The Robust
He/Him/His
Twenty-Eight
October 30th
Bevaridge Town
Biomesexual
Pokemon Educator/Vlogger/Biome Enthusiast
Avatar/Gym Leader/Elite Ranger
See ya later, Feraligatr!
Vital Spirit Festival
POSTED ON Mar 8, 2021 1:43:25 GMT
"Little hand here?" Zac called to Tapu Bulu. "I'm not the one who needs to make up for lost time." There was a deep, sonorous clang, and suddenly Tapu Bulu was at his side. Zac's glaring red eyes met the creature's passive green. Tapu Bulu clanged, not in deference but in understanding. Zac did not control him any more than a sundial controls the sun, though there was a certain, undeniable correlation between the two. The sun was pure, unfiltered force. The sundial gave it clarity and direction. Tapu Bulu pressed its bell hands onto the wood. Emerald life dripped from the legendary, suffusing the soil, the pile, and the waking plants within. It was what Zac had done with the board, only on a scale a thousand times larger. The heap of dead wood pulsed, like the heartbeat of a forgotten forest. Wrist-thick roots wriggled underfoot like soaked worms, the lichen on the boards swelled to the thickness of redwood bark, and patches of creeping phlox bloomed, faded, and bloomed again in sporadic waves of purple. "Oi, Zac. Mind filling us in on the plan? Gonna make a monument to commemorate yer Avatarship or somethin'?" Doug asked. "No," Zac replied, forcing the words out through his straining jaw, "it's for everyone." Something massive moved within the pile. Boards rattled and fell as the thing pressed its way upwards. "The legacy of this festival will not be destruction and mayhem," Zac said, as the creaking rose towards the peak of the heaped wreckage. The shuddering stopped, and Zac looked at Tapu Bulu. The legendary was no longer dripping green. Tapu Bulu's emerald splash could only grow so much before it needed to recharge. The blackened bull snorted, and then breathed in, pulling the life out of the plants blooming around them.
Sprouts crumbled, the phlox grayed, and the reanimated board under Zac's firm hands stilled. With a groan like a waking Torterra, the growth inside the pile resumed, and a dense spear of twisting wood forced itself through the top of the pile and out into the fresh air. The tree was bare, stripped of any leaves or branches by its passage upward, but as the rest of the hill grayed around it, the emerald force flowed up and into the young plum tree. The combined life of ten-thousand plants, and the will of Tapu Bulu himself accelerated the growth of the tree. Zac saw the seasons passing in front of his eyes as the plum tree thickened, trunk warping and cracking. The tree's spear point tip split, unfolding into a weeping canopy that expanded over the pile and those around it, claiming them with its skeletal shadow. And then came the leaves. A million supple, waxy shoots that filled in the creeping branches. The new, centennial canopy shaded the festival grounds with crisp, dappled light. The growth would have stopped there, were it not Spring, and were this not a plum tree. Pink buds pushed between the leaves, opening in a flush of cupped, red-throated blossoms. The dark canopy exploded with light and sweet fragrance as the plum tree reached full-bloom.
The creaking of growing wood faded, and Zac pulled away from the board. His hands were covered in life and crumbling death, and he wiped them on his Golden Explorer's Jacket. Zac and Tapu Bulu had grown a massive, blooming monument, not to themselves, but to regrowth. A pillar of proof that tonight's tale did not end in tragedy.
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