My day job is working as a Part-time Cashier at a fast food place, as such my Income is very small. So, if you can, please support me so I can keep making and sharing cool stuff with you all!
And if you don’t wanna use the Tip thing, here are some other ways you can help support me:
Here’s my Ko-Fi, if you want to send a little bit of money my way. Also, people can commission Art from me there! https://ko-fi.com/Q5Q1BERK
If you wanna help out in a more long term way, I have a patreon too! I don’t post much, but every little bit helps! https://www.patreon.com/qrkepner
And if you just wanna read my original comic, And The Cat Said, you can check out my person website! (I also post personal updates and original art there too.) http://qrkepner.com/
If you wanna buy things from me, I also have a Zazzle and Redbubble Shop! (Also, if you know of any art of my you wanted to have a merch-thing of, let me know and I’ll make it!)
Anyways, I could use any support people can give, because it’s hard to have time to do fun things while still balancing earning money and keeping myself afloat. Every little bit helps!
UPDATE!!!
I have now started adding my Fanfictions to both my Patreon and Ko-Fi!!! On Patreon, the fanfictions are free to read, with no paywall so you can read them without becoming a patron if you don’t want to. And on Kofi, each chapter is being posted as a Pay-What-You-Want item with both PDF and Epub files in standard and Open Dyslexic Fonts.
So far, I’ve started with my longest running/most commented fanfic The Hidden Butterfly: Sasakia and I plan to add more as I go. If there is a fanfiction of mine that you especially like, let me know and I’ll add it to both!
Arceus choses the hero to save Hisui from destruction.
But his timing was terrible.
The Prologue of my AU, Inspired Ideals, with some sprinkling of details for the world building.
It had been a month since Rei’s grandmother had passed. He was… Handling it. Maybe not well, but he was handling it. He was functioning. He ate when he should, cleaned when he should, and finished his school year as he should. He was okay! Ish.
He hadn’t had a complete meltdown, at the very least.
Mrs. Simmons was helping as much as she could get away with legally. She wasn't his permanent guardian, though, so there was only so much she could do. Her main job was handling grandma’s estate and figuring out how it would be taken care of now that she was gone.
She'd managed to argue for him to get to stay in Grandma's house while they sorted all the legal stuff out. Last wills and custody and packing and all that. He was old enough to be left at home alone.
Rei hated how quiet the house was.
He'd never really noticed how loud it used to be when his grandma was around. But now it was unnaturally quiet to him. He couldn’t hear her moving around the house anymore. No humming as she cleaned or read. No clatter of dishes in the morning as she made them both breakfast. No call of “Stay safe!” when he went out for groceries while she worked on something in the house, or “Welcome back!” when he came home. No tight hugs, no exaggerated kisses, no goofy jokes as they talked about their days. Just Rei and the creaking of the wood and wind.
He was alone. (He hated being reminded of it.)
He ran his hands over the journals his grandmother had written years ago. Her adventures as a “Pendragon” that she'd gone through when she was around his age, called to the Isles to avert Calamity. She'd never rewritten them, at least not that she'd told him, so he could see all the mistakes and rambles she had put in that she would either skip or skim when she would read from it for him as a little kid. He loved them, though he was pretty sure she had just made most of them up. He was sure some of the characters were based on legends or past family members who’d been notable in some way or another.
They were probably his grandmother's way of combining their family history and stories into a fun adventure, to help make teaching the stories to little kids like him easier. So they could learn about their family in a way that would actually stick with them.
He liked reading about the Fae anyway, even if they weren't real. They inspired him for too long for him not to feel affection for them.
(He would pick a grass type for a starter, in honor of Lady Egrain. He remembered just how many times he'd declared that to Grandma before…)
He was going to bring some of them with him. For his journey. So he could have a piece of home with him. Mrs. Simmons could probably keep the rest or help Rei get a storage locker for them.
He had to start his journey now. He had to. It felt like the only option to avoid losing what little of his grandma, of his home, that he had left.
He was sixteen. He couldn't be put into an orphanage; he was too old to be adopted at this point. Younger kids were the ones parents would look for, ones that they could go through all the “growing up” milestones with. Someone who was almost grown wasn’t what they would want to connect with. He’d just end up staying there until he aged out of the system.
And foster care would be just as bad, he was sure of it. They would force him to leave everything behind and then leave him in a house of strangers until he was too old to be there, until he was too old to shunt to the next house, then they would kick him out and leave him to fend for himself. (There was a reason so many people said that being put into the Foster System was one of the worst things that ever happened to them. Even if it got them out of something terrible.)
The only family he had left was an aunt and a cousin in Sinnoh. But he didn't know them. They were basically strangers, too.
According to Grandma, his mom had gotten into a fight with her parents and hadn't spoken to them in years before she and his dad had passed. They had gotten a card when his cousin was born, but that was it. Rei'd never seen them himself. Never spoken to any of them. He didn't even know what they looked like. He knew they existed, but that was it.
The only way he would have some kind of safety, some sort of anchor to keep from being taken away to a strange, unfamiliar place and forced to live with people he didn’t know, would be for him to start his journey now.
