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There were many things Ingo had learned since arriving in Hisui, and even more since becoming Warden to the Lady of the Cliffs.
At first he simply tucked them away into the corners of his mind. He had far more pressing matters at hand, after all. But as time passed Ingo came to learn that his mind wasn’t the most reliable place to store something important. If his memory did end up failing him again, he’d rather not have to relearn these things the hard way.
So during the long nights when his body was just too stubborn to sleep, he would sit at the low table in the middle of his lodgings, light a lantern and coax the memories out so he could immortalize them on paper.
One: the people were paranoid.
This paranoia had extended itself to him after roughly six months, and taken permanent residence within his first year. But that wasn’t the important part.
Whenever Lady Sneasler brought him to the settlement, he was half dead and without even the energy to shiver. And yet, the people of the Pearl Clan were wary. They didn’t turn him away— they were frightened, not monsters— but even though a noble of their clan brought him to them with her own claws, whispers spread.
These whispers only grew louder after Calaba had nursed him back to relative health and he was asked to tell his story, only to find that he had no story to tell. He only had a name, strange clothes that he couldn’t bring himself to part with, and the ghosts of memories dancing at the edge of his subconscious.
They did not believe him at first. Thought him a spy from the Diamond Clan or a Zoroark playing a cruel trick. (When he heard that name, Zoroark, an image flashed in his head— of blood-red claws and a dark flowing mane. Later, when he learned what a Zoroark was, he wondered why he thought of that strange dark creature.) Children fled when he was near, and adults muttered prayers under their breaths.
Despite the majority wishes of his people, Lord Ryu agreed to let him stay. He was one of the first to give him trust, and he swore never to break it. He had given Ingo so much already— it was the least he could do as payment. It took many moons for the rest of the clan to come around, but most did. Even Ryu’s daughter, Irida, one of the most skeptical among them. When he was near, she would clutch her Eevee close to her chest and watch him pass, distrust in her eyes.
Ingo couldn’t help but be grateful for the skeptics like Lady Irida. A dash of doubt kept everything running in working order, made sure that nothing managed to slip through the cracks unnoticed. As frustrating as they could be at times, they were needed as much as anyone else.
Two: his clothes were peculiar.
This wasn’t just in terms of their style, though they were strange in that way too. No, the clothes he had arrived in… they meant something. He couldn’t tell what, not yet, but they meant something.
A day or so after he had fully regained consciousness, Lord Ryu came to visit, offering him a tunic emblazoned with the insignia of the clan. You have caught the eye of Lady Sneasler, Ryu said. It would be cruel of them to turn him away before, but with her approval, leaving him for dead in the wastelands would be taboo.
The tunic felt wrong at first. Far too bulky and stifling. He learned quickly that it was just right for the weather, keeping him in the perfect medium, even when the harsh winds of the icelands nipped at his skin.
Even so, Ingo could not bring himself to part with the hat and coat that he had been discovered with. He was told they were peculiar, and he could agree with that to an extent. Compared to the rest of the clothing found in the settlement, they were absurd as a yellow Riolu. But to Ingo, there was something… distantly familiar about them. It was likely they meant something more to him, to the person he was before he was found.
He wished he knew what it was.
But alas, he did not. And as it stood, he had no way of finding out. Feeling their comforting weight on his body was enough, he decided.
Lesson three came soon after his admittance into the clan.
Three: everyone must help if the clan is to survive.
A few days had passed since he’d recovered enough to walk and talk. He learned quickly not to do too much of either while in the village, though. The strange way he spoke confused and frightened the villagers. If he was being honest, it confused him too. The strange words rolled off his tongue like he had been saying them all his life. He might have, for all he knew.
But no one wanted him around, it seemed. Be it because of his outsider status, his strange words, imposing height or a face that naturally fell into a frown no matter how hard he tried to stop it.
So he started to forage. Carving his own tracks out of the village in search of resources. The first few times, he restrained himself to day trips. Just far enough to get what the clan needed. But soon that wasn’t enough, and after only a week or so he was sleeping out in the wilderness because he just couldn’t make it back before nightfall, and he couldn’t risk leading a ghastly back to the village. Safety came first, after all. Especially when concerning his new home station and all of the new passengers he had to look out for.
Lessons four and five went hand-in-hand.
Four: his affinity for pokémon was peculiar.
Ingo didn’t know what drew him to pokémon. Perhaps it was the same force that compelled him to keep his hat and coat, or to call “All aboard!” when leaving the village with others. Either way, they were marvelous creatures that never failed to capture his attention when one came near. No one else in the village seemed to agree with him, though. Children were kept in their beds at night with tales of Braviary snatching them up, or Zoroark leading them away with clever illusions.
