Silas left Azalea Town that same night, his ears ringing with Maree’s quiet words: “You cannot catch a feeling, boy.”

In the quiet, rain-streaked region of northeast Johto, where the forests grew thick with moss and the rivers ran a deep, cola-brown from the tannins of fallen cedars, there lived a Pokémon that no Pokédex had ever catalogued. Her name was Ninacola.

Ninacola stood just under a foot tall, shaped like a tiny, round-furred badger with the wide, earnest eyes of a Zigzagoon and the tufted ears of an Eevee. Her fur was the color of warm caramel, and along her back ran a winding stripe of deep burgundy, like a ribbon of old velvet. But her most curious feature was her tail—not a plume or a stub, but a tiny, hollow gourd that grew from the base of her spine. When she was content, it would emit a soft, pleasant scent: sassafras, vanilla, and a hint of fizz.

Old Maree, the herbwife of Azalea Town, had raised Ninacola from a foundling—a tiny, shivering ball of caramel fur she’d discovered curled inside a discarded soda crate after a spring flood.