Banana Boat

..shortly after their fateful encounter.

The gently passing wind rustles the trees overhead, the only sound which accompanies the muted din of the swift stream flowing towards Capim Bay. Soon, however, the sound of a thunderous stomping breaks the silence, a slow and methodical footstep limited in pace by the smaller, gentler sound of a delicate set of paws crunching the grass beneath.

As he trots slowly behind her, Tropius looks down questioningly as he looms over Rain. Although she had downed the banana almost the moment he had gifted it to her, he sees that she still holds onto the peel tightly in her mouth, as she has to walk on all fours just like him.

Tropius can’t help but let out a small smile. On one hand, he had felt his heart race rapidly at the first thought of even offering a banana to Rain, and when he managed to tell her she could have one, his heart nearly leapt out of his chest. Did he really want to give in and be seen as a fruit tree?

Actually giving her the banana was an even worse feeling for him, but he somehow managed to steel his nerves as he watched her scarf down the precious fruit it had taken him months to grow.

Tropius glances skyward and sees that, although there is no shade over the increasingly-widening river, the path that runs beside it is still shaded for now thanks to the flanking trees. He has no need to worry about direct exposure to the sun – though he made sure to pack a hat for such a contingency – which would alter his mood, another side effect of his new form he can’t control.

But as he looks back down at Rain he reminds himself that, despite his appearance, he is still human. There was something familiar and reassuring that he remained able to overcome this one nagging alien instinct to be empathetic to someone just as homesick as he is. Though he still feels sick – the knot in his stomach still not yet gone – he feels somewhere within him the reassurance that he’s still himself. And if it made Rain – even if he didn’t normally get along with her – feel like a human too, well he wouldn’t complain too much about that either.

Rain’s pace quickens as they begin to go a bit more downhill, the river beside them cascading into a small waterfall tumbling over, and Tropius has to be careful to not follow through with his threat made one-too-many times to stomp her.

Tropius can’t help but grin at the irony of such a thing. That would be tragic, huh, if I accidentally stomped her after she finally got her banana.

They continue, and Rain’s spirits only grow as the stream widens to a river, and so too do the banks. When finally the trees part a bit too much and the river path is no longer shaded by trees, the duo stops as Tropius retrieves an item from his bag. While she waits for him, Rain looks at the sun slowly returning back to the horizon from its midday height; she closes her eyes and stands for a moment basking in the pleasant heat.

The sound of the river, somehow, seems to fade away when met with the sound of wind whistling through the trees, where the brush of every leaf and quiet swaying of trees fills her ears with serenity.

The winds which brush against her grey fur carry to her nose the aroma of some exotic flower, the scent both piquing her curiosity and, simultaneously, making her long for home.

Rain presses down on the banana peel in her mouth. The taste is more peel than banana, but nonetheless it pushes against the homesickness and returns her to calm; even if she lost her human body, she wasn’t alone. And if you told her two years ago that a mere banana would be the most reassuring thing in the world at just the right time, she would’ve laughed. Now, however, it was one of the sweetest things – figuratively and literally – she had ever experienced.

Rain returns to the sensations of nature around her, her heart now steady, and basks in it for yet another moment. She knows that eevees evolve, and that she has so many options available to her. But sitting there, enjoying the natural flow of the world, she weighs the question a bit more heavily than before in her mind of what it would be like to be a lea-

“Ahem, can we go now, Rain?” says Tropius.

Rain, startled, opens her eyes and comically leaps up. “Huh? Oh, sorry, I thought you were still…”

Rain cranes her neck up at Tropius who, even a handful of yards away, still towers over her. She sees he is now wearing a large, straw hat which is twice as long as she is, and she can’t help but hold back a laugh.

“…still getting your big ‘ol hat.”

Tropius rolls his eyes. “Ugh, let’s get a move on, you gremlin.”

Normally when he’d say it, it’d be an insult ushering Rain to leave his presence lest she get crushed, but this time – perhaps this once – it had a playful tone to it. Rain's large large ears perk up as she makes this out, and she continues to walk beside the wide river with a grin that refuses to disappear, Tropius not far behind. She knows that after today things would almost certainly go back to normal – though she’d do her best to quit hounding Tropius for a banana (would she though?) – but just this once she’d enjoy a more amicable Tropius.

They continue down the river, letting the sounds of nature once again remain broken only by the sound of Tropius’ footsteps, further and further as they neared Capim Town until, ten minutes later, they come across a cliff on the other side of the river, a waterfall cascading down and joining the river in a wash of white foam accompanied only by other rocks jutting out of the water.