But Ingo didn’t have the same fear. He was drawn to pokémon for some inexplicable reason— or perhaps they were drawn to him. That seemed to be the case with Lady Sneasler. From what he’d heard from around the village, her official domain was the Coronet Highlands, yet she always seemed to be just within eyeshot.
Besides, how could he fear these creatures whenever a sniffling Swinub waddled up to him and ate a chesto berry right out of his hand? Or when a Snowrunt guided him to a hidden cave so he didn’t freeze in the coming blizzard.
The difference between Ingo and the rest of the clan was evident when a young Gligar followed him home, somehow managing to half-stumble-half-glide its way after him through the mountains and snow. It was first spotted by a young girl, who shrieked and pointed, screaming for her father to come save her. At least four different villagers ran to her side, four more approaching the Gligar with wary stances. It simply gazed up at them, waving a claw and chirping in greeting.
It didn’t take long before most of the clan was arguing. How did it get here, what should they do with it, should they go to Ryu—
Instead of waiting for the conversation to run in any more circles, Ingo squatted down and picked the Gligar up. It waddled up his arm and stopped to rest on his shoulder. The villagers stared at him with wide eyes and gaping mouths as he declared he would take care of it.
And he did. It was nice to have someone by his side. Although sometimes when he was out in the icelands and Gligar flew off, he would catch smears purple from the corner of his eye, and he felt strangely… nostalgic? He didn’t remember. But that was to be expected.
The next lesson came only weeks later.
Five: pokémon were to be feared.
He learned this once he returned to the village after a long expedition, only to find the heavy weight of mourning hanging over the heads of every villager. Ingo didn’t ask what happened. Even he could tell that it would be quite rude, so he simply bowed his head and lent a shoulder to cry on.
Besides, he pieced the story together soon enough. The mournful songs that the Pearl Clan sang as the smoke of a pyre tickled the sky. He watched the hunting party head out in search of the Mamoswine who dealt the final blow. Saw the men come back victorious and present Lady Irida with the pelt of the beast who took her father’s life.
She wore that same pelt around her shoulders as she was inaugurated as the new clan leader. Ingo didn’t miss the way her voice trembled as she swore to be a better leader than all those before her.
It was her first act as leader that taught Ingo his next lesson.
Six: you adapted, or you died.
Many changes were set into place once Lady Irida was appointed the leader of the clan. Unspoken rules were set in stone, outdated practices were erased, things of the such. But the first thing she did surprised many, Ingo himself included.
She appointed Ingo warden of Lady Sneasler.
He was quite confused when she first approached him with the idea, but the more she said the more it made sense. The lady had not bonded so closely with a human since her last warden passed. They had been looking for one for years, and Ingo seemed the perfect candidate.
Most of the clan was overjoyed at the news. The party that was thrown after the announcement was wonderfully festive, everyone offering up a token of their affection for Ingo to take to Lady Sneasler.
Once the festivities had calmed down, Irida presented him with an intricately carved wooden band that marked him as Sneasler’s warden. He slipped it onto his wrist and stared down for a few seconds, expectant.
Suddenly realizing what he was doing, Ingo dropped his arm back to his side and shook his head, pushing the incident into the furthest reaches of his mind. He had bigger things to worry about than strange muscle memory or the expectation for the band to light up with strange colors and noises.
His next lesson came in the form of many small ones.
Seven: time is a fickle thing.
It was as if one day he was just settling into his new lodgings in the highlands, and the next morning he was waking up with a full team of pokémon by his side and a years worth of experience under his belt.
A team of pokémon. All kept tight in those strange contraptions the Galaxy Team used— pokéballs, they were called. His first few were from a member of the Survey Corps, a gift to thank him for helping her through the highlands. Holding them just felt right, in a way that he could barely describe. It was like a missing piece of him had returned after wandering the wastelands. On her way back, Ingo made sure to take her the quickest route in exchange for the recipe.
No one else in the clan kept their partners in the pokéballs, but Ingo would be the first to admit that he wasn’t much like the rest of the clan. Something just felt right to keep his pokémon right by his side, secure and safe where no alpha could catch them unaware.
That was another oddity about him: his pokémon. Many people in the clan didn’t keep pokémon, and if they did it was usually only one or two. Not Ingo. He had six. It was another one of those things that just felt right.
He started with only Gligar, of course, the others trickling in slowly.
He caught a particularly feisty Tangela that kept launching paralyzing spores at him in the Gapejaw Bog while looking for grain to bring back for Lady Sneasler. Next was the helpful young Nosepass who guided him through the cave systems dotting the highlands, though he ended up catching himself— head-butting into a pokéball as soon as he saw Gligar come out of his own for dinner.
