Tales from the Tall Grass

Let's get this out of the way: I am the weakest Pokémon in the world. I know, because it's written down. Humans stand on the shore of my lake and read it aloud to each other from their Pokédexes, and then they laugh, and then they throw in a fishing line anyway.

Virtually worthless in power and speed, says one. The world's weakest Pokémon, says another — a Pokédex from a faraway place called Sinnoh — and then it adds the part I like best: that nobody knows why we've managed to survive.

I know why. I'll tell you at the end.

✦ ✦ ✦

I hatched in the Lake of Rage, north of Mahogany Town, in Johto. There's a sign by the water that gives the lake its other name — Gyarados Lake — and every young Magikarp hears why. A Fishing Guru lives in a little house on the shore, and he says the lake isn't really a lake at all. It's a crater, he says, smashed into the ground long ago by rampaging Gyarados, which then filled up with rainwater. He says the story was handed down to him from his grandpa's great-great-grandpa. We heard him tell it to a visitor once, and the old ones in the reeds have been retelling it ever since, usually right before bed, which I've always thought was a strange choice.

So that was my first lesson. We are small, and we are silly, and we splash. But somewhere inside every one of us is a Gyarados — and Gyarados make lakes.

My second lesson came from a Pidgeotto.

✦ ✦ ✦

Here is a thing about us that nobody can explain, including us: we jump. We jump and we splash for no reason at all. A Johto researcher wrote that this makes it easy for predators like Pidgeotto to catch us mid-jump, and I would like to say, for the record, that the researcher was right.

I was having a lovely splash one afternoon — a big one, my best ever, at least two feet clear of the water — when a shadow folded over me and something gripped me tight. The lake fell away beneath me. Mahogany Town's rooftops wheeled past. I could see the whole shining lake from above, round as a crater, and I remember thinking: the Guru was right.

Then I did the only thing a Magikarp can do. I flopped. I flopped so hard and so stupidly that the Pidgeotto lost its grip, and I fell — a long way — into a muddy pool beside Route 43, the road that runs south from the lake, with a splash that made a passing Rattata jump clean out of the grass.

✦ ✦ ✦

The pool was brown. It smelled of old leaves and boot soles. Most Pokémon would have given up by morning. But here's the second thing the Pokédexes say about us, and they say it far less often, so listen carefully: we're hardy. The Hoenn records say a Magikarp can survive in any body of water, however polluted. Alola's say dirty water doesn't bother us at all. Long ago, in Hisui, Professor Laventon wrote in his notebook that murky water doesn't trouble us, which is why we turn up in all sorts of places. He also called us feeble and pitiful, but I've decided to forgive him.

I wasn't alone in that pool, either. Our swimming muscles are weak, so currents wash us along, and wherever water collects, Magikarp collect with it. There were nine of us in that puddle, all washed or dropped or tipped there one way or another, and the oldest was a Magikarp so faded and so scarred that the others called her Old Splash.

Old Splash had lived for more years than she could count. She had been everywhere a river could carry her. She knew things.

"Our ancestors were stronger," she told me, on my first night. "Not mighty. Just — somewhat stronger. The records say so in Kanto, and in Kalos, and in Paldea. We grew weaker over time. Nobody knows why."

"That's not very encouraging," I said.

"Wasn't meant to be. Here's another one. In Sinnoh and Unova, they say a Magikarp who lives for many, many years can leap clean over a mountain with a single Splash."

I stared at her. "Is that true?"

"The same records say Splash is still useless," said Old Splash. "So: yes. In the most useless way possible." She thought about it. "Johto's Pokédex says we never jump higher than seven feet. Well — the oldest record says never. A later one says usually not. I like the later one."

"Have you ever tried?" I asked. "The mountain?"

Old Splash gave a tiny splash, about an inch high. "Every morning," she said.

✦ ✦ ✦

We lived in that pool through a strange season. People passing on the road talked, and puddles are very good for listening. A hiker said the Lake of Rage was full of Gyarados — only Gyarados, not a single Magikarp left. A girl said there was a red one, a huge red Gyarados, rampaging in the middle of the lake. A man said men in black had come to Mahogany Town, and that the lake hadn't been right since.

I thought of my brothers and sisters. I thought of the reeds where I hatched. I thought: that would have been me.

