Pokémon Speak Not of the Children

[zion of arcadia]

Recently got the bug to write an OT fic—or my version of an OT fic, anyway. It's the most I've enjoyed writing anything pokémon related in a while, so figured I'd share it with others. Hope y'all enjoy it too. Thanks to SparklingEspeon for looking it over.

Summary: A child goes on a journey to recover the memory of home.

Speak Not of the Children

Prologue
​

I was weary, this last ride home.
Every fiber ready to surrender.
Sage and a small courage
begged my continuance.

There is frost on my doorway,
and leaves unswept.
There are miles to dream
before I meet the morning again.

—from Kimberly Wensaut's "Prodigal Daughter"

The memory of that house on a hill dimmed with each passing year. No, not dimmed. Changed. It became a palace chequered with opaque windows and a door curved like a smile. Silver mist coiled around the house’s corners—dissolving at the edges into almosts and maybes—which made little sense because Phenac City was no city of mist. Phenac City was bleached bright and gold-struck, always defined in sharp contrast with the engulfing desert.

I remember when I would trace photographs of Phenac City in my textbook, left feeling dirty, that Virbank City by proxy was dirty too. I moved there with Mother at eight years old. She had just divorced Father, and we drove four days and three nights straight to stay with my aunt and her five children. The image of that house on a hill, shrinking steadily as we pulled out the drive until it rounded out of view, remained stone-carved upon my soul. Years passed before I saw it again.

They worked hard for that house, my parents. It was enormous. I used to bound up and down the stairs between the stories, overflowing with excess energy (funny in retrospect, given I’m now prone to intense bouts of lethargy) and bathe in the warm light streaming through the broad windowpanes. It had been their dream home.

Mother grew up dirt poor on the farms near Floccesy Town. Her family thought she would become a spinster, because Mother remained unmarried until a few months after turning nineteen. Father joined the military when he was sixteen and years later paid for his college and hers through it. He worked as an aerospace engineer. I used to brag to kindergarten class that my dad was a top-secret rocket scientist government agent man.

The day we left Phenac City, Father drew me aside. Mother was using the bathroom, something that happened often and for long periods of time back then. (Only once I was old enough to have my heart broken by a boy did she admit to seeking refuge there, where no one could see her cry.) Father drew me aside, showed me a black box on the kitchen’s marble counter. Inside glowed a pokéball softly red. Father handed me the pokéball and said:

“You’re a little young, I know. I’d hoped to wait until ten at least, but… well, I didn’t get a partner until the navy. I-I think it’s important… to have a pokémon when you’re a child”—he had that look in his eye he sometimes got, as if he had just sailed a submarine to the moon—“because there’s a certain freedom you experience once. And pokémon are trapped in the amber of the moment. It’s good for them, to experience it too.”

I hadn’t understood what he meant, and still don’t, but I think about it often. Back then, I was too excited to focus much on Father’s words. Corey MacAvoy had gotten a tympole for his birthday and would push kids on the playground into the puddles it made for him. Now I had the chance to show Corey a thing or two if he tried again. Or I would have, anyway—except we were moving away.

Inside the pokéball was a cubone. I named him Doodle. He walked with a slight limp and shied from unexpected noises and used finger paints to color his helmet shades of river leaves and mismatched trees; and I have never loved anyone as much before or since. When we drove to Virbank City, Doodle sat in my lap, heart fluttering like the beat of a pidove’s wing.

We stayed with my aunt for six months. It was a miserable six months, cramped in a too-small apartment straining to hold over half a dozen other people. There was always movement—someone running, someone fighting, someone screaming, someone falling. Stillness was a myth. How stark the difference from our enormous home in Phenac City. There borders and boundaries had been clearly defined; here everyone's space bled together into unspoken acknowledgments and pre-established rituals.

Meanwhile, Mother searched for a job. She was good at math and her old job involved lots of math. At the time, I never cared enough to ask about it. Both my parents had been brilliant; I was not. I wasn’t good at much of anything in school, to be honest. I’ve never been particularly bright, and it was hard for me to concentrate on words and numbers without them flying off the page and out the classroom window.

My aunt had married three times. Two kids from the first, one from the second, and two from the current husband. I liked him because he was kind, but mostly because he cooked the most incredible oran berry pancakes. They would stay together for the next thirty years until he passed away from leukemia.

The youngest cousins walked me to school and chatted about boys, mostly, about how middle school was going to be way, way, way harder than elementary school. People always said that. My teachers especially, for some reason. Fifth grade would be much more serious than fourth grade; middle school would be much more difficult than elementary school; high school would be hell for anyone with bad study habits. And so on and so forth. It never mattered—I was mediocre at all levels—but it did amuse me after a while.

(It’s funny, because just recently I returned to those hallways for an interview. They seemed so much smaller than I remembered, fit only for little people with little minds but souls vast and uncontained like blank canvases. I felt like one of those giant pokémon across the sea, found in Galar, trundling through a landscape both familiar yet uncanny.)

Doodle often accompanied me to school as well. I had no other friends. During recess, we would range beyond the concrete baseball field to explore the docks pointing toward Castelia City. Mostly we just looked for lumineon in the sea and birdwatched for miracles. Or, at least, the skyline of Castelia, which Father once described as the thousand arms of Arceus.

Occasionally sullen teenagers smoked at the dock's edge, staining the air with blended scents of salt and nicotine. We would watch them together, grateful that Mother wasn’t there to complain about what a disgusting habit smoking was; she had been a smoker herself, when young and poor, and the sort of person with intense disdain for past shame.

Mother found a job at last, and we moved into an apartment of our own. I was relieved, although secretly I missed the chaos of my aunt’s household. It was much lonelier now.

My cousins still came over often, though, to babysit while Mother worked long hours. We organized the most elaborate plays. Doodle and their pokémon were the stage crew to witness our thespian genius, Doodle in particular with an affinity for set construction. My cousins had rambunctious streaks, quarreling often over lead roles, while my role was mostly supporting cast. I preferred it that way, preferred to follow the lead of others rather than risk faltering beneath the spotlight.

Twice a year, Doodle and I flew out to visit Father for a week. The mountain range separating Unova from the rest of the continent always reminded me of the ridges on Doodle’s back. I loved those visits.

Virbank City was a miserable place, perennially stinking of fish, too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. The novelty of snow fast turned unpleasant as the city’s winter itself. Although I can still recall the wonder I felt when I first awoke to find everything dull and gray hidden beneath a layer of white. It seemed pure, pristine. But it didn’t last long; it never lasted long.

Phenac City was beautiful year-round. A glittering jewel that neither waxed nor waned. It was eternal. Perfect. Father spoiled me during the week, taking me to the fanciest restaurants and most wonderful toy stores. My favorite was when we visited the ceramics shop. I still have one of the pieces, a blue ponyta with orange flames for a mane. (Back then, I thought it would be good luck, increasing my odds of spotting a shiny pokémon. It took years for me to realize the mane was supposed to be blue, not the fur.) I often found myself longing to stay with him when we left.

Once we uncovered a skull of some long dead pokémon in the desert and Doodle helped me clean it out. It might have been a bouffalant, once—it had large, curved horns and a long face with what must have been a muzzle. I took to wearing it wherever and whenever adults would let me, even if it pinched the baby fat of my cheeks, because it was a sign of our solidarity, Doodle and I, that we had both lost a parent. (The first time Mother saw the skull on me, she disappeared into the bathroom for ages.) We used to take turns pretending to gore each other: whoever had the most convincing death throes won.

Father tried quitting his previous life and moving to Virbank City so he could stay near us year-round. But they didn’t seem to have much use for aerospace engineers there, and he never found a job. Plus, he hated winter almost as much as I did. He had been forced to stay in a gloomy motel with carpets the color of mold. We would play board games together, but he always seemed restless. Lost somewhere else.

