Voice; Fiddlesticks 24, early-ish morning. (slightly backdated)

[mtsilver_conquor]

Colour me curious, but what are winter festivals or holidays like on your world? Back home, today would be Shiwasu 10, or Tōji -longest night and the start of winter. It's also my birthday, but that's not the important thing; it's not a big number anyway. I don't know what Alola does for Tōji, so I'll tell you what my hometown did.

[The longer she talks, the more homesick she sounds. It likely doesn't help that today's her birthday, but well. Small detail's Eva's willing to overlook.] Masara had the rural traditions of feasting, food making, drinking, games dancing, battles. You know, the normal for a coastal town.

No snowball fights though; we'd have to go to the mountains for that and we never went in the lead up to Tōji because that was bad luck. But, we did have something better: Fire jumping under the stars to bring good luck. You'd start at dusk with it low, little more than a small coal pit so even kids could jump it with supervision, and work up to a boosted jump over a half-drum of flames, though they'd only let the adults do that one.

The day I turned twenty I did so many times mum had to drag me away from it by the ear, but - worth it. So worth it...

[She trails off before ending the transmission.]

Comments

[death_from_above]

"Watching everyone acting different usually is. And while the Pokemon didn't talk, they were clearly smarter than most non-talker animals. Even the Task Force was working with the Pokemon."

[mtsilver_conquor]

Gods are they ever, but they're still not sapient. Though, I'm pretty sure I know one or two that'd fool you otherwise.

[PRINCESS. 'NONA (who is not here, thank the Four.)]

Though, it can seem that way with psychic-types at times.

[She's not even getting into the lone exception that is Fluffy. Nope.]

Task Force?

[death_from_above]

"They were kind of like kingdom Knights without the corruption and racism."

[mtsilver_conquor]

What's... racism?

[That is not a word in her - or her world's- vocabulary, full stop.

Mostly because they're all one race, and have always had more important things to worry about anyway.]

[death_from_above]

[He just stared for a long moment. Part of him... did not want to explain.]

[Finally he did however.]

"It is a thing where one group hates another group just because of the colour of their skin or length of their teeth or ears or any excuse really to point to a group and call them different."

[mtsilver_conquor]

Ah. So, basically a fancy word for Othering.

[Said so very deadpan, because Arkeans don’t have the concept of humans belonging to different races. But make no mistake: we would call 'Othering' out as racism.]

[death_from_above]

"Othering?"

[mtsilver_conquor]

Yeah. We're all one race, yet while I'd help and treat those from a different region than me with respect, but they're still Other. Not like me. Yet your word isn't the same, either, because no Arkean would treat another as an Other based on skin colour.

Region-wise, yes. Besides, we've bigger problems and a global population of less than a billion, and one wrong move could see that reduced to yet another bottleneck.

[Is she explaining this well? Probably not.]

[death_from_above]

"Yeah well we have less than that on my world, and Adrien has more than that on his, and it is an issue in both places. People used to throw rocks at one of my humans, just because he was crippled. And One of my other humans wound up marrying this girl with fangs, and it is the utter tooth that her mother tried to get her to hang herself over it. Knot that she had realized it at the time, it was noose to her." [He isn't taking the excuse that this is all past tense to make these jokes. He would have made them in the moment - had made the ones he hadn't been beaten to. Part of being a Deegan.]

[mtsilver_conquor]

[There is so much she can say about that, but she doesn't. She simply settles on:]

I'm sorry your humans had that happen to them. It isn't right.

[death_from_above]

"Agreed. You know what makes it better though? Feeding their cat." [Nod nod.]

[mtsilver_conquor]

[There's a small laugh.]

Is that your way of asking for a feed?

[death_from_above]

"Pretty much everything is," [he agreed happily.]