Chapter 1: Cave
Chapter Text
Skyfish couldn't talk.
Of course, she knew all the sounds friends made and was perfectly capable of understanding others. But no matter what she tried she couldn't produce the same sounds.
When she was first born, she simply traveled around on her own, sometimes getting spotted by Friends or even a human. But once it became clear she didn't have a voice, she slowly got tired of playing charades with everyone she met and became more and more reclusive.
Nothing caught her attention anymore. The most fun thing she did was fly as fast as she could (very, very fast, she had thought proudly to herself) until she was exhausted.
Most days Skyfish floated aimlessly above everyone, looking at the changing scenery and groups of Friends as she traveled throughout the Park, only dropping down from time to time to grab a Japari Bun, or perhaps some fruit off a tree. (Buns were tasty, of course, but all the special flavours came from the humans and as such, required interacting with others.)
One day, Skyfish had spotted some unusual structures she had never seen before. Certainly something built by humans, but she didn't know the name. She dropped down to the ground, looking up at the tall cave-like things. If she turned around, she could see the simple (buildings, she later learnt) turn into smaller but more decorated ones.
Lots of the pathways were blocked off by orange cones and yellow tape, with signs she couldn't read. But Skyfish was undeterred and simply floated above them.
Then she heard a shout.
"Hey, we're doing repairs over here! You need to stay away for a while," a human in a bright vest had shouted, "until we can make sure everything is safe again."
Around the buildings were all sorts of strange devices she hadn't seen before. (Construction equipment, they called it when she had asked someone far later.)
Turning in a different direction, Skyfish looked for something else interesting.
A fair distance away, enough to make her hungry from the flying, she spotted a new building, one with a large field behind it with red tracks. Skyfish was once again intrigued, and landed in it.
Her tail barely brushed the tip of the grass, but it felt different from the wild grass she was used to. She crouched down and brushed her hands against it, feeling the rough texture. It certainly didn't smell like the grass outside of the human area.
While she was distracted, a group of humans had walked up behind her. She saw their shadows fall over her, and she jumped out of place, about to fly off again, before she heard their reassuring voices.
After a brief but one sided conversation, Skyfish had followed them inside. They explained that this was a place where new Friends came, particularly interesting (their exact words) ones, as well as where they tested fitness. All the while her mouth remained firmly shut.
They (now just two of them, the other humans had left to go do something she hadn't paid attention to) sat down in a small room. And then the questioning started.
"We've heard about you from some rangers in the safari area. Nobody expected you to turn up here, though!" He had laughed at his own words, rubbing his neck a little while a clipboard was in his other hand. "You don't have to stay for long, but we like to know about the Friends that are born in Japari Park. Do you know what your name is?"
What a strangely worded question. "Skyfish," she told him, hoping that for once someone had understood.
But all she got in return was a blank look. He cleared his throat and looked away awkwardly, but then wrote something down.
"Right..." he continued, "Do you mind if we do some tests on you? Every Friend is unique, so it's in our interests to gather information."
She had shaken her head and ran out of the building and away from all the humans before anyone could say otherwise.
Now, Skyfish was once again alone in her own world.
Until she was snapped out of it by a rumble in the distance. While she was idling, stuck in thoughts of who knows what, the skies had become the darkest shade of grey she had ever seen them in.
Without warning, a few small drops of water had turns into sheets of rain pouring, with a spectacular light show courtesy of the sudden lightning.
The tree Skyfish was in hadn't provided much cover. She felt the rain hit her face, as it soaked her clothes and hair.
After a while of searching, with the rain only growing stronger, she had spotted a cave. Skyfish had actually cried out in delight, breaking her silence for the first time since she left the humans. She rushed into the cave, finally eager to get some cover -
- and flew face first into something that, while not exactly soft, wasn't a rock. Whatever - whoever - she collided with let out a grunt of pain.
"Good grief..." it, she, said, pushing Skyfish off of her easily. "Don't you know not to invade other people's caves?"
Skyfish let out a meaningless whistle at that. The other girl huffed and shuffled away. The cave's natural lack of light and the darkness from the storm made it impossible to make out any features on her.
"...If you're going to be stuck here, at least tell me your name."
Nobody had understood her name before, but she tried anyway. "My name is Skyfish. I'm sorry for hitting you so hard."
