Pharos...only the echoes of their souls 
could reach him, a demon. "I'm a demon! Leave me alone!"

The growl began distant, sprouting from the wind. It seemed to come 
from one way, then another, but Pande was too busy bucking off souls 
that haunted him to notice the car attacking him until it called 
loudly, a loud, almost cheerful noise as it sped towards him. Its 
twin lights grew and filled his vision. 

It was coming right at him, a lonely car driving down the night, on 
the hunt. Pande sparked in warning; all thoughts of hiding gone, his 
mind jumped into the focus of what its inherited memories told. 
Instinct was the song his blood sang. 

The car gave another long monotone call, sounding like a stantler's 
bellow or a bird of some kind... Was it calling others to the hunt? 
Pande froze where he was and sparked louder and louder... the call 
sounded again. Light hurtling towards dark with its voice rising into 
a grating screech. It was nearly on him...

His *denki* erupted with a bang and flash. It drove a snake of light 
from his tail bulb right at his attacker. All was a twist of screams, 
bang and yowl, electricity screeching down the metal like claws. 
Pandemonium screamed too as the night turned to daylight.

Light flashed back away, silence and wind prevailing around them. The 
car did not appeare injured, although it bore scars along its side 
where his current had hit.

Pande began to back slowly away towards the forest and that was when 
the car gave another strangled screech, swerving onto the grass. 
Lightning danced off the demon's tail again, striking Thunder towards 
the car. It missed. The screaming enemy ground its tires in a skid 
and bolted, bouncing on the grass back onto the road. Pande watched 
it slide away, taking its noises and lights with it. His heart raced 
in his neck and stomach and leaves quivered on his body in the still 
air, like the leaves of the aspen.  

Debris and cotton smoked on his skin. He was lucky he had attacked 
from his tail and not his head or the skull would have probably been 
destroyed. As it was he could feel the new warmth it had received. 

He retreated into the woods with thunder and screaming in his head. 
Would the tormented souls ever be quiet? Where could he retreat to--
nowhere! Everything was after him, from human-things to voltorbs to 
quagsires to caverns! To every spirit that had ever let grief swallow 
it whole. 

Pande stopped in the depths of moonlight shade to shake and cry. He 
knew demons cried now and the pain was so much worse. No escape, 
nowhere, nothing...at least he had fended it off. It had tried to 
kill him or take him as some kind of prisoner, though, that was for 
sure. Even now it could be back at any moment, three or four of them 
bulldozing their way through these woods after him. He paused, struck 
his gift up again. Nothing coming from that way. He must have lost 
it...or it was still headed on to its fellows. Humans worked in 
mysterious ways and he had no doubt they too knew Chirin's name. 

What was the use of this disguise, this new being, then? If everyone 
still could tell it was him? Pande couldn't change back now, 
though...and it was certainly less obvious this way. No, this was the 
only choice he had. He worked through his tears and got going again. 
There had been denryuu not too far from here, he had to know if they 
were his friends in need.

~

The car sped on towards the village, its occupant as terrified, if 
not more so, than the demon thing it had seen and been attacked by on 
the road. Strange and dangerous things there were in these 
parts...now an undead stantler-thing that threw lightning. He really 
had seen it all.

~

He walked on with his head jerking behind him, afraid of his blind 
spot, afraid, and angry. They wanted to kill him...all of them, 
everyone. For what? Because he had the gift? What was so wrong  about 
it--did they think he was that dangerous to their evil plans? What 
had Bua done--possessed the world? Everyone but him? He didn't 
believe anything so ridiculous. 

But if they did think his gift was a threat...he hoped they were 
right. Anything to fight them...even if he couldn't conquer them 
they'd never take him...Couldn't run from the unouns, they were in 
his head...no escaping their words, binding him...but he had escaped 
so much more. He would keep escaping. They would never take him. 
Determination blotted out all thought as the demon pressed onwards, 
crunching and snapping through the forest. Electricity glittered on 
the dead mud skin.

Pande swerved around saplings and shoved through dead vines, 
beginning to enjoy the armor the new form provided, making it easy 
for him to cut through the woods. Sometimes he stopped to browse but 
less and less so. He was on the trail now, honing in on the spot 
where his *denki* sense had caught a glimpse of his own kind...or the 
kind he had once been. In his ears the car screeched, in his mind's 
eye it gleamed in a lightning flash. He grunted, picking up into a 
trot down a clearer stretch of trail. His hooves kicked leaf litter 
in his wake.

~

He smelled fire ever stronger as he traveled north. It made his nose 
twitch and stung the caverns of his sinuses. Pande saw no flames, 
though...the fire, wherever it had been, must have burned out, and 
recently. He thought sadly on the things that it must have 
killed...he knew what  it felt like when your flesh burned. To die 
that way was something that brought tears to his eyes to think about. 
He was moving into a place full of newly bruised spirits, whose last 
moments alive had known pure pain and suffocation. He hoped they had 
died quickly and blinked his lights before he remembered he wasn't 
supposed to. But he had to ward off the fire somehow...

The dark demon thoughts rose in the pit of him again. *What good did 
light-blinks ever do for Chirin?* 

The fire's remains, its stench spiced with cooked flesh, lay 
somewhere north of here and Pande braced himself to arrive at its 
aftermath. Why did he keep fearing that his flock had been involved 
somehow? He found himself praying for them even though he knew it had 
done little good in the past. He prayed because it made him feel 
better--he felt like he was doing something for them rather than just 
blustering through the forest in a scary disguise.

The trail he followed was fractured by disuse, ingrown by plants. He 
tried to gently lift, then pushed aside a tangle of vines, stepping 
in as the woody stems resisted. He tumbled clumsily through, with no 
heart to wound them, even as a demon. He just didn't want to. He 
didn't want to hurt anything...Chirin's care had carried over. Pande 
knew he'd never be a really powerful demon. But having special powers 
didn't make life happier or easier. 

He let a song flow out as he walked, nothing much really, something 
about feathers and red lights and dreams, coming back to him in the 
aftermath of the attack on the road. He had stood on that road as a 
flaaffy and sung...tonight he had stood there and feared... and yet 
been attacked anyway. He had always thought the end of the fear was 
just around the bend, just past the next tree or the next day. Why 
had the howls of hell had to finish up the harsh lesson to the 
contrary that he had been learning almost all his life? The fear 
never ended...it grew, from the first days of lambhood onward. Pande 
could only fight it by snatching brief moments of song and fond 
memories...right now he just had to tell himself once more that it 
would someday be over.

