There came a day when the river did not test him.
No predators cut through the current. No sudden shifts in flow threatened to dislodge him from his shelter. Hunger gnawed, but not sharply. The water was calm in the way only long familiarity could make it feel calm—not safe, but *predictable*.
It should have been a relief.
Instead, it unsettled him.
Without immediate danger to sharpen his awareness, his thoughts drifted inward. And there, in the quiet, a realization surfaced that he could no longer avoid.
To this world, he was nothing special.
No prophecy curled around his existence. No hidden power slept beneath his scales, waiting for the right moment to awaken. He was not chosen by a Trainer, not marked by fate, not secretly exceptional in any way that mattered to the river.
He was just a Feebas.
The thought was neither dramatic nor despairing when it first arrived. It came gently, almost neutrally, as though stating an obvious fact that had simply taken time to fully register.
*This is what I am,* he thought.
And the river agreed.
---
He watched other Pokémon from a distance as they went about their lives. Barboach sifted through the mud in small groups, their movements efficient and communal. Goldeen traveled in loose schools, their flashes of color briefly catching the filtered light before vanishing downstream. Even the other Feebas—so similar to him that he sometimes struggled to distinguish them—moved with a quiet purpose shaped by instinct.
They fed.
They avoided danger.
They endured.
None of them questioned it.
The difference between him and them was not capability, or even awareness of danger. It was *reflection*. The tendency to observe himself observing, to stand slightly apart from his own existence.
But that difference, he realized slowly, mattered to *him* far more than it mattered to the world.
The river did not care.
---
Once, long ago—human-long ago—he might have rebelled against this realization.
He might have insisted that identity required recognition, that meaning demanded some form of distinction. He might have searched desperately for a narrative that elevated him above his circumstances.
Here, such thoughts felt heavy and impractical.
He did not have the luxury of needing to be more.
Hunger did not ease because one felt misunderstood. Predators did not hesitate because one believed oneself deserving of safety. The river offered no validation beyond continued existence.
And yet—
There was a strange freedom in it.
*If I am just a Feebas,* he thought, *then survival is enough.*
The idea settled into him, not as resignation, but as release.
---
He tested this new perspective in small, quiet ways.
When food was scarce, he did not curse his weakness or lament his body's limitations. He simply adapted—searching longer, conserving energy, choosing safer feeding grounds even if they yielded less. When currents pushed him into unfamiliar areas, he did not panic about being displaced from some imagined "right place."
There was no right place.
Only *where he was*.
Even encounters with stronger Pokémon lost some of their emotional sting. A Sharpedo passed once at the edge of his awareness, its presence sharp and predatory. He hid, waited, survived—and when it was gone, he did not dwell on the injustice of it.
Sharpedo were dangerous.
Feebas were fragile.
That was not cruelty. It was structure.
Understanding this did not make him fearless, but it stripped fear of its bitterness.
---
Memory erosion continued, but it felt different now.
What faded did so quietly, without the panic that had once accompanied each loss. He noticed absences more than gaps—areas where something *used* to be, but no longer caused pain by its absence.
Even the idea of being human felt increasingly abstract.
He knew he had been something else once. He knew that past had mattered. But the emotional gravity of it weakened, like a dream remembered only by its outline.
What remained was the present: the pull of the current, the texture of stone beneath his fins, the constant calculation of energy and risk.
These things were no longer merely survival mechanisms.
They were his life.
---
One afternoon, while feeding along a stretch of algae-rich rock, he encountered another Feebas lingering nearby. Older, perhaps, its scales even duller, movements slower and more deliberate.
They did not communicate in any complex way. No words passed between them, no exchange of ideas.
But their proximity lasted longer than chance.
They fed near one another, adjusted positions without conflict, shared space without competition. When a minor disturbance rippled through the current, they both froze at the same moment, instincts aligned.
For a time, they existed together.
The simplicity of it struck him.
There was no need to explain himself. No need to define identity or justify existence. In that shared, wordless moment, being a Feebas was not a limitation—it was a common ground.
Eventually, the other drifted away.
He did not feel loss.
He felt continuity.
---
Later, resting in a familiar pocket where sediment collected gently, he reflected on the phrase that had echoed in his mind since morning.
*Just a Feebas.*
Once, those words might have sounded like an insult. A reduction. A dismissal of potential.
Now, they felt accurate.
And accuracy, he was learning, could be comforting.
He did not need to be extraordinary to exist meaningfully. He did not need a Trainer to validate his worth, nor evolution to justify his survival.
The river had room for him as he was.
And as long as it did, he would continue.
*I am just a Feebas,* he thought, without shame or defiance.
And for the first time since his rebirth, the statement did not feel like something he needed to fight.
It felt like something he could finally accept.