He could be emancipated if he could handle a year-long journey on his own. It would serve as evidence that he could take care of himself, that he could handle being on his own without a parent taking care of him. That he was old enough and capable of living alone and deciding how to make his own livelihood. He didn't know what he wanted to do yet, but he could probably figure something out while traveling. (Grandma always said he was a clever kid. He was a quick study and a good learner. He could handle it.)
Besides, he would be seventeen by then. He would be old enough to move out anyway. At least, this way, it would be on his terms and not someone else’s.
Rei knew the major things he wanted to bring. His grandmother’s hip and waist bags, since he knew he could organize them to hold anything he might need. Her survival compass, which she’d taught him how to use years ago in case he ever got lost when they went on summer camping trips. Grandpa’s cape, since he knew it was warm and would keep him covered during bad weather. Not to mention it would help keep his bags dry, too. And his grandpa’s crafting kit. The tools from it could be a huge help if he were in a pinch. Besides, he liked making things with it.
He curled up on his grandma’s bed, surrounded by various things he was planning to bring with him, one of the journals in his lap and the rest stacked on the bed beside him.
He still had some time. A few weeks more, at least.
He opened the journal, deciding to read from it before he turned in for the night. (He could pretend she was with him, reading it aloud over his shoulder.)
------------------
That night, something otherworldly called to him. Impossibly big and impossibly bright, too much for him to truly comprehend as he looked upon it. It was simply More Than He Could Understand.
It wasn’t a Well-Wisher, there to find the next Pendragon to save the World Tree. There was no All’s-Well portal, glowing with a campfire on the other side and waiting for him to step through. This was someone, something, else reaching out to him, pulling him into a void of stars and speaking things beyond his understanding. Something that thrummed through his bones, his soul, the very Universe itself.
He didn’t understand it. He couldn’t understand it.
The Being before him seemed to know that. It was unbothered by it.
It let him fall.
And then he was alone, in a different world that didn’t have a place for him, having lost everything that felt like home.
(Everything he had been trying to prevent, made terrifyingly real in an instant.)
So, I've decided to open the poll for the other half of Emmet's breeding pair for his Galvantula. Bc I feel like having some proper numbers and trying to count voted between tags, reblogs, and comments is hard.
So who's the Father of Emmet's Joltiks?
Ariados
Drapion
Parasect
Voting ended on2h
Hopefully everyone who gave their opinions before will see this too, but I'll be reblogging it a couple times throughout the week so people will see it and say which idea they like the best.
I will use this pokemon across all my fics that have Emmet in them. Just bc I really love the idea of Emmet being both a Pro Battler and a Joltik Breeder.
One of my biggest projects - an entire Hydrapple, with all the syrpents included! There's toothpicks in the main head's horns for rigidity, while every syrpent has armature wire inside them for poseability. And...
...that includes the two tail syrpents! All six syrpents other than the main one are completely removable along with the apple top, which has little hooks to hold it in place when it's on there. The apple base also has a plastic pot inside it, to help it hold all that weight.
The one thing they can't do is fold the bonus heads flat against the apple like the ingame model does, but they can get... some of the way there? although it does require something of a Noodle Vortex on the inside for all those tails to still fit in the apple.
Very proud of these good apple noodle friends and how well they turned out!
~~~
my commissions are open - see my pinned post for more info.
(I don't offer things this big and elaborate (yet...?), but I can make you something simpler!)
idk if this is controversial or not, but I really like when non-professional writing like fic has hints of author bleedthrough when it comes to like, what different people assume is common knowledge. Like sometimes I’ll be reading a fic and it’ll just be obvious that the person writing it is either obsessed with medicine or has been to medical school, because they’ll use terms that are just a shade too technical without explaining them. It’s never the super specific stuff that they’d know other people are unaware of, it’s always the things that once you’ve known it for a while you forget it’s niche knowledge. It’s fun because as a fanfic reader it reminds me of how this is a fun hobby community, where everyone has their own thing going on outside of fandom. Everyone’s got their own specialties and they can’t help but write that into their work sometimes
HERE’S ALL THE PDF VERSIONS I COULD FIND SINCE WE’RE ALL IN QUARANTINE AND WE CAN’T PHYSICALLY GET THE BOOKS WE DON’T HAVE
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Beloved
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (this was the only free version I could find, and it’s a downloadable thing, so do so with caution)
The Call of the Wild
Catch-22 (it was either this version or one where the entire thing was in comic sans font)
The Catcher in the Rye
Fahrenheit 451
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Gone With the Wind
The Grapes of Wrath
The Great Gatsby
Howl
In Cold Blood
Invisible Man
The Jungle (personally I don’t like this formatting, but the site doesn’t look sketchy so…) - there’s also this which is the proper book format in a pdf, but it’s directly photocopied so it might be hard to read some of the print
Leaves of Grass
Moby Dick
Native Son
Our Bodies, Ourselves (we learned about this one in APUSH!)
The Red Badge of Courage
The Scarlet Letter
COULD NOT FIND Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (the ebook is 47 fucking dollars??? and i can’t even find sketchy websites that’ll let me download a pdf. if anyone manages to find a link, lmk please)
Stranger in a Strange Land
A Streetcar Named Desire
Their Eyes Were Watching God
To Kill a Mockingbird
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Where the Wild Things Are (this is a slideshow!!!! how fun)
COULD NOT FIND The Words of Cesar Chavez (however I did manage to download the first 71 pages of the book from EBSCO and I put it here but I couldn’t get the rest. sorry y’all)
Cronological retrospective of my embroidery "back catalogue". Incomplete but fairly comprehensive. Just because I'm trying to get back into embroidery and thought it might be motivating to see the progression.