~

He stalked his fear and the fire simultaneously. Its smells came 
further into focus as he traveled. Other pokemon were all around the 
lake area and he must avoid being seen by them...but  the smell 
called to him from a place he knew well: the area called Farm. 

Humans often burned wood and things, he had smelled firewood on his 
way up here. This new smell brought a troubled mix of meat and smoke, 
so strong it screeched down every nerve. All he wanted to do was hide 
away from it. Once again, fear and curiosity stirred up a pull in 
him, underscoring the need to know if his flock had been somehow 
hurt. The more he thought on it and smelled the air the more he was 
sure that his flock was there...burned..in danger...It didn't matter 
the risk, his flock was why he had taken on these powers and this 
journey. The demon was headed towards the fire, air throbbing with 
the heart of evil. Pande pushed on.

He saw the flashing swirls of lights swinging colored beams through 
the trees. He smelled humans and heard their voices as he drew 
towards the forest's edge. Pande had taken too many risks with humans 
already but he must know. He had to see what was going on and why. 
Could he really turn away without learning a thing? 

Not daring to step out of the woods in plain sight of the beasts, 
Pandemonium was resigned to watching from the dark fringe, his mud-
smeared skull mask helping his head hide. The distant lights, coming 
from up the hill past the broken pasture fence, carried the 
incomprehensible sound of human voices. They spoke a language all 
their own. 

He thought he smelled denryuu somehow, but with the smoke smells he 
couldn't be sure. Thoughts of his flock's charred bodies lying in a 
pile up there kept laughing in the back of the dark one's mind. Pande 
shut it out--it was his enemies putting it in his mind to try to 
weaken him.

A male human, talking to another out of sight over the hill, headed 
towards the fence and began to examine it, doing something along the 
broken wires and the posts they had once been connected to. He 
extended a length of yellow tape along it and further, the ribbons 
replacing where the wires had been. Fixing it? How could he know...he 
had never understood anything humans did.

Pande leaned forward, looking like a piece of the trees, his antlers 
matching bare branches and his body matching the brush. He smelled 
mareep all right, wafting down the ash-scarred slope. His flock...or 
had it been the one he'd seen on Farm? 

The human shouted something to its fellows out of sight and hiked up 
the slope with what appeared to be some exertion--like he wasn't used 
to doing this. Pande could only watch on with the sweeping lights 
finding their way to the trees over his head. His gift headed up and 
out over the field, feeling its trauma. He knew how the grass might 
feel. All ready to sleep in winter only to have fire kill it. The 
world was full of unfairness.

The humans appeared to not be leaving the scene at all...venturing 
any further than here would be out of the question. Pande's gift-
search with his now-farther-reaching sense revealed nothing of note. 
He found no denryuu, neither live nor dead. He hated to abandon it 
now...but he had his priorities and his healthy fear of humans. There 
was one thing he could do before he left...he could make a small form 
for the victims of the fire. He didn't know about any other spirits 
and he doubted that his forms had ever had much power to stop evil, 
but he knew they must do something. Just because of how he felt when 
making and beholding them...they had a magic. Even if he would never 
know for sure what that magic was, he couldn't ignore the call to 
make them. It was a form that had transformed Chirin into 
Pandemonium. Their powers couldn't be disregarded.

The demon found a few sticks and dead leaves, and got to work on a 
patch of ground he cleared further into the forests from the humans. 
Pande squatted with his tail curled forward around his debris-draped 
ankles. He allowed it to glow just enough to work by, and the form 
was born in a dim red light. 

Leaf by leaf he surrounded in nearly complete circles of debris, 
whatever he didn't find appealing enough to eat. He repeated the form 
and cried as he did, little circles. Each leaf a soul lost to the 
flames. Soon they surrounded the demon's feet and spread over the 
dying moss and debris he had not cleared. The dead ones licked around 
nearby tree trunks, circle by circle, leaf by leaf. Each time he 
stopped he thought he might be leaving one more out. He didn't know 
how many had perished but the form would guide him, as forms always 
had. They were lives in their own right. 

The flock of lost ones engorged on the ground and on his mind, 
staring back at him, each leaf a shriveled pupil in eyes of sticks. 
The ground watched, adorned with a shell of eyes. The shadows that 
had fled the fire had flocked to him. They blended with the black 
night, still smouldering, still smoking. 

Pandemonium pushed the fear down with feet and flippers, he charged 
it with a head jewel armoured by bone. The fire ones cried black 
blood, beyond the fence. Pande stared at the ground 
unbelieving...they too knew his name.

"I can't help you! I'm dangerous! Go away! Get away from me!" Pande 
burst into tears as he kicked the form apart, shattering the eyes. He 
had called the souls to him and that was the last thing he wanted. 
His enemies would only hurt them too. He smeared the form in the 
blaze of his red tail bulb. 

"Go away," he whispered with his eyes clenched shut.

A light answered his, a narrow white beam spearing into the forest 
towards him. He looked up into its glare as human footsteps crunched 
at the edge of the woods.

"There!" shouted a male voice, but Pande didn't understand it. He 
only knew he'd been seen. 

He retreated further in, seeking shelter in the dark that the 
flashlights swiped aside. Pande tried to hide his face. His body, 
anything. But light shone out dark...it made it flee, it was stronger 
than he was. It sought and found. He was on the other side now, among 
Burakuru's flock, fleeing the danger of daylight. He had always 
thought the dark was the wrong one, the evil one bent on 
destruction...

The naked branches cast a skeletal shadow on Pandemonium as he tried 
to avoid them, giving himself away with every movement. He had told 
himself he was now a beast of hiding, and no one would catch him. 
Could he, still a denryuu of sorts, actually make good on that?

The humans shouted another slur of strange words as their steps 
penetrated towards the thicker forest. Pande was turning, running, 
turning...Humans really were after him from several angles--first 
they had sent the car and now come at him in full. Under the blood 
moon their voices poked through the trees, in the cold starry winds 
they filtered into his hiding places.

