xiii. nightmare
kintsugi
the warmth of summer in the songs you write
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xiii. nightmare
※
That night her dreams are muddled. There’s a male human you’ve seen before, his figure big and hulking like Teppy after he evolved into an emboar. The human’s face is in shadow but his eyes blaze red, so bright it pierces through the murky dark, and he’s angry and he’s frustrated and it’s always something new. Will he yell this time, or will he explain how he feels in other ways? His fists were loud the last time you saw him.
“Dad, please!” And she’s looking at him, her neck craning up as he towers over her like a mountain.
You don’t wait to find out which way he wants to respond. Pink smoke swirls around him, twines up his angry fists, down the veins bulging out of his neck, pulls him into misty depths. He roars something inhuman, and then he vanishes into the black fog. It’s the scent of roses that remains.
She turns over in her sleep, sighs a little. You can hear her outside of the pink haze, but you can’t see her.
He’s with you now, trapped in your shared nightmares. All that matters is making sure he doesn’t reach her. He howls in anger. Fueled by her imagination, he seems to grow another thirty feet and charges towards you. You’re scared. But you can take it. You have to. For her.
※
Your name is Munny. You had a name at some point, but it isn’t one that your Bianca can pronounce, and besides, she was too busy to ask, and besides, at this point correcting her would be terribly rude and you don’t want to bother her.
Your name is Munny. Four moons ago you met your trainer. You are her munna and she is your Bianca. You are partners, equals. This is the way of things.
Right now, she’s sitting cross-legged on a bench in the pokécenter, sipping at a plastic cup half full of lemonade and paging through her pokédex with her free hand. “Look at this, Munny! It says right here that when you evolve, you’ll look like this!” Her finger jabs at the picture of the musharna on the screen. “Isn’t that amazing?”
You squint at the screen and try to hide your disappointment when it’s just a picture you already recognize. You’ve seen a musharna before. Your mother was a musharna, and your father too. Before Bianca showed up, they and your littermates were the only beings in the entire world who had ever touched you, cuddled close to you. During the day, when you all rested, you would gather close and close your eyes and hum softly before sleep. You remember the feel of your father’s leathery skin as he curled protectively around you, wisps of your mother’s smoke tracing gently into your dreams.
“Oh, it looks like you lose your flowers when you evolve. That’s sad. I like those.” She’s pinched the screen and flicked her fingers apart so you can both zoom in on the musharna’s half-and-half markings.
Your mother told you a story, once. Once upon a time, long ago, musharna were pure purple, the color of a cloudless sky just after sunset. They were gifted by the spirit of the moon with the ability to slip into dreams, and many followed Her back and forth, between the lands of waking and dreaming. Over time, many musharna decided that the peaceful tranquility of the dreamlands was a welcome respite to the chaos of the waking world. They chose not to leave, and stayed slumbering, forgetting themselves and where they were, where they came from, where they were going.
The waking musharna cried out to the Moon, asking for Her guidance, and She descended.
{Be careful, my children,} warned the Moon. {Though, like me, you wax and wane through waking and dreaming, you must always remember who you were meant to be.}
And She exhaled, coating all the musharna in pink. For half-day, and half-night. To mark all musharna as passengers to the dreamworld, but to remind them to return to Her on the other side.
The split isn’t perfect, of course. Your father’s mother, he told you, had evolved almost two-thirds pink! It was truly an auspicious sign, to have one so touched by the Moon.
You’re hopeful. Flowers are nice, but perhaps a new pattern will help you make sense of where you’re supposed to be.
“Oh, and it says right here that dream mist is pink when you eat good dreams, and different colors when you eat bad dreams. That’s so neat!” Your Bianca has already scrolled past the page about musharna habitat and behavior. The light of the screen is reflected in the crescent of her eyes.
Huh? That’s not true. Dream mist is pink no matter what. You would know. Who wrote this?
“Oh, and black dream mist means a nightmare, or a sad dream. Okay. That’s good to know. I’ve never seen black dream mist from you before, Munny.”
She hasn’t, and that’s true, but some of her dreams were truly terrifying.