Hisui is a hostile place. Strange and dangerous and lonely. Rei was always struggling to get his footing and survive in the place he's been unceremoniously dropped in.
Rei missed home. He missed his grandmother. He missed the stories she used to tell from the journals she wrote when she was his age.
He'll never be able to put into words the relief he felt when a fragment of the home he missed so much appeared.
AN: This story/series falls into the category of "Crossovers that Only Appeal to Me".
Inspiriles is a ttrpg made by Hatchling Games that incorporates ASL/BSL into the world to make the game accessible for people who are Deaf/Mute. It's based on Celtic mythos and Arthurian Legends and has tons of beautiful art/worldbuilding that I just ADORE. I highly recommend looking into if if you think this sounds interesting!
Since Unova is based on the US, I'm making the decision that Unovan Sign Language is the same as American Sign Language.
It was the cover that caught his eye first.
The ground was always dark in a distortion, like an afternoon sky covered in thick storm clouds. Or like he’d stepped from day to night, even with the red hue that painted the sky over his head. And most of the items Rei would find shimmered a pale blue in the darkness, even if the object itself wasn't actually that color.
Which made the little shimmer of gold in the dark grass so very strange and eye-catching.
He ducked into the tall grass, crouching low to avoid the eyes of the randomly teleporting pokemon around him. He didn't want to be attacked as he investigated the light he'd spotted. (He'd already suffered through that a few too many times.)
His breath hitched painfully when he saw what was making the shimmer. He knew what it was.
He knew the worn, brown leather journals sitting innocently in the dirt. He knew the old brass clasps that held them closed, the leather ties that bound them, and protected the seams. He knew the coat of arms pressed and painted into the front covers, surrounded by sweeping, patterned frames. He knew the golden twisting tree in the center, bracketed between two wyverns with their claws out and fangs bared, obviously defending the tree from harm. He knew the three crowns, one over the tree and the other two floating over each wyvern's head. All of them shaped in delicate sweeping knots against the ruby-red shield that framed them, unbelievably bright despite the old leather it was painted on.
It was one of his grandmother's journals. Journals she’d written herself and would read to him as bedtime stories as a child.
The first one of the set that she’d made and read to him a bit at a time for years, he could see the little marker she put in the binding to help tell them all apart.
(Was it real? What would be the chances?)
He picked it up, hands shaking slightly as he did. Rei carefully pressed his thumb against the latch, hearing the familiar click the journals always made when they were opened.
(He had to check. To make sure it wasn’t just a coincidence.)
It really was the first one.
He could see the slightly messy writing on the front page, from her excitedly writing who the book belonged to and her childhood address so it could be sent home if she ever lost it. She’d told him that she’d written them as a teenager, a few months after her fifteenth birthday. They were a look at the kind of person she’d been when she was almost the same age as he currently was.
He never thought he'd find one of them here.
But if there's one here then…
Rei's head shot up, hugging the worn journal to his chest as he scanned the ground in the rift. There was another golden glimmer nearby, thankfully still in the safety of the grass and not out in the open. He crept over, finding two more journals that he was quick to snatch up.
He couldn't see any more of them, not from his current hiding spot at least.
He carefully tucked them into the bag the Galaxy team had given him. They just barely fit inside with all of the equipment and raw materials he had to carry on his person. (He wished he had a satchel or something instead of the lone belt pouch. He was always running out of room.)
He would look through them more later. When the distortion had faded and he was safe at a base camp.
For now, he had a clearing of randomly teleporting, hyper-aggressive pokemon to worry about. At least there was plenty of tall grass for him to hide out in.
------------
As soon as the distortion had finally faded, Rei had all but sprinted for the Heights base camp. It was the closest camp, and his heart felt like it couldn't wait any longer to read the journals again.
(He finally had a piece of home, waiting quietly in his bags.)
He reached the camp on shaking legs, more than a little out of breath, and his head buzzing with emotions he couldn't fully place. He had barely enough mind to greet Professor Laventon before sitting down at the edge of the clearing and pulling out the books once more as more Survey Corps members came to the camp to eat before either turning in for the night or heading back out into the fieldlands to continue their work.
Rei ran his hands over the cover of the first journal, feeling the familiar leather under his fingertips.
He would never hear his grandmother read them to him again. She was gone…
He swallowed a lump that had lodged itself in his throat.
“What's that?” Rei yelped, jumping at the voice coming from nearby. His head snapped to the speaker and found the face of Akari staring up at him, the professor just behind her looking startled himself. She looked sheepish for a moment, tugging at her sleeves. “Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. I thought you'd heard me and the professor coming over.”
“No, no, you're fine. I was just- A little too deep in my own head, I guess.” Rei made himself exhale the tension from the scare. The girl nodded then, after a moment of quiet, pointed at the journal again.
“So…” Rei looked down at the journals, then tilted the top one so both his fellow survey corps member and the professor could see its cover better.