In a burst of new idea he flung his gift out, searching towards the 
humans. He made it take hold of things--leaves, branches...and made 
them move. Pande would scare them away--it was the only way. Dirt 
clods flew up at the encroaching pokemon, branches pushed towards 
them as they began to scream. Pande heard them echo hell's cries as 
his gift snapped static in their faces, stinging them backwards, 
herding them back out towards Farm. Pebbles danced in the air, sent 
up by a chain reaction of tiny electric impulses. The electricity 
held pine cones, sticks and acorns in the grip of delicate *denki* 
balances, then thrust them in a hail at the humans. 

The flashlights swerved, throwing beams and shadows in chaos. 
Pandemonium kept up the storm of the forest's understory, driving the 
humans out of his stronghold. The ground lived and the trees grabbed. 
He had a chance here to hurt these beasts...they had taken his flock 
and were stomping in towards him to complete the task. He let his 
gift flail in the air around them...but couldn't do it. The big limb 
lay ready to topple, he couldn't do it...

He shoved a shower of dead leaves on the humans in a storm of 
frustration. It was all he could do. Fear drove them from the woods 
faster than any savage attack would have. He knew how to hide now, to 
keep everyone away without hurting them, even those he wanted to hurt 
he knew he never could. The car had been defense--but he had found 
another way this time.

From a hidden place in the spread of a big bush Pande watched as the 
flashlights and footsteps faded. He uttered one word from his softly 
sobbing mouth... "*Exibossss.*"

~

Pande crawled out of the bush when he sensed the humans were out of 
the woods. He had no doubt they would be back. They didn't like to 
leave things unfinished. He moved slowly, every snap of a dry twigs 
in the bush's innards seeming to hurt, as he worried if it would give 
him away. It had been easy to shove himself in, harder to extricate 
himself. He feared every tiny noise he made.

Out of the brush he let his feet pound onwards, wanting out of this 
forest that had been desecrated by human penetration. He let his 
flipper run gently over a few tree trunks he passed, as he whispered 
soothing words to them. He felt their pain, the human stench clouded 
so far into his nose and head that he couldn't get clean. Pande 
forced himself on through the dark and loneliness that he hated and 
needed. 

The light from behind him made the covered ampharos about face. 
Humans--

but the light wasn't human at all. It was dim and fuzzy, a glow half 
concealed in a veil of the undergrowth between him and it. It was 
coming towards him, a small, pale yellow glow-ball close to the 
ground, and Pande got his first true glimpse of what he might have 
looked like, trekking bewildered and full of scattered hope, into 
this forest at night. 

He stood still as it approached, perhaps drawn by his scent or the 
light from his tail that he had covered partly and tried to 
discipline into dimness but that refused to obey. Even in demon form 
his light still shone free. And it was a beacon. He could not 
obliterate it.

"Maa, maaa," came a gentle lamb's bleat. The mareep was not only very 
young, it was from Farm, judging by its cloud-puff of wool and its 
demeanor...trusting, less afraid. Pande watched with horror as it 
wandered closer, picking over the ground. It had nowhere to go, 
without him it would...

Nevermind. He was so fearsome looking that it would run away as soon 
as it saw him.

Run to where? How could he throw leaves and grass at this helpless 
young thing? Was that what Chirin would have wanted? This could have 
been him once...

"Maaa...Maaa..."

The yellow light smeared in the demon's tears. He could not remove 
his mask, he could not reveal who he was...he sat down helplessly as 
the lamb approached. He faced mostly away, not moving. 

"Maaa..."

The lamb was very young, so young it might have only begun to eat 
plants. A bit younger than Selden had been when they had met. It was 
a little ram lamb with his tail bulb held low on his short little 
tail, the light looking too big for its tiny body. Pande kept his 
mouth closed as his lips curled with silent crying. The skull mask 
shook.

"'Reepuu?" The lamb, wool puffed against the cold and its 
bewilderment, walked over to the unmoving Pande from behind and 
sniffed at his tail light. Pande grunted, a deep, tired bleat ripe 
with emotional pain. The lamb did not seem to notice it, aside from 
that it was a bleat. "Maaaa," he answered.

"You don't want to follow me," said Pande softly, beginning to turn 
around a smidgen. Why had this baby gone right up to him? What kind 
of a demon was he that he couldn't even repel the littlest lamb? Or 
was being alone in the forest and the cold more scary than the 
scariest face?  The lamb sensed Pande was one of his kind. He had 
found the light, but not the darkness it was attached to. That was 
all. He wished the lamb would just run away...that it would stop 
tormenting him like this, torturing the lamb inside himself that was 
clawing at the demon skin to burst out and scoop the little one into 
a hug, showering it with licks and whispers. The pain  raked its 
nails down his soul with every poke of the lamb's nose to his tail, 
every little sound it made and every tiny spark that popped in its 
clean fluffy white wool. 

"Maaa?" The lamb butted the red orb again, emitting an inadvertant 
pop of static. Pande's *denki* absorbed it--took the baby's offering, 
it was too late, they were linked, they had met. "I'm an ugly demon 
with many dangerous enemies," said Pande, turning slightly more 
towards the lamb. He could scare humans away with a show of thrown 
debris and animated trees, but he couldn't even look the mareep full 
in the face--for fear of scaring it. He had placed one hoof back onto 
the circling path. It would begin again--find a friend, find a flock, 
find love--only to have it snatched away from him in a storm of 
violence. 

He dared to move a little, shifting his position, curling his tail 
close to himself as he shivered in the dark. His leaves crinkled. 

The lamb's young eyes traveled from the mountain of the demon 
denryuu's back, up the swirls and knots of mud-caked cotton. His gaze 
found the rear of the skull, topped with the huge branched antlers, 
graceful hands of bone cupped with fingers flared around two eyelets 
of illusion, now only home to threads of dead grass. It looked at the 
only live thing that wasn't running after it or running away. And had 
a light.

"Maaa."

Pande started to look towards the lamb, suddenly sweaty and nervous. 
The little mareep had worked his power on him, without even trying 
to. Lambs were that way. He looked slowly towards it, turning his 
head in tiny increments. The lamb was looking up at him when he 
brought his head into profile, looking with his right eye. The mareep 
jumped and ran around the other way. Pande had made this form with 
such care and a baby had seen right through it...but maybe he still 
had half a hope. Babies had abilities that were lost later in life. 