"Skyfish? I've never heard of a Friend like that... Not like I'd care..." She mumbled something else under her breath, but Skyfish was caught up in the surprise of someone actually responding to her.
"You can understand me? Nobody else has before!" Skyfish climbed closer to the other girl, not paying attention to her movements. "That's amazing! I've been on my own this whole time!"
Now that Skyfish was closer, she could make out short blue hair and blue eyes. "Huh? You sound weird, but sure." The blue-haired girl - it was nice to know something about her sudden companion - shook her head. "Alone? I get that... Not that I care, it's natural for me to be elusive."
Skyfish squeaked a questioning noise. "You don't care about a lot. And you never told me your name."
"I don't talk to anyone. There's nothing and nobody to care about," she huffed, "and my name is Tsuchinoko. It's nice to meet you... or whatever."
Skyfish smiled, even if she wasn't sure that Tsuchinoko could see it. The rain had lightened up - just a bit - but it was still hard to make her figure out with her brown clothes. But something stood out. "Hey, we have something in common..."
"Huh?"
Skyfish tugged on the pink ribbon she could see on Tsuchinoko, then held out her own blue ribbon on her dress. "We both have ribbons! Isn't that nice?"
She could barely make out Tsuchinoko raising her eyebrow, before pushing Skyfish's hand away from her and staring distantly into the rain. Skyfish too turned back to the cave entrance, her smile now gone.
The rain slowly let up as they both stared outside in awkward silence. It had retreated into nothing but a light drizzle when Tsuchinoko broke the silence.
"There's... something else we have in common..." Her voice was quiet, as if saying nice things was foreign to her. But Skyfish chirped an encouragement. "I don't think a skyfish is a real animal, but neither are tsuchinokos... or that's what some people think." Tsuchinoko laughed, for a second, but coughed to cover up the noise.
As the clouds cleared, Skyfish smiled.
Because she had finally found a friend, no matter how much Tsuchinoko wanted to dispute it.
Chapter 2: Remembering
Summary:
Skyfish reflects upon her first memories.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Every other Friend could talk.
Skyfish doesn't remember who the first Friend she met was.
She remembers a figure, but not a face. She can't think of what they looked like at all.
She remembers trying to talk, not realising the differences between them at first.
She remembers...
They were curious, but frustrated. Something like that, maybe a tail lashing from their feelings.
It wasn't long before they had walked away, but at least they had apologised for being angry.
"It's just really weird to have a one sided conversation. Maybe someone can help you speak?"
Nobody had managed to get Skyfish to talk.
The second Friend was a curious one, too. She remembers the excited flap-flap of their small wings, and how they tried to play tag with her.
That was when she learnt just how fast she could go - the other Friend had just barely caught up before becoming curious about a new thing, running their hands over her tail ("It feels all wavy!", they had laughed) and staring at her feet, always slightly off the ground, and Skyfish swears she could see a sparkle light up in their eyes.
They had told Skyfish their name, but when she reaches in her memories the words become a blank space. Less deterred than the first Friend was, they flitted about in the plains they had found themselves in, pointing out whatever they deemed interesting, which ranged from tiny bugs she could barely see to other Friends, and the faraway sound of a human's "vehicle".
As the sun set on their third day together, they waved goodbye.
"I hope you can learn to speak the next time we meet!"
But they had never met again, and Skyfish still couldn't talk.
It was the morning after departing from the bird that she met someone else. Not a Friend this time, but a human. She remembers the unsure expression on their face and how they fumbled over their words. She remembers what they looked like, with the hat with the feathers that all the humans had and their tan and green uniform.
"Um... I'm a new staff member here... I was exploring, and a c-cellien attacked -" (What was a cellien, anyway?) "- and I got separated from the Friend I was with... Uh, she's a fox, you haven't seen a fox around, have you?"
Skyfish didn't know what a fox was meant to look like. She patted their shoulder in what she hoped was a reassuring gesture.
"Ah... you'll stay with me until we find her?" Skyfish nodded, and the human's face became considerably less worried. "W-what's your name? Mine is --"
Skyfish isn't sure why she can't remember anyone's names. For the third time, she had tried to say her name, but nobody understood her language.
"I didn't get that... but it's okay," they had giggled nervously, "the Friend I'm looking for... she has light orange hair and wears a white top... Help me look for her, okay? I don't want to go back to the outpost without her."