I had secretly hoped Mother and Father might fix their problems and get back together. But it never happened. The few times he stayed at our apartment, Mother spent the night with my aunt instead. I resented her for it back then, resented her for everything. I hated our new life, hated our new apartment, hated the arbitrary rules and restrictions that had not been in place in the nebulous flux of before. I had no friends that weren’t family and often went the entire school day without speaking to anyone human.

It felt like Doodle was the one good thing that had happened to me in that span. And like everything else, he had come from Father. When Father eventually moved back to Phenac City, giving up on Virbank City—on them and on us—I made a decision:

I was going to run away.

 

[Pen]

Recently got the bug to write an OT fic—or my version of an OT fic, anyway.

Excuse you, this fic does not open with the protagonist eating breakfast and pondering their choice of starter pokemon. I feel deeply betrayed.

With that out of the way . . .

This chapter is pure narration, told retrospectively. The MC's voice comes across as older (they're doing interviews and very likely depressed, so this is at least a young adult telling the story) and they're looking back on these memories with the benefit of distance. The content of the memories themselves, of course, are appropriately childish. I thought you had a fantastic grip on the sorts of shenanigins young kids with pokemon would get up to, from Playground Bully Corey to the MC's theatrics with Doodle. The descriptions of the divorce and move are necessarily muted, since at this point the MC has had time to work through these memories. It seems clear that their sympathies towards their mom have greatly increased from what they were in the moment.

When I read this, I have to admit I forgot where Phenac City was--I just assumed it was a post-game city in Unova I'd forgotten about. But it's Orre! That makes the journey back a bit more significant. It also made me wonder whether the MC faced language barriers with the move. By legendaries, at least, Orre seems more related to Johto than Unova, though maybe in your world there's a single language or the language of Unova is a lot of people's second language, mirroring the real world.

It's nice to have the MC's motivations for going on some kind of adventure sketched out clearly. Run away and live with dad makes a lot of sense as a plan for the MC's age. And hey, they have Doodle! This prologue mostly functions as backstory and set-up, so I'm not too sure from it what direction the story will take. I'm curious whether it will all be told in this tone of retrospective narration or if we'll enter into the moment more. The current style certainly lets you weave in more, since the MC can comment on what they thought then and what they know now. It does have the result of making me feel a little less grounded in the story being told at the moment. We don't get to experience any of these scenes--the closest we come is when Father hands over the pokeball--and so perhaps inevitably I get some of the same emotional distance the protagonist has towards their past.

I'm very intrigued to see where you take this. I don't really have any guesses or assumptions--seems like there's a full canvas for you to, ahem, doodle on here.

Spoiler: Line-by-lines

Father drew me aside and showed me a black box situated on the kitchen’s marble counter.

Situated feels pretty unnecessary as a verb choice--it gives the impression of reaching for longer words where they really aren't merited.

Corey MacAvoy had gotten a tympole for his birthday and would push kids on the playground into the puddles it made for him.

As one does! Deeply checks out for what little kids with pokemon would be like. The mental image is really vivid.

He walked with a slight limp and shied from unexpected noises and used finger paints to color his helmet shades of river leaves and misnamed trees

I know you're being poetic, but it's not like trees are a different shade because they're misnamed.

(It’s funny, because just recently I returned to those hallways for an interview. They seemed so much smaller than I remembered, fit only for little people with little hearts and minds but souls vast and uncontained like blank canvases.

Little kids have little hearts and little minds but big souls?

Or, at least, the skyline of Castellia, which Father once described as the thousand arms of Arceus.

Ooh, cool.

she had been a smoker herself, when she was young and poor, and the sort of person with intense disdain for past shame.

I think you need a "was the sort of person" here.

Once we uncovered a skull of some long dead pokémon in the desert and Doodle helped me clean it out. It might have been a bouffalant, once—it had large, curved horns and a long face with what must have been a muzzle. I took to wearing it wherever and whenever adults would let me, even if it pinched the baby fat of my cheeks, because it was a sign of our solidarity, Doodle and I, that we had both lost a parent.

They're wearing it over their head like a cubone wears a skull? Would that fit?

I like the idea of the protagonist trying to be more like their pokemon partner though.

We used to take turns pretending to gore each other: whoever had the most convincing death throes won.

Super charming and again very accurate to small child behavior.

Plus, he hated winter almost as much as I did. He had been forced to stay in a gloomy motel with carpets the color of mold. We would play board games together, but he always seemed restless. Lost somewhere else.

The middle sentence seemed like a non-sequitor to me. And I'm not sure why he'd be forced to stay in gloomy hotels--he seems to have enough money to not?

When Father eventually moved back to Phenac City, giving up on Virbank City

Oh, he actually moved there? From the hotel bit it sounded like his stays were brief and temporary. I'm also a little unconvinced that an industrial town like Virbank couldn't make use of his skillset, when a desert oasis like Phenac could?

 

[zion of arcadia]

Thanks for the review! Appreciated as always.

By legendaries, at least, Orre seems more related to Johto than Unova, though maybe in your world there's a single language or the language of Unova is a lot of people's second language, mirroring the real world.

I was under the impression it was based on Arizona, although I could be wrong about that. They just didn't make any new mons for the region, sadly. Even if not, gonna roll with that assumption now that I'm locked in, heh.

I'm curious whether it will all be told in this tone of retrospective narration or if we'll enter into the moment more. The current style certainly lets you weave in more, since the MC can comment on what they thought then and what they know now. It does have the result of making me feel a little less grounded in the story being told at the moment. We don't get to experience any of these scenes--the closest we come is when Father hands over the pokeball--and so perhaps inevitably I get some of the same emotional distance the protagonist has towards their past.

There'll probably always be a slight sense of distance to the narration, since it is being told retrospectively, but scenes will be more detailed from here on out, yes. I wanted to mess around with a new style and so far, I really like it, although I am worried about that emotional distance you mentioned.

I know you're being poetic, but it's not like trees are a different shade because they're misnamed.

I love this line, but you're probably right. I'll make an adjustment.

Little kids have little hearts and little minds but big souls?

For me, it was more about capturing that sense of, hmm, unlimited potential.

They're wearing it over their head like a cubone wears a skull? Would that fit?

I thought a lot about this, actually. I'm not sure, but I really wanted the skull to be based off a bouffalant given how synonymous buffalo are with American iconography. So it might be a stretch, but one I'm okay with making. And since this is a memory, I have some leeway with what did and did not actually happen.

Oh, he actually moved there? From the hotel bit it sounded like his stays were brief and temporary. I'm also a little unconvinced that an industrial town like Virbank couldn't make use of his skillset, when a desert oasis like Phenac could?

I'll try to make this more clear. It's worth noting that the narrator is unreliable in certain aspects, especially when it comes to discussing the father. But also, I loosely based this backstory off some stories I heard about the job scene in Milwaukee in the early 2000s. Virbank isn't a perfect fit, since it's more in the Appalachians area of New York, but it was the closest proxy I could find. My hope for this, and it'll probably become apparent in the first chapter, is to sketch out a heightened view of the Midwest and its eccentricities.

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Heya, dropping in as part of Review Roulette since I wound up recalling that I reviewed Playfield offsite already, so that made yours the choice by default to read for me from the fics from the first spin.

Though a trainerfic, huh? Wouldn’t have expected that from what I’ve seen of your past fare, but let’s see where you take this thing:

Prologue

When a rabbit meets a rabbit, one takes the time to tell the other this story.
The rabbits then agree there must be two rabbits, at least two rabbits, and that in
turn there is a trace. I am only repeating what I heard. This is one love. There are many
loves but only one war.

Bird 1: This is the same story.
Bird 2: No, this is the rest of the story.