“Ah, right. This… These are some of my grandmother’s journals from when she was about my age. I found it on the ground in a distortion earlier. I don’t know if the distortion brought it there or if I just happened to see it then, but…” Rei gave a small shrug, running his fingers over the cover again. The firelight glinted off the golden ink on the covers, giving the coat of arms a gentle glow in the dim light. “She used to read bits of them to me as bedtime stories when I was little. I didn’t think I’d see something from home out here.”
“Oh, that's really pretty,” Akari murmured, leaning forward to get a better look at the image. “What are they about?”
“The Fae Isles,” Rei answered. At the confused looks he received, he flushed slightly and continued, “It’s- It’s a place from old family legends. A group of mystical islands where things like Belief and Inspiration could become physical forces that was home to beings that were neither human nor pokemon, called Fae.”
Rei carefully opened the journal in his hands to the page in the front that held a map of the islands that his grandmother had carefully drawn and labeled. He thought it might have had something else drawn on it at some point, since he could see some rough spots under the colored inks grandma had used. The kind he usually saw when someone erased something, or had cleaned something away, and then put ink down too soon afterwards. A few spots where the colors had bled because the paper hadn’t been fully dry.
“Fae?” Laventon seated himself on Rei’s other side, so he could show them the journals more easily. He nodded.
“Yeah, there were animals there, but the islands were populated by the fae for the most part.” He started flipping through pages, trying to find one of his grandma’s sketches of fae she’d met in the stories.
He landed on a page of a smiling capra woman in a tavern, the goat-like fae wearing golden jewelry on her horns, a brown apron securely tied around her waist, and a layered dress in shades of orange and green. She had a tray laden with food and drinks carefully balanced on her shoulder as she walked between the wooden tables and chairs. There were barrels of drinks in the background, a bar in front of them, and a burning hearth that gave everything a warm glow. The bottom of the sketch was labeled “Matron Margaret of Egrain’s favorite eatery, The Tree’s Hearth, hard at work in her tavern.”
There were other fae in the background of the drawing: An insect-like Piskie tinkering at their table, a draconic Wyrmbitten that was clearly telling a grand story to the bird-like Glow sitting beside them, and a stony Giantheld cradling a large tankard in hand as they watched the rest of the tavern moving around them.
It wasn’t a professional’s drawing, but even then, everything in the picture looked warm and inviting. Like it was somewhere you’d want to make a special stop to eat in at least once.
Akari let out an awed breath.
“What… What are they?”
“They’re fae, but I don’t really know where that word came from. Grandma said that there are different kinds of fae, with different names for each one,” Rei said with a hum. He tapped Matron Margaret’s image, “This one is a Capra, they all look a little like goats. The green one is called a Piskie, the stony one is a Giantheld, the dragon-like one is called a Wyrmbitten, and the bird-like one is a Glow. There are a lot more, but those are the ones in this picture.”
“Simply fascinating. How did she come to meet them?” Laventon leaned just a little closer, eyes roving over the drawing on the page. Rei paused, considering how best to explain.
“She was Called to the Isles when she was fifteen. It’s, um, part of the Family Legends.” He ducked his head slightly as he spoke. He’d never had to explain the legends before. “According to them, our distant ancestors, Arthur Pendragon and his wife Guinevere, stumbled through a portal made by the Glow, who wanted to see beyond the place they called home. While they were there, they became friends with a group of fae called the Inspired, who taught them about the Isles and a magic that could be called on while there, known as Shaping.”
“Shaping?” The professor interrupted, his brows knitting in confusion at the term.
“Shaping is a magic done with hand movements, and it’s just like sign language.” Rei’s own hands lifted, starting to sign as he spoke. The actions were familiar, from years of his grandmother having him sign and speak so that he’d always have the skill at his disposal. “Grandma taught it to me while I was growing up, but she said you’d have to be a fae to be able to use the magic from it outside of the Isles. But it can let someone talk even if they’re mute or deaf, so it’s something really helpful to know.”
The professor and Akari watched his hands move in quiet fascination. Like they'd never seen someone using Sign before. Which, as the thought occurred to him, may actually be true. He wasn't sure when Galarian or Unovan Sign Language were properly invented, let alone when the broader signs became properly accepted as a language. And he highly doubted Hisui had its own Sign Language yet. So this was probably their first look at it.
(Maybe he could come up with some signs for the Nobles. He knew the sign for Stantler, he could probably come up with one for Wyrdeer…)
“They managed to keep the connection after returning home and would even visit their friends as time went on. But both had a tragedy befall them. For Arthur and Guinevere, a war broke out in the kingdom they called home, and Arthur often had to leave with knights to fight in it. For the Fae, dragons called Wyrms started to wreak havoc in the Isles, hoarding the Belief they needed to keep the lands healthy and causing famines and droughts from the damage. Both sides tried to send aid and both eventually managed to win their respective battles, but both lost a lot in the process. Arthur passed away in the fighting and was interred in a mausoleum in Avalon, on the Isles. And the World Tree, the tree that nurtured the life and Inspiration on the isles, was made incredibly sick by the damage the wyrms did. Guinevere went to the Isles for safety and found that humans could gather belief much faster than fae could just by being there and helping where they could.”
