Post by Bianca Moreno on May 22, 2014 19:58:40 GMT -6
January, First Week
"...Bianca?"
Bianca knew that tone. That was the tone of 'I love you, but I'm worried for you sanity.' She knew it all too well. Nearly every time she showed up with an odd item or garment, or had a strange look in her eye, it would be up to one of sisters to say her name in that way as the indication that they wanted to ascertain if there was a method to this particular moment of madness, or if Bianca had well and truly snapped this time.
She supposed that the fact that she'd come home from her fishing trip looking like a drowned rat, nearly as drenched sneasel and spritzee in tow, dragging an over-eighty-pound sea star behind her meant that her family was entitled to their concern for her mental health. Still, it always made her sigh a little to hear it from Isabela of all people. Kate, sure, but Izzy? Izzy was usually on board with her crazy ideas.
The clothes she'd been wearing at the time were now hanging outside on the clothesline, having been thoroughly washed to rid them of salt and whatever else she'd gotten on them from diving into the ocean after a remoraid and beating it up, and that meant that her current outfit was free of her usual bandana, so she found herself brushing a bit of her long, dark hair from her eyes as her gaze flicked in the direction of the stairs, where Izzy was lurking. "Yes, baby sister?" she inquired sweetly.
Isabela was a small, slender girl, but she'd been growing taller, and Bianca could see evidence that she'd be a beautiful woman in a few years' time as her figure developed. She already had a sweet face with dark brown eyes and long lashes to bat at anyone who caught her fancy, which she was apparently already developing a habit of. Her deep brown, silky hair was tied back in a long ponytail as she leaned against the stairs' railing slightly, dressed in hand-me-downs that Bianca was fairly certain their mother did not know she was wearing. She certainly hadn't been allowed to wear that shirt until she was a few years older than fifteen.
Izzy's outfit was not what Bianca was focusing on right now, however, but instead the look on her face, with the arched brow that communicated the exact thing her tone when she'd said Bianca's name had. Taking the invitation she'd been given to elaborate, she said slowly, "What are you doing with that staryu core?"
Bianca rolled her eyes slightly and looked back to said core sitting the centre of the kitchen table. The limbs were entirely gone, having been cut off as closely to the golden, metallic outer core and she'd been able to manage, but the core itself had nothing but simple surface scratches brought on by the simple wear-and-tear of being part of a living creature out in the wild. The jeweled inner core was intact, but dull, having none of the gleam shown when a staryu was conscious and up-and-about. The cut-off limbs, peeled of their tougher outer layer of skin--scraps of said skin were in piles by the core, and would probably have a use found for them soon--were what was currently cut into chunks and cooking with chopped peppips in the giant stew pot nearby.
Bianca finished pouring another spoonful of salt water onto the core from her bucket, and then turned to answer this important query. "Keeping it hydrated," she replied simply.
This did absolutely nothing to shift Izzy's expression. "Why are you keeping it hydrated?" she asked.
Here, Bianca was left with a decision to make. Tell her something crazy, like back when she was a little kid, to make her throw her arms up in the air and give up on a coherent answer from crazy old Bianca, or give her a crash course in the creepier aspects of staryu anatomy. Deciding that Izzy was a big girl now--she certainly seemed to think she was, with that outfit--she crossed her arms, sighed, and braced herself for the inevitable reaction as she answered, "To encourage it to regenerate."
"It's still alive?" As predicted, Izzy's eyes widened and she backed up, nearly tripping over the bottom step, though whether this was due to fear over the revelation that there was a live feral pokemon in the middle of their kitchen or solely horror over the fact that Bianca had been chopping its body parts off, Bianca couldn't quite tell yet.
"Staryu can recover from pretty much anything as long as the core's not damaged," Bianca explained as she went back to pouring spoonfuls of water onto the gemstone. "They don't have a circulatory system, so they don't bleed out, and everything vital is in there. It's a defense mechanism. Predator grabs a limb, limb tears off, staryu swims away to live another day and grows a new one." They could still dry out if they stayed out of the water for too many hours, though, which was why she was being careful regarding hydration, but she decided to just let what she'd already said sink in for Izzy, adding, "I'm surprised they haven't gone over that down at the Lab. What are they teaching you during those classes?"
"Not which pokemon you can safely chop the limbs off of." was Izzy's answer, and Bianca gave a slightly grim chuckle in response.
"Well, they should. Knowing that could save a life, you know." She noticed a small flicker in the depths of the core's gem, and she suddenly picked up the whole, heavy thing and turned to see her sister still looking like a deerling caught in a flashlight. "Speaking of, would you watch the pot? This fellow should probably be near water when it wakes up."