—from Richard Siken's "War of the Foxes"

Oh, so this is an honest-to-goodness literature quote. Though I wonder what this book was about such that you felt it thematically fitting to include here.

The memory of that house on a hill dimmed with each passing year. No, not dimmed. Changed. It became a palace chequered with opaque windows and a door curved like a smile. Silver mist coiled around the house’s corners—dissolving at the edges into almosts and maybes—which made little sense because Phenac City was no city of mist. Phenac City was bleached bright and gold-struck, always defined in sharp contrast with the engulfing desert.

Oh, this is an Orre story, huh? Or at least the protag has a background from there given that they’re recalling a house in Phenac City. Don’t see too many of them around in OT fics, or at least I don’t think you do.

I remember when I would trace photographs of Phenac City in my textbook, left feeling dirty, that Virbank City by proxy was dirty too. I moved there with Mother at eight years old. She had just divorced Father, and we drove four days and three nights straight to stay with my aunt and her five children. The image of that house on a hill, shrinking steadily as we pulled out the drive until it rounded out of view, remained stone-carved upon my soul. Years passed before I saw it again.

Oh, so Orre is roughly positioned the same to Unova as AZ is to NY in this setting, huh? Since “four days nonstop” feels about right distance-wise for that sort of drive IRL.

They worked hard for that house, my parents. It was enormous. I used to bound up and down the stairs between the stories, overflowing with excess energy (funny in retrospect, given I’m now prone to intense bouts of lethargy) and bathe in the warm light streaming through the broad windowpanes. It had been their dream home.

… Wait, so what on earth happened between those two such that mom up and left this dream house, then? .-.

Mother grew up dirt poor on the farms near Floccesy Town. Her family thought she would become a spinster, because Mother remained unmarried until a few months after turning nineteen. Father joined the military when he was sixteen and years later paid for his college and hers through it. He worked as an aerospace engineer. I used to brag to kindergarten class that my dad was a top-secret rocket scientist government agent man.

Imagine moving from Unova to Orre of all places. Boy would that trade have been a downgrade if you did that prior to the events of Colosseum.

The day we left Phenac City, Father drew me aside. Mother was using the bathroom, something that happened often and for long periods of time back then. (Only once I was old enough to have my heart broken by a boy did she admit to seeking refuge there, where no one could see her cry.) Father drew me aside, showed me a black box on the kitchen’s marble counter. Inside glowed a pokéball softly red. Father handed me the pokéball and said:

“You’re a little young, I know. I’d hoped to wait until ten at least, but… well, I didn’t get a partner until the navy. I-I think it’s important… to have a pokémon when you’re a child”—he had that look in his eye he sometimes got, as if he had just sailed a submarine to the moon—“because there’s a certain freedom you experience once. And pokémon are trapped in the amber of the moment. It’s good for them, to experience it too.”

Oh, so the protag gets her(?) starter from her(?) father just before mom and dad divorced. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen that “absent dad” trope handled in that fashion, but it makes sense, if obviously is on the darker side of things.

I hadn’t understood what he meant, and still don’t, but I think about it often. Back then, I was too excited to focus much on Father’s words. Corey MacAvoy had gotten a tympole for his birthday and would push kids on the playground into the puddles it made for him. Now I had the chance to show Corey a thing or two if he tried again. Or I would have, anyway—except we were moving away.

Wait, so what did Protag get, anyways?

Inside the pokéball was a cubone. I named him Doodle. He walked with a slight limp and shied from unexpected noises and used finger paints to color his helmet shades of river leaves and mismatched trees; and I have never loved anyone as much before or since. When we drove to Virbank City, Doodle sat in my lap, heart fluttering like the beat of a braviary’s wing.

… Oh, so this is where that segment I remember seeing from months ago on Discord is from. Though I can tell that full moons around this kid’s house were a major racket. ^^;

We stayed with my aunt for six months. It was a miserable six months, cramped in a too-small apartment straining to hold over half a dozen other people. There was always movement—someone running, someone fighting, someone screaming, someone falling. Stillness was a myth. How stark the difference from our enormous home in Phenac City. There borders and boundaries had been clearly defined; here everyone's space bled together into unspoken acknowledgments and pre-established rituals.

Cue the awkward conversations of “mom, I want to go home to dad” in short order, since this feels like a hard downgrade in lifestyle relative to what Protag is used to.

Meanwhile, Mother searched for a job. She was good at math and her old job involved lots of math. At the time, I never cared enough to ask about it. Both my parents had been brilliant; I was not. I wasn’t good at much of anything in school, to be honest. I’ve never been particularly bright, and it was hard for me to concentrate on words and numbers without them flying off the page and out the classroom window.

Dyslexia? Or is it meant to just be this way for the Protag without any deeper cause.

My aunt had married three times. Two kids from the first, one from the second, and two from the current husband. I liked him because he was kind, but mostly because he cooked the most incredible oran berry pancakes. They would stay together for the next thirty years until he passed away from leukemia.

I swear, this kid is on track to have the most cursed family imaginable considering how it’s not even been a thousand words and we’ve been exposed to 4 divorces, rejection by a teenage lover, coping with emotions by crying in the bathroom, and a death from cancer. Like literally all that’s missing at this point is that mom remarries to an abusive stepfather.

The youngest cousins walked me to school and chatted about boys, mostly, about how middle school was going to be way, way, way harder than elementary school. People always said that. My teachers especially, for some reason. Fifth grade would be much more serious than fourth grade; middle school would be much more difficult than elementary school; high school would be hell for anyone with bad study habits. And so on and so forth. It never mattered—I was mediocre at all levels—but it did amuse me after a while.

I mean, from what I remember of school, they’re not wrong.

Even if there’s something a little sad about the way that the protag just throws their hands up pre-emptively about “whelp, what’s it matter, I’m just going to suck at school anyways”.

(It’s funny, because just recently I returned to those hallways for an interview. They seemed so much smaller than I remembered, fit only for little people with little minds but souls vast and uncontained like blank canvases. I felt like one of the giant pokémon across the sea, found in Galar, trundling through a landscape both familiar yet uncanny.)

Makes sense that the regions with gimmicks that AFAWK aren’t found anywhere else in Pokéworld would develop reputations for being places with “the [X] Pokémon”, even if I haven’t read a lot of stories that deal with that thus far.

Doodle often accompanied me to school as well. I had no other friends. During recess, we would range beyond the concrete baseball field to explore the docks pointing toward Castellia City. Mostly we just looked for lumineon in the sea and birdwatched for miracles. Or, at least, the skyline of Castellia, which Father once described as the thousand arms of Arceus.

Wait, what sort of miracles, again? ^^;

Occasionally sullen teenagers smoked at the dock's edge, staining the air with blended scents of salt and nicotine. We would watch them together, grateful that Mother wasn’t there to complain about what a disgusting habit smoking was; she had been a smoker herself, when young and poor, and the sort of person with intense disdain for past shame.

I can already tell that Protag’s mom coming off her smokes was quite a saga given how opinionated she came to be about her past habits.

Mother found a job at last, and we moved into an apartment of our own. I was relieved, although secretly I missed the chaos of my aunt’s household. It was much lonelier now.

Protag: “Also, this is still a downgrade over the house we used to have with dad.” >_>;

My cousins still came over often, though, to babysit while Mother worked long hours. We organized the most elaborate plays. Doodle and their pokémon were the stage crew to witness our thespian genius, Doodle in particular with an affinity for set construction. My cousins had rambunctious streaks, quarreling often over lead roles, while my role was mostly supporting cast. I preferred it that way, preferred to follow the lead of others rather than risk faltering beneath the spotlight.

Some cute imagery there. Though it makes me wonder if Doodle’s theatrical streak will wind up carrying over to other facets of this story.