Because here is the thing every Magikarp knows and nobody says out loud. One day, we change. We become Gyarados — six and a half metres long, more than twenty times heavier, terrible and magnificent. And the Hoenn records say that when it happens, our brain cells change their structure, and that this is what's blamed for the Gyarados temper. An Alola record says the energy of evolution stimulates the brain so strongly that we become ferocious.

"Will I still be me?" I asked Old Splash. "After?"

She was quiet for a long time. Then she said, "The Gyarados who dug our lake — that's a story about what they broke. Nobody ever tells a story about what they remembered. Maybe nobody asked them."

✦ ✦ ✦

Then, one morning, the people on the road said something new. The strange signal had stopped. A young Trainer and a tall man in a cape had gone into Mahogany Town and put an end to the men in black. The lake was back to normal. The Magikarp had come home.

I wanted to go home so badly my scales ached. But Magikarp can't climb out of puddles. We can't even swim against a slow current — a Sinnoh researcher wrote that down too. So I did the only thing I could do. I splashed. I splashed every hour of every day, the biggest splashes of my life, until a little boy walking up the road with a fishing rod stopped and looked into our muddy pool.

"There's a Magikarp in here," he called to his grandmother. "It's the loudest Magikarp I've ever seen."

He hauled me out into his fishing bucket, which was a squeeze, because a Magikarp is nearly a metre long, and my tail stuck out of the top like a bunch of flowers. He carried me — sloshing, furious, delighted — all the way up the road to the Lake of Rage, and straight to the Fishing Guru's door, because everyone knows the Guru dreams of seeing the biggest Magikarp in the world and will measure any Magikarp you bring him.

The Guru held me up to the light. He measured me from nose to tail. He looked at me for a long time.

"Not a record," he said at last. "But a fine, stubborn fish." And the boy tipped me back into the lake.

Then, because he was that kind of boy, he picked up his empty bucket and walked all the way back down the road. He did it eight more times that day, one Magikarp at a time, until the muddy pool was empty. I waited in the shallows and counted them in. Old Splash came last, in the evening, sticking out of the top of the bucket and looking extremely dignified about it.

✦ ✦ ✦

I'm home now. The lake is full of Magikarp again, flopping and splashing for no reason, exactly as we should. Sometimes a Gyarados surfaces out in the deep water, huge and cold-eyed, and we all go very quiet. I look at it, and I try to imagine it small.

Old Splash isn't in the reeds any more. She went out into the deep water one spring and didn't come back — not as a Magikarp, anyway. But early in the morning, when the lake is very still, a huge, scarred Gyarados sometimes rises far out in the deep. It looks towards the shallows for a long time. And then it gives one tiny splash with its tail. About an inch high.

So now there's a story about what one of them remembered. This one.

And I think about the Alola Pokédex, which noticed something about us that the other regions never mention. It says our reckless leaps make us easy prey — but that, thanks to Magikarp, many Pokémon live longer lives. Pidgeotto. Things in the sky. Things in the deep. Half the lake depends on us, one way or another. We are, it turns out, holding up the whole world from underneath.

So that's why we've survived, Sinnoh. You asked. It isn't strength. It isn't speed. It's that we keep splashing. Every morning. Even when the mountain is very, very tall.

My house has whiskers.

Not many houses do. Most Pokémon live in nests, or burrows, or holes in trees. I live inside the mouth of a Dondozo. The Paldea Pokédex says Tatsugiri live there to protect ourselves from enemies on the outside, which is true, but it misses the best part: my house goes wherever I tell it to.

My Dondozo is called Gulp. I named him. He didn't mind; Dondozo don't mind most things. He is twelve metres long — forty times longer than me — and he's the strongest thing in Casseroya Lake, and he would do absolutely anything I asked, because, as another Paldea record puts it, a Dondozo treats its Tatsugiri like its boss and follows it loyally.

The same record adds that, though powerful, Dondozo is apparently not very smart. I would never say that to Gulp's face. I say it to the inside of his face, quietly, sometimes, when he swims into a rock.

✦ ✦ ✦

There are three kinds of us, and I'll describe them fairly, even though I'm obviously the best one. Curly Tatsugiri are orange and curl upward, as if they're showing off. Stretchy Tatsugiri are yellow and lie flat and straight, like a dropped sock. And Droopy Tatsugiri — me — are pink, magenta really, and drape elegantly over our throat sacs. A Paldean researcher thinks our colours and patterns come from changing ourselves to suit the tastes of the prey we lure. I think it's simply style.