Machoke simply started following Ingo after witnessing his gligar take down the alpha Golem causing problems in Bolderoll Ravine. Ingo offered it a pokéball a few days later, which it gladly accepted.
Then it was a mischievous little Abra who liked to play tricks on the people of the Pearl Clan. By teleporting them into the center island of Lake Acuity, she could force them to swim through the frigid waters or stay stranded until someone came to save them. Both options gave her much amusement, and even after Ingo caught her, she delighted in making things float or bringing him to the tops of mountains.
While he was waiting for Lady Sneasler to come save him, a Magnezone was apparently very offended that he had the audacity to get stranded on top of their mountaintop. At the time, he only caught it to stop the thing from launching bolts of electricity at him, but they quickly grew into a permanent place on the team.
After that incident, though, Lady Sneasler decided that he needed to learn to climb.
It was… a harsh learning curve, to say the least. Lady Sneasler was there to catch him when he fell— which was a lot, by the way— but that didn’t make the experience any less harrowing. His entire body ached for weeks, bruises mottled with browns yellows and purples appearing on his limbs when they knocked awkwardly against the rock of the cliff-face.
On top of all that, he had to admit that it felt strange to be someone else’s passenger. Not knowing where the car was headed, completely uncoupled from control…
He didn’t like it. Not one bit.
But it was worth it in the end. A new mode of transportation such as this opened many new opportunities. He could properly keep an eye on Lady Sneasler’s little ones after hatching season, and go after them himself if they tried to escape.
The young sneasels taught him more important lessons. Never help a pokémon out of its egg, for it will be too weak to survive if you do. Which berries helped treat small poisonous wounds. To never let his hat out of his sight, unless he wanted it snacked on by a curious sneasel. How to sew was another lesson, even claws on newborn sneasel were wickedly sharp. His needlework was quite crude, yes, but it kept his coat together, even if most of the bottom half had been slowly torn away over time.
He wasn’t alone in the highlands. There were plenty of pokémon, yes, but human visitors were less common. Usually a small group from the Galaxy Team or a visiting Lady Irida were his only human companions until he made the trek back to the settlement every once and awhile.
That changed when the Diamond Clan appointed a new warden to tend to Lord Electrode.
Electrode’s previous warden had been reclusive. So much so that Ingo didn’t even know the Lord of the Hollow had a warden until Lady Irida told him the Diamond Clan had just appointed a new warden, and they were expected to be civil with one another.
While they weren’t civil all the time, Ingo did find himself learning much from this new warden.
Eight: the Diamond Clan was not as opposable as everyone had described them to be.
They were simply different. That was all.
Up until Electrode was given his new warden, Ingo never interacted with any members of Diamond Clan. The only things he knew about them were learned through the comments made by members of the Pearl Clan, which weren’t the most reliable of sources.
But he must admit, his first meeting with Warden Melli of the Diamond Clan wasn’t the most orthodox.
Ingo had been conducting his routine safety checks at the Sacred Plaza when he felt a strange prickling at the base of his neck. At first he suspected a pokémon, but that thought was quickly brushed aside. The pokémon who hung around the plaza were dangerous predators— their eyes burned into the very core of your being. The eyes upon him were far more… inquisitive. They turned out to belong to Warden Melli, whom announced his presence by clearing his throat. After a short one-sided conversation stuffed full of snide insults, Melli left with a toss of his hair.
They had a few more interactions like this, but Ingo didn’t mind. For the most part, they kept to themselves, tending to their respective wardens and keeping the peace in the highlands.
Even after particularly bad interactions, Ingo couldn’t bring him to agree with the things his fellow clan members said about the Diamond Clan. While yes, it was quite unsafe to the passengers who passed through Wayward whenever Melli extinguished the torches, at least he was trying to protect the pokémon.
Ingo tried his best to share what he knew of Pearl Clan culture with Melli. He didn’t seem particularly interested, but he allowed Ingo to speak anyways. In exchange, or perhaps in spite of, Melli would tell Ingo about the Diamond Clan’s way of life.
He got to experience one of their traditions first hand, in fact.
Ingo was returning to his lodgings after a long day of preparations. Lady Sneasler’s kits were rambunctious as ever, but with their winter coming it was his job as their warden to help keep them safe during their journeys.
His Tangela was padding alongside him, and her sharp cry was the first sign that something was off. The second was the Skuntank sat right in front of his door. It wasn’t unusual for pokémon to linger at the tent, but for one to purposefully stand guard at his door?