She quietly floated next to the human, looking in the opposite direction. The land had become drier and the grass was tall and yellow - she hoped this pale friend was being as obvious as she could - but couldn't see any Friends, let alone the one they had to find.
They had sat down to rest for a while sharing water and some food that wasn't buns for once, before the human had suddenly looked behind Skyfish with a fearful expression.
"It's another one! Another cellien! We need to run away, and please stay with me!" Without waiting for a response, she grabbed Skyfish's hand and ran as fast as she could.
She remembers turning around and seeing a strange, colourful blob chasing them. She wondered if that bird she met would have explained everything to her if they had found one. Would they have panicked or were they used to seeing them?
This "cellien" didn't look intimidating, but Skyfish guessed the human knew better than she would. But whatever it was doing, it was catching up to them. She remembers...
She had grabbed the human, and flew faster than she had before. They screamed the entire time they flew - which luckily, wasn't long, because Skyfish came to a sudden halt when there was a new voice yelling and a crash behind them.
A pale haired girl - a Friend, she had ears and a tail - was standing triumphant as sparkles faded where the cellien was. She smiled brightly and ran towards Skyfish and the human. They both sighed in relief and shared a brief hug.
"Thank you... I kind of panicked, you know, imagine that thing but larger and that was the cellien we saw!" Despite seeming out of breath, she was still full of energy. She held out her hand. "My name's Pale Fox. What's yours?"
Skyfish didn't know what to do with the hand. Pale Fox had grabbed hers and shook it forcefully, then grinned again.
She remembers trying again to say her name again, and that nobody understood her again.
Again and again.
"I'll learn your name next time we're together, okay?" And just like that, the human and the Friend had left together.
Skyfish wondered if she would be with a human one day. She hoped that they would appreciate flying more than this one did.
Skyfish had met a cellien on her own a few days after that. It didn't seem any bigger than the one she was running from, and it was dumb enough to lose track of her when she simply flew above it.
The celliens made strange noises sometimes, too. But they didn't speak the same language.
At least that meant Skyfish wasn't a cellien Friend. Then other Friends would be scared of her, instead of just confused.
She wondered if anyone had ever put Sandstar on a cellien.
Maybe a cellien Friend would be able to understand Skyfish.
What a ridiculous thought, she had muttered to nobody, and left to go onward.
There were other Friends and humans and celliens to meet, even if she'd rather not meet the celliens. She would watch as human "vehicles" would go by, sometimes only a small one with a single human in, but she had seen a particularly lively group in an animal shaped one a few times.
What would it be like to be surrounded by friends?
But Skyfish couldn't talk to any of them.
Skyfish was pondering all her meetings while sitting in the cave with Tsuchinoko. She wanted to bombard the Friend with questions, all the ones she had thought of while she was flying and following and listening... But she didn't want to bother her too much. Would she even know the answers to any of them?
She didn't stay with Tsuchinoko every day, but she tried to find interesting things to bring back to her. As it turned out, she had a small collection of odds and ends deeper in the cave. It was mostly small things - a few pictures (photos, she called them) and bottles (Skyfish wasn't allowed to touch these) and most intriguingly to her, "books". They were filled with all sorts of interesting pictures. In a rare moment of kindness Tsuchinoko had told her that this was how humans wrote, and pointed out the different sounds that they made.
Tsuchinoko only had a small collection of books. Skyfish's favourite one was filled with pictures of strange animals and human-like things, even if some of them made her uneasy. (Tsuchinoko had sneered briefly at a picture of a weird thing with eight heads and tails, but refused to elaborate further after grumbling something about "sake thief". Skyfish wondered if it had something to do with her bottles.)
She had even found a page with a tsuchinoko on it! There wasn't anything like a skyfish, though. Maybe one day she could bring back a book that had one.
Humans sure had lots of strange memories to put into books. Maybe someone out there remembered what a skyfish was.
Maybe there was another person who remembered how she could speak.
Notes:
Pale Fox. Her appearance in this fic was randomly selected.
A certain Friend is certainly a ridiculous thought.
Chapter 3: Thief
Summary:
Skyfish makes a new friend.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Tsuchinoko wouldn't talk.