Twice a year, Doodle and I flew out to visit Father for a week. The mountain range separating Unova from the rest of the continent always reminds me of the ridges on Doodle’s back. I loved those visits.

Oh, so your regions are big, big. Given that Orre apparently directly borders Unova with a whole lotta nothing of note in between them.

Virbank City was a miserable place, perennially stinking of fish, too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. The novelty of snow fast turned unpleasant as the city’s winter itself. Although I can still recall the wonder I felt when I first awoke to find everything dull and gray hidden beneath a layer of white. It seemed pure, pristine. But it didn’t last long; it never lasted long.

Just like real life. /s

Though more seriously from personal experience, it takes a while to get used to four seasons coming from a place where it doesn’t snow in the winter, so I can feel Protag’s circumstances there.

Phenac City was beautiful year-round. A glittering jewel that neither waxed nor waned. It was eternal. Perfect. Father spoiled me during the week, taking me to the fanciest restaurants and most wonderful theme parks.

I’m going to presume this is either before or after Orre’s little Cipher problem given how little it weighs on the Protag’s memories.

My favorite was when we visited the ceramics shop. I still have one of the pieces, a blue ponyta with orange flames for a mane. (Back then, I thought it would be good luck, increasing my odds of spotting a shiny pokémon. It took years for me to realize the mane was supposed to be blue, not the fur.) I often found myself longing to stay with him when we left.

I mean, having the big, spacious house instead of the cramped apartment with the outside that stinks of fish would probably help with appreciating Phenac more.

Once we uncovered a skull of some long dead pokémon in the desert and Doodle helped me clean it out. It might have been a bouffalant, once—it had large, curved horns and a long face with what must have been a muzzle. I took to wearing it wherever and whenever adults would let me, even if it pinched the baby fat of my cheeks, because it was a sign of our solidarity, Doodle and I, that we had both lost a parent. (The first time Mother saw the skull on me, she disappeared into the bathroom for ages.) We used to take turns pretending to gore each other: whoever had the most convincing death throes won.

I assume that Protag was wearing this on her(?) head, though I wonder what on earth it reminded mom about such that she took it badly enough to go and cry in the bathroom repeatedly.

Father tried moving to Virbank City so he could live near us. But they didn’t seem to have much use for aerospace engineers there, and he never found a job. Plus, he hated winter almost as much as I did. He had been forced to stay in a gloomy motel with carpets the color of mold. We would play board games together, but he always seemed restless. Lost somewhere else.

… Yeah, don’t really blame him for not finding the neighborhood attractive with digs like that...

I had secretly hoped Mother and Father might fix their problems and get back together. But it never happened. The few times he stayed at our apartment, Mother spent the night with my aunt instead. I resented her for it back then, resented her for everything. I hated our new life, hated our new apartment, hated the arbitrary rules and restrictions that had not been in place in the nebulous flux of before. I had no friends that weren’t family and often went the entire school day without speaking to anyone human.

Boy is that a poor omen for how this kid’s family life is going to play out from this point. .-.

It felt like Doodle was the one good thing that had happened to me in that span. And like everything else, he had come from Father. When Father eventually moved back to Phenac City, giving up on Virbank City—on them and on us—I made a decision:

I was going to run away.

Ohhh boy. Though I’m guessing that this is going to be a trip through Orre, which considering what Orre is known for canonically...

Yeah, only good signs for where things are going to go from here.

But I think that it was a pretty solid Prologue there. I liked the vibe that it gave off as a memoir written of events that happened years ago in the past, and there’s a lot of little touches that give off a rather believable atmosphere of “kid with a troubled family life” tries to find an outlet for grief and feelings that can’t be expressed in his/her present circumstances. Even if I’m not convinced that things aren’t going to wind up going to some really

places since “running away from home, possibly to Orre” and all that jazz.

The one thing that I find myself questioning as to whether or not it was a good idea or not is that the entire time the Protag as far as I could tell from my readthrough doesn’t have a hard gender or name attached to them. I can’t tell whether or not that’s a deliberate choice for the readers to project the face and backstory they want onto the character, or if we’re going to find that out in a future chapter, but it’s something that I noticed. If you are going to go the second of those two route, I kinda wonder if it’d have made sense to mention such details in passing at some point here in this Prologue.

But that’s a small quibble, and didn’t really get in the way of my enjoyment of this story. Good show, @zion of arcadia , and I’ll be looking forward to whenever you bump this story in the future, since Doodle and his trainer are pretty compelling characters to follow. ^^

 

[Negrek]

zion OT fic?! This one slipped under my radar when you first posted it, but I was excited to find it when I was going through W3-eligible fics. Very convenient that it ended up being a Roulette pick! I am really looking forward to this.

The framing of this story as one being told from some point far in the future is an interesting one--not the sort of thing you often see with OT fic. I'm curious to see how that's going to be used in the upcoming chapters... if we're going to stay with the narrator or dip back into the POV of the child, or whether we'll even see a bit of what's going on in the narrator's present day. As it is, I think you make good use of the device in this chapter; it allows for a different, more broad sort of analysis than you could have with the child themself as the POV. The narrator can call their past self foolish, while that self would have every conviction that they're right. I think you did a nice job of capturing the way that our childhood memories are colored by our adult experiences, how they loom larger with time, right from that first paragraph where the narrator describes the house in Phenac in a way that may not be true, but which is true to them. I'm curious to see how you might play with that disconnect in the future.

I do really enjoy how mundane the whole story so far feels. No world-saving shenanigans here (yet?), just a kid uprooted from their happy life and thrown into a new and unpleasant situation. This is another place where I think the adult narrator's perspective works for you, as they have the distance to differentiate what was happening from their (totally understandable!) feelings about it. I love how concrete and lived-in the pokémon world feels here, the sort of place you could almost imagine stumbling into if you took a wrong turn somewhere. I think my favorite detail was the bully who'd push people into his tympole's puddles. It's such a little-kid mean thing to do, and I keep imagining him having the tympole make those puddles specifically so he gets to push people into them himself instead of just having it soak them directly. You have a lovely sense of the sorts of ridiculous things kids get up to.

I also love Doodle! The image of a cubone taking fingerpaints to their skull is adorable, and I also loved the part about the narrator wearing the fossil skull in order to match her pokémon. (And the mother having to go cry in the bathroom after seeing that, lol, oh no.)

I will admit I had a bit of a record scratch moment when the narrator talks about driving from Phenac to Virbank. But it sounds like you're taking Orre as being something approximating Arizona and Virbank/the general Unova area as being geographically in the same area as its inspiration, e.g. on the east coast of the same continent. In that context it absolutely makes sense that someone would be able to drive from one to the other in a few days (or indeed at all), I'm just not used to seeing the regions related like that. It's also interesting to me how nice (and Pokémon-friendly) Phenac seems to be in the narrator's memories. Phenac is definitely portrayed as the nicest city in Orre, and the narrator's impression is no doubt colored by nostalgia, so I can buy them at least remembering the city as that nice, but when they start talking about theme parks and so on it gets harder for me to imagine, heh. I'm curious to see if this is a case of the fic being set before/after Orre gets into the run-down state we see in the games or whether we just have different interpretations of what the region is like!

On the whole, this was a lovely opening chapter, and I'm excited to see where you take the story from here. Been great seeing you around more during Blitz, and I hope you've been having a good time writing this one!

Spoiler: Linequotes

When we drove to Virbank City, Doodle sat in my lap, heart fluttering like the beat of a braviary’s wing.

This struck me as odd. Being big birds, I'd expect braviary to have relatively slow wingbeats--not fluttery ones.

I’ve never been particularly bright, and it was hard for me to concentrate on words and numbers without them flying off the page and out the classroom window.