Because we're hunters. Small ones — and we know we're small, which is the whole secret. The Paldea records call Tatsugiri extremely cunning. A Curly pretends to be weak to lure prey in close, then orders its partner to attack. A Droopy, like me, plays dead. A Stretchy knows it's weak, so it never hunts without a partner. And what we're usually after is bird Pokémon.

So here's how a hunt goes. I float out on the surface, limp and pink and pathetic, the saddest thing on the lake. A Flamigo spots me from the shallows and thinks: free lunch. It wades closer, and closer, and at the very last moment I shout NOW! — and Gulp, waiting below like a sunken island, surges upward with his mouth open wide enough to swallow a rowing boat.

And misses. Usually. The Paldea Pokédex says Dondozo is a glutton but bad at getting food, and it isn't wrong. The Flamigo flaps away, offended. Gulp surfaces, puzzled. I climb back into his mouth and we try again tomorrow. Honestly, the hunting is mostly an excuse to spend the day together.

✦ ✦ ✦

I trust Gulp completely. I'll tell you why.

When I was very small — smaller than now, which is saying something — two giants lived in our lake. A Tatsugiri and a Dondozo, both grown huge, far bigger than any of their kind should be, because they had eaten Herba Mystica: the Spicy kind, a rare and precious herb. People called the pair the False Dragon Titan, and everyone on Casseroya Lake knew to keep out of their way.

Then, one day, a boy called Arven, with an enormous backpack, came to the lake with a young Trainer, looking for that herb. I watched from the reeds. When they came close to the giant Tatsugiri, the giant Dondozo did something I have never forgotten. Before the battle had even begun, it swallowed its Tatsugiri. Not to eat it. To hide it. To keep it safe inside, where nothing could reach it, while the Dondozo fought in its place.

When the Dondozo was finally beaten, the giant Tatsugiri came out of its mouth and fought too — and lost, and fled. Later, after the herb was gone, I saw that same Tatsugiri back at the lake, normal-sized now, just like the rest of us. It still lives here. It doesn't like to talk about it.

That's when I learned what a Dondozo is really for. Not for hunting. Not for being clever. A Dondozo is a mouth that will close around you and keep you safe, whatever it costs him.

✦ ✦ ✦

In battle, Gulp and I are terrifying. Battle researchers have a name for what I do: Commander. When Gulp is fighting beside me, I dive into his mouth and give the orders from inside, and his strength rises sharply — and while I'm in there, nothing can touch me. Gulp has a move called Order Up, and it gets an extra boost depending on which of us is giving the orders. A Curly inside sharpens a Dondozo's Attack. A Stretchy makes it faster. A Droopy — me — makes it tougher. I like that. I'm a defensive sort of genius.

Which brings me to Pepper.

Pepper is a Curly: orange, upward-curling and extremely full of herself. Pepper doesn't have a Dondozo. Pepper wants mine.

This happens more than you'd think. A Lumiose researcher wrote that Tatsugiri fight furiously among themselves over which of them gets to partner with a particular Dondozo, and they're right — there's nothing on the lake we squabble over more. Pepper had been circling Gulp for weeks, floating near him and pretending to be weak, which is a Curly trick, and I'm sure she thought I hadn't noticed.

One morning I went off to scout the shallows for Flamigo, and when I came back, my house was occupied.

"Morning," said Pepper, from inside Gulp's mouth. "I'm in charge now. Gulp — let's go."

And Gulp — loyal, powerful, apparently-not-very-smart Gulp — went. Because there was a Tatsugiri in his mouth giving orders, and that's what Dondozo do.

✦ ✦ ✦

I swam after them as fast as my little fins would go. My cousin Noodle, a Stretchy, swam alongside and gave me helpful advice, which is the worst kind.

"We Stretchy have a rule," said Noodle. "Size it up. If there's no hope of winning, swim away as fast as you can. Just mentioning it."

Pepper was showing off. She'd spotted a whole flock of Flamigo standing on one leg in the shallows on the far shore, and she ordered Gulp to charge. Gulp charged. The Flamigo, very sensibly, flew away. And Gulp — twelve metres long and going very fast — ran straight up out of the deep water and onto the mud flats, where he stopped, and lay there, huge and stuck and confused, with the lake lapping at his chin.

