"Well, there's bunks and showers at the Pokémon centers for anyone between ten and fourteen, and we get paid for errands like that letter Ryan's got and how I weeded someone's garden yesterday and stuff, and we gather plants and valuable rocks in the woods and eat them or sell them or brew meds with them and sell those, and our parents gave us some money to start out. And if you're good at battling you can make money off other kids by betting them they can't beat you, but we haven't been at it long enough to want to bet more than a few pyen."

"My ma says you should never ante more'n half of what you've got in your pocket," adds Ryan.

"Wise words! How else could you bet the other half of what's in your pocket, ha-HA! I suppose between the odd jobs and the foraging, though, that leaves you with enough spare pocket money for sweets?"

"Yeah, for sure. I've got half again as much as I started out with already!"

"Have you tried crystallized iapapa rind? That's my favourite sweet."

"Candied fruit, of course!" Mr. Wonka shouts with a great vertical leap of professional interest. "Keeps for a long time—take it with you anywhere—" And now he's muttering something about confirmed sugar sources, Pacific sugarcane trade routes, and the backpacking candies of the future. "Is it truly scrumptious, the iapapa rind? Oh, don't bother telling me, I'm sure it is. The things I could do here," he groans delightedly, his eyes sparkling. "The things we could do here."

Alys is not quite sure what to do with this and falls back on what she'd been planning to say anyway. "Want a piece? I've got some in my bag."

"In your—oh! Yes, I'd be delighted!"

Alys fishes out a little paper bag, shakes a chunk of something sugar-coated and yellow-orange out and offers it to him.

"Hey, how come you share with him but not with me?" jokes Ryan.

"'cuz he's from space and doesn't have money. You can just get your own."

A gleaming citrine delicacy. This is no wild fruit, but a product of human ingenuity. Little windows into a way of life. Agriculture, hybridization, a treat for the holidays or mealtimes, climate and trade, the foods we love or abhor, scrimp for or stash in the cupboard or boast about. He breaks off half for Kevin, surprised that it snaps like apple rather than tearing like jellied fruit. And the taste?

Munch, munch. A burst of neon-bright, truly mouth-puckering sour from the rind, cut through by the sugary coating. Simply lovely. Here's the unfolding chorus of acids—citric, malic, and a third he can't identify, a big puckering whallop in the beginning but mellows out to—hmm, provocatively fragrant sugars. What are they? No real caramelization or maltiness. At the base of it, the barest hint of fructose with its berry-sweetness and glucose with a mild sheen, probably the iapapa itself, more like uncultivated citron than a heavier tropical fruit. Evidently nature laid a promising foundation, and some enterprising humans saw the potential and—yes, the syrupy richness of sucrose, marinating the bitter crisp rind. He smiles in surprise. It's an almost giddy revelation, like eating a sudachi fruit whole—something this tart might be tolerated as a garnish or a droplet to be dribbled cautiously over the tureen, but never as a centerpiece. Nonetheless, someone believed in it. When life hands us lemons, we do what we've always done—we show what a wondrous thing a lemon can become.

Munch, munch. The sweets do suggest the whole of society, don't they? He's always thought so. He thinks about adventurers with portable fruits and pokeballs, supply chains and sugarcanes, strangely sportsmanlike animals and challengingly sour berries, a world of uncharted sweets to taste and create. So this is the sort of civilisation he's landed in.

"Delectable," Mr. Wonka pronounces.

Kevin enjoys his piece, blissfully ignorant of his relative lack of skill in the art of enjoyment. It's sweet and sour and tastes good. "Thank you!"

"Glad you like it! Oh look, we're almost there!" As they walked their path went from underbrush to a trail to a broad flat dirt road, and now there's cobblestones underfoot and buildings ahead and a sign saying Welcome to Lavender Town.

A polity! Mr. Wonka's quick bright face turns every which way. What kind of place is this—size, technology, population, architecture? He feels his instincts shift gear fully from hinterlands survivalist to expat naturalist, just like shrugging on a new coat.

It's sized for a few thousand people, dense enough to be walkable but small enough not to be intimidating. The streets are a broad and cobbled and on a loose approximation of a grid except where they aren't, and inhabited by people walking or bicycling or wheelchairing or riding Pokémon. Several of the non-riders are otherwise accompanied by Pokémon who lumber or scuttle or hop or roll or slither or flutter along beside them. Houses and shops are mixed together and occasionally conjoined. A lavender farm at the edge of town is perfuming the air. The skyline is dominated by a grey tower, slender and tall and elegant and somehow melancholy.

Oh! Oh! Just look at all these marvelously cooperative creatures—surely more pokemon! All in symbiosis with humans just as the hounds and horses he's familiar with! And what can he see through the shop windows?

There's a grocery store full of fruit and vegetables and milk and cheese and bread and things in cans! There's a laundromat and a bank and a hairdresser. There's a law office, which is closed today. There's an ice cream parlor. There's an art supply store with a sideline in finished art and an office supply store with a sideline in school supplies and a camping goods store with a sideline in sports equipment. There's a PokéMart, which sells quite a lot of things in cans and tubes and baggies and also several variations on the theme of PokéBalls. There's restaurants describing themselves as "all-day breakfast" and "Johtan cuisine".

Hmm. Camping goods? Too practical; definitely a last resort. PokéMart? Undoubtedly a sweet shop of possibilities. Naturally, they'll want to think about money or barter if they want to buy, but that's easy enough. And thus they can explore this magnificent civic macro-mechanism—the crowds! that appealingly atmospheric tower! Oh and what was it he meant to ask about—

"You know, earlier I thought I heard you say 'We've all got to go heal'. May I inquire how that works? Normally, I think of healing as involving rather a lot of tedious waiting around and re-epithelialization and so forth, and rather fewer destination luncheons. Which, now that I mention it, seems a terribly provincial way to live."

Why is this guy a vocabulary lesson all of the time? Whatever. She points at a red-roofed two-story building on the next block. "We're going to the Pokémon center! They can heal up tired or injured Pokémon like that" fingersnap "so you and they don't have to wait around until they're feeling energetic enough to come out of their balls again! Because yeah, that would take aaaaages. Like days and days."