"Maa, meriipu!" Playfulness leapt into its voice. Pande's cries had 
subsided, running out of charge...and now his mouth began to twitch 
under his mask, a smile trying to break out. Deep down in a place 
where he had buried it deeply, stirred the urge to play. But so many 
troubles were laid over it that Pande could not rise. His mouth 
relaxed.

"Riipuuuu?" the mareep, running all the way around to aim its gaze at 
Pande's face at last, looked up at him with light brown eyes, its 
tail giving his skull-masked face and antlers a warm yellow tint. 
Pande sighed, reaching a flipper out to touch the mareep's cheek with 
one of the few parts of him that wasn't covered up, the palm of his 
right hand. The demon gave a childish sniffle, feeling emotion stack 
up inside him so high that he breathed in and out deeply to avoid 
bursting into tears. He thought he had cried it all out already...all 
of a sudden it was dealing him double.

"*Amphaa, pharaaa,*" he said, deep and soft, to the little sheep. The 
mereep's face looked at him with a touch of the curiosity and fear 
that Pande probably felt so many times. 

He thought he had stopped believing in signs...maybe one thing was 
proving itself even more true than it ever had--that there were 
exceptions to everything. 

He showered himself with sparks, breathing out a globe of frost. It 
merged with the little one's puffy breaths. Pande's *denki* found its 
way to the surface of his costume and it briefly lit him up, sparks 
worming up and winking back out. 

"Maa," the mareep said as Pande leaned his head down closer to the 
lamb. The baby looked at the ram's black eyes behind the bone holes, 
that looked at it. Fear mingled with a tharn confusion... how long 
had this sheep been alone? Whatever had happened at Farm must have 
sent it running loose and alone. Pande let his hand glide through the 
lovely, fluffy fine wool and the lamb extended sparks, tickled with 
delight or maybe just relief that he wasn't alone anymore. The relief 
was shared. Pande realized he could not live alone stalking the woods 
without anyone else. His mind could not survive. He had not just 
saved this lamb. This lamb had saved him. 

Spirits...the thought whispered inside him. Had they been sent to 
each other? Pande would never know, and he let the lamb's warmth and 
his trusting little baby bleats blur out useless questions. 

As Chirin he would have been able to come out to the child so easily, 
welcoming him into a rubbery blubbery hug, complete with fuzzy 
buzzies. Pande had none of these things...his hug was scratchy and 
dirty, his face hard and cold. But he could give fuzzy buzzies. He 
let them emanate from his hand, swelling the lamb's wool as he felt 
over it.

"You feel so soft," said Pande, still in a low cautious voice, which 
crept out with caution like he had from the bush. It was Chirin's 
voice talking, just more quietly. "How are you? Oh, you're so alone--
stay with me for now," he said, hand stroking the wool on his 
head. "Oh, who would leave such a cute little lamb alone?"

"Maaa," the lamb answered. Chirin bent close to nuddle him but 
Pande's skull met the mareep's face. Pande lifted his hidden head 
away. He must look such a frightening sight, yet the baby had been 
drawn to his eyes, and his tail light that he should have covered but 
had been too weak to. 

"Thank you," he said with a voice touched by emotion again and he 
brought the lamb towards him, letting his fuzzy static surround the 
poor little thing. His repeated petting of the lamb's back and head 
soothed the young demon as much as it did the baby. A baby who could 
not tell him his name or how he had come to be alone. So much 
separated them--but so much more bound them together. "Thank you for 
trusting me."

"Maaa," and the mareep yawned. Pande must move on and find his flock! 
but this sheep...what could he do?

"Riipuuu," the lamb gave himself over into the arms of the demon dark 
who picked him up. Pande arranged the lamb in his arms so his tail 
bulb was hidden among the debris. How strange that his disguise 
should so quickly become a lamb's warm bed. "You are so beautiful," 
he whispered, and then, alone in the dark, he sang the song of Phos 
to him.

He traveled on with his gift splayed wide, twice as alert and twice 
as strong as he had been before. 

His alertness served him well. Pande realized that he had drawn close 
to the trail he had been on before, once again...he was so close he 
smelled them. Other denryuu, close by. He backed from the thicket, 
smelling blood and musk. Denryuu rams.

In one intake of air into his nasal passages he had gone from 
stalking the danger into being surrounded by it. He clutched the lamb 
to his chest; the mareep stirred, he felt it breathing. The poor 
thing was doomed if he chased him away and doomed if he kept him.

He had to work with his gift. Nothing else would work anyway and the 
gift was his best chance against his own kind...unless they were from 
Boro's flock and had it too...Only way to find out was to try. 

Pande searched in the air and trees at the level of his body, seeking 
the fields of warmth and current that marked the unseen denryuu. His 
arms rustled and crunched leaves as they wound around the half-asleep 
baby. He listened to the breath in his lungs and muffling out under 
his mask as he stood absolutely still. Clef stood still high above 
the treetops, the ground was still under his feet. Nothing moved but 
his body's pulses and those of the lamb...and those of his gift.

Depending on becoming one with the dark...depending on not being 
seen. Pande felt prayers tumble about in his head and released them 
in his thoughts as he hunted and was hunted.

~

His hopes that they were just any old rams didn't float well. 
Ordinary rams would not be stalking around in the forest, this late 
in the season, at night, in silence and dark. Still...he hoped. He 
certainly wouldn't do anything to hurt them if he could possibly 
avoid it.

But where were they?

His ears seemed to grow sharper and sharper to the silence, then 
there was a voice. 

"Down this way," one ram said to another. Pande's ears perked. A leaf 
fell from one. He stood stock still, waiting to hear another sound.

"I heard it behind us," said the other, deeper voice, to which the 
first one replied something Pande couldn't hear. 

"That wasn't her, it was something big!" said the deeper voice more 
loudly, lightly tinted with fear. Pande tried to nuzzle the lamb's 
wool, feel something soft and fluffy before having to face 
them...Ward them off somehow, keep from being discovered.

But who was 'her?' Pande couldn't just scare them off. There was 
something more. Was she with them or against them? 