Pepper climbed out of his mouth, took one look at the situation, and swam off as fast as she could. (Apparently Curlies do that too.)

So it was me. Pink, droopy, ruler-sized me, and a stranded Dondozo the size of a ferry.

Here's the thing about being one of the most intelligent dragon Pokémon — which a Paldea record says Tatsugiri are. When you're small and the problem is huge, you don't push the problem. You think.

Gulp can't climb. But a Lumiose researcher once wrote that a Dondozo's body is so enormous it stirs up great waves when it thrashes. So I climbed up onto his head and shouted my orders right into his ear.

"Thrash, Gulp! Left! Now right! Left! Right!"

He thrashed. The lake heaved. A wave rolled off his side, slapped against the bank and came rolling back — bigger. He thrashed again, and again, each wave lifting him a little, sliding him a little, until, with one final enormous wallop, the water picked him up and carried him off the mud and back into the deep, where he sank happily to the bottom and opened his mouth.

I swam in. It was dark and warm and smelled of lake water and last week's dinner. Home.

"Good boy," I told the inside of his face. "Boss is back."

I can fly around the whole world in sixteen hours. Researchers in Hoenn wrote that down, and records from Kanto, Kalos and Paldea agree — and every one of them sounds a little surprised that something built like me, big and round and bulky, with wings that look far too small, can fly at all.

I don't usually fly around the world. Usually I fly in slow circles over one grey stretch of sea, listening. Because the other thing they wrote about me is truer, and it's the reason I'm telling you this tale. A Galar record puts it best: if a Dragonite spots a drowning person or Pokémon, it simply must help.

Must. Not "likes to." Not "often does." Must. I couldn't stop if I tried. I've tried.

✦ ✦ ✦

I wasn't always big. I began as a Dratini — long and thin and blue, a ribbon of a thing — in a pool at the foot of a waterfall. The water came down so hard and so loud that nothing could get at me behind it, and that was the point. A growing Dratini sheds its skin almost every day, layer after layer, and a rapid waterfall keeps it safe while it's soft. I used to leave my old skins drifting in the pool like pale ribbons. A fisherman found one once and held it up to the light and shouted to his friends, and none of them believed him.

That's why people call Dratini the Mirage Pokémon. So few have ever seen one that, for a long time, everyone thought we were only a story — right up until somebody found a small colony of us living underwater. Fishermen still tell of one of their own who fought a Dratini on his line for ten hours before he finally pulled it up. I like that fisherman. He didn't give up, and neither did the Dratini.

There was a lump on my forehead in those days — a horn, still coming in. It itched terribly.

✦ ✦ ✦

Then I was a Dragonair — four metres of shining blue, with crystal orbs at my neck and tail — and I learned about people.

My lake lay in farming country, and the farmers believed that Dragonair could control the weather. Farming people have revered us that way since time immemorial, and they'll tell you that when a Dragonair's body takes on an aura, the weather changes. I'm not going to tell you whether I ever made it rain. I'll only tell you that the farmers filled my lake with offerings — flowers, rice cakes, little carved boats — the way people do wherever Dragonair live.

And every New Year's morning, I rose out of the lake and twisted through the sky above the fields, as high as I could, as beautifully as I could. There's an old belief that if you see a Dragonair twisting through the sky at the start of the year, you'll have good health all year long. I wanted my farmers to be healthy. They had given me so many rice cakes.

And then I was a Dragonite, and the sea called me, the way it calls all of us.

Nobody quite agrees on where we live. Several regions' Pokédexes say we're said to make our homes somewhere in the sea. One old Kanto record insists that's only a rumour. A Johto record and a Paldea record say there's an island somewhere in the ocean where Dragonite gather, and only Dragonite live there. That one's true. I won't tell you where it is. Sailors tell of a shipwrecked man a Dragonite once carried there — a paradise, he called it, with nobody on it but us. I don't know what became of him afterwards. I hope someone flew him home.

Mostly, though, I fly. I cross storms the way you'd step across a puddle; we're built to fly over raging seas without any trouble at all. Long ago, a ship's captain watched one of us crossing a storm and gave us a name sailors still use: the Sea Incarnate. In Galar, many ships carry a carved Dragonite on their bows. Figureheads, the sailors call them.

