Nothing Gold Can Stay
_"Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold..."_
The little girl in the plaid dress read painstakingly from the book, struggling to form the words she was only just learning to read. All around her, Pokemon of the forest had gathered to listen on this day like any other.
_"Her early leaf's a fl-... a flower;
But only so an hour..."_
Crowe, the smallest of the Eevees in the Eon clan, sat with his head on his friend Rose's shoulder. His eyes were half-lidded in the late afternoon sun that filtered down through the canopy.
"Crowe.." Rose nuzzled him gently. He looked up at her, into her blue eyes that had stopped the young Eevee's heart from the moment they first met. "Promise me we'll always be together. Promise me we'll always be friends."
_"Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief..."_
The world around him began to blur and distort strangely. A faint aura of smoke hit the dreamer's sensitive nose, smoke from a fire that wouldn't start burning in the forest for years to come. He answered calmly, as if everything was and always would be as perfect and beautiful as it was in this moment.
"So dawn goes down to day..."
"Yeah, Rose. We'll always be together."
"Nothing gold can stay. "
The clittle girl clapped her schoolbook shut with a noise like reverberating thunder, and Crowe awoke on the cold tile floor of a Pokemon Center.
"Ugh..." Crowe, now an Umbreon, groaned as he shook his head to clear off the fog of sleep. It was certainly no morning to wake up to, with minimal light from the already grey, overcast day coming from the windows to complement the harsh flourescents of the Pokemon center.
A scornful laugh from his Houndoom companion at the foot of the couch made Crowe wince.
"Still worn out from yesterday, runt?" Jerome taunted, his muzzle twisted into a sneer. The Houndoom had slept by their trainer's feet, more a display of importance than of loyalty. Jerome didn't have much of a heart to feel that kind of devotion with.
"You wish. Your crunch missed its mark." Crowe scoffed. He turned away and tried to curl back into a ball, intending to sleep more while the morning was still quiet. The grey was predawn grey, he'd realized.
Jerome wouldn't have it. "I wouldn't get too comfortable if I were you. Hiro fully intends to go north to the mountains starting 'first thing' today."
"I'll keep that in mind."
This only earned another laugh from Jerome. God, Crowe hated that laugh, a stacatto sound that grated on his ears every time. The Houndoom, one of three Pokemon kept by their human master, was Crowe's companion but far from his friend. As the last of his chuckling died down, silence fell, and Crowe's mind turned to other things.
That dream... again...
He felt his throat tighten pre-emptively, and stubbornly forced down the tears that threatened to come time and time again. He'd been having it so much recently... though for the longest time he'd had no dreams at all.
Rose... I'm sorry... My promise...
He let his cheek rest against the cool tile floor and squeezed his eyes shut. It had been two years. Two years since humans had followed the little girl out into unknown territory up in the mountains and discovered the Pokemon's very own Eden. Two years since the great wildfire started by their careless tourists had razed much of it to the ground. Two years since Rose and himself had run into that trainer--Hiro Matsumoto--when they'd wandered too far from the shrinking borders of the sanctuary.
"Hey! Runt!"
"Shut up, Jerome!" Crowe snapped, snarling over his shoulder at him. He winced at the sudden jolt of pain in his shoulder. Maybe Jerome's crunch hadn't been such a fluke, after all.
Jerome's gaze was bemused. That wince hadn't escaped his sharp eyes. Not at all.
"Why do you push yourself so hard? Hiro is only a young trainer, he doesn't really know what he's doing... We can take it easy here."
Crowe let his head fall back to the tiles. "Some of us actually want to get stronger, Jerome."
"Eh? What for?"
Crowe was silent. Jerome might himself like a pretentious gentleman among others (and a madman on the battlefield), but he was still Jerome as Crowe had gotten to know him over the years. Selfish, corrupt, a real shady character. He'd never--
"Don't tell me you're planning some kind of uprising? Revenge? Heh HEH heh heh--" Jerome's barking laughter was cut short. His face was serious now. "I knew a Pokemon who thought he'd do that once, when I was just a pup with a different master. Use the humans to further his own abilities, turn around and take back all his friends and escape to a far-off paradise in the wild."
"... Yeah?" Crowe couldn't repress his curiosity.
"Have you heard of the Weavile Grievance Gale? You must have. He's a legend, even if you don't pay attention to the humans' tellievisions."
Crowe didn't get to answer, as the automated doors of the Pokemon Center slid smoothly aside to admit a young man, dressed sharply in shades of black and grey with the brim of his Goldenrod city sports cap pulled low over his eyes. Hiro.
He strode over to the couch with a proud stride he was far too young for. He finished shuffling through some papers--inconsequential things to the Pokemon--and scooped up his pack. His sky blue eyes had dark circles beneath them, implying Crowe wasn't the only one who'd beenn tossing and turning all night. But Hiro always looked that way.
"Jerome. Crowe. Let's go."