This reads a little odd to me, I think because right now it's reading that the words flying off the page happens after the narrator's concentrated on them, where I'm kind of expecting that the words flying off the page is what would prevent them from concentrating?

(It’s funny, because just recently I returned to those hallways for an interview. They seemed so much smaller than I remembered, fit only for little people with little hearts and minds but souls vast and uncontained like blank canvases. I felt like one of the giant pokémon across the sea, found in Galar, trundling through a landscape both familiar yet uncanny.)

This is a huge visiting-an-old-school mood for sure!

The mountain range separating Unova from the rest of the continent always reminded me of the ridges on Doodle’s back.

This sentence doesn't feel as though it fits with the rest of the paragraph to me; kind of an aside. Maybe it belongs somewhere else?

 

[K_S]

Meh divororce is a nightmare coming and going. And theres a loss tonit that hits hard and sharp to any minor effected. Considering thenupheavel little wonder pov is losing memories and getting unpleasent associations with the places about those events.

Wonder how much the old home will shrink between past recollections and present encounters. Though the narritive seems like someone looking back well beyond the shock of those revelations of how a growth spurt changes things.

Laughs the dads preceeved job is a nightmare to spit outnon the fly. It says a lot that they atuck together through the stress of achademia but fell apart in other ways.

Wonder if moms got some hard mental health issues. But dads timing of the gift... Makes me think of all those disney horrer stories where the family goes in "one last trip to see mickey" before things fall apart.

Well it raises some ethical issues them being in amber as it were and whilenits a kind of mercy to let them grow with thier trainer it does highlight the cruelity of the catch. Even if accidental.

Love how shes like "and this will help me with the bully at school" except they are moving... And type disadvamtage...
And we're giving a girl with distant/abscent mother issues a cubone... Sheesh statements much?

I get that doodles more family than battler. The limp with the startle reaction screams that the poor ground type has its own issues. Wonder how doodle got hurt?

Glad povs mom is ok enough to get work. The chaos they both must of hit head on going from this huge step down can not be understated.

Wheres dead beat mc deaderson?

Huh so kiddos not achademically inclined. Thats rough, especually when stereotypical smart parents usually harp on education. Seems like thats sailing her by but so is the chance to help her do better.

Nice encapselating the chaos of a complicated mixed family as well as one jam packed as this one. Thanskgiving must be an event to be seen.

Yeah i remember the whole difficulty eclscalation of achademia. Especially when hopping grades and i remember just sighing. Figuring out how much i needed to do. Weighing it against what i wanted to do. And finding a balance to avoid burn out. Looks like pov did much the same and seems to have come back later as an important personage since joe-bob npcs tend not to be the focus of interviews..

Im imagining doodle bone used as a paintbrush... Making sweeping runs across backpacks to make them pop.. And the like.

Ok now i am curious as to the legalnside of the break off... Because twice a year seems way too light. And dad sinks into a distant dad role. And shes kinda cottoned on considering her "truth" about the snow and hownit mirrors her relatiinshio at home...

And nostalgia strikes. And waged against indulgence visits while she mentally dances around an unpleasent truth she's not conciously acknowledging.

Laughs. Kiddos not morbid at all. I mean its fair and kids are like that and it feels very true to life for it all. fitting together so well as a character trait and a dealing with trauma...

While rubbing poor moms trauma raw.

While dad plots escape routes in those restless moments... And of course his bailing inspired kiddo to follow suit.

This is so not going to go well.

 

[Venia Silente]

As part of Review Blitz 2022 and associated games, I got to read this story. Originally it was admittedly low in my RB2022 backlog, but the review raffle that was running around promoted it a few places and gives me a pretty good excuse to play catch-up!

This story is unlike others in that for what I could notice, while being a Trainerverse story and having the existence of a Pokémon signify a strong bond between characters, the story doesn't even actually feature a Pokémon, any Pokémon, in a relevant position for about a whole half of it if not more. Not exactly mu cup of tea, although given the nature of this story not something that detracts from it either.

The memory of that house on a hill dimmed with each passing year. No, not dimmed. Changed.

I've had myself realize this was happening once and I was rather spooked. This does make one's fur stand on end in a certain way, and feels like a cautonary warning about what the story is going to tell (or not).

Also, with the upcoming paragraphs, heavy Infinity Train vibes!

A memory of a family splitting is, fortunately or not, not something I can relate to. I do can relate however to the idea that as family changes one notices a certain distance building up until it becomes insurmountable. Here, a heavy distinction is made in that Father gives Child a gift when Mother is not around, as if that was part of the point.

Apparently the gift is a Pokémon, and I can understand this is going to leave bad lingering memories because ouch, receiving your Starter as a "your mom and I got divorced" gift.

Or I would have, anyway—except we were moving away.

Oh and add that too. OOpsie daisie!

The day we left Phenac City, Father drew me aside.

Child, I'ma gonna be honest: you're LEAVING ORRE! That is like the worst region ever to, like, exist in! It's like Racist South but Extra Hellhole (hey, it *is* inspired on Arizona). Like Cleveland after the ending of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Like the world 12 minutes before the Bonfire of the Vanities. A starter Pokémon is not gonna protect you there. Escape.

Inside the pokéball was a cubone. I named him Doodle.

Which makes sense! She was also drawing and tracing things — doodling, when she was young. Shared activity! Also paging @Spiteful Murkrow , this does bring happy memories.

The story seems to have an important beginning component of dealing with divorce and separation as a kid. But something in the writing, here and there, hints towards a sullen or bad ending. What little action is in the retrospective is hidden and mostly comparative— as tends to do with accounts of childhood, as when we are grown enough to examine them properly we realize that much of our feelings about them come from the simple fact that at such young ages, anything that happens feels like forever.

When we drove to Virbank City, Doodle sat in my lap [...]
We stayed with my aunt for six months. It was a miserable six months

I can see Unova is not faring better than damn Orre around here in story land. Sucks for Child tho!

Mother found a job at last, and we moved into an apartment of our own. I was relieved, although secretly I missed the chaos of my aunt’s household. It was much lonelier now.

This is a notorious instance of that "hint towards sad ending" mood I was speaking about. I'm also not much sure how to feel about it in the sense of, well, feeling lonely in the company of the one family you have left.

Phenac City was beautiful year-round. A glittering jewel that neither waxed nor waned. It was eternal. Perfect. Father spoiled me during the week,

This! This is what I'm talking about! That "then was forever" feel, that strong tying of the father to the quality of those memories and the appreciation of the world surrounding their encounter, and then immediately after the crushing "return to form" reminding us how brief those encounters are once subject to the rules of the real world.

Once we uncovered a skull of some long dead pokémon in the desert and Doodle helped me clean it out. [...] I took to wearing it wherever and whenever adults would let me, even if it pinched the baby fat of my cheeks, because it was a sign of our solidarity, Doodle and I, that we had both lost a parent. (The first time Mother saw the skull on me, she disappeared into the bathroom for ages.)

Ayyyyyayayayayayayyyyy there's... a lot to unpack here. We were told beforehand what it means when Mother disappears into the bathroom. And we also know at this young age Child considers herself to have Lost a Parent. This while looking the other Parent to the face and performing for her, basically.

Kudos to Child: there's passive-aggressive, then there's her thespianally accuse your parent of losing you your other parent. Gotta hand it to Mother too that she didn't just close the door of the bathroom and suicide right then right there.

It felt like Doodle was the one good thing that had happened to me in that span. And like everything else, he had come from Father. When Father eventually moved back to Phenac City, giving up on Virbank City—on them and on us—I made a decision:

I was going to run away.

Not exactly the bad ending but still a sullen one. At this point in her life, Child lost a parent and is willingly letting go of the other one. About to embark on a Quest. I wonder, if, to recover the Lost Parent she wants? Or does she also consider him truly gone, too?