Bianca waited until she'd received a nod, then turned and headed for the door. Hauling the core wasn't much easier than hauling the whole body before, since all the heaviest parts were in there, but at least it was a less awkward shape to hold without the limbs. Nevertheless, she marched out of her house and toward the shore, purpose in her step.
The sun was setting, painting the sky and waves alike with oranges and purples. It was a beautiful sight, one Bianca never grew tired of, but right now she was a bit too restless to properly enjoy it as she lounged on a stone, feeling a chilly breeze as the temperature began to drop. For one thing, she was still hungry, and even with how long staryu meat needed to cook before it was properly tender, her family was no doubt already eating by now.
Well, most of them, anyway. Bianca was sure Izzy was going to hesitate a little before the desire not to waste food took over and made the decision for her. That was how it was in Mi-aro, after all. Eat when there's food, and don't let that food spoil. Never let yourself go hungry if you can help it, but never be a glutton either, because someone else may be going hungry who needs it. To reject food based on your squeamishness on where it came from was a luxury, one that their society didn't encourage.
Eating pokemon had always been an uncomfortable and complex thing regarding its morality, Bianca knew. In the old world, they'd had animals, and those animals had been the source of food, along with the source of many other things. The idea of even drinking milk from a miltank or having clothing made from the wool of a mareep, rather than an ordinary cow or sheep, had been synonymous with luxury, of wealth and excess, and so the idea of killing and eating a pokemon, like the delicacy that farfetch'd had been once upon a time, had been an entirely different level of that. Some had seen the killing as akin to murder, due to the intelligence of pokemon, but it also just had seemed such a tremendous waste to make a meal of something so powerful and valuable over the common animal.
Here, though, animals were a thing of the past. Killing and eating pokemon, just like the pokemon themselves did, was a fact of life. Catching them out in the wild in nets and traps had the justification of them having had a free and natural life before their demise, and the few that were ranched for their meat...Well, plenty of people said that corka weren't much more than animals, anyway, being little more than weak, dumb blobs of seafood.
The part that made it all the murkier was the idea of eating merely pieces of pokemon. For plant pokemon, it had always been perfectly acceptable. Pluck a fruit from a tree or from a tropius, it had mattered not. Pick a bitter herb from the ground or pluck a leaf from a petilil's head, all the same. It still had fallen under the umbrella of luxury, as trees were the more common thing, but with how prolific grass types were, it had been less so.
However, the idea of chopping a piece off of a non-plant pokemon, that never failed to make a human being recoil. For a human, someone chopping off your limbs to eat them while you still lived was a horrifying thing to contemplate and, once upon a time, simply the idea of cutting off the tail of a slowpoke to enjoy the sweet taste of the meat had been a sign of a twisted mind.
What Bianca wondered was, had anyone ever asked the slowpoke? If explained to them that their tail would feed someone, that not a single other part of them would be harmed and they would be allowed to grow that tail back in peace, would they have responded with the same kind of horror as a human, or would a creature that naturally regenerated their tails because they frequently used them as a makeshift fishing lure simply accept that, while an unpleasant experience, life would go on? Bianca liked to think she'd take some temporary time without a limb over losing her life, if it came to it.
She would never keep around a pokemon specifically for food, though. To constantly butcher a living thing over and over, that was cruelty, but surely, when the opportunity presented itself, catch and release was better than catch and kill? That was what she mused on to keep herself occupied, as she sat there, watching the gleam in the staryu core's gem grow brighter and brighter.
Only when the sun finally dipped under the horizon entirely did the core finally seem to gain consciousness, shuddering slightly under the moonlight as the gem started to glow brightly. Before her eyes, she watched flesh appear and expand outward from all sides of the core, rapidly forming the five long, pointed limbs that she'd previously cut off. They didn't shine under the light like the old ones had, it presumably taking time to form the harder, shinier layer of skin, and the staryu visibly wobbled as it tried to pull itself to stand upright on a pair of its limbs.
Bianca froze as the staryu rapidly steadied itself, then turned on its new limbs to face her, and that expressionless gem seemed to take her in as she sat there. She swallowed a lump forming in her throat, and after a few, silent moments, sat up and made shooing motions with her hands. "Well, go on! Back in the water!"
For a moment, Bianca had the feeling she'd done something that had spelled her doom, as the staryu's core glowed all the brighter and it gave a tiny hop to take to the air, where it started spinning. Luckily for her, the staryu soared out toward the water and landed with a splash, rather than taking its revenge on her for what she'd done.
That was the way of the staryu, after all. Limbs were lost, but life went on.
Bianca let out a relieved sigh and got up, setting her sights on home as a small smile settled over her features. Hopefully someone had kept her portion of the stew warm for her.