Maybe they don’t count as nightmares. But you were always told that the reason is that your mist is always pink, because it comes from the Moon, and is a reflection of Her.
But … maybe your Bianca is right? And maybe the dreams she’s been having, the ones she’s asked you to help forget … maybe those don’t count as nightmares. There’s another pokémon, the one who tries to eat the Moon, and he’s pitch-black, right? So it would make sense if he sent bad dreams and made them out of black mist, yes. That’s very true. Your Bianca is very smart, and you’re not. She knows these things. You’re just not strong enough to know what a real nightmare is.
“Hey, Bi, wanna do a quick spar? Maxis just evolved and I wanted to try out some new stuff.”
You look up in alarm. Oh, good. Her Cheren wasn’t talking to you. You resume looking back at your paws.
Your Bianca’s already on her feet. “Sure thing! We’re always down for a practice match. Isn’t that right, Munny?”
Oh. Now she’s talking to you. Oh no. You obediently chirp in affirmation, but you weren’t quite listening to the question. Is she looking at you? It’s hard to tell; the lights here are quite bright and, really, your entire species was designed for being awake at night, so your vision isn’t—
“Alright, Munny. Let’s show him how it’s done!”
Her voice shakes. Often, your Bianca strokes your back and tells you how she feels. Her Hilda is a good friend, she says. But sometimes she’s worried about her Cheren. He’s so angry sometimes. He has so much that he wants to prove. Your Bianca’s face clouds when she talks about him, in ways that it never should. Her Cheren doesn’t like losing, she’d explained once in a solemn voice. So sometimes he’ll pick fights he knows he can win.
You can think about your bad vision later. You follow your Bianca outside. This is good. If you’re close to a pokécenter, then it won’t matter so much if …
“Maxis, you’re up.”
Ah, yes, now that you’re outside in the harsh sunlight and you aren’t looking at pokédex articles that are directly in front of your face, this gets a little harder. You see the brown smudge of a trainer, and the shorter, greener smudge that’s probably his pokémon. His simisage? Is that what her Cheren had mentioned? You remember he had his pansage at some point.
“Alright, start off with a Psybeam!”
Okay, here goes. You contort your face, and then release a charge of psychic energy, as much as you safely think you can. The green smudge moves out of the way—you can hear him screech in pain just a little as the attack clips his tail—and you try to track him, but by now his trainer is already shouting, “Get in close for a Bite!”
His simisage transitions to all four legs and starts scampering across the ground, growing bigger and bigger in your vision until it’s close enough for you to make out all the features and confirm that, yes, it certainly is his simisage—and then it’s sinking its teeth into the top of your back. Pain blooms across your body and you scream out in alarm, shaking back and forth, trying to dislodge it. You float up into the air, straining against the weight, and it finally gives up and drops back to the ground.
You look back nervously. Your Bianca is too far away for you to see her face, but she probably isn’t happy with your showing on that one. You pant heavily; your back burns, something hot and wet is running down your skin—
“Alright, Munny! We can still do this!” Right! You can! You have to. You puff up your body as big as it’ll go. His simisage doesn’t seem intimidated in the slightest, and is waiting patiently for its next command. You wish you could do that. Waiting patiently. But sometimes you’re anxious and doubtful, which is bad, because who could ever doubt your Bianca when she says—
“They can’t hit us when they’re asleep! Use Hypnosis, Munny!”
This strikes you as a particularly bad idea, because his simisage is quite agile, and it does seem like he’ll be able to dodge out of the way again. Hypnosis travels faster than Psybeam, and you haven’t quite done the math and you do trust your Bianca, of course, but—
“Dodge with Acrobatics, and then use Seed Bomb,” says her Cheren calmly.
You scrunch your eyes tight and begin generating pulses of mesmerizing, swirling energy, but his simisage is already jumping high into the air, and it’s around then that you process that Seed Bomb sounds like it might hurt a bit, and by that point the clusters of green energy that sprouted up around your feet are detonating.
The last thing you remember is your Bianca crying out in dismay, and then a horrible banging sound blots out the rest of your hearing, and then your vision, and then everything else.
