The river slowed.
Not everywhere—only here.
The current still flowed strongly beyond the bend, pulling insistently onward as it always had, but within this stretch it weakened, spreading into a wide basin where water circled instead of rushing forward. Eddies formed and dissolved lazily. Sediment settled thick and undisturbed. Even sound—if such a thing could be said to exist underwater—felt muted.
It was a place that resisted motion.
He felt it the moment he entered.
His body, accustomed now to reading the river's intent, expected the usual nudge forward, the quiet pressure that guided him downstream whether he resisted or not. Instead, the water held him loosely, as though undecided.
He drifted.
Not carried. Not anchored.
Suspended.
---
At first, he assumed it was temporary.
Some quirk of terrain, some seasonal anomaly that would resolve itself once he moved far enough through the basin. He followed the faint pull of the outer current, navigating carefully around smooth stone ridges and dense plant clusters.
But each attempt ended the same way.
The water curved him back.
Not forcefully. Gently. Like a suggestion repeated until it became impossible to ignore.
He stopped fighting it.
Energy was precious, and the river had taught him well: resistance without understanding only wasted strength.
So he remained.
---
Life here moved differently.
Food was abundant but static—thick mats of algae that grew slowly and clung stubbornly to stone. Small organisms thrived in the stillness, but they moved less, reacted slower. Feeding required patience more than precision.
Predators were rare.
Not absent—but hesitant.
Larger Pokémon passed near the basin's edge without entering, their movements cutting sharply through faster currents beyond. Once, the distant silhouette of a Floatzel lingered at the boundary, scanning the water below. It did not descend.
The basin did not invite intrusion.
He began to understand why.
---
Time stretched.
Days blurred together in a way they hadn't before. Without the constant push of the current marking progress, existence here felt circular rather than linear. He fed, rested, adjusted position as sediment shifted—but he did not *go* anywhere.
At first, the stillness unsettled him.
Movement had been survival. Flow had been purpose. Without it, he felt exposed to thought again, to reflection he had learned to quiet.
*Is this stagnation?* he wondered.
The question carried no fear—only curiosity.
---
He explored the basin thoroughly.
There were layers to it: shallow shelves warmed faintly by filtered light, deeper pockets where cold water pooled and pressure increased. Narrow channels threaded through stone, but all of them curved back into the central body eventually.
No exits.
Not truly.
He found others here.
Not many, but enough to notice.
A Barboach lingered near the basin's edge, slow-moving and thick-bodied, its whiskers brushing stone with methodical patience. A pair of Tympole pulsed gently near a warm shelf, barely acknowledging his presence. Even another Feebas rested along a silt ridge, its movements minimal, eyes half-lidded.
None of them seemed eager to leave.
None of them seemed troubled by that fact.
---
Something about the basin demanded stillness.
Not enforced—but encouraged.
His body responded to it more than his mind did. Muscles loosened further, resting into their strengthened state without constant exertion. His breathing slowed naturally. Even hunger felt muted, arriving softly instead of sharply.
The algae clinging to his scales thickened here, no longer a nuisance but a second skin. It camouflaged him completely against the basin floor, rendering him nearly indistinguishable from the environment.
He was not hiding.
He was *blending*.
*This place erases urgency,* he realized.
The thought lingered.
---
Memory shifted again.
Not eroding this time—but flattening.
The remaining fragments of his human life no longer felt distant or painful. They felt irrelevant. Facts without gravity. He could recall them if he tried—but he rarely did.
They did not intrude.
What surprised him was that this did not feel like loss.
It felt like relief.
Without the pressure of past or future, the present expanded. Sensation deepened. The feel of water against his scales became a complete experience rather than background noise. The slow dance of particles in the basin occupied his awareness fully.
He existed entirely *here*.
---
One day—if days could still be counted—something changed.
Not the basin.
Him.
He noticed that remaining still for long periods no longer felt passive. There was a subtle engagement in it, a tension held lightly rather than released. His awareness spread outward, attuned to the slightest disturbance anywhere in the basin.
He could sense movement before it happened.
A stone shifting.
A Tympole preparing to pulse away.
The distant pressure of something large passing beyond the basin's boundary.
He was not reacting.
He was *anticipating*.
The realization came quietly:
*Stillness is not absence of motion. It is readiness.*
---
The basin did not force him to stay.
He could, if he truly wished, expend the energy to leave. He understood now where the current weakened enough to be overcome, where persistence could push him through the basin's subtle resistance.
But he did not choose to.
For the first time since his rebirth, he was not being carried forward by necessity or pressure. He was not enduring because he must.
He was staying because he *wanted* to.
The choice mattered.
---
At the basin's center lay a deeper hollow, colder and darker than the rest. He avoided it at first, instincts whispering caution. Places like that often concealed danger—predators, traps, unknown risks.
But over time, he noticed something else.
The water there was impossibly calm.
No eddies. No drift. Just depth.
One evening, guided by curiosity rather than hunger or fear, he descended.
The pressure increased steadily, wrapping around him like a firm, steady hold. Light faded until the world became muted shades of dark green and gray. His movements slowed, not from resistance but from instinctive adjustment.
At the hollow's center, he stopped.
The water was utterly still.
He hovered there, supported evenly from all sides, algae-draped and motionless.
And for the first time—truly for the first time—nothing demanded anything of him.
No feeding.
No hiding.
No adapting.
Just existence.
---
He remained there for a long while.
How long, he could not say.
When he eventually rose back toward the basin's shallower layers, something fundamental had settled inside him.
The river would move again. It always did. This place, too, would eventually change—fill with sediment, shift its channels, release its hold.
He knew that.
But now he understood something deeper:
Movement was not the only form of progress.
Stillness could shape just as surely.
The basin had not transformed him.
It had *confirmed* him.
And when the river eventually chose to pull him onward again, he would go—not as a creature carried by circumstance alone, but as one who had learned how to remain whole even when nothing pushed him forward.
The water circled softly.
And within it, a Feebas waited—not trapped, not lost—but grounded, patient, and quietly ready for whatever the current would ask of him next.