ErazonPo3
Bug Catcher
- Pronouns
- She/her
Heyo! This was my submission to the 2024 Oneshot Contest, Magical But Mundane, which placed second in the Eevee flight! You can find the interview for this piece here, with the judge commentary within the same thread. I'm hoping to revisit it with the feedback in mind, but I figured I'd post the original version here for posterity.
Summary:
Luculia Hiver works at the Hearthome City Museum, a building more concerned with exciting events of the past, rather than the present. Yet a chance encounter with a lone Mime Jr forces Luculia out of her office and into the latest exhibit— which may plant a small seed for the Museum’s future.
Rating: G, Word Count: 3,031
The train screeches to a halt, and Luculia’s hand tightens around the strap hanging overhead. Somebody stumbles into her and she stumbles into somebody else, but she remains on her feet— and earns a red welt on her palm for her effort. A few other passengers in the carriage mutter to themselves, but most are used to this by now; the same Snorlax has been planting itself on the train tracks for a snooze the same time every day for the past week, and all efforts to relocate it had been in vain.
On the first day they’d been stuck on the tracks for thirty minutes before the train could move along again. Today, somebody’s Alakazam pries the door open with telekinesis without even needing to be told, and they all spill out onto the tracks and through the hole somebody’s Bastiodon had punched through the fence. Luculia checks her watch for the time— if she takes the shortcut through the park, she can still make it to the museum without ending up too late for work.
The park, however, is an obstacle course of its own. Luculia narrowly dodges the splashing from a pod of Popplio and Brionne in the fountain, and in doing so narrowly dodges getting trampled by a rugby team of mixed human and Machamp players. She holds her breath as the team stampedes by, wincing as her hair whips a hurricane around her. She scurries back towards the safety of the footpath as the dust settles, and attempts to smooth the wrinkles in her blazer and the frayed ends of her ponytail down. It’s a futile effort, but at least she’s still in one piece.
Up ahead the Hearthome museum ekes into view, its gothic stone facade peeking through the trees. Luculia continues down the footpath with an added briskness in her step, but wavers as a flash of pink catches the corner of her eye. There’s a rustling sound near the neatly trimmed hedges that she really ought not investigate if she wants to get to work on time— but as much as she wills it, she can’t bring herself to plant her foot another step further.
Truthfully, she knows that a little tardiness isn’t about to cost her her job given that she’s the most punctilious of the staff otherwise. She also does more work than most of her coworkers put together, and the Museum Director knows as much. (She’s also helped with the book-keeping a few times, when the accountant falls behind, and knows they can’t afford to replace her right now).
A little grudgingly, she walks over to the nearby shrubbery to peek through a gap in the tightly woven branches. As it turns out, the flash of pink had been a Mime Jr. The baby Pokémon is sitting on its own, shaking and shivering and whining and whimpering without ever making a sound. Luculia glances around, but there’s nobody who looks like they might be its trainer, nor can she see any nearby Mr Mime. Most wild circuses live out on the routes east of Hearthome, but it isn’t uncommon to see one parade into town to put on a performance or two— had this one been left behind?
Luculia looks closer at it. It doesn’t look hurt, nor ill, nor does it bear any fresh scars. It just looks… sad. Judging that it’s probably wild and isn’t in any immediate danger, she should be fine to leave it alone— and she really ought to get a move on. Luculia bites her lip.
“Hey, little guy. Do you have a trainer?” She asks, crouching down. The Mime Jr stops crying for a moment, looking up at her with watery eyes. She’s not sure it understands the question.
“Is there a person, or another Pokémon looking after you? Are they around here somewhere?” she prompts. It looks solemnly down to the ground in response, its tiny lip trembling. Luculia sighs through her nose. The first place she should bring it is a pokécentre; they’ll know what to do with it, where to put it.
But she’s already late for work now, and she’s sure it’ll survive a few hours with her until she can take it to the local centre on her lunch break.
“If you’re interested, do you want to spend the morning with me? I’m going to the museum over there,” Luculia offers, and holds her hand out. The Mime Jr glances around, searching for something they both know isn’t going to appear. The silence is heavy as it takes her hand, and wobbles over to her side.