※
You have the strangest sensation, floating through the ether—a bolt of energy strikes you, and adrenaline surges through your veins. Once, the Elesa invited you to practice spar with her emolga, and he knew a move called Discharge, and for a split second before the pain sunk in you remember how it almost felt energizing, like waking up after a good night’s dream.
You flinch, waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the electricity to come surging in, but … there’s nothing.
“Hey there. That should do the trick.”
There’s a flash of red light, and you drop out of your pokéball. The act is so surprising that you almost plummet to the ground before you remember to reassert your telekinesis; something is wrong here; this doesn’t feel right; what’s—
You catch yourself a foot later and swivel around to see a blob of pink hair. Blue eyes, maybe? Green? You don’t want to be rude and hover closer to get a better look at her. The hair draws you in the most; it’s bright, fiery, poofs around her like a protective wreath of dream smoke.
“Hey, hey there. Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you.” She’s tilting her head back and forth like an enormous pidove, but she doesn’t get any closer—scrutinizing you from a distance. You like that. “How are you feeling?”
{Very good, thank you,} you chirp back politely. {Where am I?}
She giggles a little, and says, “I’m glad! You were in pretty rough shape, but you’re safe now.”
You wait expectantly, but she doesn’t say anything else. Where are you? Who is she?
Oh. Oh no. {My trainer,} you say, floating closer to her now. She seems friendly enough. You get close enough that you can see the pattern of her own flower-spots on her cheeks, freckled bits of brown. {Is she okay?} No, you’re so stupid! Of course your Bianca is okay. She’s not weak and dumb like you are; she would never end up in this situation. {Where is she?}
Her eyebrows bunch up. Blue. Her eyes are blue. They’re a nice color, like the sky—“Oh, don’t panic! Are you still hurt?” She starts rifling through her backpack, which hangs loosely off of one shoulder. “I used my last potions on a herdier already and we can’t really go to a pokécenter, but I have some berries that’ll do the trick.”
You shake your head. {My trainer.} You vibrate up and down for emphasis, cycle a flash through all your flower for emphasis. {Trainer.}
“I’m sorry,” the girl says. “I don’t know what you’re asking for. I, hmmm, one sec.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out her x-transceiver. Good! She can call your Bianca, and then this whole mistake can be settled before anyone gets mad. She types something on the screen, and then puts the device away.
{Call my Bianca,} you chirp.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and it really sounds like she means it. “I don’t know what you’re saying. But I have a friend who can translate for us. He’ll call me back and then we can figure out what’s up.”
You suppose that’s a start.
“You want to rest? Go anywhere? We’ve got a little time, and I don’t want you to get bored or anything.”
You? Oh. She’s talking to you. You look around nervously. Your Bianca’s done most of the sightseeing in Castelia—a lot of the places she wants to go aren’t pokéfriendly after all, not her fault—and besides, with your bad vision? What’s even the point? You chirp back something half-heartedly, hope she’ll read into it and pick something out for both of you to do.
“Hmm. Okay. Do you want to go somewhere in the main city, or maybe by the docks?” The smudge of her face fiddles nervously with her hair. “Actually, scratch that. Do you want to go downtown? One chirp for yes, two chirps for no.”
Oh, that’s actually really clever of her! You like this human. That’s a very smart idea. From what you’ve heard of downtown, it’s noisy and smells bad. Two chirps.
“The docks?”
What’s a dock? Um. No chirps. That’s a strange word. Dock. You know that audino sometimes work for humans called doctors, but you’re feeling quite fine—
“Oh, sorry, the ocean. There’s a nice lookout of the ocean.”
Ah. That does sound nice. One chirp.
She beams. “That’s a great idea. I know a really nice spot where we can watch the ships come in; my mom used to take me there all the time as a kid.” She hoists her backpack up and swings it over her back with practiced ease. You can’t help but balk at how comically large it looks on her, the way it almost engulfs her shoulders like a tirtouga shell. What in the world does she have in there? Your Bianca’s bag is much smaller. The Rhea motions with her head. “Come on, follow me!”
Unwittingly, your eyes flit over to the pokéball—she isn’t going to recall you? What if she walks too fast?—and then you hover after her.
