RECREATION

you start to think. you start to become more than the sum of your parts. abstractions and intricacies, dreams following you into the waking world and nipping at your heels, haunting you with visions of a past made of ash and a future burnt up by reckless wildfire. 

someone tries to steal your best friend's stuffed ariados and you hit them. and you keep hitting them, bones growing, that fire in your veins a vicious, snarling thing, landing you in a locked bedroom for weeks on end, your only solace the love notes slipped under your door. 

dreams are not for you, freak, and you spit in their face, but you stand in front of the mirror with black scales on your arms and a pain over your brows. her hands are the first you let wander over the bumps on your forehead, hidden in your hairline.

doctor's appointments and pills and when that doesn't work, another foster home, another family, your best friend and her stuffed ariados left behind, the golden string between you fading, slackening, becoming nothing but a forgotten once-tether. 

your name shows up on a screen halfway around the world and within weeks, they're on your doorstep, telling you they've found you. they've finally found you.

and they love you so much, freya.

you meet your first dragon, lyune, and the rumble in his throat sends you back, back, back to that moment, part of you not yet you, still moon and stardust and part of the universe, hearing your name whispered as it's meant to be.

daughter of the hunt, he says, welcome home.

OCT 3 - DREAM DROP DISTANCE
269 WORDS

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he reads. his brows crease. the veil lingers stubbornly over his eyes - that same faraway look that so many others (ollie morales, Eva Morales, Greyson Connors) have gotten when she's mentioned the past refuses to make sense of the words on the page.

in his contemplation, wavering on the precipice, she looks down at herself. 'cause i love ye. but it doesn't change what she's done, what she's doing, and gods, delta. delta.  how she ever got near elisabeth is beyond her. an attack doesn't feel right.

it doesn't matter. 

she reaches for a sweater and rolls it up to place in the duffel bag, pausing only when king withdraws, eyes glassy. 

"it's everything i remember," she says. "everything you forgot.

"you're not the only one who's forgotten. it's...i didn't mean to keep it from you." she tucks another shirt in the bag and rearranges some things, keeping her hands moving lest she break down again. "but i haven't met anyone else who remembers. and if i can't trust myself, my own thoughts, again..."

teeth grit. tears well and shame sweeps through her, hot and acrid. 

KING WAYLAND

☉

"don't be rude," she says primly and admires her own handiwork. his fingertips trace the curves and lines, the scratched notes all around, and she can feel the gears turning. his ingenuity turning her flimsy designs into something less abstract. 

eventually, something tangible. 

she cocks a brow. "i'll be overseeing the region's combat preparedness.

"i'll be on the frontlines more often than not." and hoenn is always at war. 

ALEXANDER STONE

☉

surrounded on all side by walls of her own making, claws trimmed and filed, too weak to shred the ties holding her together and even if she could, breaking out would mean breaking apart. it would mean losing herself - what makes her her. she's a ghost trapped in skin, dead the day ALEXANDER STONE died. 

the thimble under her foot finally disappears and all at once her balancing act plummets and she falls, knees hitting sand, hands finding purchase in the loose granules of earth. her wrist bumps her coffee and it tumbles, spilling a brown stain, barely distinguishable from its surroundings. 

pieces of her coming apart and needing to be put back together, but her hands are already so cut up and she's so, so tired of doing this alone. 

freya!

she comes back with a strangled sound, blinking furiously. her head clears with the ribbons gone. the lapping waves replace the pressing sound in her ears and she inhales shakily, scrambling to find her center. 

"n-no," she says breathlessly. "you didn't hurt me. it's okay, isaac. i'm okay." but she's saying it more for herself. 

she sounds unconvinced. 

"you were only trying...to help." 

several paces away, melusine is standing still as a statue, pupils thin as a sheaf of paper and trained on isaac. freya's voice is a rough scrape, somewhat of a snarl, and melusine's feathers ruffle. she snorts and turns her back with a flick of her tail, returning to her duties. 

freya grunts and slides back up onto the driftwood, smacking her palms together to brush the sticky sand away. 

"i forgot you were an avatar," she admits finally and runs her fingers through her hair, fidgeting with a braid. "i had some...bad experiences with another. it shocked me is all. there's - it's complicated. but thank you, for trying."