Beside the waterfall standing in the shallow and slow-moving end of the river is a familiar light-blue face bearing a grin and a long stick; Nida is too busy reaching her hand into the basket beside her to pop a berry into her mouth to notice the duo. Tropius, seeing this, takes another lumbering step forward and says to himself. “Huh, is that-”

“Nida!” Rain cries out in excitement as best she can with a banana peel between her teeth, scampering quickly to her fellow Guildmate. Nida jumps up in surprise, somehow not having realized that a giant many times her size accompanied by a shiny eevee had snuck up beside her.

“Oh, hi Rain!” she exclaims, dropping her fishing rod and almost losing the x-ray specs that sat on her snout. She runs to Rain and gives her a big hug, lifting her off the ground and almost crushing her.

“Ow ow ow, okay Nida, you can let go now,” Rain manages to say.

“Oh, sure!” Nida says, loosening her grip on the eevee before a look of realization flashes across her face and she looks back down at Rain. “Wait…it’s your BIRTHDAY!!!”

Nida’s embrace of death returns and Rain’s vision begins to blur and fade until, finally, Rain finds herself on the ground, gasping for air, with Nida looking down at her wagging her tail. Another look of realization flashes across Nida’s face and, before Rain can tell her that she won’t survive another “birthday hug,” she instead trots back to her basket and drags it towards them. She opens the basket to reveal an assortment of berries and apples. “Pick some! A birthday gift for you!”

Rain reaches for the first berry on top – a tamato berry – but Nida swiftly grabs it and pops it into her mouth. She says to Rain with a sheepish grin, food still chewing in her mouth. “Well, any berry but that one.”

Rain grabs a pawful and then gently places the peel of her mouth onto the grass, stuffing her mouth with a delightful assortment of sweet and sour berries. They’re no banana, sure, but it’s the thought that counts!

Nida looks at Tropius and gestures to the basket, but the two-banana'd pokemon raises an eyebrow. “What>” he asks. “Are you going to try to make up for that time you stole my food?”

Nida blushes and laughs. “I, uh, forgot about that, and it was an honest mistake! If you want you can think of it that way, but I’m just offering a berry to you, friend to friend!”

Tropius wouldn’t really call Nida a “friend,” but if there was one thing he knows about her, it was that her voracious appetite almost rivaled his, an impressive feat considering he was several magnitudes larger than her. He notices a pecha berry at the top of the pile, and even though he wasn’t that hungry, he can feel his sweet tooth ache. “Fine, I guess I’ll have a pecha…”

Nida’s tail starts to wag as she fishes out the pecha berry on the top, as well as a handful more of others. She is able to restrain herself and pop only one into her mouth before handing the rest to Tropius, who happily enjoys the explosion of sweet pecha that fills his mouth, chewing slowly to enjoy the sensation.

Rain, finished with her berries, speaks to Nida. “What are you doing out here? Are you…”

A flash of surprise crosses Rain’s face as she sees the rod has a berry tied to the end of it. “...are you fishing?!”

Nida, full of innocence, nods and smiles. “That’s right! I’m fishing… for friends!”

Both Rain and Tropius breathe a sigh of relief, thankful that Nida’s appetite hasn’t gone that far. Nida continues, sighing as she waddles back to her fishing spot and steps into the shallow waters beside the cascading water. “Well, I would be fishing for friends, but it’s too shallow here."

She taps the glasses perched on her forehead. "I can see with my x-ray specs that there are a lot of fishy friends in the middle where it’s deep, but I can’t get close enough without going underwater.”

She then looks at Tropius and her tail once more wags, each flick splashing up water. Tropius beats Nida to the question by plainly stating, “I’m not a boat.”

Nida’s tail, however, is unrelenting in its wag, and she chooses to glance at Rain who catches wind of what Nida is thinking. Rain's tail, too begins to wag; she looks up at Tropius who, once again, beats her to the punch as his eyes narrow. “I gave you a banana, I'm not gonna be your boat too now.”

Taj Mahal's Fishin' Blues (Instrumental)

Tropius lies on the relatively shallow bed of the river with Nida and Rain both perched atop him. I’m still not a boat, he thinks begrudgingly, I’m just a very tall person lending these two midgets a helping hand…

He looks over to the two Guildmates on his back, both looking into the deep and quickly-flowing center of the river with excitement. The hat on his head, blocking out the sun and helping to regulate his exposure to the sun somewhat, is wide brimmed enough for him to angle it blocking Rain and Nida’s sight of him letting out a small smile.

Yet again, he’d been suckered into being a source of food – or, in this instance, “catching friends” – but it still reminded him it was nice to help others, even if these two weren't exactly the most deserving. He let out a low, involuntary chuckle at the revelation that, paradoxically, being used exactly like a Tropius would be – for their massive size and bounty of fruit – makes him feel more human than he’d like to admit.