✦ ✦ ✦

This is the part of my story I tell most.

There was a storm — not an ordinary storm, a two-day storm, the kind that turns the sea into mountains. I was riding the top of it, listening, the way I always do, when I heard a ship's bell far below, ringing and ringing, the way a bell rings when the people on board have lost their way.

I went down through the rain. And there it was: a fishing ship from Galar, its lamps flickering, its mast cracked, wallowing in waves taller than its sails. And on its bow, streaming with seawater, was a carved wooden Dragonite.

I can't explain what it's like to see your own face on a ship, lost in a storm, looking hopefully into the dark. I'll only say I didn't think about it for long.

Every Dragonite knows how to lead a lost ship home through a storm. Here is how it's done. You fly low, right in front of the bow, close enough that the crew can see your shape through the rain, and you don't go too fast. You fly ahead and wait. Fly ahead and wait. And the ship follows you, because what else is it going to follow?

Halfway home, a wave broke over the deck and took someone with it — a boy, the cook's son, who should have been below. I heard him hit the water. I heard him shout.

Must. Not "likes to." Must.

I dived. The sea is very dark under a storm, and very cold, but a Dragonite's arms are strong, and I had him before the next wave came. I flew him back up and set him down on the deck in front of his father, coughing and furious and alive, and then I went straight back to the front of the ship and carried on leading it home as if nothing had happened, because the ship still needed me.

We reached the harbour at dawn. The whole crew stood at the rail to watch me go. The captain — an old woman with a voice like gravel — called out the old name for us, loud enough to carry over the waves.

"Sea Incarnate!" she said. And then, more quietly, to the cook's boy: "Told you that carving was a good likeness."

✦ ✦ ✦

People sometimes ask whether I'm ever angry. A Dragonite is normally calm — but an Alola record warns that if you anger one, it will smash everything to smithereens before it's satisfied. I've been angry like that exactly once, at some people who were doing something they shouldn't have been doing to a Lapras. That isn't a story for the evening, and I won't tell it.

What I will tell you is this. An old Kanto record says a Dragonite's intelligence is said to match a human's. I don't know about that. I do know that I have never once been able to fly past a bell ringing in the dark. If that's intelligence, I have plenty. If it's something else, I have that too.

When you're sad, your waves go flat.

I don't mean you look flat. I mean I can see it. All Riolu can. Every living thing gives off waves — of feeling, of being alive — and a Riolu sees them the way you'd see ripples on a pond. Sinnoh researchers say a Riolu can see emotions such as joy and rage in the form of waves. An Alola record says we can tell the physical and emotional state of people, Pokémon and other natural things from the shape of those waves.

We call them aura. Everyone does now. But somebody had to name it first, and it was a professor in Hisui, long ago, called Laventon. He watched a Lucario sensing faraway things with waves of energy, and he wrote in his notebook that he had given this power a name: aura. Isn't that strange? Somebody had to invent the word for the thing I've been seeing my whole life.

✦ ✦ ✦

I live with Kenta and his grandfather on a farm high in the hills of Sinnoh, a long, long way from anywhere. Kenta's aura is usually quick little zigzags, like a kettle that's just about to boil. His grandfather's is long, slow, steady swells, like the sea on a calm day. I can feel both of them from anywhere on the farm.

I'm not easy to look after. A Galar record says taking a Riolu for a walk can be a challenge, and Kenta would like to add that this is an understatement. I'm not naughty. I'm just very, very interested in everything — and I can run all night if I want to. A Johto record says so. Kenta can't. That's the challenge.

✦ ✦ ✦

The night it happened, it was snowing.

Kenta's grandfather had gone up the mountain path at dusk to bring the Miltank down from the high pasture before the storm. He didn't come back. Kenta and I found him an hour later at the bottom of a steep bank, with the Miltank huddled around him and his ankle twisted underneath him. He couldn't walk. He could barely stand. And the snow was getting heavier.

We got him into the shelter of a big rock. Kenta wrapped him in both their coats. And then Kenta looked at me, and his waves were so frightened and so jagged that I could feel them in my teeth.

"The Pokémon Center," Kenta said. "In Celestic Town. Someone has to fetch help." He swallowed. "I can't leave Grandpa. And it's too far. It's three mountains away."