Isaac Merlo

☉

WEALTH

you are the child, moonlight in your blood, always caught staring up, up, up and above them all, wishing you could fly. you don't know yet the meaning of this feeling, the nature of this feeling at all, a destiny burning soft and low in a body small and vulnerable and defenseless. 

you don't know that your life is hard. that there is that sort of thing - suffering. you know that you are hungry sometimes, that your crying will sometimes grant you the rubber nipple of a bottle, but more often than not only the heavens seem to hear you. the starlight spilling through your blinds, shadows stretching long and intimidating in your crib. 

your blanket, a second skin, swaddling you, smothering you, holding you grounded. 

not yet, little one. not yet, not yet. whispers of your mother's voice, but you don't know it's her and you don't understand what a memory is. you know sometimes only that you feel heat, a bubble of warmth, a pleasant façade - what could have been. 

sometimes, when you wake, you are clutching your blankets so tightly you nearly tear through them. your foster mother swaddles you tightly and presses a finger to your nose and you laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and her brows crease, gently, as she remarks to herself how odd it is the way your nails grow.

OCT 2 - DREAM DROP DISTANCE
229 WORDS

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freya did not own a halloween costume. by the time she had a doting mother and father that would have done that sort of thing with her, she felt she'd outgrown it, so this is the first year she's ever dressed up and with her actual costume still in the works (ie, she hasn't had any time and has no idea if delta even wants to go trick-or-treating and hasn't found a way to ask because things are still complicated and - )

she's a fairy princess.

she has bright sparkles on her rosy-painted cheeks, a tiara in her hair, and some small wings on her back. they were in a bin. it was one of the only costumes left. the sparkles were leftover materials from the carnival. 

it at least helps her look approachable. she squats down now and holds out the bowl for a group of kids dressed as...ninja tirtougas? the youngest of them giggles cheerfully as moxie flicks her tongue out to taste his wrist, no doubt swiping at some of the sugar in the palm of his hand. 

they wander off and freya looks down in her bowl, realizing she's a little bit low. "excuse me," she says as she sidles past another volunteer to reach for some more of the mini twix bars. 

Julien Demassieux

☉

isaac's avatarship is not at the forefront of her mind. in fact, it doesn't quite click with her that the merlo in front of her is the same as the one from the one in the documents, emails glossed over in the wake of callan's departure and the aftermath of the walking wake's devastation. couple that with the instability of her home life and it's just another snippet that's slipped through the cracks. 

so she's puzzled, watching him more out of amusement as he tries to enter some sort of meditative trance. if he's attempting to coax her to peace, she leans into it, looking past him and out to the sea. watching the waves roll in. seeing the glint of scales just under the surf, her dragons watching from afar. 

she wonders after king. and that hurts too much so she turns to easier things - her incessant check-ins with the island's ranger stations, checking for any sign of Elisabeth Fiorelli. glimpses made, skirmishes reported, but whenever she arrives, it's too little too late. 

alone, tasting decay on her tongue. 

vengeance is a poison, she told tsubaki, but her own is a fire and the walls of her heart have already long since scorched. elisabeth made an enemy when she brought tapu fini to her, and then she forged her end when she turned her 'gift' on delta. 

she will protect fernando because it's the right thing to do. 

she will kill elisabeth because she wants to. 

and this, this is what she's thinking about when blue light spills from isaac's hands. when ribbons twist around them, so like the motherly touch of her dragonair, so like the patron's burden that sought to bind her. 

she startles and isaac's words cannot get past the waterfall rush of blood in her ears, the pounding in her throat. her breaths are quick, tight, drawing the aurora closer to her, and she covers her mouth tightly with her hands, afraid to swallow any of it. to swallow it at all. 

tears prick in bloodshot eyes and she stumbles back, away, breaking out of the wrappings, veins on her wrist pale blue and tense, every bit of her on fire, feeling the grains of sand in her boots and the heat on her neck and the salt on her cheeks, salt of her own making, salt of the sea, that brine threatening to drown her. 