“So she made a promise, an oath, that every time the damage from the old war became too much for the Tree and the Belief became too scarce for its health, the descendants of the Pendragon family could be called on to help. Her and Arthur’s spirits, and the guardians of the portals to the Isles, would guide members of the family who were old enough to be capable of helping to the Isles to help it heal again. Grandma and a few of her distant cousins were picked from her generation to help when they were all about fifteen years old.”
Rei looked down at the book in his lap, his smile turning just a little sadder.
“I… Honestly don’t know how much of the stories are true and how many were things grandma made up to make teaching our family history easier. I mean, getting a little kid to remember an exciting story gets them to learn better than just telling them a lesson and expecting it to stick.”
Laventon hummed, rubbing his chin in thought. There was an odd, deeply thoughtful look on his face. One that Rei had never seen before.
“Can we hear some?” Akari asked shyly, fiddling with her chopsticks. “They sound interesting and I’d like to know more.”
Rei smiled, something warm in his chest as he clutched the books close.
“Sure. I can start after we eat.”
For the first time in a while, Rei let himself be lost in a world of fantasy, where magic and mystery were wonderful and exciting instead of looming and dangerous.
(He had missed it.)
.
.
.
AN: Coat of arms notes: the three crowns represent King Arthur's Coat of Arms, the tree is the World Tree, and the Wyverins represent the role the Pendragons play in protecting the Tree/Fae from Disbelief.
It was a redesign done by one of the pendragons who felt like the og Coat was a little bland/didn't really have as much meaning as they felt it should. It was well received by the other Pendragons, along with several Friends once the meanings were explained to them, and it became known as the “Descendants' Coat”.
It was kinda fun to think of how someone would explain the Arthurian Legends to people who had never heard of them before. Without calling them The Arthurian Legends.
Laventon is thinking about how it looks like the cover was embossed in Gold, has a very elaborate coat of arms (something that only Nobility tends to have) on the front, and the mention of Rei’s ancestor fighting alongside Actual Knights. He doesn’t really know what he’s looking at, but he’s getting the feeling that Rei’s family is actually WAY MORE IMPORTANT/POWERFUL than everyone in Hisui thinks it is. He doesn’t know how right he is about that.
So, I've decided to open the poll for the other half of Emmet's breeding pair for his Galvantula. Bc I feel like having some proper numbers and trying to count voted between tags, reblogs, and comments is hard.
So who's the Father of Emmet's Joltiks?
Ariados
Drapion
Parasect
Voting ended on2h
Hopefully everyone who gave their opinions before will see this too, but I'll be reblogging it a couple times throughout the week so people will see it and say which idea they like the best.
I will use this pokemon across all my fics that have Emmet in them. Just bc I really love the idea of Emmet being both a Pro Battler and a Joltik Breeder.
Arceus choses the hero to save Hisui from destruction.
But his timing was terrible.
The Prologue of my AU, Inspired Ideals, with some sprinkling of details for the world building.
It had been a month since Rei’s grandmother had passed. He was… Handling it. Maybe not well, but he was handling it. He was functioning. He ate when he should, cleaned when he should, and finished his school year as he should. He was okay! Ish.
He hadn’t had a complete meltdown, at the very least.
Mrs. Simmons was helping as much as she could get away with legally. She wasn't his permanent guardian, though, so there was only so much she could do. Her main job was handling grandma’s estate and figuring out how it would be taken care of now that she was gone.
She'd managed to argue for him to get to stay in Grandma's house while they sorted all the legal stuff out. Last wills and custody and packing and all that. He was old enough to be left at home alone.
Rei hated how quiet the house was.
He'd never really noticed how loud it used to be when his grandma was around. But now it was unnaturally quiet to him. He couldn’t hear her moving around the house anymore. No humming as she cleaned or read. No clatter of dishes in the morning as she made them both breakfast. No call of “Stay safe!” when he went out for groceries while she worked on something in the house, or “Welcome back!” when he came home. No tight hugs, no exaggerated kisses, no goofy jokes as they talked about their days. Just Rei and the creaking of the wood and wind.
He was alone. (He hated being reminded of it.)
He ran his hands over the journals his grandmother had written years ago. Her adventures as a “Pendragon” that she'd gone through when she was around his age, called to the Isles to avert Calamity. She'd never rewritten them, at least not that she'd told him, so he could see all the mistakes and rambles she had put in that she would either skip or skim when she would read from it for him as a little kid. He loved them, though he was pretty sure she had just made most of them up. He was sure some of the characters were based on legends or past family members who’d been notable in some way or another.
They were probably his grandmother's way of combining their family history and stories into a fun adventure, to help make teaching the stories to little kids like him easier. So they could learn about their family in a way that would actually stick with them.
He liked reading about the Fae anyway, even if they weren't real. They inspired him for too long for him not to feel affection for them.
(He would pick a grass type for a starter, in honor of Lady Egrain. He remembered just how many times he'd declared that to Grandma before…)
He was going to bring some of them with him. For his journey. So he could have a piece of home with him. Mrs. Simmons could probably keep the rest or help Rei get a storage locker for them.
He had to start his journey now. He had to. It felt like the only option to avoid losing what little of his grandma, of his home, that he had left.
