Day 1

Clear skies.

It has been a month. Between the nightmares, the anxiety and guilt, I do not know what to do with myself. Navy has suggested that I take up gardening as a hobby. He said it will take my mind off it. Like the ancient samurai, huh? I am apprehensive that this will help, but doing anything is better than nothing.

If I happen to attain spiritual enlightenment, Navy, let this act as my last will and testament: please put me out of my misery.

That's all for now.

Day 2

Slight wind.

Spring is in full swing. The world appears to be waking up again after a long nap.

Just like me, I suppose.

Call it cloistering a princess if you like, couch it in all those pretty words. It still doesn't make it any more glamorous, realizing I spent the last month lying in bed staring at the ceiling.

Now that I go outside, everything is green again. The birds sing incessantly, the flowers are in full bloom. It grates on me. Why should this world be so happy? If only they knew.

Navy has chased me to the garden again today. I watered the seeds we planted yesterday.

I think I would prefer if they just never grew.

That's all for now.

Day 3

Bleak.

The sun is gray and washes everything out. Its heat is claustrophobic. The wind is deafening, and the sky overhead makes me feel like I am underwater.

I can't breathe.

Every day feels like a waking dream, or like I'm sleep walking. The world is like a shadow, but I know now what the real thing looks like and it hurts to be away.

I don't know what I'm doing here.

Day 4

Rain.

Days like these are a blessing, as if the sky itself sponsors these forays into becoming a comatose lump of flesh, a pair of lungs. I need not take care of anything else today. Need not even get out of bed.

I finally woke up after dusk and made miso clam chowder for the entire house, including all of the pokemon. Rainy and dark days like these are the only days I can bring myself to cook.

Tomorrow will be nice again as the storm front rolls through. I'm almost sad.

That's all for now.

Day 5

Clear Skies.

There isn't any need to water the berries today as nature has taken care of it for me. That leaves me with plenty of spare time.

Rather than stop and give myself a chance to ruminate on everything, I went for a walk around town. I am still getting used to the layout of Slateport's streets, and this was a chance to orient myself and become more familiar.

Going through alleyways, side streets, and various tunnels, I walked until I thought I had gotten lost, only to come out of the opposite side of a covered market on the same street as Navy's place. My intuition never fails when it comes to finding my way. Whether it's following a scent, tracking cues I'm barely even conscious of, or keeping my sense of direction no matter how turned around I get.

I can always make it exactly where I want to go, as long as it's in a city.

Tomorrow I'll resume gardening.

That's all for now.

Day 6

Clear Skies.

The rain refreshed the gardens, and Ayame as well. She so adores the spring rains when they come through. The winters make her flower wilt.

She seems happy to have a green place in this city as well. For a lack of space and money there were few places we could take advantage of in Kanto, but on the rooftop, with all of these plants, she seems healthier than I can ever remember her.

Shuwen has been tremendous help as well. If Ayame looks after the rest of the flowers and trees in the gardens as a surrogate mother, then his construction efforts would make him the father. He will carry anything any distance, no matter how heavy.

As a test of his conviction I told him this morning to carry the heaviest thing I could find, an entire tree, to the beach. He disappeared until after dark.

I don't know where it went.

That's all for now.

Day 7

Partly cloudy.

It has been one week.

The pokemon seem much happier up here. It definitely seems more pleasing with my intervention. Navy's set up was so spartan, it's a wonder the plants grew at all before. Now they seem to be growing so much every single day.

It is strange to be taking care of something other than myself and my pokemon. For so long I was focused on survival. In the city it is eat or be eaten, and I was not about to allow myself to become prey. Now, I am building something, growing food instead of stealing it like a predator.

A wild animal will grow complacent if it is given a life like this. It will lose its edge.

Maybe that would be alright after all.

That's all for now.

Day 16

A hollow heart, a hollow body. Like a forgotten doll steeped in venom.

Ayame's sweet scent lured in something vile. It's the most disgusting thing I've ever seen.

I love it.

Something that's grown so repulsive because it's unwanted and unloved has shown its face, and I see myself in its desire. It is a reminder that some things, no matter how much you treasure them, can slip between the cracks, fall between the gaps of this world and get lost. Sometimes those things who depended on being wanted hold a grudge when they're forgotten in the void. They lurch from the shadows and awaken as something else, the laments of something left behind become tangible.

I can recall the moment I met her.

She shudders in the dark of the garden. I stand there and watch her. My heart falls for something that I must possess, because she desperately wants to be wanted. She can resist, claim that her desire has fermented into a thousand different flavors of hatred, but I know that all she has left is love.

Because that's true for me as well.

Ayame fills the air with a corrosive powder I've already grown numb to. She falls prey. It's only there, when she's in the midst of being swallowed by a sea of poison, that I toss the ball.

The result is self-evident, isn't it?

Day 184

The tropical weather of Evergrande makes even the winter months tolerable for plantlife. Just as well that the move came when it did. Even so, I should establish a greenhouse. It will make the yield more consistent, and ward away as many wild pokemon.

Contrary to what this journal might suggest, I have kept up this garden as a form of therapy. I have even taken most of it with me when I left Dewford. Though it was a sanctuary for the months following the raid on Granite Cave, eventually it became more than a crutch. Nurturing a garden like this is more than a hobby or a way to explore feelings you've been suppressing.

Gardening provides crops that can be used as ingredients for food, to give back to the community. In a small way, it is a way to make yourself useful.