Rain manages to squeak out a “be careful!” as Nida gently grabs the banana from her mouth – Rain refused to leave it ashore – and figures out where to place it. She looks at the tuft of hair on Rain’s head and, in a single motion, places it on her. “There! Now you have a hat like Tropius!”

As they share a laugh at Tropius’ expense that elicits a roll of his eyes, Rain is finally able to speak answer Nida’s earlier question of “what berry should we use, Rain?”

She looks into the basket, careful to not let the peel sitting atop her head slip off, and says “well, why not an oran berry? That’s a classic.”

Nida nods, grabs two, and ties one on the end of the fishing rod's string while putting another in her mouth. She reels the fishing rod back and then casts it into the middle of the flowing stream as she chews, the blue juices dripping down her grinning snout.

The bait, now in the middle of the flowing river and over the deepest part thanks to Tropius the not-a-boat, bobs against the surface as it is pulled downstream, surfacing and going back under over and over until it is too far and the line, now taut, suddenly goes slack as the berry disappears completely below the surface, the only sign of a taker being the flashing of what seems to Rain’s eyes to be a blue, mermaid-like tail.

Mermaid-like tail… Rain thinks, wondering where she saw it before, until a moment of realization strikes. She turns to Nida and asks, “do you have any bluk berries?”

Nida licks her lips as she rummages through the basket and pulls out a handful. “Yes, we have five.”

She takes a bite of one. “Four. How about three-”

Rain stops her. “Wait a moment! We can use these to catch the fish!”

Nida raises an eyebrow. “Why these specifically? The fish is just going to wait until the line is too far to reel it back in!”

Rain smirks as she attaches a bluk berry to the end of the line. “Not if they’re too tasty to resist.”

Sure enough, as Nida casts the line yet again, it bobs where it lands for a few seconds but, instead of going downstream, it quickly disappears beneath the surface in a flash of blue and white.

Nida looks at surprise at Rain, whose tail is wagging in pride. “Hand me another one, Rain!”

“Okay,” she replies, grabbing another bluk berry from the pile and giving it to her friend, “just be sure to pull this time.”

“You bet! I’ll also put on my x-ray specs to make sure I see where our friend is right before he can take it!” Nida says, pulling them down from over her head onto her snout. She casts the line and waits for a second, focusing intently. Rain and Tropius alike are silent, the only sound being the rushing of the river fed by the roar of the waterfall.

Nida’s eyes widen as she sees the approaching friend with her specs. In a single swift motion she quickly lifts up the bluk berry from the surface, hoisting it up into the air. Immediately following is a vaporeon leaping out of the water, droplets of upturned stream flying in the air as it chases the bluk berry.

The vaporeon finally catches up to the berry, cranes its neck upwards and manages to quickly bite down on the berry. Precisely what Nida wanted. “Gotcha, friend!” she exclaims as she uses the vaporeon’s upward momentum to throw the line behind her over Tropius’ back.

Rain looks up and sees her Guildmate, d’Alin, midair, his mouth shut tight on the berry no longer for taste, but as she can see from the look of astonishment in his eyes, for dear life as he is tossed over Tropius and lands into the shallow end of the river with a resounding splash, barely avoiding being slammed into the cliff face behind them.

He quickly resurfaces and says, “What the hell, Nida?! You didn't have to throw me into the air like that!”

Although there is a flare of discontent in his voice, as he chews on the bluk berry he managed to hold onto, it quickly dies down. He then turns his attention towards Rain and Tropius.

“Hi Rain! Hi, uh... big guy?”

Tropius rolls his eyes since yet again the vaporeon failed to remember his name, though fortunately there were no other humons around to "for you" him. "I just go by Tropius, it’s not too hard to remember.”

d’Alin lets out a small exhale from his nose and apologizes for being “terrible with names” even though Tropius has gone by the moniker of his species since he arrived. Suddenly d’Alin turns his attention back to Rain, then looks to the sky as he says, somewhat bashfully, “So, uh, where’s your partner?”

“Cory?”

At the mention of the corvisquire’s name d’Alin turns red. “Y-yeah, is he around? I don’t see him nearby…”

Nida grabs another bluk berry and tosses it to d’Alin as Tropius looks at his Guildmate in confusion, wondering why he seemed flustered at Rain's partner being mentioned. Rain, however, shifts as she replies to the vaporeon. “Well, he had to go out on some errands, and, uh, that left me alone on my birthday…” her eyes dart up to the banana peel she is wearing and she lets out a soft smile.

d’Alin spits out what little bluk berry remains. “Oh God! I didn’t even know it was your birthday, Rain, sorry! Uh… happy birthday? Oh, how’d you get the-”

He looks at Tropius who looks away at d’Alin’s eye contact. Ohhh, I see, thinks the fish.