* * *
The Hearthome Museum is by no means a quaint building, though it can’t boast the illustrious reputation that the Sinnoh Museum over in Jubilife has. It gets its fair share of foot traffic from visitors, but it also gets its fair share of lean days, which is all the better for giving its research team more time to pursue their own projects. Though Luculia enjoys her fair share of the overall workload, it also pays the bills, and occasionally she gets to go out on sponsored archaeological expeditions as the resident epigrapher.
Most days, however, are filled with busywork.
The fastest way in via the park entrance is through the grand main foyer, and she narrowly dodges getting heckled by Cathy at reception by sliding behind a tourist and escaping through the staff door. She quickly navigates the labyrinth of backrooms to reach her office, then turns back to look at her stowaway. It blinks up at her, looking a little overwhelmed.
“Alright, you can stay in here while I work for a few hours until my lunch break,” she says, watching it teeter over towards the various shelves with pieces she’d been studying safely sealed away in glass cases.
“Hey— look, but don’t touch, okay?” she warns, just in case. It nods slowly, and she turns to her desktop. She has… fourteen new emails, most of them staff-wide notices, but she’ll have to reply to at least three of them with updates. She barely gets two of those three emails sent off before a manila folder floats in front of her face and spews its contents upside down onto her desk. Luculia spins in her chair, but the Mime Jr pays her no mind as it levitates her red binder of Old Kalosian translation notes, loose sheets of paper scattered at its feet. She probably should have seen this coming.
“I said don’t touch,” she scolds, and it merely lifts its bare palms at her. Luculia pinches the bridge of her glasses.
“No telekinesis, either.”
The Mime Jr tilts its head dolefully to the floor, and the puffball on its head limps sadly like a teardrop. Luculia glances at her computer screen— there’s not that much on her ledger for today, or at least nothing she can’t crunch in under an hour. She crouches down again, knees clicking in protest.
“Hey, buddy. Want to go have a look around the museum?”
The Mime Jr looks up at her, and tilts its head like a small child.
“I can show you all the displays we have, and tell you a little bit about them,” she adds. Now understanding, it lights up with a wide smile and nods its head emphatically, its floppy hat whipping back and forth like a Wobbuffet.
Despite herself Luculia can’t help but laugh, and she pokes the button on its belly.
“Alright, then let’s go!”
The first gallery at the museum’s yawning entrance is the Acuity hall, which hosts their permanent display of Pokémon fossils, skeletons, and even a few taxidermy models. It’s a great academic resource, though Luculia decides that it might be a little morbid for the baby. Instead, she pivots them towards the winding pathway leading to the Valor hall, where a temporary exhibit of cultural artefacts loaned from Johto’s Heritage Museum is on display.
Luculia scoops the Mime Jr up into her arms as they arrive at the exhibit’s entrance, partially so that it can have a better view but mostly to keep it from wandering away and getting into trouble. Not that it’s a reasonable concern, however, as two pairs of shrewd eyes are already fixed on the bundle of pink.
“Hey, Luculia. When did you get a Mime Jr?” An otherwise silent presence in the corner calls out to her. Luculia spins around to see one of the security guards— a Hoenn woman named Nadia— grinning at her, though her Gallade stands stalwartly beside her with none of the same amusement. It does give the Mime Jr a curious look, however.
“Oh, um. It’s not really mine. I found it alone outside in the park, and I think it’s—“ Luculia moves to cover where she hopes its ears are, “I think it’s been abandoned, so I’m watching it until I can get away to a pokécentre at lunch.”
“Good idea,” Nadia nods, though there’s a hint of skepticism in her eye that Luculia doesn’t get the chance to interrogate.
“Francis, stick to your post. I’m going to do the rounds with Luculia and Junior, here.”
Her Gallade nods back stolidly, and Nadia shoots him a thumbs up before turning to Luculia with a wide grin.
“Lead the way, tour guide.”
Luculia tries to suppress her grimace. She’d been lumped with the task of tour guide a few times in their first year as a sort of hazing ritual, and they all know how disastrous she’d been at it. It’s not her fault that she hates talking to strangers, and they’d put her in a position where talking to groups of strangers is the entire point.
Well, Nadia isn’t a stranger, and it’s a lot easier talking to Pokémon than people. Pokémon don’t tell you to move on because you’re getting boring. (Even if Scilla would like to, sometimes, but her Froslass has endless patience for her otherwise).
Luculia leads her group of two into the first room in the gallery, and stops by the centrepiece. Sealed in a glass case are two ornate wooden structures almost as tall as herself, carved with identical and yet alternating details.
