"oh gosh, yeah! absolutely!" saskia says with an enthusiastic nod of her head. oleg does a little jig in delight and then consequently slams his face down into an overripe berry, sending juice all over her ankles and her shoes. saskia grimaces and plucks him up into her arms, fiddling with him like a baby. 

"yeah, on that note, i think oleg's done too. it was really great meeting you, robin!"

and with her own basket full of berries, she returns home. leaving hours of chattering her dad's ear completely off about her new bestie while they make cobblers.

robin coello

☉

when she runs out of ice cream to nom on top of the cone, she digs her teeth into the side, gathering creamy deliciousness and crunchy waffle in her mouth all at once. it doesn't matter that sven can't even look at her while she commits arceus' worst sins. she doesn't even notice. she's too enthralled by the conversation. 

"swap names? wait, no, oh my gods, you know how some couples do that thing with the dash? we could be sven korolev-volensekov and i'd be saskia koroleva-volensekova. or the other way around, i guess. that would be so terrible for anyone else."

she polishes off the rest of her cone and shimmies closer to him, resting her head contentedly on his shoulder. 

"me neither. i'm really glad to be back, even if ranger duties have been kicking my ass. deda was great and i made friends and stuff while i was in snowpoint, but...not like you."

the first whistle of a firework sounds and saskia perks back up, spine straightening. "oh, look! they're starting."

sven korolev

☉

"not really actually," she says cheerily. "he has these homemade pest control things that keep wild pokemon at bay. although there was that one time i accidentally left some honey outside and oh boy, that did not go over well. did you know honey is like, super crazy for pokemon? they love it."

oleg beeps an incredibly long, high-pitched series of beeps, which makes saskia simultaneously wince and grin. 

"but you should come by sometime and see it!"

robin coello

☉

"snowpoint was a dreammmm," she says with an exaggerated sigh. she still misses the snow. and her grandfather's hot cocoa. and not the stinky, awful heat. the ranger uniforms over there never smelled as bad as she smells, like, all the time now. 

eh, she'll acclimate eventually.

she realizes she hasn't really been filling her basket. not like robin has. but that's okay. oleg's been filling it up for her...one berry at a time. he totters up to her now and waves one hand, gently pushing it over the lip of the basket that's just too out of his reach, and the berry tumbles in. 

"we have a little garden at home, but papa takes care of it. some of those crops can be a heck of a lot of work. but this is kinda nice, you know? coming out with all these people and getting to watch 'em all pick berries. i wouldn't have met you!"

robin coello

☉

"ohhh, dewford. right on the water. do you go to the beach a lot? i hear the sand is nicer than slateport's. less rocks." she's never been. 

"ghost wildlife! oh wow. we have a few ghost-types that haunt some of the older houses in town, but i've never trained one. most of the ones i've met are little sweethearts."

saskia laughs when robin tells her oldale's a cool city. she might mean it, but boy is oldale a sleepy little town. not many folks could claim it's cooler than a place like mauville. 

"kinda. was born 'n raised, but i studied abroad in snowpoint with my grandfather for the past couple years. got back a few months ago as soon as the bubble went down. it's been weird, with everything going on, y'know?"

robin coello

☉

saskia, who doesn't even like traveling by flying taxi, squeals as they're swung up and down and side to side on the pendulum ride. her hands are white as they grip the harness, hair whipping into her mouth because she has it open. 

when they're safely back on the ground, she's grinning from ear to ear, abuzz with adrenaline. sven doesn't seem all too impressed, but her head is spinning, and so she gratefully takes the outstretched hand as they come off the ride's platform. 

she follows his gaze about, looking for a map, but when she finally spies one, he tugs her in the opposite direction. that's fine by her. she gets through most of her life without a plan. 

her hand is kind of sweaty because it's so hot, but she doesn't mind holding onto sven's. it's nice. 

"target in sight! i repeat, target in sight! deploy our operatives - us - to extract the package - snow cones," she says with a giggle as she hauls them to the back of the too-long line. 

sven korolev

☉

oleg doesn't eat much. and when he does eat, it's weird things. like rocks. and tree bark. he likes tree bark a lot. berries? saskia thought she's seen him eat berries before, but apparently not. apparently he just likes squishing them in his hands and rubbing the juices on the leaves. 

mrs. kimura is grateful for the help, but she'd given a sideways glance when saskia had trotted in with oleg on her head. the elgyem isn't the most helpful pokemon. 

seems she's not the only one with an unruly partner, though. saskia bounces her way over to the other girl in a ranger uniform and smiles wide. 

"your munchlax is so cute! and hi - i'm sasky. are you an oldale ranger too? i haven't seen you around our ourpost."

robin coello

☉

saskia is a psychopath. when she draws the ice cream away from her mouth, the perfect sphere has teeth marks in it. perfect, hellish teeth marks. and she's happy as a clamperl, gently munching on the sprinkles as the rest of the creamy treat melts on her tongue. 