"I hate these woods," said the first, scratchier bleat. They were 
heading west.

"Yeah." The word stabbed towards him. They were heading south as 
well. Leaf litter crunched now, Pande could hear them: they were 
searching for something, someone. A her. 

He did not move, but let them creep closer to him. He stood in a 
shadow of absolute dark, invisible in the island of shade from the 
moon. A pair of feet stomped towards something and Pande heard the 
thicket bristle with snapping.

"Now I smell him. Who's there?"

Pande let the silence speak.

"I'm cold."

"Wait, around this way, she tried to get out through here, see that 
blood?" Pande saw a glimmer of red light swipe through bushes far 
off. "Can you follow in there? Even if you're slow, you can go and 
I'll try to cut her off down the trail."

The demon's blood rose towards boiling. He balled his fists to the 
crumple of dry debris. They were indeed of that evil flock and they 
were hunting someone...who had either gotten away or was running to 
keep the freedom she had. He searched fora trail through darkness 
towards them, but halted before he started to move. This was a job 
for his gift. The less he was see, the better. and he had a lamb in 
his arms to boot. Pande's gift quickly began to concentrate itself 
around the voices, quickly pinpointing where both rams were. With 
only his *denki* to guide him he found branches, bushes, stuff on the 
ground. He didn't know who or even what 'she' was. He only knew they 
were out to do something horrible to her. This was what he had come 
for.

He let his gift float about, poking in and around the thick woods to 
make sure there were only two rams. 

"A ewe couldn't squeeze through there, flaaffy or no," said one of 
the voices to a wrenching of dry sticker branches. Pande's mind ate 
the clue greedily. A flaaffy, one he might even know. It was a shame 
he would not be able to find her. He kept his gift on alert in all 
the distance from here to them...he couldn't sense the mentioned 
flaaffy, but that boded well, it meant she was probably far away from 
them. But a flaaffy ewe couldn't hold out against those monster rams 
for long. They would track her down and catch her if he did nothing.

Seeking in a wider arc, he caught the flaaffy ewe, pushing north, 
electricity in a strange subdued pattern. Where had he sensed that 
before?

~

"I got a clear way through," one ram said, then the ground lifted 
around them while the branches descended. The thicket came to life, 
gnashing bramble like teeth as the pathway they had found, among 
other things, tangled closed. Pande pulled it closed as if with 
stitches. 

"*Amp!*" one said. 

"*A-a-a-amp!*"

"Lightmaster! Lightmaster!" cried one through the fits of foliage. 
The woods' frenzy heightened, tree branches rocking, debris tossing 
up forms that sank into piles, then shaped again. Pande immediately 
realized the shortcomings of not knowing how to create a voice to 
speak to them with what was available--although that was probably 
familiar to them... As the forest trembled around them he tried to 
use the air to speak, pushing and pulling it around, then when that 
apparently failed--he wasn't sure, he turned to trying to scratch 
leaves and branches against each other.

"Lightmaster!" called one, increasingly desperate when Bua did not 
reveal his presence. 

"I'm getting out of here," said one ram, breaking towards the west 
and the promise of open fields. The thicket, the woods were angry and 
alive and "That was not the Lightmaster!"

"I KNOW!"

Pande let the woods fall silent as he sensed the two rams running 
away, and he saw them as well, their lights flashing alarm to the 
woods they fled.

~

"I'm sorry, forest," said the demon with his voice full of regret. He 
sent a warm soothing stroke out on his *denki* sense to calm the 
flustered trees. 

The rams could easily be back. He couldn't underestimate them. He 
looked down at the lamb in his arms and saw it looking up at him, 
seeing the bottom of his jaw under the mask. The mareep really wasn't 
afraid. He felt it sigh and its breathing slow down. His nervousness 
before had transferred to it.

Pande, still on alert all over with his gift, stepped over to a 
sapling and nibbled the needles, trying to bite them and work them in 
his mouth without getting needles sticking his tongue. Plants fought 
back. 

He picked his head up and bolted down the food in his mouth. The rams 
were coming back onto their pursuit, further north, debating with 
each other over what was in the woods and where the flaffy ewe was. 
Pande couldn't figure out why they wanted to catch her so badly. It 
was all one with the wrongs wrought on the mountain and the evil 
threats whispered into his flesh in the glade. 

"She can't have gotten that far..." he heard, then their voices 
jumbled up too far away for him to hear. Pande started after again, 
picking up and heading still further north as quietly as he could, 
all the while giving the woods around the rams a scary shake--a mere 
reminder that the forest had not ceased its vigil. But his gift 
weakened as he drew farther away. Pande struggled to keep up with 
them. Think, think...he had to herd them away from the escaping ewe. 

In front of the rams was a clump of brambles, part of the thicket 
they had pushed into. Pande decided he had no choice. He had to 
really scare them, not just give them the shivers. He hated what he 
did as he took hold of the bushes immediately surrounding the two 
denryuu. 

First he closed off the way they had come, wrapping sticker branches 
in against each other, twining them secure by their twists and thorns-
-thorns almost 2 inches long. Pande focuused on the ewe's getting away-
-how he was helping her--as the rams disscovered they were now trapped 
and began to fumble around, desperate for a way out. Thorns drew 
blood and moonlight shattered through the holes in the thicket. 

"Don't panic! You know this forest is haunted!" one bleated as Pande 
pushed the branches in tighter. He saw a distant flash of electricity 
as the rams began to use their current to try to fight their sudden 
prison. Pande would have ventured closer, securing them better, but 
for the lamb he held. 

He bound branches around them, weaving a nest as the thicket pushed 
in a shell around the two evil ones. He did not press it close enough 
to keep scratchng them unless they fought it. They had room to move, 
but would their fear give them room to think?

He wept as his gift put the branches in place and lifted away, 
dwindling its connections. He would keep them there only until the 
ewe was long gone. The sounds of their screams and thunder shocks 
grappled at him from the inside... it hurt, it hurt...

How long, how long?

~

Pande unpeeled the shell of stickers slowly, releasing the occupants. 
He just couldn't take their pain anymore. Maybe he would have felt 
differently if he had seen them going after the ewe. But he hadn't 
and his heart hurt.