“This is a wood carving of the Brass Tower in its original state, which was made before it burned down. Next to it is the Bell Tower, which is still standing in Ecruteak today. That’s Ho-Oh at the top, see?”
She moves the Mime Jr to give it a better look, and it leans curiously towards the beautiful carving of the proud bird. The intricacy of the entire piece always astounds her, with ornamental filigree carved into each pillar and balustrade. It also makes her fingers hurt just to look at.
“Careful, Junior. Don’t touch anything, alright?” Nadia warns, and the Mime Jr nods astutely back. Luculia frowns surreptitiously at her.
“Should you be giving it a nickname like that?” she says in a hushed whisper.
“It’s fine. You’re too much of a worrywashi, sometimes,” Nadia waves her off. Luculia’s frown only deepens, and she turns away to hide it.
She leads them over to the next cabinet where a series of artefacts depicting the three Legendary Beasts are on display, and stops in front of her favourite of the lot. The trio of brass sculptures look nothing like any Pokémon she’s ever seen, with an extreme level of artistic stylisation; one of their necks’ is as long as a Farigiraf’s, and another looks more like a Cranidos in shape than every other quadrupedal depiction. All she can say of the third is that it looks like a furry Bastiodon.
“These three are Raikou, Suicune and Entei. All works of them all have at least some amount of artistic interpretation, because nobody’s really seen them up close long enough to get a good picture. The most accurate depiction is said to be this, though,” she says, and moves along to stand in front of a silk cloth painting of the three Pokémon. This version depicts the trio as a similar size and shape, embodying their elements through slight physical variations.
“It’s also said that this piece was painted by a Smeargle, because of the black pawprint used as a signature. We don’t really know that for sure, but I’d say it’s likely,” Luculia adds.
“Maybe someday something you make will end up in a museum,” Nadia says, ruffling the Mime Jr’s hat, and its widen with wonder.
They pass by a few trinkets here and there; infinitely valuable jade charms and urns which have great historical significance, but aren’t as exciting for a young Pokémon to look at. The katana and Samurai gear are a favourite of young children, but they’re also a relic of a time before people and Pokémon knew peace. The museum’s layout feeds them into the next room, featuring some of Johto’s lesser known deities. The feature piece of this particular collection is a small wooden structure, built in a shape reminiscent of a house.
“This is a replica of the shrine in the Ilex Forest, where Celebi is said to live. Celebi is a forest sprite believed to have the power to distort time, though it’s hardly as powerful as Dialga is— according to legend,” Luculia explains, half reading off the plaque. The most noteworthy thing about it in her mind is its similarity to the hokora in Celestic town, though Sinjoh religiosity isn’t her expertise.
“It looks like an onion,” Nadia observes, looking at the little wooden figurine carved to represent Celebi. The Mime Jr giggles silently at it, and Luculia shakes her head with a trite smile. She sets the Mime Jr down to have a look at it from the ground, as the rest of the exhibit has a few more displays that can be enjoyed from ground-level. They follow the winding path through the rest of the gallery until they reach the final room, which is dedicated wholly to Johto’s two most revered of Legendaries.
Hanging upon the walls are two massive tapestries, woven to depict Ho-Oh on one side with glittering gold thread and Lugia with shining silver thread on the other. All around there are woodcuts and figurines on display, while one of Ho-Oh’s coveted rainbow feathers floats suspended on an invisible string.
“The titles of these tapestries are ‘Heart’ and ‘Soul’. They were woven by the Geisha who lived in the Brass Tower with the help of Spinarak and Ariados, and it took them ten years to finish them both,” Luculia says, admiring the tapestries in their full glory. Looking at them is something of a religious experience; with the way the threads gleam, the two Legendaries’ magic almost seems to come alive.
Just as they begin to head towards the exit a boy in a red shirt dashes between them, almost knocking Luculia to the ground.
“Hey, don’t touch that—!”
Nadia doesn’t reach him in time, but thankfully she doesn’t need to; an invisible barrier of some kind forms between his outstretched hand and the Rainbow Feather, while his feet remain rooted to the ground. Luculia looks down to see the Mime Jr with its arms outstretched, a look of determination on its face. Nadia’s eyebrows shoot up in amazement, and Luculia releases a ragged breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. (It isn’t a real feather, of course, but the replica still belongs to the Johto Museum, and if anything comes back damaged then it opens up a whole can of wurmple of insurance claims.)
