When she was a girl, she'd believed a garden could be anything.[break][break]

The wildflowers in the forest outside meant as much to her as the carefully curated plots outside her childhood home. She had tried to explain this once to the family gardener, but he'd dismissed the notion, saying that no, no, there are gardens and there is nature.[break][break]

She'd never believed them to be truly separate from one another, though.[break][break]

The clearing in Sootopolis where the life bloomed at the water's edge beckoned her from her quiet, solitary apartment. The wilderness was not a proper place to tend plants, but she was not a proper tender of them anymore, either. Everything she touched seemed eager to die on the stem.[break][break]

Nature flourished better when Elisabeth's hands were uninvolved.[break][break]

The underboss knelt at the side of the clearing, her hands buried in her lap, as she willed herself to think soothing thoughts. It was not that she was unsettled, precisely.[break][break]

Her emotions had just never seemed so loud.[break][break]

She turned her palm over, thinking, before she sought to distract herself. Eyes closed as pink mist coalesced at her fingertips, a forbidden thrill that she felt only safe truly experiencing in secret. This place -- this hallowed home to her moonlit revelries -- could guard her in a way that the rest of the world never could.[break][break]

"How strange," she murmured to herself, watching the rosy fog drift around her, dancing with sparkling specks of light that tickled her skin. "I never thought you'd feel comforting."[break][break]

When she was here, the other voice in her head went silent, for a little while.[break][break]

When she was here, secretly, she felt more like herself than anywhere else.

[break][break]

[attr="class","ooc"] FERNANDO SILPH

[attr="class","pkmn"]

(Set during Goodbye Galar: Rusted Shield, Motostoke.)

[break]

It had been an initial decade of sloth and leisure for Wo-chien.[break][break]

The withered remains of the courtyard garden became the Ruinous Beast's favored haunt as it recovered from battle after battle to defend the city of Motostoke. This did not exhaust the legendary being; war was, to a creature of devastation, a normal and natural cycle to fall into. Times of peace disturbed more.[break][break]

What good fortune, then, to be stranded and isolated in a place of such bleak, utter chaos.[break][break]

***

[break]

So many pitiful vessels meandered here in Motostoke. Wo-chien's ochre eyes lazily took in their gangly, human forms as they loitered about and busied themselves in useless tasks. Training their tiny armies, building their makeshift families, trading their old happiness for a false one that was nothing but a pale echo of what was before -- these flimsy attempts at staving off their own resentments irritated the demon to no end.[break][break]

How pleasing it was, to have chosen a vessel that did not easily succumb to such depths of delusional happiness.[break][break]

There had been a time the snail watched Tapu Fini warily, unsure how far the alliance between them extended; here, the two rarely coincided, as the moonlit mistress found her primary interests laid in matters of Hoenn and not Galar.[break][break]

That absence of balance left this mortal playground open to the Ruinous Beast's own resentful designs, and oh, how delicious it was to mine this new vein of loathing.[break][break]

Wo-chien engorged itself on the woman's despair at being trapped against her will for another decade's span, after too recently having escaped a previous decade of captivity at her last abuser's hands.[break][break]

The snail hummed with pleasure at the way its Avatar took each glimpse of other's joy like a knife to her own heart, isolating herself further and further within her ivy-wreathed tower. Away from Isaac Merlo. Away from ana fell. Away from the already-too-distant Cillian Quinn and Felix Gallagher.[break][break]

It watched those relationships wither on the vine, and it reveled in its victory in the shadows.[break][break]

***

[break]

Admittedly the Ruinous Beast had been concerned about her dark-haired companion, at first.[break][break]

BARNABY FINCH.[break][break]

Wo-chien's ochre eyes had watched the man enter and leave the tower that had become its mortal's new residence, misliking the way he seemed to hold genuine care for the deity's prized possession.[break][break]

Yet the faint aura of that man's own malcontent had lingered, tangible to the Ruinous Beast as the scent of any bitter herb, and realization dawned: this was not a union that would offer either solace, but instead, a reminder of what had been lost between them.[break][break]

Whatever might blossom between them both, the snail well knew, would forever be choked in those thorns of regret and longing for what had once been.[break][break]

So, generously, Wo-chien decided to allow this man to share in its precious company.[break][break]

Let them both delude themselves, the Ruinous Beast thought. In the aftermath of the courier's departure, wouldn't delectable regret simply flourish in its chosen vessel anew?[break][break]

True, this new source of envy-tinged sorrow belonged more to the realm of Chi-yu than to Wo-chien, but ah, resentment could be born from other base emotions; the two often tangled into one another, as perhaps PENELOPE LIVY would find in her own version of this city.[break][break]

How peculiarly marvelous it was, for this miserable woman to resent her own past self so strongly. What a delightfully unending font of spite she'd proven to be.[break][break]

There was no reason to be concerned, Wo-chien thought, in this little kingdom that the Ruinous Beast had claimed for itself. Even the Spectrier in the stables kept its distance from this demonic god, theirs an unspoken truce of indifference between one another.[break][break]

So when the girl entered the threshold of the witch's tower, the snail thought nothing of her presence. An insignificant child surely held no power compared to the might of a cruel deity and its broken demigod.[break][break]

***

[break]

Little by little, the seasons changed over the next decade -- so subtly, Wo-chien did not notice it until it was too late. The garden that had been its private haven had transformed seemingly overnight into a sanctuary for the girl's avian Pokemon, leaving the god no place to skulk in the shadows.[break][break]

The more battles raged in the city, the more that Wo-chien felt the impact of each and every blow, taking longer to recover as it slunk off to the outskirts of Motostoke to mend its wounds. How powerful it had felt before, nearly invincible as it faced down Necrozma with a well of resentment so overwhelming it seemed limitless in its might.[break][break]

The puppet strings did not come so easily now. When it yanked on them, sometimes, the marionette did not want to play along to its insistent tune. Had gluttony made them idle, Wo-chien wondered? Had the Ruinous Beast succumbed to too much leisure, enjoying this temporary interlude while it awaited the inevitable return to its infernal brethren in another realm?[break][break]

It took too long for the god to notice the shimmer of gold in the woman's once-black hair, or to note the vibrant green that marked her now-unclouded eyes.[break][break]

Gods underestimated mortals, most, their capacity for change and growth.

[attr="class","ooc"] BARNABY FINCH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]