Pokèmon: The Anglos Region

Chapter 18: Babies

The snow along the trail was slowing down their progress considerably after a couple of days of hiking. As tough as it was for Jett, Brownie actually didn't fare much better. In fact, they had to slow down and stop more because the snow and ice was starting to hurt the Mudsdale, so much so that Jett had taken up the mantle of pulling the cart. By the fifth day they were only moving a quarter mile with the sun.

Grovyle had long moved to his ball along with Brownie to avoid the icy winds. Magikarp, surprisingly, was hardly affected and seemed to flop and jump through the snow with grace and ease that took Luna, and even Jett, by surprise. Larvesta rode in Jett's jacket and Ember and Sentinel kept Cassandra and Luna warm, respectively. Angel typically helped Jett with the cart. Though she wasn't nearly as strong as Brownie the fact that she was the largest and strongest pokemon they had that was capable of withstanding the weather took some of the load off of his shoulders.

On the dusk of day six they made camp in a small alcove, using the wagon to block most of the wind.

"How much further do we have to go?" Luna asked as she poked the fire.

"We're close to three quarters of the way to the peak," Jett said as he had Larvesta crawl around his chest to his shoulder. "Tomorrow morning we'll definitely be above the cloud line, if we're not there already. It's tough to tell with all this wind and snow. That, and it does change depending on the weather," he chuckled as he went to the back of the alcove and started looking around.

"What are you looking for?" she asked.

"This," he said as he knelt down and pointed at the wall.

She moved closer to get a better look.

Where he was pointing were several gouges that looked like letters. There were multiple different letters but each one was accompanied by a D.

"What is this?"

"It's a memorial of sorts," he said as he pulled his knife out and started scratching into the rock face.

"D for Drachenzahm," Luna said in realization.

"Yep!" he smiled, "Each time one of my family made this trip we stopped here in order to commemorate the event. And now it's my turn. But that's not all," he pointed to another portion of the wall.

Here it was obvious that this alcove wasn't fully natural and, in fact, had been partially carved through several generations of Drachenzahms. Along the wall were largish divots about two and a half feet tall and two feet wide.

Jett brought out Grovyle who looked up at him in confusion.

"I need a small favor buddy and then you can go back in if you want, alright?"

Grovyle nodded.

"Cut out a chunk of rock from that wall," he pointed where all the divots were.

Grovyle held his hand out and summoned a large, slim leaf that glowed with green energy. With a few well placed strikes a big chunk of rock lay in front of them.

"Now we need to shape it up and polish it," Jett told him. 

"Grovyle!" his partner said.

Jett held it steady as Grovyle carefully took off the more jagged edges. Once the larger segments were removed Jett called Magikarp over. Once more he adjusted it as his pokemon flopped beside it, his powerful tail and rough scales smoothing out the smaller imperfections that stuck out.

After an hour of carefully sculpting this large rock the shape became obvious. They carved it into an egg.

Jett held his arm over and Larvesta crawled over and perched himself onto it.