A bead of sweat rolls down Junior’s brow as he slowly pushes the kid a metre away, and releases the barrier. Now freed, he backs away under Nadia’s glare— without having actually done anything, he can’t be kicked out, but it’s safe to say every guard will read the message on their pokétches to keep an eye on him. Security is one of the only jobs Luculia doesn’t have to micromanage in this building, and she’s content to let Nadia and her team handle it.
Nadia reaches down to pick up the Mime Jr and proudly hoist it up on her waist.
“You should consider joining my security team, Junior,” she grins, and flicks the puffball on its hat for good measure. Junior’s eyes shine with the same gleam Scilla’s had, when Luculia had first shown her a dawn stone, and she knows there won’t be any way she can bring that Pokémon to the pokécentre now.
Luculia smiles softly, watching Nadia set Junior down again, though they remain hand in hand. It’s a precious moment, when a Pokémon finds their calling and a new, lifelong friend in their partner. The occasion is usually reserved for young trainers on their journey, but it’s nice to be reminded that boring old adults with day jobs can experience it too. Even if it’s something she only ever gets to witness.
* * *
A month passes by like a mundane hurricane, and that Snorlax is still causing trouble on the train lines. This morning there’s another carriage waiting on the other side of the track to pick everyone up and ferry them off with minimal delay, but Luculia has found it’s just as quick to keep taking the shortcut through the park. She sidesteps the Brionne splashing in the fountain, and sidesteps the rugby team as they trample past, and continues on across the road to clock in to work right on time.
She steps into the bright foyer, and waves to Cathy at reception. The Johto exhibit is all packed up and ready to go home, and their seasonal Prehistoric Pokémon exhibit has been pulled out of the archive, ready to take its place. One of their newest hires stands watch outside, ensuring nobody aimlessly wanders in while the models are still being put together.
“Hi, Junior,” Luculia waves, and the Mr Mime waves silently but cheerfully back. Francis is still standing in the corner, watching as his supervisor, but the Gallade stands more relaxed than usual. Luculia continues on to her office, her near-completed Old Kalosian transcript awaiting her on her desk. She sits down with a restrained groan, and boots up her computer.
Another day, another twenty emails.
Summary:
Luculia Hiver works at the Hearthome City Museum, a building more concerned with exciting events of the past, rather than the present. Yet a chance encounter with a lone Mime Jr forces Luculia out of her office and into the latest exhibit— which may plant a small seed for the Museum’s future.
Rating: G, Word Count: 3,031
Past, Present, Future
The train screeches to a halt, and Luculia’s hand tightens around the strap hanging overhead. Somebody stumbles into her and she stumbles into somebody else, but she remains on her feet— and earns a red welt on her palm for her effort. A few other passengers in the carriage mutter to themselves, but most are used to this by now; the same Snorlax has been planting itself on the train tracks for a snooze the same time every day for the past week, and all efforts to relocate it had been in vain.
On the first day they’d been stuck on the tracks for thirty minutes before the train could move along again. Today, somebody’s Alakazam pries the door open with telekinesis without even needing to be told, and they all spill out onto the tracks and through the hole somebody’s Bastiodon had punched through the fence. Luculia checks her watch for the time— if she takes the shortcut through the park, she can still make it to the museum without ending up too late for work.
The park, however, is an obstacle course of its own. Luculia narrowly dodges the splashing from a pod of Popplio and Brionne in the fountain, and in doing so narrowly dodges getting trampled by a rugby team of mixed human and Machamp players. She holds her breath as the team stampedes by, wincing as her hair whips a hurricane around her. She scurries back towards the safety of the footpath as the dust settles, and attempts to smooth the wrinkles in her blazer and the frayed ends of her ponytail down. It’s a futile effort, but at least she’s still in one piece.
Up ahead the Hearthome museum ekes into view, its gothic stone facade peeking through the trees. Luculia continues down the footpath with an added briskness in her step, but wavers as a flash of pink catches the corner of her eye. There’s a rustling sound near the neatly trimmed hedges that she really ought not investigate if she wants to get to work on time— but as much as she wills it, she can’t bring herself to plant her foot another step further.