"we were smart though. all those snow cones kept us cool...but man, how many times have i peed already? like six?" does she have to pee again? yes. 

she'll wait until they go in the water. if they go in the water. saskia adores swimming at night, but she's pretty sure that's a no-no when firework shrapnel is falling from the sky. afterwards, though, she'll drag sven into the water whether he likes it or not. 

saskia frowns and then rolls her eyes. look, she knows her papa loves her, but she also knows he has always wanted a son. instead, he got a rough-around-the-edges daughter.

"he's always said you're family, dummy. you're, like, basically my brother anyway, but korolev's such a cool name." she plops down next to him and bites into her ice cream again. "but that's cool he said that to you. he's such a softie."

sven korolev

☉

saskia has dressed lightly too. it's a light little thing with spaghetti straps and a breezy lacey midsection. it's also, coincidentally, part of the wardrobe she keeps hidden from Nikolaj Volosenkov. he might faint if he saw his daughter in it (but it's just so cute), given how much skin it shows off. 

so the heat has nothing on her, with her shoulders bare and her hair tugged up into a ponytail. she is absolutely feeling herself because it feels like she rarely takes her stinky ranger costume off. 

when he takes out his phone, she sticks her tongue out and throws up the peace sign by her chin. of course, she has to give it a once-over before he puts it on the world wide web, but they look adorable and HAH! she snorts a giggle at the last hashtag and says, "trueeeeeee."

"oh, pendulum, pendulum, fo sho. it'll help cool us down too." and! she'd come prepared. under her dress are latex shorts, so even if it flies up from the rides, she's fine! kolya always told her she should dress for practicality. 

"and then i wanna get snow cones. man, think there's a water ride anywhere? or a hose we can spray into our faces?"

sven korolev
dress

☉

she should have known sven wouldn't let maugrim off that easily. her forehead is still pressed into his shoulder and she's not paying as much attention as she should be, so she doesn't notice him reaching a hand out as an offering to the wolfhound. too late comes the snapping and she startles, straightening. 

maugrim's muscles tense and she knows what's coming, but she's not fast enough to stop it, nevermind warn him. 

oof. 

the air is pushed out of her as maugrim hits sven and sven hits her at full force. she lands, sprawled, on the ground with a thud, groaning in discomfort from the weight of sven and the dog on top of them. the snarling isn't good, but she definitely doesn't want to panic, and maugrim won't actually bite sven's face off, right? 

he slinks off and then sven gathers himself too. she grabs his hand gratefully and pulls some twigs and leaves out of her hair. 

"don't look so sad. he doesn't like me either." she sighs. "we'll get through to him eventually."

she's more than happy to turn her attention to more fun sounding things. like fireworks. and ice cream. 

"heck yeah! i gotta check my ranger schedule, but i think i'm free early in the week. whenever you're down, we can set a date." she grins. "that's not gonna stop me from raiding the freezer for some ice cream right now though."

sven korolev

☉

whoa, maybe sven's right. maybe this could be her destiny. sure, she doesn't have fiery red tips in her hair, but pobody's nerfect. she swipes through the photos, laughing at the blurry one, and tries to see herself next to mari in these pictures. with her arm around her shoulders, cheeks pressed together. it's a warm, albeit anxiety-inducing feeling. 

and so she saves replying to the message for later and looks back at sven. 

"okay, but like, on the first date?" she shoots back with a giggle. "what if they turn out to have some weird secret? like they only sleep upside down? or they collect toenails? then you're stuck."

she reaches greedily for the offered phone and swipes through some of the pictures. the fireworks look great, but the rest of the carnival seems like so much fun too! her phone buzzes. a couple more swipes from the app come in, but she ignores them, tossing the phone back to sven. 

"okay, duh, we're going. and i wanna go to the carnival too. and also maugrim's not going anywhere near fireworks, sven. puppers hate them." she reaches for the minimized ball on her belt and rolls it in her palm in front of sven. 

"um, he's here, but remember what i said? he's not...well-behaved." an understatement. but...kirin's here to protect them if he tries anything funny. 

still, she lobs the ball across the unlit fire pit.

it bursts in a blash of white light and the lanky wolfhound emerges. his left ear flicks and he turns, hackles raising immediately when he catches sven's scent. his lips curl, showing teeth, and saskia stands up hurriedly, hand splayed out in front of sven. 

"maugrim, stop it." he continues his growling until kirin stomps one hoof and threatens a hypnotic pattern between her horns. the wolfhound looks away, fur still raised, and lopes over to the fringes of the property. 

saskia bonks her forehead into sven's shoulder and sags. "it's hopeless. i told you."

sven korolev

☉