lilycove is filled with too many mostly hazy memories, tinged with pink. she avoids the port town at all costs when she can help it, but she's heard marvelous things about lam logan and thought it only appropriate to take on his gym challenge as a means to get to know him. her road to badge collection had been put on the backburner, but there's no better time than the present. 

teamwork themed. she'd signed up for the roulette. her partner's name is still hidden to her, even now, but when an assistant calls her name and then davey jones, one brow raises. 

it's not wholly uncommon for some trainers to have pseudonyms or stage names, but she can't help her suspicion. that suspicion fades, though, and is replaced with a familiarity that rocks her to her core when she spies the man and his vaporeon. 

aeris, at her side, fans her frills as freya's heart races. her palms sweat. memories attempt to stretch carefully threaded bonds as an ache thrums behind her eyes. 

"i'm freya," she says as she approaches, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. "and you're...davey? my partner today?"

lam logan Tempest Quinn

☉

his hand is offered, but she is not shaking it here. she is staring distrustfully, feeling the pressure of a shadowed legendary behind her, and as the warmth of his palm nestles in her hand she is flung forward, smiling in one of her rare moments, thinking that this world and everything in it may be dark and terrible, but at least she has them. him. 

and then she's back, startled, hearing lam logan thank her for being there as one of his first challengers. whatever words she'd planned on saying get stuck in her throat. she clears it with a cough, looking elsewhere. 

tempest. 

none of it matters now. not his name. not their history. because that history never existed. before this moment, his hand has never touched hers. words have never been exchanged. loyalty never followed them from that place. 

and yet his name is gently set adrift in her conscious, swallowed, along with his affiliation, with a nod. 

"outdoor match sounds great. aeris'll love to get some sun," she says. 

lam logan Tempest Quinn

☉

not anymore, he says and something tells her to stop remembering. picks up on the cadence of his words, that sad drawl, and she knows there is a line in the sand somewhere, smoothed over with the passage of rewritten time. they were friends once. this, she knows. 

and she knows, too, that they can never be friends again.

she does not prod the caution tape. instead she lets the memories slip through her fingers and follows in contemplative silence; his answer was answer enough for the both of them. 

a haze fogs the battlefield before them. aeris, a dragonair who typically relies on her mist to confuse her opponents, feels right at home swallowed in the suspended dew. the altaria is freya's pressing concern, though she knows better than to write off the pokemon's partner. what she doesn't know about zigzagoons could tip the scales of the battle. 

i can rely on temp to outweigh my shortcomings, murmurs a soft voice, rich with a timbre ten years her own age. 

a low growl of her own and aeris' tail sparks in response. ribbons of light wrap around herself and snake to her companion, swathing them both in a protective light screen. 

lam logan Tempest Quinn

dragonair uses light screen
dragonair is obscured by the haze

☉

aeris is at ease in the mist. it gives her the cover she needs, its blueish hue a natural camouflage over her scales. she stays low to the ground, feathered wings pulled to the side of her head so as not to disrupt the conjured cloud.

freya raises her hands when she hears the first note of the altaria's song. pale gold darts to the sheen of light screen and she watches it flicker in and out of focus, struggling no doubt as aeris' concentration is pushed to its limits. 

the zigzagoon goes searching for her, but temp stops it with a deluge of brown water. the light screen falters again, but this time it's in tandem with a paralytic spray coming from the altaria's right.

lam logan Tempest Quinn

aeris is drowsy
light screen is glitchy
aeris uses thunder wave

☉

the altaria's keen eyes zero in on the origin point of its paralysis, a twisting vein of fae magic rippling through the cloud and striking aeris at her midsection, too sluggish with sudden exhaustion to move out of the way of the attack. 

her companion is felled in a tangle of roots; a series of clicks from freya's tongue and the dragonair slithers out from hiding to coil protectively in front of slushie. the rattle of her tail goes off and supersonic vibrations reverberate out towards jam jam.

lam logan Tempest Quinn

aeris is drowsy
aeris hit by moonblast (ouchies)
aeris uses supersonic on jam jam
protecting slushie poggies

☉