Questions. Feelings. Things of categories kids have no business having to solve on their own if I feel honest.

A nice story, that feels like I'm not sure if it should be the beginning of something, or the end of something. And a decent case of writing where nothing actually needs to happen: the story is all retrospective, I still have no idea of who or what Child is, and so far that doesn't seem to cause issues. No need for persistent action, Quick Time Events and apocalypses of the wekk — at least, not at a global scale, but then again for a child all scales are global.

But hey, at least she's out of Orre!

 

[Sinderella]

Hi Zion!! I don't think I've ever reviewed anything of yours, and since you were rolled for the roulette game, here I be!!!

I'm wondering, are you planning to turn this into a full chapterfic, or is this standalone? On one hand, I actually really liked this as a one-shot. There was just enough description and Stuff Happening to where I could enjoy it as a one-off and leave other things up to my own imagination. However, on the other hand, I have enough questions that I would like to keep seeing this fleshed out! What is the POV character's name? Why did the mother divorce the father? What HAPPENS when the POV character runs away? This also seems to be told in a retrospective sense, and I think it would be cool to read a fic told by the POV character retrospectively...don't think I've seen anything like that.

Judging by the way it ended, I'm getting very prologue-y vibes, so maybe you are planning to make this a whole chapter fic? I wait with baited breath if that's the case!

Overall, I do like how this was written. I like the little tangents that happen between the exposition, it gives me a sense that the POV character is telling this story to their grandkids YEARS later and occasionally veers off track to mention something distantly related. It made it feel a little more.......personable, I guess is the word I want? More real? In layman terms it gave me the fuzzies and made me smile and made me feel like I was reading an autobiography (or I guess biography in this case because they didn't actually write it??? Who knows) Cool feels.

I did have some questions more about the characters than anything, which I'm assuming will be fleshed out if this does indeed have more coming chapters. I'm really really really curious about why POV character's mom divorced the dad. My first thought was abusive household, judging by the way their leaving was described--it gave me WE'RE FLEEING vibes. But then we get to the part where POV character's dad gives them a Pokeball and speaks kindly to them, and well.....no abuser vibes there. At least, not to the POV character. Maybe he was horrible to the mom but she never let that show? Maybe that's why she hangs out in the bathroom so much, to get away from him? Honestly, scary thought. Looking forward to seeing the reasoning there. Or finding out if SHE'S the crazy one because that's not out of my head either--I know plenty of stories of the bad parent divorcing the good parent and taking the kids then acting like the good parent was the bad parent.

Nothing major standing out to me as critique-able yet, since this appears to just be getting started. There was one part where POV character mentions that living at their aunt's house was "a miserable experience" but then a few paragraphs down, after mentioning they moved out, indicates that they "secretly missed it." Just a matter of reader opinion, I have a slightly hard time believing someone would, even secretly, miss a miserable experience. If anything, I'd tweak the thought to lean more toward "it was horrible time but once we were gone, I was shocked at how much I missed the companionship because now I'm just lonely all the time" or something along those lines. But that's about it!

I enjoyed reading this and I very much enjoyed your writing style! Very descriptive and flowy to read. Looking forward to what's next!

 

[zion of arcadia]

Apologies for how long it took to update, I have no excuses.

Spoiler: comment responses

@Spiteful Murkrow I actually changed the poem, although I personally feel the meaning isn't that dissimilar to what I had in mind. The Orre in this story isn't quite as turbulent as the games, but it's certainly not as nice as the narrator makes it out to be either. I purposely obscured their gender because I like the idea of it being unremarked upon.

@Negrek So there were two main sources of inspiration. The first was Heaven-Hell by Jhumpa Lahiri, an actual memoir, and Kushiel's Dart, a fantasy story which is also narrated by the main character in the future. I found myself interested in how you can play around with voice and time, how what the adult version knows in the future impacts how the re-evaluate events in the past. It's one of the more interesting parts of writing this, for me, anyway. Although balancing those elements can also be a challenge. The psychology of children fascinates me and I'm glad it resonated with you. I wasn't expecting so many people to be thrown by how I portrayed Orre, to be quite honest: in my mind, the Orre we see is an abstraction of Arizona, much like the other regions are abstractions of different parts of the world. For me, there was no reason for Phenac to not have a theme park, because it would be like saying Phoenix doesn't have theme parks, which is absurd. Since so many people commented on it, I did scale back some of what was said about the city. But yes, it's also true that nostalgia colors the narrator's memory. Line quotes were seen and changes were made, although some of them I did decide to keep unchanged.

@K_S Yeah the academia grind is rough, anyone that has gone through it can relate, I think. And not being as smart as your parents, or at least, not smart in the same way as your parents, can also be stressful. The narrator is just getting an interview for a teaching position though, nothing too crazy, hah. It probably won't go great, for sure.

@Venia Silente That "then was forever" feel is a quintessential feeling in childhood, or at least, when recollecting childhood. At least for me it is, and I definitely want to try and capture that feel. Also lol, I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she left Sunnydale, California though, not Cleveland. (Not that Cleveland is great by any stretch of the imagination, it also has a Hellmouth for good reason. I was talking to someone from England once and we agreed there would be a Hellmouth in Bristol, too.)

@Sinderella Yeah, this is a prologue. I write slow though. More will be mentioned about the divorce, how much will be elucidated I haven't quite decided yet. I suppose I can come outright and say I don't consider any of the relationships abusive, although many of them are for sure unhealthy. Some of the description of the aunt's house is just hyperbole on the narrator's part, but I'll see about toning it down regardless.

Speak Not of the Children

Chapter One​

Before I ran away from home—two years after moving to Virbank City—I woke up in the middle of the night. I had a dream; I had remembered something. The dreadful sensation clawed down my back and rang in my ears like the dolorous toll of a bell. When I awoke the next morning, I remembered that I had remembered, but not what I had remembered. Only sand remained. This might be my life in a nutshell.

Everything was dark and quiet, dawn not yet quite on the horizon. For several minutes, I lay in bed and stared at the outline of fading stars on the opposite wall. Unlike, say, my classmate Destiny Williams—whose walls were filled with boy band and movie star posters—mine were blank. Empty. Even now, I harbored an inexplicable distaste for decorations.

I rolled out of bed and put The Plan into motion. Running away from home had required careful planning. Or about as careful as a ten-year-old could manage, anyway. The Plan was simple: I would say I felt unwell, Mother would take my temperature, Doodle would create a distraction in the kitchen, I would run the thermometer under warm water in the bathroom. Boom. Easy. Father had told me such a story once, and I felt I could manage a similar feat.

In truth, it should have failed miserably, for I have never been a good liar. Mother was a master of deceit in her youth and knew every trick in the book when it came to playing hooky. My plan only succeeded because one: Mother had been distracted all week by a rigorous work audit, and two: I had Doodle to help me. He had been apprehensive overall about The Plan but would have followed me to the ends of the earth.

Luck and Doodle both prevailed, and since I was now old enough, Mother let me stay home alone.

She had lingered at my door before leaving, in that specific way of hers, lips pursed, somehow both understated and demanding simultaneously. I was tucked under the covers to hide the guilt rising scarlet along my neck. In retrospect, the flush probably supplemented my fabricated claims.

“If you feel it’s getting worse, don’t be afraid to call,” Mother told me. “I’ll schedule an appointment with Dr. Marks.”

Then she was gone; the sun had not yet risen. I waited an hour to ensure she would not return. In the meantime, Doodle settled in the crook of my arm and daubed blood red paints upon his skull. When at last I dared stir, I began packing supplies for the trip while Doodle wrote our goodbye letter.