The mareep had failed to fall back asleep, pressed against the 
demon's deeply breathing body. The almost sweet smell of musk sweated 
through his disguise, perfuming every layer and the air around him 
with animal essence. The demon sighed as the last of the bramble 
branches tore away. 

At first the rams did not move. Had their shock killed them--toppling 
them from inside? Pande had tried to be careful in avoiding touching 
the rams themselves with his gift, although he imagined he had little 
power to hurt them that way. 

Nothing came from the niche in the thicket, although he sensed both 
rams still there. Pande crept a little closer, towards the lights, 
but hanging back.

He jumped at sudden movement from the hollow as the rams seemed to 
snap out of the spell. Out of the north charged a red light flashing, 
towards Pande's left. The demon hung back under the eaves of a pine. 
Moving would give him away. It was too late, he had crept too 
close...cared too much. 

The light slashed down in a mad arc onto the face of the demon and 
the ampharos was locked in the beam of its own light, shining on bone 
and branch. 

Neither pokemon made a sound.

Pande sparked in terror, trying to move back, desperate for a bush to 
hide in. The ram stood bigger than him, although his form gave the 
illusion of larger size. His gift...

The air was suddenly full of dead leaves like a swarm of butterflies. 
They shoaled and skipped, forming a wreath around Pande's form, as he 
tried to shake the terrified ram into running...

"Bangaa!"

The ram did what denryuu only did to enemies they had no other 
defense against--he ran. He ran screaming, "Bangaaaa!" feet leaving 
divots in his wake as he charged westward, eyes stil full of the face 
to face meeting with death. 


The spell...had Pande cast a spell on their minds? He had thought 
that nothing, not magic or especially pleading the spirits, was worth 
ever doing. But he had called on magic before...he knew how potent it 
could be. Magic had made him what he was now. Without a spell's touch 
he would still be a naked sheep running scared. 

The mareep he held was softly bleating. "Shh..." he glanced around, 
trying to figure out where to go next and what to do. He sensed 
around. Both rams were gone. The forest around him was finding some 
equilibrium again...some peace.

"It's okay," he whispered to the mareep, who had fallen into silent 
shivers, silent except for small sparks from its wool. Those little 
pricks of *denki* were all it had against the world's horrors. Some 
evil had set this baby out alone so soon before it was ready. 

Pande hunkered down in the brush, wondering where to go next...how to 
find his flock. He wanted to follow after the ewe...just to see who 
she was. Had it been one he knew? Karama or Fluffy? 

But no, that ewe was free to escape now. She was not the one he 
needed to follow. The other two rams were. Where they were going was 
probably back to answer to the others of their flock. They worked 
together under the dark one. 

And all the while this mareep lamb was in his arms. Pande shuddered 
in a long breath and swallowed a swell of despair. Mareep or no, he 
had to continue on till he at least found his flock. Even if he was 
helpless to break them out, it was time to act on this. Wandering 
around here would get him nowhere.

Pande ran to the west, following the hurried hoofprints in the pine 
needle litter. 

The rams were headed out into the fields where he couldn't follow, 
for safety's sake. What would he do then? He had been seen, too, on 
top of that--they had grabbed a piece of him and run off with it. 
Everyone who saw his face weakened him a little.

The mareep lamb wriggled in his flippers and Pande set him down with 
a stroke to his back. "We've got to be extra careful," he said, 
giving him a reassuring smile before remembering the little sheep 
couldn't see it. 

He reached the edge of the woods quickly and saw the rams out in the 
open...heading southward. Pande picked up, light and dark moving 
parallel to each other, each in its own element. He kept glancing 
back to make sure the mareep was keeping up...it was not. The lamb 
lagged behind and began to bleat, unable to keep Pande's hurried 
pace. Pande stopped and bent to pick it up, but the little ram lamb 
bleated and dodged his grasp. "I'm...I'm sorry." The baby wanted only 
to follow him at a step it could keep up with...he had no one else to 
follow but a denryuu who had fallen from the light. 

Pande slowed his own pace, feeling guilty as he willed the lamb to 
keep up. He felt pulled two ways...something had to give somehow! The 
life--or undeath--he now led, seeking his flock and finding danger--
was no life for this sheep. But what could he do?

~

Was there someplace safe he could leave this lamb for now--some flock 
that could take him in?...His thoughts steered towards the mountain. 
He wondered at how even now he had thought, for a split instant, that 
there was still a safe haven there, full of denryuu in ritual 
conflict and ancient harmony. It was no more and there were no safe 
havens. Not anywhere at any time. Pande had to stop trying to fool 
himself--it would get him or his loved ones killed eventually. If 
they hadn't already been killed.

If there were no safe havens then the lamb's being with him could be 
no worse than anywhere else! Leave him with another flock--to see 
that flock get taken by evil too? Pande sparked lightly in 
revelation, slowing his pace a bit as he followed the firestion the 
rams had taken. They were out of sight now but he knew which way they 
were headed. The rate at which they were going, with the fear that 
drove them, they weren't taking the long way. Pande pressed onwards 
and smiled down at the mareep. His place was with it--they needed 
each other and the lamb might even be safer with Pande than another 
flock, a flock that might know nothing about what was going on.  He 
would teach this lamb the wisdom he had brought back with him, from 
hell and from his life before...for apart from each other nothing in 
his life was real wisdom. It was the collection of events and the 
things he had done and suffered that created his wisdom...wisdom he 
wished he didn't have to shoulder, a lot of the time.

Luckily the winds and the spirits and the forces of chance had 
granted him a friend again. Pande would guard him like he had guarded 
his own flock...this lamb, stumbling tiredly after him down the 
trail, was of his own flock now. He bent down and scooped up the 
mareep, after letting him strip some lichen off a rock.  Still 
holding him Pande took a momentary interest in the lichen too and 
both of them dined further on it. He tasted its dry spicy texture and 
for a moment enjoyed it, enjoyed eating, enjoyed company. A speck of 
lichen got stuck to the mareep's nose and Pande brushed it off, then 
showed the lamb. Who promptly licked it up. Pande allowed himself a 
laugh and the lamb giggled.

He picked up the lamb again and as he walked along, with the rams out 
of sight and a long way to walk, he began to ponder something.

"Do you have a name? Can you tell me your name?" he gently asked to 
the bundle of fluff in his arms, a white cloud held in a pile of 
debris. 