He was sixteen. He couldn't be put into an orphanage; he was too old to be adopted at this point. Younger kids were the ones parents would look for, ones that they could go through all the “growing up” milestones with. Someone who was almost grown wasn’t what they would want to connect with. He’d just end up staying there until he aged out of the system.
And foster care would be just as bad, he was sure of it. They would force him to leave everything behind and then leave him in a house of strangers until he was too old to be there, until he was too old to shunt to the next house, then they would kick him out and leave him to fend for himself. (There was a reason so many people said that being put into the Foster System was one of the worst things that ever happened to them. Even if it got them out of something terrible.)
The only family he had left was an aunt and a cousin in Sinnoh. But he didn't know them. They were basically strangers, too.
According to Grandma, his mom had gotten into a fight with her parents and hadn't spoken to them in years before she and his dad had passed. They had gotten a card when his cousin was born, but that was it. Rei'd never seen them himself. Never spoken to any of them. He didn't even know what they looked like. He knew they existed, but that was it.
The only way he would have some kind of safety, some sort of anchor to keep from being taken away to a strange, unfamiliar place and forced to live with people he didn’t know, would be for him to start his journey now.
He could be emancipated if he could handle a year-long journey on his own. It would serve as evidence that he could take care of himself, that he could handle being on his own without a parent taking care of him. That he was old enough and capable of living alone and deciding how to make his own livelihood. He didn't know what he wanted to do yet, but he could probably figure something out while traveling. (Grandma always said he was a clever kid. He was a quick study and a good learner. He could handle it.)
Besides, he would be seventeen by then. He would be old enough to move out anyway. At least, this way, it would be on his terms and not someone else’s.
Rei knew the major things he wanted to bring. His grandmother’s hip and waist bags, since he knew he could organize them to hold anything he might need. Her survival compass, which she’d taught him how to use years ago in case he ever got lost when they went on summer camping trips. Grandpa’s cape, since he knew it was warm and would keep him covered during bad weather. Not to mention it would help keep his bags dry, too. And his grandpa’s crafting kit. The tools from it could be a huge help if he were in a pinch. Besides, he liked making things with it.
He curled up on his grandma’s bed, surrounded by various things he was planning to bring with him, one of the journals in his lap and the rest stacked on the bed beside him.
He still had some time. A few weeks more, at least.
He opened the journal, deciding to read from it before he turned in for the night. (He could pretend she was with him, reading it aloud over his shoulder.)
------------------
That night, something otherworldly called to him. Impossibly big and impossibly bright, too much for him to truly comprehend as he looked upon it. It was simply More Than He Could Understand.
It wasn’t a Well-Wisher, there to find the next Pendragon to save the World Tree. There was no All’s-Well portal, glowing with a campfire on the other side and waiting for him to step through. This was someone, something, else reaching out to him, pulling him into a void of stars and speaking things beyond his understanding. Something that thrummed through his bones, his soul, the very Universe itself.
He didn’t understand it. He couldn’t understand it.
The Being before him seemed to know that. It was unbothered by it.
It let him fall.
And then he was alone, in a different world that didn’t have a place for him, having lost everything that felt like home.
(Everything he had been trying to prevent, made terrifyingly real in an instant.)
microdosing on catharsis by watching a fictional character or persona i relate to have an emotional breakdown until my chest starts to ache from the amount i've repressed
Hisui is a hostile place. Strange and dangerous and lonely. Rei was always struggling to get his footing and survive in the place he's been unceremoniously dropped in.
Rei missed home. He missed his grandmother. He missed the stories she used to tell from the journals she wrote when she was his age.
He'll never be able to put into words the relief he felt when a fragment of the home he missed so much appeared.
AN: This story/series falls into the category of "Crossovers that Only Appeal to Me".
Inspiriles is a ttrpg made by Hatchling Games that incorporates ASL/BSL into the world to make the game accessible for people who are Deaf/Mute. It's based on Celtic mythos and Arthurian Legends and has tons of beautiful art/worldbuilding that I just ADORE. I highly recommend looking into if if you think this sounds interesting!
Since Unova is based on the US, I'm making the decision that Unovan Sign Language is the same as American Sign Language.
It was the cover that caught his eye first.
The ground was always dark in a distortion, like an afternoon sky covered in thick storm clouds. Or like he’d stepped from day to night, even with the red hue that painted the sky over his head. And most of the items Rei would find shimmered a pale blue in the darkness, even if the object itself wasn't actually that color.
Which made the little shimmer of gold in the dark grass so very strange and eye-catching.
He ducked into the tall grass, crouching low to avoid the eyes of the randomly teleporting pokemon around him. He didn't want to be attacked as he investigated the light he'd spotted. (He'd already suffered through that a few too many times.)
His breath hitched painfully when he saw what was making the shimmer. He knew what it was.
He knew the worn, brown leather journals sitting innocently in the dirt. He knew the old brass clasps that held them closed, the leather ties that bound them, and protected the seams. He knew the coat of arms pressed and painted into the front covers, surrounded by sweeping, patterned frames. He knew the golden twisting tree in the center, bracketed between two wyverns with their claws out and fangs bared, obviously defending the tree from harm. He knew the three crowns, one over the tree and the other two floating over each wyvern's head. All of them shaped in delicate sweeping knots against the ruby-red shield that framed them, unbelievably bright despite the old leather it was painted on.