I shoved the venipede-themed sleeping bag in my duffel bag—the same duffel bag I always used when flying out to meet Father. Alongside this I packed a bottle of water and an extra pair of clothes. I was going through a specific phase of my life where I would be very stubborn about wearing the same sweatshirt and slacks for as long as Mother allowed it. I had little intention of changing unless my current clothes became unwearable for whatever reason.

Last but certainly not least, my limited edition PokéStar studios metal lunchbox with Brycen-Man on the front. It was an acid green-and-purple color that sparkled in the right light, containing my holographic gym leader cards and Doodle’s pokéball and two Choco Berry Chunk bars, my favorite. I added to the lunchbox my diary and three peanut butter and honey sandwiches. Doodle helped me cut off the crust, precise as always. When I was young, I had been a picky eater. No crusts, and nothing could touch.

Doodle finished the letter shortly after I finished packing. Well, letter was inaccurate: it was a picture. A colored pencil scrawl of two human stick figures with a stout brown-and-white blob in the middle, holding both humans’ hands. A heart curved around all three.

I swallowed down the lump in my throat. For a split second, I considered dropping the entire idea. Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like, to take the path more often traveled. In the end, I jotted down a quick note in the corner explaining I had to leave and that yes, I had been the one to steal my cousin’s shirt, and pinned the picture to the fridge, just beneath the post-it note with Mother’s office extension.

On the way out, I grabbed my skull. We were off. Actually, no, not quite. Outside had been overcast with a slight chill, and as soon as I realized it might rain, I had been forced to turn around and dash back inside for my coat. I wound up tucking my skull into my duffel, because I hated the smell of wet bone. No wonder Doodle disliked rain.

Then I left for real.

There had not been much of a plan beyond skipping school. If events had occurred even slightly differently, I doubt I would have gotten far. As it stood, I intended to strike west along the league sanctioned roads, until I hit Aspertia Town and hitched a ride further from there, somehow.

I took the back roads. Doodle stayed in his pokéball, where it was dry and comfortable. We had meandered along these roads plenty of times during the summer and knew them well. Follow Hatchback Road just past the cemetery, cut through Dreamland Boulevard, walk six blocks then turn left at—Underwater Railways. The league trails would not be far from there, in fact were near where the girl I mentioned earlier, Destiny, lived. Destiny was the daughter of my scout troop leader. While we weren’t friends, I knew the house and area enough to feel confident heading in that direction.

Of course, I had not accounted for strangers tracking a child alone in the middle of a school day. A beater car with a cracked passenger window pulled over as I walked along Hatchback Street. The window rolled down and inside I recognized Roxie, Virbank City gym leader.

“Yo, kid. What’s up?” she asked.

Beside her, the driver was a tall, lanky woman with a long neck and short hair and multiple tattoos. Mother hated tattoos almost as much as she hated smoking. Unlike cigarettes, however, she had never had a tattoo.

I gawked, dumbfounded, incapable of forming a response or even coherent thought. As far as I was concerned, this was the end—over before it even started, and I would be grounded until time immemorial. But Roxie just laughed.

“Aw, I get it. Used to do the same thing, when I was your age. School sucks. Weather sucks too, though. Need a lift?”

Even though Roxie was a gym leader, had she been alone, I probably would have refused. But there was something comforting about a car with two people in it. It wasn’t like being with a group, where people could get lost in the shuffle, and it certainly wasn’t like being a singular driver, where they could be anyone. With two, there had to be at least a baseline of enjoyment in another person’s company. I trusted that simple fact, and what it said about someone.

And the weather was rather damp—I had checked the forecast and while there had been no predictions of rain, a vestige of winter unpleasantness yet lingered, tainting the middle of Virbank’s sullen spring. So I nodded, mute with shock, while Roxie jiggled the backseat door open. On the other side was a whirlipede, one of Roxie’s signature pokémon. It rested at an angle against the car door, watching me with a round yellow eye.

The sudden image of four whirlipede as wheels for the car appeared in my mind's eye, and I had to stifle a giggle. It might as well have been the case given the road’s bumpiness. Most of the city streets were in poor condition due to abundant snow and freezing cold during winter months, an issue exacerbated further on Hatchback because the old houses there had been built too close to the road.

Rain drizzles smeared the car window, turning outside surroundings into a dull, gray affair that matched the dull, cracked asphalt below. My breath fogged the glass, and I glumly traced a smiley face upon it. Roxie was watching me in the rearview mirror, blue eyes glinting like twin diamond chips.

“Are you participating in the youth league this summer? You look around the right age,” she asked.

The Pokémon League circuit was divided into three divisions: youth, amateur, and professional. The youth league only took place during summer and was often run by volunteers rather than full-time trainers. Gym leaders excepted, of course. They were pillars of their communities and expected to participate at every level.

I shook my head. I didn’t think Doodle would enjoy battles, nor would Mother sign the release forms. Plus, it would cut into the months when I visited Father—although, once I moved in with him, maybe things would change. Maybe…

The lady driver spoke up at last, asking for directions. She had a dark, husky voice that matched dark, inquisitive eyes.

While I responded to the question, Roxie’s cell phone started buzzing. Her answer was accompanied by a cacophony of flailing hand gestures, reclined in the seat with feet thrown up on the dashboard. If it bothered the lady driver, she made no mention of it. I personally was amazed by such wanton brazenness.

A string of words I’d only ever heard from class clown Joshua Pratt and my oldest cousin left Roxie’s mouth. She straightened in her seat even as the flailing intensified. After a few terse moments more, Roxie turned off the phone.

“Dammit, we have to take a detour. Sorry about that, kid. Gotta pick up some equipment at Marsh’s since Chez decided to welch out again. What a dumb motherfucker.” Roxie spotted her friend’s disapproving glance and shifted, legs crossing and uncrossing. Her overly saturated pink and purple tights flashed in and out of view. “Err, forget that last part, kid.”

I had no idea who or what a Chez was, but I did know Marsh’s—everyone knew Marsh’s Spot. It was one of the few ‘cool’ places to hang out at in Virbank, a club where the alternative scene routinely gathered. I told her it was fine and I could walk the rest of the way to my friend’s house from there, which wasn’t strictly true, but close enough to the truth to suit.

“You sure?” Roxie asked.

I nodded.

Roxie exchanged a glance with the long-necked driver, who shrugged then made a u-turn. I held Doodle’s ball in the palm of my hand, marveling at the warmth humming just beneath its cool metal exterior. Doodle’s miniaturized form could be seen through the pokéball, and I wondered what he thought about while inside there.

Was it like sleeping? Dreaming, maybe? It sounded nice. To have an enclosed space where you could be alone and not have to think about anything or worry about anyone. I only wished I could be there too.

“We need some equipment for a gig tonight,” Roxie explained after several furious minutes spent typing a storm of texts. “You’re too young for it, probably, but if you have an older sibling or whatever—let them know! They should totally go!”

I eventually attended one of Roxie’s concerts, years later. She had quit the league by then, for reasons I won’t detail because they’re not pertinent, and garnered quite the cult following. The venues were small and dimly lit, except the stage, where Roxie and her band mates, wreathed in smoke from fog machines, glowed effervescent under the LED lights.

Roxie would pace back and forth, barefoot and vibrating with uncontrollable energy, an energy that spilled out her fingertips into her guitar and left my ears ringing long after the concert finished. We had met backstage for autographs, and Roxie never recognized me as the kid she picked up off the streets all those years ago. It shouldn’t have stung but did anyway, because I had built that chance meeting up into the momentous start to a series of life changing events. But for her it had just been another day.

We parked in front of Marsh’s Spot. In the morning light, it differed little from any other building, fashioned from gray concrete and of brutalist design. Only at night would it come alive, dealers and smokers drifting along its periphery while the bones trembled and thudded from the loud electronic music within.