"Maaa," the lamb bleated back, more as a natural response to being 
spoken to than any real understanding.

Pande thought hard. "A name...I'm going to give you a name, then. And 
it'll be a nice one." 

The steps of his feet on the forest path, the beat of crimping debris 
as his body moved, swayed him deeper into thought on this. He had 
done many many things but he had never named anyone before.

Pande froze, hidden in the depths of the forest as he heard--and 
smelled--enemies, in his path. To run back would mean he might lose 
those rams and would probably not catch them up before tomorrow. To 
stay would mean...well, he had no choice. Running now, they would 
hear him.

He stayed low, whispering prayers even though he knew that pleading 
the spirits did little, at best. He changed into his new demon mode 
of mind, that which aligned itself with averting the enemies by 
warding them off, with magic. He stayed low, big and ugly and afraid, 
a freak in the dark. Were they to see him that might be enough to 
scare them, depending on how big and hungry they were. 

His electric gift was once again the only thing standing between the 
others and himself.

"Maaa," bleated the mareep, "maaa..."

"Shhh, shhhh...." Pande stroked the lamb's back and sides, trying to 
soothe it into quiet.

Thunder banged and lightning flashed somewhere beyond the horizon. He 
heard very faint screams. All of the demon's muscles tensed--he knew 
what it was, the evil flock attacking yet more innocents. And he had 
been busy in here...not moving fast enough...

The enemies just ahead and the flock further away--he could not stay 
here! He chewed cud with a restless desperation making him growl 
deeply. The lamb complained with a wriggle in his arms and he 
realized he had been clutching him a little tightly, as if he could 
make a shell around the young sheep that should never go what he had 
been through. Not if he could help it. Life with a demon would be, 
for this lamb, as peaceful and safe and enjoyable as he could make 
it. He feared he wouldn't be able to give it much of those things, 
but by Phos he would try. 

Every faraway flash, bang and scream--a three-part song--called to 
him, echoing the battle inside his mind. He experienced again the 
struggle against Boulder, the agony of the squeeze and the fight on 
the mountain while sheep screamed all around him. It was happening 
again, an echo...and again he was caught alone in the dark.

Pande dared to move. Whispered spells passed from his lips and 
through the hollows of his skull as he crept nearer. The smell 
reminded him of Char and Stavros and Scrik. They were charmanders, 
then--and before his eyes flickered distant flame. Whether they were 
friends or strangers--or true servants of the darkness--he didn't 
know. And it didn't matter. He must avoid all of them. 

He skirted round trees, dodging any place Clef touched. His lights 
toned almost to nothing and mostly covered up as well, he stole 
towards the mysterious flames. He was full of fear and anticipation. 
His hands sweated and trembled around the lamb whom he had still not 
named yet. Haunted and driven the demon lurked forward.

~

Every name he thought of for the lamb didn't seem right, he felt out 
of place putting a name to this little creature who had stepped out 
of the shadows to befriend the denryuu under the disguise. Names 
slipped to the back of his head as he kept the enemy flames in sight. 
He knew where to head now--as the thunder and lightning laced with 
screams faded, signifying the end of what was surely an act of mass 
evil, the direction it came from was pounded into his knowledge. He 
was heading straight for it.

His thoughts circled on themselves as he used his gift to slowly seek 
out a way around the two charmanders. He could see them in the light 
of their flames now, and they were indeed Char and Stavros. They were 
alive! He longed to talk to them, bound out of cover towards their 
familiar faces... but he couldn't. He wasn't a familiar face to them. 
He was a thing of darkness now, his only ties to the light he had 
left were his memories of the flock, the resolve to kill the evil, 
and the mereep in his arms was also a thread to his light-path. Pande 
didn't think much about his light-path lately. It felt long gone and 
far away, something he was so far off there was no finding his way 
back for probably years.

He trembled as he crept yet closer. A path to the light...while 
forced to hide in dark? The lamb's warm yellow tail light, tucked 
under his little body and faintly illuminating his wool, made him 
hope...it was a beacon for him.

The woods thinned past the point at which he stopped. Any further and 
the trees were too spread, the shadows too shallow.

Pande was trapped in an ocean of fields he would once have gladly run 
into...the lands his kind lived on. Open air now the bane of his 
existence. He would have to brave it, like he'd braved it back on the 
paddock. This place was much more full of enemies and closer to the 
danger, but how did he stand a chance of getting his flock free if he 
couldn't even brave an open field? 

It was a matter of getting past these charmanders to that big copse 
down the way. A short dash for him, even with the disguises's slight 
restriction of movement, and especially its added weight. It took a 
strong neck to hold up the skull with its big antlers after a while. 
He was getting tired but he'd worked through exhaustion before. He 
held his head high and gazed out towards the route he must take and 
the rather small pair of threats that stood in the way.

How to push them away from here...give them just enough of a creepy 
feeling to dissuade them? Fear was what he played on, it was an art, 
like sculpting a form. You had to use just the right mix to get the 
right result. It was an art he loathed, like so much else about this 
new lifestyle. Resigning to it--he needed to do it--he began to think 
of a method by which to use his gift...

...how radically he had changed from Chirin, to ponder ways to scare 
them, drive them away, rather than approach his friends and try to 
hel them? He knew how to heal now! And he couldn't do it from a 
remote location, they had to be close to him to give him optimal 
focus. Watching Char limp was pain to him. The torment, would it 
never end...

He caught the stench of houndour smog, familiar from very distant 
memories. His mind hearkened back to lambhood days (and nights) and 
the couple of occasions when houndours had attacked. Smells were the 
wind talking and his mind was forever strewn over the ages. 

Houndours. If they had attacked, was it just an incident of the sheep 
defending themselves against a normal enemy? No, he decided--the two 
rams had been heading straight for the scene just like he was now. 
And that many denryuu gathered together that late, in that area, 
again stank of the unnatural things that the evil forced his kind to 
do. He was still headed there, he refused to deceive himself and find 
a reason not to go. If he'd even considered backing out. He would be 
disappointed if after all this was not where the heart of the trouble 
was. He hadn't come to find a meadow to frolic in.