Truthfully, she knows that a little tardiness isn’t about to cost her her job given that she’s the most punctilious of the staff otherwise. She also does more work than most of her coworkers put together, and the Museum Director knows as much. (She’s also helped with the book-keeping a few times, when the accountant falls behind, and knows they can’t afford to replace her right now).
A little grudgingly, she walks over to the nearby shrubbery to peek through a gap in the tightly woven branches. As it turns out, the flash of pink had been a Mime Jr. The baby Pokémon is sitting on its own, shaking and shivering and whining and whimpering without ever making a sound. Luculia glances around, but there’s nobody who looks like they might be its trainer, nor can she see any nearby Mr Mime. Most wild circuses live out on the routes east of Hearthome, but it isn’t uncommon to see one parade into town to put on a performance or two— had this one been left behind?
Luculia looks closer at it. It doesn’t look hurt, nor ill, nor does it bear any fresh scars. It just looks… sad. Judging that it’s probably wild and isn’t in any immediate danger, she should be fine to leave it alone— and she really ought to get a move on. Luculia bites her lip.
“Hey, little guy. Do you have a trainer?” She asks, crouching down. The Mime Jr stops crying for a moment, looking up at her with watery eyes. She’s not sure it understands the question.
“Is there a person, or another Pokémon looking after you? Are they around here somewhere?” she prompts. It looks solemnly down to the ground in response, its tiny lip trembling. Luculia sighs through her nose. The first place she should bring it is a pokécentre; they’ll know what to do with it, where to put it.
But she’s already late for work now, and she’s sure it’ll survive a few hours with her until she can take it to the local centre on her lunch break.
“If you’re interested, do you want to spend the morning with me? I’m going to the museum over there,” Luculia offers, and holds her hand out. The Mime Jr glances around, searching for something they both know isn’t going to appear. The silence is heavy as it takes her hand, and wobbles over to her side.
* * *
The Hearthome Museum is by no means a quaint building, though it can’t boast the illustrious reputation that the Sinnoh Museum over in Jubilife has. It gets its fair share of foot traffic from visitors, but it also gets its fair share of lean days, which is all the better for giving its research team more time to pursue their own projects. Though Luculia enjoys her fair share of the overall workload, it also pays the bills, and occasionally she gets to go out on sponsored archaeological expeditions as the resident epigrapher.
Most days, however, are filled with busywork.
The fastest way in via the park entrance is through the grand main foyer, and she narrowly dodges getting heckled by Cathy at reception by sliding behind a tourist and escaping through the staff door. She quickly navigates the labyrinth of backrooms to reach her office, then turns back to look at her stowaway. It blinks up at her, looking a little overwhelmed.
“Alright, you can stay in here while I work for a few hours until my lunch break,” she says, watching it teeter over towards the various shelves with pieces she’d been studying safely sealed away in glass cases.
“Hey— look, but don’t touch, okay?” she warns, just in case. It nods slowly, and she turns to her desktop. She has… fourteen new emails, most of them staff-wide notices, but she’ll have to reply to at least three of them with updates. She barely gets two of those three emails sent off before a manila folder floats in front of her face and spews its contents upside down onto her desk. Luculia spins in her chair, but the Mime Jr pays her no mind as it levitates her red binder of Old Kalosian translation notes, loose sheets of paper scattered at its feet. She probably should have seen this coming.
“I said don’t touch,” she scolds, and it merely lifts its bare palms at her. Luculia pinches the bridge of her glasses.
“No telekinesis, either.”
The Mime Jr tilts its head dolefully to the floor, and the puffball on its head limps sadly like a teardrop. Luculia glances at her computer screen— there’s not that much on her ledger for today, or at least nothing she can’t crunch in under an hour. She crouches down again, knees clicking in protest.
“Hey, buddy. Want to go have a look around the museum?”
The Mime Jr looks up at her, and tilts its head like a small child.
“I can show you all the displays we have, and tell you a little bit about them,” she adds. Now understanding, it lights up with a wide smile and nods its head emphatically, its floppy hat whipping back and forth like a Wobbuffet.
Despite herself Luculia can’t help but laugh, and she pokes the button on its belly.
“Alright, then let’s go!”
* * *
The first gallery at the museum’s yawning entrance is the Acuity hall, which hosts their permanent display of Pokémon fossils, skeletons, and even a few taxidermy models. It’s a great academic resource, though Luculia decides that it might be a little morbid for the baby. Instead, she pivots them towards the winding pathway leading to the Valor hall, where a temporary exhibit of cultural artefacts loaned from Johto’s Heritage Museum is on display.