The Skuntank hissed at him when he got near, but Ingo didn’t command Tangela to attack. Based on the familiar fourth toe on this skuntank, Ingo’s only real question was what Melli was doing inside of his tent.
It didn’t take long for him to figure out, as after only a few minutes the door clicked open and Melli poked his head out. Skuntank stood and stretched as Melli spotted Ingo and ushered him into the tent, Tangela and Skuntank following after him.
Melli instructed him to sit as he carried a large pot over from the stove and set it down in the center of the table, ladling out a bowl of stew and setting it in front of Ingo. He stared down at it, then glanced back up at Melli, who stopped ladling out his own portion just long enough to glare and snap to just eat.
Ingo did. It was a delicious, the recipe probably one that had been refined over generations of use.
He and Melli ate in silence, soaking in the atmosphere. It wasn’t until Melli was packing up his things and heading for the door that Ingo asked why. Melli scoffed and rolled his eyes, saying that today was the one-year anniversary of Ingo’s arrival in Hisui. When he got nothing but a confused stare in reponse, Melli scoffed again, louder than before.
Time was sacred to the Diamond Clan. Because of this, the day of ones birth was to be celebrated joyously by their loved ones through dancing, presents and food. Ingo couldn’t remember anything about his past, much less the day he was born, so the day of his arrival would have to do.
When he asked again, why, Melli’s eyes softened the slightest bit before he declared that he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if a birthday went without an attempt at celebration. Even if it was for a member of the Pearl Clan who insisted on scaring all of the Zubats in Wayward Cave into hiding.
Melli left and spoke nothing of it until the next year, when he invited himself over and they did it all again.
They did this strange ‘birthday’ ritual a total of four times. It was nice, Ingo must admit, but each and every time, after Melli left a strange feeling would overtake him. It wasn’t until his third year that he could begin to voice what it was: a sense of longing and loneliness.
As if his mind expected there to be someone else for him to share the day with.
Even if such a thing were true, Ingo would have no way of knowing. It was better to concern yourself with the things you could change than to dwell on the past, he decided.
Many things changed as the years went by. Lord Kleavor was appointed a new warden, a young boy named Lian who brought a pang of nostalgia every time Ingo looked at him. The storm above Mt. Coronet changed rapidly, but it seemed to be getting worse.
But the biggest change was his next lesson.
Nine: there was someone like him.
Someone from beyond the rift. They were just rumors at first, but both Young Lian and Lady Irida confirmed as such at their next clan meeting.
The girl— Akari was her name— had fallen from the sky at Prelude Beach. She was amnesic as well, but showed a strong affinity for pokémon and was working her way up the ranks of the Galaxy Team’s Survey Corps. She was working to calm the frenzied nobles. Had gotten the blessing of Lord Wyrdeer and saved Lord Kleavor.
She could also play the flute much better than Lord Adaman, Ingo overheard Lady Irida whispering to Lady Palina.
Lord Electrode had been affected by these frenzies as well, Ingo knew. As much as Melli tried to deny it, his lord was in pain, and there was nothing he could do about it.
If this girl really was to calm all of the nobles, she would end up in the highlands. And to properly traverse the highlands, you would need help from Lady Sneasler. It seemed Ingo would need to prepare for a new passenger, sooner than later.
Lady Akari turned out to be a lovely passenger. She held a sort of quiet resolve that Ingo couldn’t help but think he’d seen before.
Once all was all was said and done— all nobles quelled, almighty Dialga and Palkia calmed, and the Harmony Festival thoroughly celebrating the newfound bond between the three clans— things were looking up.
Ingo worked at the Jubilife Training Grounds now, alongside his duties as a warden. Lady Zisu never ceased to entertain, and being in Jubilife allowed him more battles against Lady Akari.
This lead him to his last lesson.
Ten: he was content with his life.
It was true. He was happy here. Happy alongside the Pearl Clan and the other peculiar acquaintances he’d made along the way. Happy to help Lady Sneasler with whatever she needed of him. These people made him happy. He was happy.
Happy, but unsatisfied.
At times, he wishes he could let the past die. That the final scraps of memory from his past life would wither and decay, leaving only one absolute truth of his identity. Finally able to put it all behind him and fully embrace his life in Hisui.
But they did not die, and for that he was glad.
There was something missing from him. Something that tugged at his memory every time he battled against Lady Akari or picked his way through wayward cave with only a flickering torch to guide his way. The ghost of someone hovering just out of reach every time he looked at Young Lian or saw the two young girls of Jubilife village who shared a face.
If not for anything else, he would keep searching for Lady Akari. She was just like him, after all. She deserved to return to her family, wherever they were.
His hope could not die. Not yet.