Beside Marsh’s Spot was a wooden statue of a beartic. It towered nine feet tall, proud and terrible yet comforting, the wood beneath old and spotted while the varnish coating its ripples of shaped fur remained meticulously maintained by the owner. One forearm was extended; perched upon it was a braviary, also carved in the round, wings flared outward to soften its landing. Each individual feather had been painstakingly detailed, a chorus sung without words. That's the thing about feathers, they knew what had been lost.

The statue was famous even outside Virbank, depicting an old tale. When humans and pokémon were interchangeable, and a beartic spied a braviary in the sky and cried, “Braviary, come down and be my brother.”

The light rain slackened. I hoped the semi-decent weather would hold, although knowing my luck it would probably worsen. While I should have left then and there, instead I loitered near where Roxie and her friend parked, watching them carry amps and guitars and keyboards out of the club into their beater car.

It was quite a tiny car, and I was rather impressed by their ability to fit everything into it. Not an iota of space went to waste. The whirlipede’s lone amber eye could be seen peeking just above the window, like a sinking sun caught on the evening horizon.

“Ey up! Just gonna stand there, gawping? Bloody typical,” said a new voice. I recognized the distinctive accent right away, before I even turned to face them.

Quinton was a morgrem originally hailing from across the sea. To us, however, he had always been a permanent fixture of Virbank City. Often he would be seen begging on the streets, although he begged like others prayed: on his knees, head bowed in supplication. No one knew where or when Quinton learned human speech, but no one ever questioned it, either. Quinton just is.

He ambled out of whatever nearby alleyway he had been lurking in, clutching a brown paper bag no doubt containing a bottle of spoiled milk, and peered at me, lopsided smirk firmly in place behind a dark curtain of greasy hair. Those slanted eyes shone with the greed-light of magpies.

Recently, I heard of Quinton’s passing. He had not been well-liked, and the funeral would be small, only a handful of mean-spirited friends attending. I stayed away, but wrote my own personal eulogy late one night. It had opened with a quote from a famous author:

You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. Running to another region doesn’t make any difference. He tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.

There had been more words. My words, useless scribbles dripping off a faded ballpoint pen like blood from an open wound. But enough about that.

“Hi, Quinton,” I said.

My one major interaction with Quinton, before this point, had been at a little league baseball game. I had been the right outfielder, a truly boring position where coaches hid their worst players. A pop fly ball sailed just past me while I focused on extracting a booger from my nose. Quinton, watching atop the bordering chain link fence, had tumbled off to roll around on the ground, overwhelmed with laughter.

Quinton sniffed the air. “And hullo to you too. What’s with the cheeky look, then? You wouldn’t happen to be plotting, would you?”

“No, sir. Not plotting.” My face went bright red.

“Scheming?”

“No, sir.”

“Conniving?”

“... No? Sir?” The answer came out as a question, mainly because I was uncertain what conniving meant beyond context clues.

One of many things I would learn from Quinton was that it was possible for two people to speak the same language and still be incomprehensible to each other. Meanwhile, Doodle and I shared not a single verbal exchange, yet understood each other on an intimate level. Words were funny like that.

“Hmmmph. We’ll see.” Quinton scratched his chin. I put a hand on Doodle’s pokéball. He wasn’t a fighter, but just his presence comforted me.

“Oi, leave the kid alone, Quinton! Is he bothering you?” Roxie and her friend re-emerged from the club, more band equipment in tow.

“Am I—does it look like I’m bothering anyone?” Quinton pinwheeled around, arms thrown outward, the over-embellished response of the oft accused. “Just standing around, aren’t I? That a crime now?”

Roxie’s eye roll could be seen even from a distance. They drew closer and she asked me, “You good?”

I nodded. If Quinton noticed you, it meant you were cool. Unless it was similar to how our first meeting had gone, anyway. That had just been humiliating. He sometimes helped teenagers shoplift cigarettes from the gas station, and seemed to know everything about everything.

Roxie looked unsatisfied with my answer. Then she shrugged, muttered a vulgar phrase under her breath, and continued to the car. Her friend hung back and watched us curiously for a moment, before following behind Roxie.

Quinton placed both claws on his hips and cocked it at a jutting angle, still brimming with righteous indignation. He swung around to face me. “Well, out with it already. What’re you hiding?”

I lasted a beat longer, then cracked.

“If I tell you, you have to promise not to tell anyone,” I whispered, glancing about furtively.

Roxie and her friend were busy trying to fit the last of the equipment into their car. It seemed to be causing issues—tetris skills strained to their utmost limit—if Roxie’s loud exclamations were anything to judge by. The whirlipede had left its spot within the car, now leaning outside the dented door to stare balefully without remark. I hadn’t seen it move.

“Yeah, yeah. Do I look like a fink?” Quinton waved a hand dismissively.

“I fink not.”

Almost immediately, I regretted the response. In retrospect, the pun was clever enough, given the spur of the moment. But it was difficult to feel clever when Quinton stared at you with enough disdain to sedate a rapidash.

So I hurried past the intense embarrassment and explained The Plan to him. He listened without comment, expression for once devoid of the broad, cartoonish emotional strokes that often defined him. When I finished, Quinton just frowned.

“Might be the daftest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said at last. “What—just gonna trek all the way to Orre? You realize how far that is?”

I nodded. “Four days.”

“Four—yeah, by car! You drive, whelp?”

I shook my head.

“Thought as much.” Quinton huffed. He thought some more, tapping one foot against the cracked cement sidewalk in a rapid staccato.

Doodle emerged from his pokeball and took my hand. His palm was cool, solid yet rough like sandpaper. I squeezed it for reassurance, and felt better. Doodle let out a timid squeak, and squeezed my hand back.

“Eh? Come with you? Why’d I wanna do a thing like that?”

Doodle squeaked again. I was mildly alarmed by the proposition, even as another part of me was thrilled. No one else in my class would be able to claim that Quinton had helped them run away.

“I mean… s’pose we could head north to Anville Town, take the train through the mountains…” Now Quinton was rubbing his chin. He narrowed his eyes. “Bah! Can’t believe I’m even considering this rubbish. What’d you give me in return?”

I had nothing. Well, not quite true. “I have two Choco Berry Chunk bars.”

I opened my lunchbox and showed them to him. Quinton looked incredulous. Then he laughed, a high pitched wheeze that creaked like unoiled door hinges. He plucked one of the candy bars out of the lunchbox, peeled the wrapping and took a bite. The noises he made while chewing were loud and grotesque. Quinton swallowed, wetly, and licked at the corners of his lips.

“Incredible… you know what? Fair enough. But keep in mind, kid: bargains with fairies almost never turn out how you expect. Sure you still wanna do this?”

It would be a long time before I understood what he meant by that. If I had known then what I know now, I probably would have refused. As it stood, I nodded enthusiastically. Doodle nodded too, albeit slower, almost pensive. Quinton spat on the hard cement sidewalk.

“Done, then.” He looked at me expectantly. After a moment, I cottoned on and spat too. Quinton seemed satisfied, and vanished in a back alley.

For a split second, I worried he might take off with my candy bar. But he returned shortly, ornate white pokéball cradled between his long claws. They displayed premier balls in the window of the Mart, but I had never seen one up close before.

“Here. This’s mine.”

“I didn't know you even had a ball to stay in,” I said, surprised.

“Yeah, well, don’t go running your mouth about it, either. Maybe one day I’ll tell you more.”

He never would.

I took the premier ball and followed Quinton down the road. Doodle followed behind me, forming an odd little slow moving train. Roxie waved goodbye as we passed, and Doodle and I waved back. Quinton ignored her. I thought to myself, Come down and be my brother.

Virbank City soon fell behind us, out of sight.