Luculia scoops the Mime Jr up into her arms as they arrive at the exhibit’s entrance, partially so that it can have a better view but mostly to keep it from wandering away and getting into trouble. Not that it’s a reasonable concern, however, as two pairs of shrewd eyes are already fixed on the bundle of pink.
“Hey, Luculia. When did you get a Mime Jr?” An otherwise silent presence in the corner calls out to her. Luculia spins around to see one of the security guards— a Hoenn woman named Nadia— grinning at her, though her Gallade stands stalwartly beside her with none of the same amusement. It does give the Mime Jr a curious look, however.
“Oh, um. It’s not really mine. I found it alone outside in the park, and I think it’s—“ Luculia moves to cover where she hopes its ears are, “I think it’s been abandoned, so I’m watching it until I can get away to a pokécentre at lunch.”
“Good idea,” Nadia nods, though there’s a hint of skepticism in her eye that Luculia doesn’t get the chance to interrogate.
“Francis, stick to your post. I’m going to do the rounds with Luculia and Junior, here.”
Her Gallade nods back stolidly, and Nadia shoots him a thumbs up before turning to Luculia with a wide grin.
“Lead the way, tour guide.”
Luculia tries to suppress her grimace. She’d been lumped with the task of tour guide a few times in their first year as a sort of hazing ritual, and they all know how disastrous she’d been at it. It’s not her fault that she hates talking to strangers, and they’d put her in a position where talking to groups of strangers is the entire point.
Well, Nadia isn’t a stranger, and it’s a lot easier talking to Pokémon than people. Pokémon don’t tell you to move on because you’re getting boring. (Even if Scilla would like to, sometimes, but her Froslass has endless patience for her otherwise).
Luculia leads her group of two into the first room in the gallery, and stops by the centrepiece. Sealed in a glass case are two ornate wooden structures almost as tall as herself, carved with identical and yet alternating details.
“This is a wood carving of the Brass Tower in its original state, which was made before it burned down. Next to it is the Bell Tower, which is still standing in Ecruteak today. That’s Ho-Oh at the top, see?”
She moves the Mime Jr to give it a better look, and it leans curiously towards the beautiful carving of the proud bird. The intricacy of the entire piece always astounds her, with ornamental filigree carved into each pillar and balustrade. It also makes her fingers hurt just to look at.
“Careful, Junior. Don’t touch anything, alright?” Nadia warns, and the Mime Jr nods astutely back. Luculia frowns surreptitiously at her.
“Should you be giving it a nickname like that?” she says in a hushed whisper.
“It’s fine. You’re too much of a worrywashi, sometimes,” Nadia waves her off. Luculia’s frown only deepens, and she turns away to hide it.
She leads them over to the next cabinet where a series of artefacts depicting the three Legendary Beasts are on display, and stops in front of her favourite of the lot. The trio of brass sculptures look nothing like any Pokémon she’s ever seen, with an extreme level of artistic stylisation; one of their necks’ is as long as a Farigiraf’s, and another looks more like a Cranidos in shape than every other quadrupedal depiction. All she can say of the third is that it looks like a furry Bastiodon.
“These three are Raikou, Suicune and Entei. All works of them all have at least some amount of artistic interpretation, because nobody’s really seen them up close long enough to get a good picture. The most accurate depiction is said to be this, though,” she says, and moves along to stand in front of a silk cloth painting of the three Pokémon. This version depicts the trio as a similar size and shape, embodying their elements through slight physical variations.
“It’s also said that this piece was painted by a Smeargle, because of the black pawprint used as a signature. We don’t really know that for sure, but I’d say it’s likely,” Luculia adds.
“Maybe someday something you make will end up in a museum,” Nadia says, ruffling the Mime Jr’s hat, and its widen with wonder.
They pass by a few trinkets here and there; infinitely valuable jade charms and urns which have great historical significance, but aren’t as exciting for a young Pokémon to look at. The katana and Samurai gear are a favourite of young children, but they’re also a relic of a time before people and Pokémon knew peace. The museum’s layout feeds them into the next room, featuring some of Johto’s lesser known deities. The feature piece of this particular collection is a small wooden structure, built in a shape reminiscent of a house.