It was one of his grandmother's journals. Journals she’d written herself and would read to him as bedtime stories as a child.
The first one of the set that she’d made and read to him a bit at a time for years, he could see the little marker she put in the binding to help tell them all apart.
(Was it real? What would be the chances?)
He picked it up, hands shaking slightly as he did. Rei carefully pressed his thumb against the latch, hearing the familiar click the journals always made when they were opened.
(He had to check. To make sure it wasn’t just a coincidence.)
It really was the first one.
He could see the slightly messy writing on the front page, from her excitedly writing who the book belonged to and her childhood address so it could be sent home if she ever lost it. She’d told him that she’d written them as a teenager, a few months after her fifteenth birthday. They were a look at the kind of person she’d been when she was almost the same age as he currently was.
He never thought he'd find one of them here.
But if there's one here then…
Rei's head shot up, hugging the worn journal to his chest as he scanned the ground in the rift. There was another golden glimmer nearby, thankfully still in the safety of the grass and not out in the open. He crept over, finding two more journals that he was quick to snatch up.
He couldn't see any more of them, not from his current hiding spot at least.
He carefully tucked them into the bag the Galaxy team had given him. They just barely fit inside with all of the equipment and raw materials he had to carry on his person. (He wished he had a satchel or something instead of the lone belt pouch. He was always running out of room.)
He would look through them more later. When the distortion had faded and he was safe at a base camp.
For now, he had a clearing of randomly teleporting, hyper-aggressive pokemon to worry about. At least there was plenty of tall grass for him to hide out in.
------------
As soon as the distortion had finally faded, Rei had all but sprinted for the Heights base camp. It was the closest camp, and his heart felt like it couldn't wait any longer to read the journals again.
(He finally had a piece of home, waiting quietly in his bags.)
He reached the camp on shaking legs, more than a little out of breath, and his head buzzing with emotions he couldn't fully place. He had barely enough mind to greet Professor Laventon before sitting down at the edge of the clearing and pulling out the books once more as more Survey Corps members came to the camp to eat before either turning in for the night or heading back out into the fieldlands to continue their work.
Rei ran his hands over the cover of the first journal, feeling the familiar leather under his fingertips.
He would never hear his grandmother read them to him again. She was gone…
He swallowed a lump that had lodged itself in his throat.
“What's that?” Rei yelped, jumping at the voice coming from nearby. His head snapped to the speaker and found the face of Akari staring up at him, the professor just behind her looking startled himself. She looked sheepish for a moment, tugging at her sleeves. “Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. I thought you'd heard me and the professor coming over.”
“No, no, you're fine. I was just- A little too deep in my own head, I guess.” Rei made himself exhale the tension from the scare. The girl nodded then, after a moment of quiet, pointed at the journal again.
“So…” Rei looked down at the journals, then tilted the top one so both his fellow survey corps member and the professor could see its cover better.
“Ah, right. This… These are some of my grandmother’s journals from when she was about my age. I found it on the ground in a distortion earlier. I don’t know if the distortion brought it there or if I just happened to see it then, but…” Rei gave a small shrug, running his fingers over the cover again. The firelight glinted off the golden ink on the covers, giving the coat of arms a gentle glow in the dim light. “She used to read bits of them to me as bedtime stories when I was little. I didn’t think I’d see something from home out here.”
“Oh, that's really pretty,” Akari murmured, leaning forward to get a better look at the image. “What are they about?”
“The Fae Isles,” Rei answered. At the confused looks he received, he flushed slightly and continued, “It’s- It’s a place from old family legends. A group of mystical islands where things like Belief and Inspiration could become physical forces that was home to beings that were neither human nor pokemon, called Fae.”
Rei carefully opened the journal in his hands to the page in the front that held a map of the islands that his grandmother had carefully drawn and labeled. He thought it might have had something else drawn on it at some point, since he could see some rough spots under the colored inks grandma had used. The kind he usually saw when someone erased something, or had cleaned something away, and then put ink down too soon afterwards. A few spots where the colors had bled because the paper hadn’t been fully dry.
“Fae?” Laventon seated himself on Rei’s other side, so he could show them the journals more easily. He nodded.
“Yeah, there were animals there, but the islands were populated by the fae for the most part.” He started flipping through pages, trying to find one of his grandma’s sketches of fae she’d met in the stories.
He landed on a page of a smiling capra woman in a tavern, the goat-like fae wearing golden jewelry on her horns, a brown apron securely tied around her waist, and a layered dress in shades of orange and green. She had a tray laden with food and drinks carefully balanced on her shoulder as she walked between the wooden tables and chairs. There were barrels of drinks in the background, a bar in front of them, and a burning hearth that gave everything a warm glow. The bottom of the sketch was labeled “Matron Margaret of Egrain’s favorite eatery, The Tree’s Hearth, hard at work in her tavern.”
There were other fae in the background of the drawing: An insect-like Piskie tinkering at their table, a draconic Wyrmbitten that was clearly telling a grand story to the bird-like Glow sitting beside them, and a stony Giantheld cradling a large tankard in hand as they watched the rest of the tavern moving around them.