※
You like the ocean. It’s big, wide, sparkling. The color is reassuring, almost like a night sky. You can’t pick out the details of the waves, but you almost don’t need to—when it all blurs together, the sun reflects off of the water and makes a thousand vanishing stars for you.
“I grew up down the street from here,” the girl is saying. “My mom used to take me and my little brother here on the weekends all the time. Free entertainment, you know?”
You don’t know, but you chirp politely.
The girl looks up in alarm suddenly, and she’s quick to stand at attention. Her back is as straight as the lamppoles dotting the pier. “My Lord N!” Her voice is higher-pitched than before. Almost a squeak. You like her. “I didn’t mean for you to come out this way. I apologize for interrupting; I thought you were going to call.”
He waves a hand. “Don’t worry about it, Rhea. I was in the area anyway. How are you?”
Her voice is rapid-fire now. Official. Low, serious. “The extraction went fine. Tourmaline covered my tracks. Best to keep her out of the eastern boroughs for a few days, and obviously we’ll have to scramble the tags on the pokéball if we want to take her back to a center, but no trackers.”
Something about her statement brings a smile to his face—at first you think it’s the strange words like boroughs or scramble or trackers but—“How’s Tourm doing? Is she happy?”
Despite herself, the Rhea smiles. “Yeah. She’s a liepard now—that doesn’t help the fur problem much—but I think she likes the new form a lot.”
“If both of you think you have some time, I’d love to say hello after this.”
The Rhea chews her lip. Calculating something, you think, and then she says, “We should probably go north of here. I was planning to be out of here by sundown.”
They’re talking in some strange code. Why do they have so many schedules? Your Bianca came and went as she pleased, and was much happier for it.
“I understand. I’m heading north as well. Could you give us a moment?”
“Of course, Lord N,” she says, and then strolls purposefully down the pier.
That leaves, well, just you.
“Hello,” the new human says. He’s a smudge of green and white on the horizon, and if not for the accessories he’s chosen to wear, you’d think he were a tree. He comes closer to you, but not too close, and then sits cross-legged on the wood of the dock with his chin in his hands, a full two feet away. These are a respectful bunch. “My name is N. Do you have a name?”
Well that’s an interesting question to open up with. No one’s asked you that before. {Munny.}
The features of his face flash and knit together for a moment, and then he says, “Ah, that’s a very nice name. Haven’t heard that for a munna before.” His teeth glimmer from beneath his smile, but it doesn’t seem like he fully means it. “Rhea over there tells me you’ve been very agitated. I wanted to ask you why. Are you hurt? Are you satisfied with how she’s taking care of you?”
{No, I’m fine, actually.} You normally wouldn’t push confrontation, but luckily you actually are fine, so this is a good day for everyone. {Oh—I was wondering what she did to make me feel better?}
“What she did?” he asks. “What do you mean?”
{It’s just that normally only audino can heal pokémon,} you explain patiently for him. {Humans can’t heal pokémon. She must be very special. Touched by the Moon.}
The N quickly shutters his eyes, and you aren’t quite sure what he means by that. He steeples his fingers across his nose and exhales sharply; you recoil in alarm as tendrils of his emotions suddenly flare out, big enough for you to see. You aren’t a good empath yet and you really can only sense things when humans are asleep, but he’s angry and he’s frustrated and it’s something you said and you want to shout sorry sorry sorry but won’t that just make it worse and—
“Oh, hey.” His voice is quiet all of a sudden. “Hey, hey. I’m not angry at you. This isn’t your fault.” Is he talking to you? You nervously peak one eye open and uncurl a little, just a hair. He’s blurry, but he’s certainly looking at you. But if he’s not mad at you and it’s not your fault, whose fault is it? “Munny? Can you hear me?”
Big silence. You’re a roiling sea of emotions and he’s the nightmare on the other side, lightning waiting to strike—
“Do you mind if I sit a little closer? I think it’ll be easier for us to talk that way.”
Oh. {Okay. If you’d like.}
“Only if you’d like, Munny. I didn’t mean to scare you earlier, but that was my fault. I’m sorry. I’ll try not to let it happen again.”