“This is a replica of the shrine in the Ilex Forest, where Celebi is said to live. Celebi is a forest sprite believed to have the power to distort time, though it’s hardly as powerful as Dialga is— according to legend,” Luculia explains, half reading off the plaque. The most noteworthy thing about it in her mind is its similarity to the hokora in Celestic town, though Sinjoh religiosity isn’t her expertise.
“It looks like an onion,” Nadia observes, looking at the little wooden figurine carved to represent Celebi. The Mime Jr giggles silently at it, and Luculia shakes her head with a trite smile. She sets the Mime Jr down to have a look at it from the ground, as the rest of the exhibit has a few more displays that can be enjoyed from ground-level. They follow the winding path through the rest of the gallery until they reach the final room, which is dedicated wholly to Johto’s two most revered of Legendaries.
Hanging upon the walls are two massive tapestries, woven to depict Ho-Oh on one side with glittering gold thread and Lugia with shining silver thread on the other. All around there are woodcuts and figurines on display, while one of Ho-Oh’s coveted rainbow feathers floats suspended on an invisible string.
“The titles of these tapestries are ‘Heart’ and ‘Soul’. They were woven by the Geisha who lived in the Brass Tower with the help of Spinarak and Ariados, and it took them ten years to finish them both,” Luculia says, admiring the tapestries in their full glory. Looking at them is something of a religious experience; with the way the threads gleam, the two Legendaries’ magic almost seems to come alive.
Just as they begin to head towards the exit a boy in a red shirt dashes between them, almost knocking Luculia to the ground.
“Hey, don’t touch that—!”
Nadia doesn’t reach him in time, but thankfully she doesn’t need to; an invisible barrier of some kind forms between his outstretched hand and the Rainbow Feather, while his feet remain rooted to the ground. Luculia looks down to see the Mime Jr with its arms outstretched, a look of determination on its face. Nadia’s eyebrows shoot up in amazement, and Luculia releases a ragged breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. (It isn’t a real feather, of course, but the replica still belongs to the Johto Museum, and if anything comes back damaged then it opens up a whole can of wurmple of insurance claims.)
A bead of sweat rolls down Junior’s brow as he slowly pushes the kid a metre away, and releases the barrier. Now freed, he backs away under Nadia’s glare— without having actually done anything, he can’t be kicked out, but it’s safe to say every guard will read the message on their pokétches to keep an eye on him. Security is one of the only jobs Luculia doesn’t have to micromanage in this building, and she’s content to let Nadia and her team handle it.
Nadia reaches down to pick up the Mime Jr and proudly hoist it up on her waist.
“You should consider joining my security team, Junior,” she grins, and flicks the puffball on its hat for good measure. Junior’s eyes shine with the same gleam Scilla’s had, when Luculia had first shown her a dawn stone, and she knows there won’t be any way she can bring that Pokémon to the pokécentre now.
Luculia smiles softly, watching Nadia set Junior down again, though they remain hand in hand. It’s a precious moment, when a Pokémon finds their calling and a new, lifelong friend in their partner. The occasion is usually reserved for young trainers on their journey, but it’s nice to be reminded that boring old adults with day jobs can experience it too. Even if it’s something she only ever gets to witness.
* * *
A month passes by like a mundane hurricane, and that Snorlax is still causing trouble on the train lines. This morning there’s another carriage waiting on the other side of the track to pick everyone up and ferry them off with minimal delay, but Luculia has found it’s just as quick to keep taking the shortcut through the park. She sidesteps the Brionne splashing in the fountain, and sidesteps the rugby team as they trample past, and continues on across the road to clock in to work right on time.
She steps into the bright foyer, and waves to Cathy at reception. The Johto exhibit is all packed up and ready to go home, and their seasonal Prehistoric Pokémon exhibit has been pulled out of the archive, ready to take its place. One of their newest hires stands watch outside, ensuring nobody aimlessly wanders in while the models are still being put together.
“Hi, Junior,” Luculia waves, and the Mr Mime waves silently but cheerfully back. Francis is still standing in the corner, watching as his supervisor, but the Gallade stands more relaxed than usual. Luculia continues on to her office, her near-completed Old Kalosian transcript awaiting her on her desk. She sits down with a restrained groan, and boots up her computer.
Another day, another twenty emails.
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