a wandering soul

a garden of serenity

he finds it in a haze, in a chemical stupor. the ferns stretch around his feet and the fae twinkle with laughter as he trips. his hands are before him and he feels rough leaves, snagging branches, and he swears the forest will swallow him whole. is this why he came out here in the first place? to become lost? to become part of this beautiful, menacing swath of green? 

and then he feels rock, something alien. the light is so bright, dappling through the leaves, and there are runes, etchings, under his fingertips. he passes through the rift and into a meadow, with a pathway calling him home.

water murmurs, dappling, and he sinks to his knees beside a wisp of an ivysaur. he drops his pokeballs to his feet and then lays to rest. and his pokemon nourish this pariah, and in return it builds them a hovel from its roots, a haven against the oncoming storm.

and they weather it together, steadfast and strong.

tired bones

shaking hands

she finds it from the sky. and perhaps that's not how it's meant to be found, really, but lyune's wings ache as they pass above it. she lands in the clearing and it's unlike him, but the salamence takes care to tuck his tail, to not rustle the trees and the sprouts, or even the dirt path, somehow not overgrown though the rest of the plot looks abandoned.

upon dismounting, the salamence dips his head, tucks his fins, and freya follows his gaze to the ivysaur planted in the dirt. she approaches carefully, but with lyune's ease, she drops her guard. and the ivysaur opens its eyes and seems to sigh. and the flowers bloom. and the vines shiver. and freya is enraptured by the magic around her.

they're allowed to rest, provided they tend the garden. both trainer and pokemon don't know how they understand this, buy lyune watches sleepily as she gathers berries and trims dead growth. eventually, the salamence crawls forward and exposes his belly to the creature. the ivysaur grumbles pleasantly at the warmth.

and so they are granted rest, and recovery, and peace of mind, for the moment.

intrusion

a reminder of the world that waits

this mountain has become his prison. his self-inflicted torture. and he's withering away. in love, taken care of by the only person in the world who really matters to him (summer and eden and maybe even ollie aside), and he's so morbidly unhappy. food has no taste. one minute he's craving sam's touch, bending him over backward and sharing such naked intimacy that he can fool himself into thinking everything's okay. the next?

a moment squandered.

he sits by the pond, feeling sorry for himself. sam tends the graveyards on the other side of the mountain. work keeps him busy these days. lots of bodies piling up since sea!hoenn became a thing.

blue peers up at him, body shimmering, half liquid. she sticks her tongue out and knox huffs, nonplussed. but then she wiggles her rump, solidifying and launching herself forward. not at him, though he scrambles out of the way, and complains when his shirt gets wet.

but she collides with the assailant behind him.

had he really not heard?

blue takes care of it quite handedly. her barrage of water-type moves makes quick work of the intruder. hypatia approaches when the fighting subsides and teleports the lairon away. just away, he begs. anywhere but here.

he's not as untouchable as he thought.

irregardless

none of your pain can touch you here

when she comes upon the paradise nestled in the woods, the ivysaur's roots have spread. tangled veins, a vibrant green, the color of its own hide a sallow, pallid grey. she sits beside it and does not pretend to understand it. her dragons do not give the amphibian a wide berth; rather, they warm it by curling on their sides beside it, gifting what sunlight they can as a moment's respite.

the trapinch chews through the ground, through the soft, watery roots, and the ivysaur struggles. vines slacken as freya goes to stand in aggression, but the trapinch freezes, half out of the ground, sap dripping down its side. rather than cut its way through the rest of the overgrowth, it takes care to wriggle free, moving in tandem with the amphibian's shifting.

her dragons welcome it sleepily and freya lays back against lyune's side, lashes fluttering.

when she must return to the world - to all of her duties and her frustrations - the trapinch shakes itself awake and goes to accompany her.

catching!

she does not return to see the remains of her mother's cliffside cottage. not yet. there is a chance that the waters hadn't taken it away. it's hidden in a copse of trees, overlooking the tallest bluffs of sootopolis. it's where she asked jayden cross to bury her, if it came to that.

she goes back to the place she found years ago when she was unmoored. the grove with its falling-apart and then somehow-put-together hut, berry trees swaying in plots. she finds freshly tilled earth, sproutlings bursting through the ground, and the once-proud ivysaur unresponsive in the ground. she is not surprised, but she does wonder at the vines stretching in every direction, flourishing in its decay.

the flygon at her side, glowing softly from its strange markings, lifts his head. he scurries behind a tree stump and freya turns at the sound of a cat yowling. the mangey creature's lips are stained with berry juice. pescis tosses it away and it lands on all fours, hissing and spitting. pescis holds his ground and beats his wings to send it running with its tail lashing behind it.

"thank you," freya says and scratches the flygon on its neck. she lays down in the grass some distance away from the berry trees and stares upward, content with watching the sky.

note: get out, CAT!!!