His stubbornness and unwillingness to climb the mountains, which were covered in this knee-high brush that was almost too thick to walk through, force him to push through the foliage next to the river – which left him bleeding and scratched all over from the whipping and scratching branches.
…
On the second morning of this, with Leo having crawled once more into the willowy growth that crowded the narrow river valley to sleep, he woke up to Queen staring right at him from the river, only her muzzle and the top of her head visible as she rested in the water.
He didn’t say anything as she stared at him, nor did she to him for a moment.
Her eyes glowed blue, and Leo was suddenly struck with his own memories thrust back at him – of the biting cold winter, of death, and of the warmth of a fire.
Following that was a few more confusing images, of taking fish and then of Leo leaving.
Then she crooned, soft and low, moving up and butting her head against Leo’s prone form.
“What’s up?” Leo asked softly, scratching Queen behind the ear.
She crooned once more and turned around, waddling off into the river and swimming back upstream without saying anything else.
Leo watched her go, utterly confused until he noticed what she had left behind.
A baby slowpoke lay on the muddy riverbank, apparently sleeping as it lay curled up.
Leo stared at it, and stared at it, then looked back upriver, then stared at the baby slowpoke some more.
He frowned, a million thoughts running through his head all at once, then slammed his forehead into the ground.
He’d known Queen was smart, and far more aware of herself and her surroundings than the rest of the slowpoke herd – who were lazy enough to let a magikarp gnaw on their tails for hours rather than fish it up – but he hadn’t expected this.
His best guess as to what happened?
Queen had understood their little psychic conversation perfectly – so well, in fact, that she came to the same conclusion Leo had about the baby slowpokes; that at least a few wouldn’t survive the winter.
But surprise!
Leo was leaving to escape the cold, so why not send at least one of the babies with him?
“You have got to be kidding,” Leo grumbled, pulling himself out of the willows and dusting himself off, hands sticking to the sap on his chest.
He focused on the still sleeping slowpoke as he stood over it.
It was probably just about as long as his arm, from snout to the tip of its tail, and still just a chubby baby.
Well, not that normal slowpoke weren’t chubby either, but still.
“When I said I wanted a partner pokemon I meant something that could help me survive, not that I would have to help survive,”
Leo crouched down in the mud and examined the baby slowpoke, looking back upstream and waiting for a while to see if Queen would come back.
He waited for a good hour, watching the willows wave in the light wind that blew through the valley and the pod of wooper that shuffled in the mud on the opposite riverbank, when the baby slowpoke woke up and Leo gave up on the idea of Queen coming back to get it.
Call it a gut feeling, but he would bet money on Queen not coming back.
“Wish I had a boat,” Leo muttered to himself, watching the baby slowpoke as it looked up at him blearily.
“Then I could travel as fast as she did.
It’s pretty impressive she got all the way to the herd and back in just two days,” the slowpoke waddled over to him, tail waving from side to side lazily, and butted its head against his leg, letting out a soft whine.
Leo scratched its head, but when it didn’t stop whining turned back to the short willows and pulled his backpack out of the brush, retrieving one of the three potato things he had found.
They were getting scarcer; he would have to spend some time just stocking up or search for a replacement plant.
All the while the slowpoke continued to whine, even going so far as to trying to fit the heel of Leo’s shoe into its wide mouth.
“You hungry?
Is that what this is about?” Leo asked rhetorically, presenting the potato to the slowpoke, who gobbled it up happily.
“Hope you can fish with your tail, or at least learn how to.
Don’t know how I’ll get you fish otherwise.
It’s a good thing you don’t need milk anymore,” Leo admitted, scratching the back of his head as he watched it eat.
The slowpoke didn’t respond, instead spitting out a remaining chunk of potato and flopping onto the ground.
For the umpteenth time in the past hour, Leo sighed.
Things just got harder.
…
After three more days of travel the lush green valley transformed into steep cliffs, and Leo had to spend a good half-day backtracking just to climb the mountain so he could avoid swimming down the river.
That the river was getting more turbulent too wasn’t promising either, and Leo wasted another solid day just foraging and hunting – managing to kill a rattatta with his atlatl, and find a good fifteen potatoes, thankfully – in preparation for hiking across the mountain and away from the river.
The as-of-yet unnamed baby slowpoke did not make things easy either.
It was, first and foremost, slow, and still a baby.
It did not have much energy to go travelling long distances, and so Leo was forced to figure out a way to carry it.
His young arms were too weak to carry the good twenty-pound creature far, so he alternated between carrying it while he strapped his skarmory feather unsafely to his back, and stuffing the little creature into his backpack, which killed his back.
That wasn’t even to mention that it was dangerous to leave the slowpoke in his backpack, both because it would squirm its way out if it suddenly felt adventurous, and because it would eat or soil his food.
Cleaning poop out of his pack wasn’t fun, and he had to isolate his journals and Archibald’s journal after that incident.
Still though, Leo grit his teeth and forged ahead, carefully walking along the steep cliffside and occasionally stealing glances down the sixty-foot drop to the raging river below.
“Slow,” his little ‘buddy’ called from behind him, having been walking behind Leo for the past hour.
Leo stopped and turned around, raising one eyebrow at the creature as it stood at the cliff’s edge, looking down at the raging water.
“I’m not coming to get you if you jump off,” Leo warned, crossing his arms.
The slowpoke ignored him, staring down at the water unblinking for a solid few minutes before turning its head to look at Leo and repeating its call.
Then it turned back to the river and experimentally put one foot on the edge of the cliff, forcing Leo to jump forward and grab the little pokemon, hauling it away from the edge.
“I said no, you little idiot!
Do you not understand that you’ll die if you try to go down that way?!” he hissed in its ear, sitting down and pulling the creating into his lap, laying it on its back so it couldn’t wander off.
“Slooow,” the slowpoke crooned, flopping its head back into Leo’s chest and exposing its creamy white underbelly to the world.
“What am I going to do with you?” Leo asked, slumping his shoulders in defeat and giving the baby a few belly scratches.
It was only midday and Leo was already considering making camp for the night – he was dead tired from having to carry the slowpoke up and down the stupid mountain all day.
His arms were tired, his legs hurt, and his back felt like it was going to give out from carrying around the slowpoke.
“Tell you what I’m going to do, I’m going to sit here and rest for a few minutes.
You are not allowed to kill yourself during that time, understand me?” Leo muttered as he lay on his back, staring at the sky.
The slowpoke grunted and squirmed, rolling off of Leo and flopping down onto the ground, where it lay unmoving.
Leo grumbled to himself and slipped the straps of his backpack off, rolling away from the slowpoke and lying belly-down on the ground, propping his chin up on his hands.
The mountain sloped gently upward from the cliff, pine trees covering the hillside and preventing much in the way of small plants from growing as they blocked the sunlight.
Off to his right was an aspen grove, the white-trunked trees grouped together densely.
Amusingly, no branches grew on the lower part of the aspens’ trunks, instead only growing near the top and giving the grove a whole “dark, evil forest” vibe as it cast the ground in shadow.
…
A/ N: The Story Needs More Power Stones 😉