That’s very nice of him. You … didn’t really expect that. {Okay.}
He inches a little closer. Still a solid foot away, very respectable distance. He doesn’t look like a munna, but he seems to understand proper spatial etiquette much better than most humans. They’re incredibly touchy creatures. Maybe he told the Rhea how to be polite as well. The ocean sparkles to your left.
“I, uh, where were we?” He smiles nervously, a bit flustered. “Your question. Rhea is a normal human.”
{She’s a very nice human!} you say defensively.
“Oh, yes, she’s a very good human. Sorry.”
He apologizes quite a bit to you. That’s normally your job. {It’s okay.}
“Rhea is a very good, nice, human, but she doesn’t have magical healing powers,” the N corrects. “But humans have made inventions that can make pokémon feel better. They can use these inventions to heal pokémon, even if humans can’t heal pokémon themselves.” Big pause.
Oh, that’s very nice of them. Why would they waste them on you, thought? Bianca had explained this once—they did sell Potions and Revives but they were very expensive, and to buy them you had to be good at battling, but to be good at battling your pokémon had to be healthy, but for your pokémon to be healthy you had to buy the items, so. It was a circle and the two of you were on the outside.
“Anyway, I wanted to ask you about your trainer,” the N says.
{Oh yes.} A pang of guilt. You feel bad for forgetting, but there’s just been so much to keep track of today. {I wanted to know. Where is my Bianca? Can I return to her?}
“That’s,” N says, and sighs heavily, “what I wanted to ask you about.” He traces a pattern in the bench with his index finger, over and over again, and then all of a sudden he looks you squarely in the eyes. His eyes. They’re the color you see behind your eyelids right before you fall into slumber. “Rhea’s been watching your trainer for a while. She says that your trainer battles with you until you faint a lot.”
Oh, that. Yes, it’s quite embarrassing. You don’t really know the numbers but you’re quite sure that, of Bianca’s team, you’re the one who’s knocked out the most. Even Mienny, who’s the newest and the youngest.
You look up at N, but he’s fallen silent. Is he waiting for you to respond? That’s weird. You’re not used to that. It’s weird talking to someone who expects you to talk back. {I know,} you say glumly. {I’m trying to get stronger, really, I am! Then my Bianca can do better and I won’t faint as much.}
The N sighs. You don’t think you gave the right answer. Oh no. Is he mad? No, he’s smiling now, a small one that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Do you think your trainer should be allowed to do that? It hurts you a lot.”
{She heals me up right after!} Okay, not right after. Sometimes not for a while, and your bones ache and your mist is more of a wisp, but that’s not her fault either! She tries her best, and it’s not like you could do any better anyway. {And it makes her happy, so I’m happy as well.}
He builds a mountain out of his fingers and rests them under his chin. He thinks for a long time. He’s not like you; you can tell that every word is weighed carefully in advance before it even has the time to approach his lips. “Rhea is in a group with me. Our goal is to make sure that pokémon don’t get hurt. If you want, we could put you somewhere else. Wherever you’d like. You wouldn’t have to battle any more.”
Your flowers flash a bright pink before you can control yourself and tamp them back down. {I … I wouldn’t have to battle?}
“Not unless you want to.”
Oh, moon and stars. That would be such a relief. You wouldn’t have to think about how you’re too slow, or how your attacks aren’t strong enough, or how it hurts when you aren’t tough enough to tank a blow. You wouldn’t have to feel bad about letting everyone down, and—best of all, you wouldn’t have to feel guilty for when you did get stronger, and you made other pokémon hurt instead of you. Your flowers are practically glowing now, bright like the reflections of the sun on this ocean. {That’s … that would be lovely. Can I really?}
The N nods. Doesn’t say anything else. He smiles. Seems happy you’re happy.
And then.
In a very small, very polite voice: {But will my Bianca be mad at me?}
He fidgets with his fingers nervously. You’re suddenly struck by how long they are. He absently twirls a set of gold bracelets around and around on his wrist, where they make a gentle clacking sound. “You wouldn’t be returning to Bianca. You would go somewhere else.”