Pande needed to prepare for the dash down the grass. He looked around 
him, still safe from being found if he was quiet. He was looking for 
the right things to make a form with.

He trasferred the mareep to the cradle of his right flipper while his 
left one pawed through the pine needles on the groun, searching, all 
the while trying to keep from making any movement that would call 
attention to him. He used his strongest thoughts to push the 
charmanders' senses and curiosity away from the place he was in. He 
imagined he radiated a frightening darkness, that let them into the 
fold of his despair if they did so much as look his way. It hurt him 
to think this way.

"Maaa," the lamb bleated to be let down. Pande placed himself between 
the mareep and the charmanders to block his yellow tail as he set the 
ram lamb on his feet. The lamb promptly snatched up and crunched on a 
nut that Pande hadn't noticed. Even the chewing sounded loud.

Pande made the form with spruce needles placed at certain positions, 
starting with a small circle and then making lines radiate out from 
it. He added a tiny circle in the small one...he leaned over it as he 
cried, letting his tears soak into the ground within it. "The circle 
is me," he said, "and I drive them all away..." He added to the 
lines, strengthening himself. A long line then led from the middle of 
both circles, out and away, trailing off towards the copse that he 
was preparing to make a run for.

"Riipuu," said the lamb quite loudly, finding something worth 
bleating about as he watched Pande arranging pine needles. Pande 
worked on harder, encouraged...and wondering what it was that the 
child sensed. Some things, Pande supposed, were closed to him forever 
now.

The lamb picked up a pine needle in his mouth and dropped it next to 
Pande's flipper as he worked. "Maaa," he proceeded to scratch gently 
at the already made parts of the form. His hooves broke the lines and 
scattered the needles as he 'helped.'

"Oh..." Pande's look of semi-horror as his work was destroyed faded 
in the sight of the lamb's happy game, as it continued to imitate the 
movements he made with his own hands. Pande smiled and let the lamb 
continue on. He'd made the form, and it was ever changing..and who 
said that someone couldn't help? Who was to say that wasn't the best 
way for it to look? He only knew he'd never had someone else join in 
and help him make forms before. The closest had been the big one by 
the lake, and then he had onlyleft faces bare for people to fill inas 
they saw fit. No one had ever just gone up to him and started joining 
in the process. 

Pande gave a small giggle as he watched the form take a very 
definitely different look. "Meriiipu!" said the lamb as Pande almost 
poked him playfully, but refrained--it might make to much noise in 
the night. 

Instead he stroked the lamb's head and back and right then and 
there, "You're helping me make a form? You're so good...look, how 
nice, what a good job you did."

"Maa, maaa!" The lamb was still young enough to remember a mother 
with red lights and a voice sort of like this strange thing, and eyes 
very much like him. A life he had been traumatically torn from, he 
partly found his way back to with this strange leaf-thing with the 
thing on his face.

Sitting right there with him, Pandemonium scooped him up in a hug and 
decided to name him.

"It took me a lot of thought and care to come up with just the right 
name for you," he said, "and I know it's not your true name...that 
may be lost to you forever, or a very long time. Until it's found, 
I'm naming you Chamadis," he said, pausing. Chamadis was a scorned 
character among some, although Ysgard had at least agreed with 
Chirin, of course that was because Chirin had been him reborn. Since 
Pande was Chirin reborn, he was, in turn, Ysgard reborn 
too. "Chamadis. For the ram who dared to satisfy his curiosity...and 
do that his light-path told him... and died for it. But he was reborn 
again in me because I felt the fire when I heard that story. I met a 
kindred soul," he held the lamb close. 

"Maa," said the newly named Chamadis. 

"And if you want a different name later, when you've learned to talk 
and tell me all about how you're doing, littlest light-friend of 
mine, then you can take a different name. But until then I call you 
by the same name that a hero was called. They don't all know he's a 
hero, but I do."

"Maaa, reepu," said Chamadis. 

"And you will live a long time and learn a lot, Chamadis. Your name 
will help you. And I'm here in case some evil flock comes after 
us...that's another reason you have that name...like the first 
Chamadis you're being hunted by evil, because you're with me."

His flipper rubbed lovingly on Chamadis's cheek. "We'll beat that 
evil, we'll get away from it, we will," he whispered, gulping.

Pande didn't remember the rituals that went with a naming, he only 
knew that it felt like it needed something. He knew that denryuu did 
some kind of spell or rite when they first bestowed a name on 
someone. They picked it carefully--he wasn't sure who picked, it 
probably varied--according to the circumstances of the birth, or the 
lamb's characteristics, the day of the birth and the parentage and so 
on. Pande knew a demon performing any rituals on Chamadis or anyone 
would produce a diffrent effect with his magic than anyone else would 
with theirs. But he needed to cement the name as well as remove 
certain bad effects that might come with it. He had escaped an exile 
into hell. He had the power to do this.

The demon brought his tail forward towards the lamb's head. He peeled 
away a couple of leaves. In the moonlit night he blinked his light, 
and Chamadis looked at it with a strange delight. "Maaa," he said, 
his little mouth opening in a high, young bleat. He butted the light 
gently and pawed at it with a hoof, clinking on the smooth hard 
surface as his foot slid down it. 

"The moon leaps the sky
We tumble on our tails
We scramble for a light where
The darkness prevails.

The flock turns dark
We are bounding towards the dusk
Let the herd give chase
They won't find us."

"I name you Chamadis, of hidden light and a strong mind. Of curiosity-
-which you've shown to me--that may get  you in trouble someday. We'll 
watch out for each other."

Pande turned his task to getting past two charmanders who knew who he 
had once been...and who would smell him, if they hadn't already. He 
strode into the woods' shallows, still concealed, and let his gift 
race over the dead grass. It haunted it with an unnatural ripple that 
lapped at the fire pokemons' feet.

Under his mask his nostrils dilated. The air was so thick with 
enemies that he would need to be very careful--he was trying not to 
be seen, which worked against a denryuu, not for. The only saving 
grace was that anyone seeing him would not think, denryuu. 

Houndours and fox pokemon were what he smelled the strongest, aside 
from the charmanders. No doubt they were well aware of the great 
attack--if he could hear it, anyone in the area could. 

Pande pondered how he would use his powers to get him unseen across 
the field...and what he might meet there in that copse.