He swims towards Tropius and the two smaller pokemon on his back. “Well, I’m just as bad with birthdays as I am with names… so I don’t have anything to offer you except maybe some tricks? When I first evolved, all the eevees tried to convince me about evolution, and for some reason I have that very same instinct. Interested?”

Rain nods in the affirmative, curious in seeing what a vaporeon could do, and everyone watches as d’Alin moseys towards the shore, runs toward them, leaps, and dives into the water, quickly disappearing below the surface.

While Nida and Rain can’t see where he went, Tropius from his vantage point sees a fox-like figure quickly swim below the surface before surfacing on the deep end once more. It takes no more than a handful of seconds, a feat that rivals even the foremost human swimmer. “Ta-da!” d’Alin announced.

Nida and Rain clap, and d’Alin asks for another bluk berry. “Do another trick first!” demands Nida.

d’Alin narrows his eyes and, after a moment, says “sure!” He concentrates, performs a small spin, then shoots a stream of water right at Nida, catching her by surprise and making her drop the bluk berry. Before it can roll off Tropius’ back and hit the water, d’Alin catches it with his paws – one white and the other blue – and bites into it. He snickers playfully and says, “now we’re equal for you throwing me over that colossal banana tree.”

Tropius now responds. "Says the fish. Don't you feel a bit... silly, going after literal bait and doing tricks for our amusement?"

d’Alin contemplates this for a moment and responds. “Well, I got lucky that, as an eevee, I had the opportunity to choose my own path.”

"So you decided to be a fish?"

d’Alin laughs and shrugs, his forelegs lifting out of the water. “I can’t really explain it, I was kind of called out to it, you know? It feels right somehow, even if it felt odd at first." He then looks at Rain, who returns the reflective gaze. “You know, Rain, we all wound up here by chance, stumbling into this, ahem, brave new world.”

Nida’s ears droop back in confusion as Rain and Tropius let out a groan in unison. d’Alin had unfortunately brought with him a deluge of literary references that were told as low-quality jokes precisely timed to spoil the mood, and this was no exception.

d’Alin giggles once more before continuing. “Sorry, couldn’t help it. Anyways, Rain: we’re here, right? Sometimes I wake up and realize it’s tough not being home, but here we all managed to find new friends we wouldn’t have met otherwise. With all the wonderful pokemon I’ve managed to meet, including you – I’m sure Nida and Tropius and, hell, even the whole Guild would be inclined to agree – I don’t think I’d have it any other way.”

d’Alin then looks at Tropius with a shit-eating grin. “And, well, isn't that something to get bananas over, right?"

Tropius responds by lifting up his foreleg from beneath the surface of the river and sending it crashing down, causing a minor tsunami to rise and sweep d'Alin away.

Rain and Nida both laugh at the sight of d’Alin being tossed around by the wave, though the vaporeon is able to quickly dive and return to his three companions. “Okay, fine, maybe I deserve that. Now, Nida! Go ahead and fish for a friend, yeah? I’d like another bluk berry, please and thank you!”

Nida once again attaches a bluk berry to the rod and tosses it out, letting it hit the stream with a gentle splash. d’Alin surfaces from the water behind it and looks at the delicacy, ready to pounce, the berry gently bobbing up and down from the surface tension of the water breaking upon d’Alin’s emergence.

Nida, her x-ray specs once again on her forehead, looks back at Tropius, whose eyes she is barely able to make out from beneath the wide brim of the hat. She procures a smile that, under the orange light of the slowly setting, sun flashes a message of “thank you for being a boat!”

He rolls his eyes but lets out a smile, letting the river flow beneath him and secretly enjoying the serene sensation it brings over him. I can be charitable for one day, at least, he thinks. Even though he’s missing a banana, he looks at Rain and sees the peel nestled onto her head; Tropius can’t help but once more feel pride that he was able to help someone’s day be a little better.

Rain, finally, looks into the water and reaches out a paw at her reflection, and for an instant much of the world seems to fade out save for another gentle rush of wind that rustles the trees and carries the scent of yet another exotic flower that smells like a mix of lavender and vanilla. She sees a grey eevee with so many possible futures, so many unknowns in life that she can’t help but feel a little nervous about.

But in her reflection Rain also sees not only her companions surrounding her, but also the banana peel perched on her head that she will cherish forever; after all, she’s already set her mind on seeking out an alchemist to have it preserved. She lets out a smile as she focuses on the banana peel, the joy rising within her serving as a soothing reminder that – no matter what – she has friends beside her every step of the journey she finds herself taking.

Art by Nida-anon