{Somewhere else?} The lights stop flashing through your flowers, and suddenly you feel dim, deflated. That future of you not fighting suddenly vanishes until it’s nothing more than wisps of dream smoke. {Where?}
“Wherever you’d like,” the N says quietly, still twirling the bracelets.
{Can’t I go back to her?} This doesn’t seem fair.
“If you do, you’ll probably have to battle again. She is a trainer, Munny. You are a pokémon. That’s part of what she does.”
{Oh.} Yes, he’s quite right. You were stupid for thinking otherwise.
“You don’t have to answer right away. I want you to think it over first.”
This isn’t a very fun thought. You want to change the subject. Right now. {You look like someone who has interesting dreams.}
There’s a big black-and-white hat on his head, so the shadow almost obscures his eyes, but you see him flinch back in surprise. Then, his lips crack into a smile. “You’re very observant, Munny.”
{What kind of dreams do you have?}
“I dream of the future.”
{The future?}
“Yes. It’s a place where pokémon are free to do what they want, and they live happily amongst one another.” His voice is quiet now, but it’s still low and fast, so it’s almost in perfect rhythm with the waves dashing against the pier. “A lot of the details are blurry, though. Sometimes it doesn’t even feel like it was even a dream I had to begin with.”
{Oh. Home.} You actually know a lot about these. You’ve dreamed about your home as well. And those bits about forgetting a lot of the details … you know that as well. {The kind that goes away when you wake up?}
Yes, he’s smiling, but it doesn’t look happy in the slightest. “Sort of. But I’ll get there again one day. It won’t be a dream forever.”
{I hope so. Sad dreams are the worst.}
You want to correct yourself, but you don’t want to waste his time. But as soon as you say it, you realize your mistake: sad dreams aren’t the worst. When you wake up from a nightmare, you open your eyes in a better world. When you wake up from a happy dream …
You both sit in silence for some time. The waves wash in, and then they wash out.
Finally, he shakes his head, almost like he’s flicking water out of his mane or something, and he clears his throat. “Whether you decide to go back to Bianca or not is entirely up to you,” the N says, but you can’t shake the feeling that he doesn’t think this is fine, that you’ve somehow made the wrong choice already. “You’re allowed to do whatever you’d like. You can stay with us and we can talk about where you’d like to go from here.” There’s a long pause. When you don’t say anything, he adds, “Or Rhea can escort you back to your trainer.”
Oh thank goodness. Hopefully your Bianca won’t be mad at you. {Thank you. I’d like that.}
There’s. Another long bit of silence. He seems upset somehow, and you don’t know what you did to cause it. “Before I leave, though, do you mind if I trouble you for one more question?”
You wait expectantly, but he doesn’t ask the question. Oh. Right. {No, go ahead.}
{Your trainer,} he says, and a little chill goes down your back as you realize he’s not speaking with a human tongue any more. There’s suddenly layers that the human tongue never has, the way trainer has the same cadence as friend. {She gives her dreams to you. Is it just her nightmares, or do you get to share the happy ones as well?}
You’re so stunned at the sound of his human voice speaking your language that you don’t even know how to respond to him, let alone think over the words that he’s saying. You hover perfectly still, the munna equivalent of a blue screen, and by the time you can scrape together some words, the N is standing up; the Rhea is back.
“Thank you, Rhea, for escorting her to her trainer,” the N says. “And thank you for your time, Munny.”
You can’t tell properly from this distance, but the Rhea’s face is contorted in fire. “I can’t just take her back; she’s only going to get hurt again.”
“It’s her choice, Rhea,” the N says quietly, casting a look over his shoulder towards you. He doesn’t sound convinced. Not like your Bianca, who always knew what was best. “We can’t force her to stay; that’d be just as bad.”
“Just as bad as forcing her to faint again?”
That shuts the N up for a second, and you can see him cycle through his open mouth and closed mouth positions without any words coming out. His head hangs so that his mane hides his face. “Could you please tell her, Munny? Tell her what you told me.”
{She can’t understand me, can she?} You almost hope not. You’re not used to this many people asking your opinion, and your words aren’t nearly as good.
“Not the actual words. But, it’s like you said. Rhea is a very nice human. She’ll understand the meaning behind it.”