In Skyfish's opinion, this was very unfair. Why not speak if you had a chance? Tsuchinoko had insisted that she had friends, but Skyfish wasn't convinced. (She was slightly convinced. The other girl was nice, sometimes.)
She floated around lazily outside the cave, almost like she was on patrol, wondering what kind of friends Tsuchinoko had. Were there other snakes? Skyfish wasn't sure how many different types of Friends there were. Maybe there were other ones from the book.
The second option was better, because they would understand her like Tsuchinoko had.
But she decided - she should find her own friends instead, and really try this time.
Skyfish had ran in and out, grabbing the book, faster than she could be seen. Probably. She hadn't been yelled or grabbed at, so it was fine.
She held it against her tightly and rushed away as fast as she could.
Skyfish decided that maybe going that fast was a bad idea, after a few encounters with unexpected bushes. She straightened a hairclip (she wasn't sure when or how it had came loose) and brushed the leaves off of her dress (the dark green wasn't really her colour). Now she was gently sat on the ground, the precious book in her lap.
The words in there were still a mystery to her, so she wouldn't be able to find any names, but with how distinctive some of these animals looked she was sure to find a Friend of one easily. Like the sake thief, or whatever she was actually called.
But some of them were so nondescript! There was a fox that didn't look special, aside from holding something in it's mouth. There were four of them on the same page, though, so maybe she'd have to look for a group of Friends. Maybe that was notable enough for them to come out of the book?
(Skyfish wasn't exactly sure how she and Tsuchinoko had became Friends, since she had never seen anything like them within the Park.)
Her eyes lingered on particular on the sake thief's page. It was a bit fearsome, even though she wondered how anything like that could move, being the tangle of heads and tails and sharp bits that it was. She had tried to imagine the Friend, with all the heads, human heads.
Maybe for now, she was fine with only knowing Tsuchinoko.
Imagining Friends of the smaller, cuter ones was easy. Other foxes, cats, a trio of lithe animals that she didn't know the name of, though they did have sharp claws that made her look at her own fingernails and wonder. But some of the others, represented by twisting drawings that she couldn't make sense of, were a complete mystery to her imagination.
For now, Skyfish closed the book.
It was almost pitch black when she returned, but the dark didn't really bother her. Her hair and clothes seemed almost bright enough to make their own light. Skyfish was strolling, for once, trying to feel like a more normal friend.
There were no words exchanged between her and Tsuchinoko when she was back, which meant everything was fine. Except...
"I didn't find anything interesting today," Skyfish said. "I didn't even see any other friends." Tsuchinoko stared at her a bit.
"Get your own cave if you're going to become a hoarder," but she was smiling - only slightly - while she said it. Somehow they had fallen into a comfortable friendship, despite their differing views on some subjects. (Like why Tsuchinoko wouldn't use the wonderful gift of talking normally.)
"...How many Friends do you think came from that book, Tsuchinoko?"
She didn't talk, but instead grabbed it and leafed through the pages just like Skyfish had earlier, sometimes muttering under her breath. "I wouldn't know... They wouldn't come here, anyway," she grumbled, but didn't take her eyes away from the pages. Then she hissed at a page, the one with all the heads. "Sake thief."
"What's she called? What's sake? Why don't you just share it?"
"Yamata-no-Orochi. Sake is a drink humans make, and because she should go away and get her own instead of freeloading." Despite her tone, Tsuchinoko didn't look angry. "We're drinking rivals now. I guess it's okay if she brings her own."
"I could drink faster than you. I can do everything faster than you, and anyone else!" That made both of them snort.
"It's not the speed, and it tastes different from just water," she explained. "More like who can drink the most before passing out."
Skyfish was still confused, and would have asked another question, had someone not walked up with a lantern which cast a yellow light around the area, which made her shadow stretch over them.
"Tsuchinoko! It's time again!" Whoever she was, her voice was extremely loud. "I even brought my own this time, so-"
"Don't yell! You're right in front of us!" That seemed to make Tsuchinoko laugh too. Twice in one day was amazing. "You're not talking to someone all the way in Park Central!"
For a moment, she didn't respond, and Skyfish looked at her.
Closely.
At all the snakes wrapped comfortably around - or from - her back.
It felt like her yellow eyes and the red ones on the snakes were staring into her soul. Skyfish couldn't quite read the expression on her face.