Three mountains. And two canyons. I knew exactly how far it was. And I knew something Kenta had forgotten — something the Sinnoh Pokédex says, which his grandfather had once read aloud to me by the fire: a Riolu can cross three mountains and two canyons in a single night.

I didn't wait to be asked.

✦ ✦ ✦

Running at night as a Riolu isn't like running at night as you. You'd see darkness, snow, the black shapes of trees. I saw everything glowing. The pines had slow, sleepy waves, deep down in their roots, waiting for spring. A family of Bidoof under a log gave off soft little ripples of dreaming. A Galar record says auras also tell a Riolu about the state of the land around it, and that night the whole mountain was talking to me: ice here, thin snow there, the stream is frozen, the path is under that drift.

I ran. Up the first mountain, through the pines. Down into the first canyon, where the wind roared like a river. Up the second mountain.

That's where I felt the Ursaring.

It was asleep in a cave right beside the path — I'd never have seen it with my eyes. But I could see its aura through the rock: huge, heavy and slow, with a hard, spiky edge to it that meant if you wake me up, I will be very cross indeed. An Alola record says a Riolu won't go near dangerous opponents. I'd like to tell you that's because we're wise. It's partly because we're wise. It's mostly because Ursaring are very large. I went the long way round, along the ridge — an extra half hour I couldn't spare.

I was halfway down the second mountain, gasping, when I felt something watching me.

It was a Lucario. A wild one, standing on a rock above the path with the snow streaming past it. I hadn't sensed it at all — but it had sensed me. Sinnoh researchers say a well-trained Lucario can sense the feelings of creatures more than half a mile away. This one had felt my fear from the other side of the valley, and had come to see.

We didn't speak. Riolu and Lucario don't need to. Researchers in Unova, Kalos and Hoenn say we talk with the shapes of our auras, and an Alola record says we do it without making a sound, so no enemy can overhear. I showed it everything at once — Kenta, the grandfather, the twisted ankle, the snow — in one long, frightened wave. And the Lucario showed me something back, very simple and very calm, like a hand on my shoulder.

This way. Faster.

It ran beside me down into the second canyon and up the third mountain, along paths I'd never have found on my own — and when the lights of Celestic Town finally showed below us, it stopped on the last ridge and let me go on alone.

✦ ✦ ✦

It was nearly dawn when I hammered on the door of the Pokémon Center. The woman who opened it was half asleep, but her aura was the kind that makes a Riolu trust someone straight away — clear and steady, all the way through. In Hisui, Professor Laventon wrote that Riolu can mysteriously read human minds, approving of the pure of heart, while those of ill nature earn only its loathing. I don't know about minds. I know hearts. Hers was good.

I couldn't tell her what had happened. Riolu can't talk. So I grabbed her sleeve and pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and she understood — and within the hour, three rescuers and a Mamoswine pulling a sledge were following me back over the mountains, with the sun coming up gold across the snow.

Kenta's grandfather was cold and grumpy and completely, wonderfully alive. The rescuers splinted his ankle and lifted him onto the sledge, and Kenta threw his arms around me and cried into my fur, and his waves were so huge and so bright and so warm that I couldn't see anything else at all.

That's when it happened. Right there, in the morning sun. Battle researchers say a Riolu evolves when its bond with its friend is strong enough — and only in the daytime. I began to glow, and to grow, and when it was over I was looking down at Kenta instead of up.

✦ ✦ ✦

I'm a Lucario now. I can feel Kenta's aura from the far end of the farm. I can feel the Miltank, and the Bidoof under the log, and sometimes, on very clear days, a wild Lucario somewhere far off on the third mountain. An Alola record says that Lucario, reading everyone's feelings, learn things they'd rather not know, and so get stressed easily. That's true, too. I always know when Kenta's sad, even when he says he's fine.

But that's all right. Knowing is how you help.

Kenta's grandfather says that one day, when his ankle is better, we'll all take a boat to Kalos and visit the Tower of Mastery in Shalour City, where there's a great statue of a Mega Lucario. It honours the first known Mega Evolution in Kalos — a Trainer and a Lucario, long ago, who found the special stones that made it possible right there on that spot. I'd like to see it. I'd like to stand in front of it and find out whether a statue has an aura.

I think it will. I think anything that people have loved for that long must.