You float closer to Rhea, so close you can almost see the way the light reflects off of her eyes, far too close for a respectful munna but just close enough for a respectful human. {I love my Bianca! I do. She gave me everything I have. It’s not her fault that I’m not strong enough yet, and better yet, she’s going to help me become stronger! She’s a very busy human, and out of all of the munna in my dreamyard to join her team, she picked me, so of course I need to work hard and repay her! If I left now, she’d be really sad, and besides—}
It takes all of your energy, the bits that the Rhea gave you and a little extra besides. You aren’t like a big musharna; you can’t control your smoke very carefully, but you have to try. So you gather it all up and scoop it into a rough approximation of your feelings, and that all takes the form of the day you first met your Bianca. She scooped you up into the air, her hands far, far too tight around you, and then she held you close, smiling, the way only your parents would, and she whispered a name for you. She became your whole world, your Moon, plucked you from a dark night and made herself into your light.
{—if this is what it takes for her to love me like I am, then … that’s what I’ll do, don’t you think? I’ll get stronger, and then I can take it!}
There’s a long silence.
The smoke swirls tighter, condenses in the image of her clutching you to her stomach. In the mist, you’re completely pink, touched by the Moon. With her you know exactly who you are supposed to be.
You look at both humans, nervous. {Did I do okay?}
The Rhea is crying. The N’s mane and hat are in the way, but it looks like he might be as well.
You wish they were asleep so you could take their bad dreams away, so they wouldn’t cry like this. But they aren’t. They’re awake, and you’re awake, and you can’t wake up.
※
Your Bianca sniffles, even thirty minutes after you’ve reunited with her and the trouble is all cleared up. You try to cheer her up, but it doesn’t work.
“Oh, Munny,” she says, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her shirt. “The girl who found you said some horrible things. She said that I was a bad trainer for letting this happen to you, for letting you get hurt. She said if I really cared so much about learning about all of you, I should just do that instead. Imagine! Me, the researcher?” Another sniff. “I’m not a bad trainer! Right?”
No! You nuzzle her fiercely. She is a good person. You know she won’t understand that, but you hope that, like the Rhea, she gets the meaning behind your words.
She laughs weakly, but it’s more of a sob. “Oh, thank you, Munny.” She hugs you tight, so close it’s hard to breathe. “I know you can’t be mad at me, but everything she said just made me feel so bad, and …” She trails off. “Oh, I just feel so horrible.”
You want to cry too. Your heart breaks for your dear Bianca, who doesn’t deserve to feel bad. After all, it wasn’t her fault that any of this happened, and you both know it! You chirp at her reassuringly, but it doesn’t seem to help. Her pain is important! So important. She doesn’t deserve to hurt like this, to have her flaws brought out under a magnifying glass, burned like leaves under the lens. The Rhea doesn’t have a potion to make your Bianca’s pain go away, and that doesn’t strike you as fair.
Your Bianca needn’t worry. You’ll get stronger. You’ll think less about your parents, of your home at the dreamyard, of the Moon that’s outside of her orbit. You’ll stop losing so much. Then it won’t matter. If you don’t faint then no one can be mad at you for making them feel bad, right?
That night, as you all settle in for sleep in the pokécenter, you think about what the N asked you, about the answer you never gave. Your Bianca asked you if you could eat her bad dreams for her, true. And you’d never dream of taking the good ones from her; that simply wouldn’t be fair. She worked hard for those. She gets to keep them.
That night, she dreams again of her father, hulking and monstrous, and you take it from her. You take it all. Her dreams are dark and scattered, fragmented like shards of broken glass. They hurt to touch, but you lovingly scoop them all up anyway, just like every other time she’s asked you to protect her. In the morning she wakes up rosy-eyed and refreshed, and you curl a little closer in your cloud of pink smoke. Sad. For a moment you can’t shake the image of how the Rhea and the N cried for you on the docks. For a moment you have the feeling that you’re sleeping and you can’t wake up.
But you have to wake up. It’s a new day, and your Bianca is waiting. The Moon is set.
It’s not her fault. She gave you her nightmares, but she never asked you to give her your love.
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