It wasn’t a professional’s drawing, but even then, everything in the picture looked warm and inviting. Like it was somewhere you’d want to make a special stop to eat in at least once.
Akari let out an awed breath.
“What… What are they?”
“They’re fae, but I don’t really know where that word came from. Grandma said that there are different kinds of fae, with different names for each one,” Rei said with a hum. He tapped Matron Margaret’s image, “This one is a Capra, they all look a little like goats. The green one is called a Piskie, the stony one is a Giantheld, the dragon-like one is called a Wyrmbitten, and the bird-like one is a Glow. There are a lot more, but those are the ones in this picture.”
“Simply fascinating. How did she come to meet them?” Laventon leaned just a little closer, eyes roving over the drawing on the page. Rei paused, considering how best to explain.
“She was Called to the Isles when she was fifteen. It’s, um, part of the Family Legends.” He ducked his head slightly as he spoke. He’d never had to explain the legends before. “According to them, our distant ancestors, Arthur Pendragon and his wife Guinevere, stumbled through a portal made by the Glow, who wanted to see beyond the place they called home. While they were there, they became friends with a group of fae called the Inspired, who taught them about the Isles and a magic that could be called on while there, known as Shaping.”
“Shaping?” The professor interrupted, his brows knitting in confusion at the term.
“Shaping is a magic done with hand movements, and it’s just like sign language.” Rei’s own hands lifted, starting to sign as he spoke. The actions were familiar, from years of his grandmother having him sign and speak so that he’d always have the skill at his disposal. “Grandma taught it to me while I was growing up, but she said you’d have to be a fae to be able to use the magic from it outside of the Isles. But it can let someone talk even if they’re mute or deaf, so it’s something really helpful to know.”
The professor and Akari watched his hands move in quiet fascination. Like they'd never seen someone using Sign before. Which, as the thought occurred to him, may actually be true. He wasn't sure when Galarian or Unovan Sign Language were properly invented, let alone when the broader signs became properly accepted as a language. And he highly doubted Hisui had its own Sign Language yet. So this was probably their first look at it.
(Maybe he could come up with some signs for the Nobles. He knew the sign for Stantler, he could probably come up with one for Wyrdeer…)
“They managed to keep the connection after returning home and would even visit their friends as time went on. But both had a tragedy befall them. For Arthur and Guinevere, a war broke out in the kingdom they called home, and Arthur often had to leave with knights to fight in it. For the Fae, dragons called Wyrms started to wreak havoc in the Isles, hoarding the Belief they needed to keep the lands healthy and causing famines and droughts from the damage. Both sides tried to send aid and both eventually managed to win their respective battles, but both lost a lot in the process. Arthur passed away in the fighting and was interred in a mausoleum in Avalon, on the Isles. And the World Tree, the tree that nurtured the life and Inspiration on the isles, was made incredibly sick by the damage the wyrms did. Guinevere went to the Isles for safety and found that humans could gather belief much faster than fae could just by being there and helping where they could.”
“So she made a promise, an oath, that every time the damage from the old war became too much for the Tree and the Belief became too scarce for its health, the descendants of the Pendragon family could be called on to help. Her and Arthur’s spirits, and the guardians of the portals to the Isles, would guide members of the family who were old enough to be capable of helping to the Isles to help it heal again. Grandma and a few of her distant cousins were picked from her generation to help when they were all about fifteen years old.”
Rei looked down at the book in his lap, his smile turning just a little sadder.
“I… Honestly don’t know how much of the stories are true and how many were things grandma made up to make teaching our family history easier. I mean, getting a little kid to remember an exciting story gets them to learn better than just telling them a lesson and expecting it to stick.”
Laventon hummed, rubbing his chin in thought. There was an odd, deeply thoughtful look on his face. One that Rei had never seen before.
“Can we hear some?” Akari asked shyly, fiddling with her chopsticks. “They sound interesting and I’d like to know more.”
Rei smiled, something warm in his chest as he clutched the books close.
“Sure. I can start after we eat.”
For the first time in a while, Rei let himself be lost in a world of fantasy, where magic and mystery were wonderful and exciting instead of looming and dangerous.
(He had missed it.)
.
.
.
AN: Coat of arms notes: the three crowns represent King Arthur's Coat of Arms, the tree is the World Tree, and the Wyverins represent the role the Pendragons play in protecting the Tree/Fae from Disbelief.
It was a redesign done by one of the pendragons who felt like the og Coat was a little bland/didn't really have as much meaning as they felt it should. It was well received by the other Pendragons, along with several Friends once the meanings were explained to them, and it became known as the “Descendants' Coat”.
It was kinda fun to think of how someone would explain the Arthurian Legends to people who had never heard of them before. Without calling them The Arthurian Legends.
Laventon is thinking about how it looks like the cover was embossed in Gold, has a very elaborate coat of arms (something that only Nobility tends to have) on the front, and the mention of Rei’s ancestor fighting alongside Actual Knights. He doesn’t really know what he’s looking at, but he’s getting the feeling that Rei’s family is actually WAY MORE IMPORTANT/POWERFUL than everyone in Hisui thinks it is. He doesn’t know how right he is about that.