Isaac Merlo

☉

her earpiece crackles. reports of movement from rocket come streaming through in the wake of an obstacle. league personnel rush down into the tunnels while others, like freya, move to disrupt some of the supply lines. 

lyune is rested and fit for battle and has enough energy to passively snap at the poipole that levitates teasingly alongside it. 

"morningstar closing in on position." rockets scramble along the shore, sprinting loads of cargo up and into the tunnels. lyune's shadow stretches over the sand and a flamethrower spurts over the ground as they soar past. 

mint frost Remiel Calcifet

salamence uses flamethrower
poipole vibing

☉

with a tuck of his wings, the gunk shot flies overhead. spatters of it rain down on freya's armor, making it hiss, and she grimaces as a few drops mar her cheek. committed to the evasion, lyune is forced to swing by the poipole and curve in a wide turn through the air. 

melusine, outpaced by the noivern, fires off a hydro cannon in frustration. with noivern, rider, and poipole now caught between the two dragons, freya snarls another order.

lyune's maw gathers with more draconic light as he aims a dragon pulse at the nimble creatures. 

Lulu Flint

salamence uses dragon pulse
roaring moon uses hydro cannon

☉

meeting others from that time reawakens the memories. softly, in snippets, blurred shapes on the corner of her vision. riddled with holes as memories tend to be, leaving her wondering just how much of it is her reminiscing and how much of her is filling in the gaps. but she remembers the coming together of so many wayward, timesick souls, finding solace amongst each other over food and drink. 

she remembers him at the head, a wife and...children at his side. their faces are gone, lost to time, but a pang of guilt flits over her face. she'd forgotten herself. those who do remember may not want to. 

a brow raises alongside her coffee cup. she follows isaac's gaze and has to admit to herself that with the help of his pokemon, the rest of the ship's crew are getting on with the work. if anything, she'd only be helpful with supervising at this point, and that seems extraneous in itself. 

the dragons patrolling the skies are all the safety they need; her job is done. 

her boots sink into the sand as she reluctantly agrees to humour him. she perches on a piece of driftwood and thinks about setting her coffee in the sand, but then thinks, ew, sand, and opts to cradle it in both hands. 

she realizes she's been quiet this entire time. 

"i'm not good at small talk," she apologizes. she's not good at filling in the spaces. most of the time, she's content to simply be. in galar, that meant sitting quietly beside Eva Morales while she studied her books, or taking night watches on the wall, or patrolling the skies.

"what's your idea?"

Isaac Merlo

☉

black scales fall towards the water and lyune rights himself. gravity's weight settles once again over freya's shoulders and she watches with cold satisfaction as the paralyzed charizard plummets from the air. 

though she knows not to turn her back on an enemy. 

energy pulses and lyune's claws flex, muscles rolling in anticipation of the fight. the charizard's awakened dragon-typing makes it an entirely new threat, but that doesn't stop lyune from meeting the pokemon head-on. blue flames lick around his fins, scorching his face. embers spark over freya's cheeks and she grimaces through the heat, ducking her chin down, pressing palms to lyune's shoulder blades as his claws glow with matching blue light. 

in close quarters, he attempts to score a slash across the black dragon's hide. 

BARNABY FINCH

salamence uses dragon claw
3/15 total raid arrows used

☉

it feels a futile race against the clock. she must make an imprint, shore up her defenses, provide substance to her short tenure to protect herself against FERNANDO SILPH 's retribution. and perhaps he only wants her scared. perhaps he'll leave her to her own device, waiting for her to crash and burn all by her lonesome.

if all of this is truly by his design, she is already doomed.

her office door is open, inviting. they're new hours and unusual among the upper echelon of the league, so not many know of them yet. she spends those scant couple hours to herself, most of the time, taking time to catch up on paperwork and incoming news.

now, with half of her time used for her duties, eyelids drooping, she closes the door and consents her body's need for a nap. her lashes flutter as she sits back down, but she hasn't even relaxed her shoulders before there's a knock on her door.

surprised, she opens the door and finds herself face-to-face with a king. recognition flashes and is promptly smothered.

she's learned to take care around those who may not remember.

and besides, he looks like he wants to punch something. this will undoubtedly be awful.

"here for the office hours? come in."

Caleb Harcourt

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