Then she laughed a loud, boisterous laugh. "She's cute! Where did you find her?" She put the lantern down, surprisingly not tossing it somewhere like Skyfish assumed she would. "Anyway... I brought my own this time, so please don't kick me in the stomach again," and began laughing once more.
Skyfish grabbed the newcomer's hand with both of hers, excited. "What's your name? Can you understand me? My name is Skyfish. Do you know what a skyfish is? Even though I'm one, I don't. Do you know who you are? Why do you have all those snakes?"
She desperately hoped it didn't sound like a bunch of whistles and chimes to her, because Tsuchinoko wouldn't want to be stuck being a translator.
It was kind of upsetting to need one, too.
"I'm Yamata-no-Orochi, I can understand you just fine, Skyfish is a nice name, I'm sorry about your identity crisis -" she breathed in "- because I'm not having one! I'm a legendary snake, Yamata-no-Orochi! That's why I have all these snakes, and I like seeing snake Friends, too."
Yamata-no-Orochi wasn't phased by the speed of her questions at all, and responded without a hitch. Even her joke made Skyfish laugh, but the snakes were still intimidating. They probably made for great protection from celliens, though.
She was so fun just from their brief interaction that Skyfish wouldn't mind if she took her sake. Maybe Tsuchinoko just had a grudge over something petty, like how Yamata-no-Orochi always had her snake friends with her. Could they talk to her?
But now that she was here, creepy snakes and all, Tsuchinoko didn't seem all that bothered. She smirked and traded banter over the sake like there was nothing between them at all.
Skyfish liked seeing Tsuchinoko happy, and hoped she could become friends with Yamata-no-Orochi too.
Despite their noise, Skyfish fell asleep easily while watching them.
When Skyfish woke up after that first night, the two snake girls (did Yamata-no-Orochi count as a snake, or were they just attached to her? What was she, if not a snake?) were sound asleep, with empty bottles filling the space between them. The lantern had been broken at some point, but at least it wasn't made of anything sharp.
This quickly turned into a common thing.
Yamata-no-Orochi seemed to be visiting more than Tsuchinoko was expecting, going by her complaints, but they didn't feel genuine.
"She's not that bad if she doesn't take any of my sake."
Sometimes she would follow Yamata-no-Orochi out when she left, and they'd even manage to get Tsuchinoko out with them most of the time. They probably looked strange, all together, but Skyfish was happy to feel like she belonged. It was almost strange how well they ended up getting along.
Yamata-no-Orochi stayed in their cave most of the time, now. Tsuchinoko had complained about her "moving in", but didn't seem truly bothered. She complained about everything, anyway, but that was fine because it would be weird if she stopped.
One day, Skyfish was sitting outside looking through the illustrated book again. She wondered if a Friend would come out of the pages if she looked hard enough.
Unusually reserved, Yamata-no-Orochi sat down next to her and followed the book as the pages turned.
She stopped Skyfish from turning a page, and pointed her finger at the header.
"Yatagarasu."
The picture was fairly simplistic. It was almost an ordinary black bird, but it had a third leg and piercing red eyes.
"She helps everyone out far too easily," she laughed, "but I guess some of us powerful Friends have to be benevolent."
It continued like this for a while. Even the snakes seemed to be crawling over to look at the pictures - Skyfish still wasn't sure how sapient they actually were. Skyfish would turn the pages, and every so often Yamata-no-Orochi would point out a creature that she knew as a Friend. Skyfish marked every page carefully, counting them.
All of them seemed so powerful, even the ones that were supposedly less important. Was Skyfish anything special like that, or was she just confined to being an oddity? Yamata-no-Orochi had left her to her thoughts, the book sitting closed in her lap.
She wanted to find out more about these mythical Friends, but most of all, she wanted one who could help her talk.
Notes:
I mentioned Yatagarasu and Oinari-sama because they're my favourite divines. I also pointed out the three Kamaitachis because they're underappreciated. All of them have filled out articles on Library, so go take a look.
Chapter 4: Creations
Chapter Text
Humans could talk, and they were more than happy to do so at great lengths.
Skyfish was sitting patiently in an admittedly comfortable chair - the humans absolutely were not tempting her back to Park Central with comfortable places to sit and delicious things to eat, even if they thought otherwise - while two of them talked. She listened, trying to copy every sound and shape of the mouth, but she couldn’t copy them.
“Identical anatomy… no abnormalities found… standard for a Friend…,” and at that point she had to restrain herself from not flying back to her now-precious cave.
The “clock” ticked. She had rapidly learnt the name of every object in the room and had only been stopped by upholding her part of the deal - she would let them research her, and they would teach her about whatever human things humans did and made.
Predictably, Tsuchinoko had refused to come to Park Central. It was certainly in character, but she couldn’t help but feel bitter. It hurt to not have someone who could fully understand her by her side in this strange place.
The first time Skyfish came to Park Central, she had happily unloaded every detail she could to a begrudgingly listening Tsuchinoko.
It felt like Skyfish had been talking forever, but she had finally finished.
“So, maybe if I spend more time with the humans, I can learn to talk!”
“...Well, wouldn’t that be nice…”
Skyfish made a wordless chime in response.
The time for patience was over. How many times had the clock ticked? One of the humans had left, and the room was silent aside from the endless tick of the clock and the tapping of the remaining human’s keyboard. Keys… letters that she could learn, so she could read the books she had been gathering without help.
The rising amount of books in the cave had nothing to do with the occasional missing books from Park Central.
She edged her way around to the screen as the letters appeared. Ones about her - what a wonderful thing that was. The human either ignored or didn’t notice her movements, eyes moving between papers and screen. The ticking and tapping formed an unpleasant instrumental. She frowned, and let out a small rhythm of her own chiming voice. If she ignored the tapping, the clock acted as a metronome, and the room felt slightly less cold. Soon, the human had stopped tapping and added her own humming to the impromptu song.
This human was definitely her friend, Skyfish decided. She had worked with this one once before - a girl, long haired and laser focused on writing whatever was being discovered at the time. Pages of neat writing were filled and dutifully copied onto the computer.
The screen changed, and a calm song filled the room. Songs were Skyfish’s second favourite thing to books now, and she had started to sing in her own way to whatever came on next. Sometimes her voice fit perfectly with the song, and sometimes she wondered what had compelled anyone to even produce a song that sounded like that. But still, humans made great things; writing, pictures, music - all ways to express yourself without words. Emotions, truth, fiction, things that could only be conveyed through the abstract nature of the arts and things that had to be carefully recorded for others to read.
Some Friends had created their own art without the intervention of humans. From a human’s point of view, that was amazing. Skyfish herself had developed her own way of communication, going beyond the basic actions of pointing to expressing herself as much as possible using her full body. The humans found that fascinating, too, and had written it down, as if they were making a dictionary of her own special language.
Whenever the wonder of a new discovery faded, Skyfish once again truly longed for words to come out in the same way as everyone else.
More visits to Park Central came and went, but there was one thing she couldn’t find.
Friends that were in the precious book. Friends like her and Tsuchinoko and Orochi who would look like the strange animals in the pages, Friends who might be able to understand her. Friends that humans didn’t think were real, a muddle between truth and fiction, boundaries blurring between the humans of the distant past and of the modern times. Ones that humans truly believed in, ones that researchers scoffed at when looking at the pictures, ones that…
It was best not to think too hard about those kinds of things. Simple was best. She had slipped in pages - one with a picture of what a skyfish was. The picture was fuzzy and the text was scant, and it didn’t fit the design of the book at all. But that just made the book all the more precious. Behind that, she had put in copies of the researcher's notes about her, having had them read to her and gaining approval.
She wanted to add notes to more potential Friends in the book.
She came back with a new book after the next visit. It was small and colourful, decorated with simple images. A children’s book, teaching the most basic letters and sounds and words. It was a gift from the kind researcher - it wasn’t quite as precious as her book of strange animals, but it took second place.
Another visit was coming, one for leisure and not research - Tsuchinoko, once again, rejected the request for accompaniment, staying in the loneliness perpetuated by herself. But Orochi had paused, given it some thought, and laughed.
“Sure, why not?”
Skyfish chose to completely ignore the devious smile that had spread across the other Friend's face.
Gaelic_Eva_Pilot on Chapter 1 Mon 26 Dec 2022 05:27AM UTC
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phonyboi7 on Chapter 3 Sat 04 Nov 2023 10:47PM UTC
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