Love Lost, Chapter 20b: Exposures, concluded.
#40 of Love Lost
Love Lost, Chapter 20b: Exposures, continued.
Carlos turned and faced her, dumbstruck: Gardevoir, beautiful; eyes, green and brilliant; horns, like emeralds. Hair... the man on the docks now seemed a little more eerie.
She continued when she sensed his reaction pass. "I know that I know you. I don't know how, or why, but I do. I knew you would be here. I came a long way, from Rennin."
Carlos opened his mouth to speak, but Grace spoke for him.
"The last time you were in Rennin, you had a bad time."
Grace's facial expression shifted together with Carlos's.
"I--I was hoping that wasn't right. But, it's all coming together in reverse order." She sat across from Carlos, a coffee table between them. The man was unsure what to say, if anything, and waited for her to continue. "I had a vision. It ended with me being here, at Hexyloxy Pokecenter One apparently, resting in this lobby. Anyway, I came here after riding on a boat from an island south of here. On the way, I met a man: you. You called yourself Diego Ortega at first, but later admitted your name was Carlos. I guess now I know the whole thing."
"The boat was named 'The Sphinx,' wasn't it?" Carlos whispered.
Grace winced and continued. "I met you in its cabin, you were passed out on a wide seat with your shoes off. There was a paper bag on the table beside you.
Carlos did not react.
Grace felt him not reacting and continued. "Before I got on the boat, I met a flaaffy who serves drinks near the docks."
"Lloyd," Carlos whispered.
Grace winced and continued. "And, at the store where they have a radio to talk to the boats, there was a big white pokemon, kinda like a bird, that got sick from eating too much."
Carlos gestured toward Junior's ball, but Grace raised a hand, "I know. With all the commotion he caused I was already half-awake, but when I heard your name I woke up fully and saw him. Before that, I met a guy who lives on the island, and he let me have a book that--"
Carlos unfurled his coat and put a wrapped object on the table. "I never met that guy before, but he gave me this, which feels like a book; an exact description of you; and he told me to give it to you if I ever saw you."
Grace shuddered. "In my vision, when I was here, I woke up remembering that I left the book behind. Then, in a second vision that I thought was real, it was delivered by an express carrier."
"Light Parcel Express: Anything a flygon can carry, from coast to coast, overnight, guaranteed." It was not quite as snappy without the commercial's jingle behind it.
Grace reached toward the book, and telekinetically drew it within reach. "The book in my vision had a note in it. It said, 'I'm sorry about your mother,' and it was signed, 'C.V.', and since we've connected every dot but one," she let her sentence trail off meaningfully and gave him a meaningful glance as she gripped the book tightly, as though she wanted to both protect it and crush it.
Carlos rubbed his brow, having broken a sweat, and whispered again. "Are you going to kill me?"
Grace was taken aback, "No!" she projected to avoid drawing attention, "I just want to know why."
"Because there is a lot of money to be had."
"Stop," she winced, "not that. I know that part. I've felt the thoughts of people who look at me and see me as that; as money and as corruption. I've seen what they will do to gardevoirs--"
She felt his reaction although he was trying harder than ever to remain unread.
"--and I'm not holding you responsible for that, even if that could've happened to me if I hadn't been saved, although now I know that you were aware of what you could have made of my future. Just, tell me why you would do it, and don't say it's just for money. There are jobs; you're a human, you can do anything you want for a living. My sister struggles to get a taste of the privileges you humans have. I don't think there's a single job that you could get that she wouldn't take, gladly, that you chose being a poacher over. Mister Velasquez, please, tell me, why did you chase us through the forest, and why did you kill my mother? I know it was you. After it happened, I went to that place, I felt the residual energy, I synchronized with it, I know you were the one who stabbed her."
Carlos hid his face behind his palm for a moment. She stared at him, resisting with all her resolve the urge to pry. She did not want to hurt him--but she knew that she would not let him go until she got her answer. He asked, "Do you have a place to stay, tonight?"
Grace's lack of a reply answered for her.
"I've been through a lot, today. You said you saw me in your vision; did I seem to be in any better condition?"
"Other than a headache, I would say, yes, but in the vision, I did not feel your emotions being this... muddy."
"Would you let the me in your vision have a couple hours to settle before answering your question?"
"I've followed a guide that I don't understand, but if waiting a couple more hours is part of this path, fine, I'll wait, just a little."
Carlos watched the television and its clock as it slowly counted to twenty-hundred hours. A public address announcement confirmed that the hostel wing was now open. Carlos left the lobby and Grace followed behind him. The nurse shot Grace a look, Grace turned and shot one back. The nurse turned away with a blush.
Neither spoke again until Carlos settled into his cot and, as best he could with an anxious gardevoir within emotional radius, relaxed. "We weren't supposed to bring any weapons. But, I figured I could ditch the knife if we got made, and I didn't want to be un-armed. And, if I wasn't armed that night, Rosa and I would be dead right now."
Grace listened silently.
"Killing her wasn't part of the job. Killing never is. But if a pokemon makes it a duel, then that's what it's gonna be."
"Duel? You call chasing a wild pokemon until she's about to drop dead from exhaustion a duel?"
Carlos wanted to say something, but he was not sure how to phrase it.
Grace sensed something, more precisely than she could have had he said it. "Why should I believe you?"
"Because you would sense it if I were lying."
He felt Grace's shifting emotions. He remembered feeling a gardevoir's emotions shift like that before, and quickly gave this one a topic to focus on.
"You think you're right, that money isn't an excuse, but it is. Tell me, what did you do to earn the money in that purse you're holding?"
Grace hesitated. "I took this money from my trainer, but he said the money I earn in battles is mine and it's in his account, so really I just switched that for this. It just means what I spend of this comes out of that."
"You've never earned a dime, Toots. You've never done work and had your boss walk up to you, put money into your hand, and say, 'Thank you. You did a good job.' "
The gardevoir's expression turned sour. "Every time I win a fight, Joe tells me that I did well, that I earned my prize, that I made him proud. Even if he speaks words that say that I don't need to fight or I shouldn't be getting roughed up or that he doesn't care either way. He tells me with his heart."
"I'm not talking about friends or family. They care about you anyway. I'm talking about somebody who doesn't give a damn about you; for whom you're nothing but a payroll entry. Yes, I was a poacher. What I did was terrible for some of the pokemon affected by my work. I may be an agent, but if I didn't do it, somebody else would have, and you can't eat a moral victory. You can't wrap yourself up in virtue in the dead of winter after your landlord changes the locks. I kept the heat on, I kept my dog fed, and until she came after us, I never killed a pokemon."
Grace did not care to see it his way, but she did wonder, "She came after you?"
Carlos scoffed. "That wasn't in the psycho residue your kind likes using to leave notes behind? We chased her well into the wooded block. Then, when we realized the sh--that you were gone--we turned around. That's when she teleported back, blocked us, and started throwing things around. Not just breaking the tree branches and bringing them down on us. She found some stuff to use as weapons. It was an ambush."
"But, why?" Grace whispered, feeling ill after the thought that her mother had such malice within her.
"She decided that she'd rather kill us than let us turn back and have a second shot at finding you."
"I can't believe--I thought she died for me, but I didn't think she killed for me."
"Along the way, Ruby stopped me and pointed out a bedroom of one of the houses. I looked in, saw a kid sleeping. That was the Joe you mentioned, wasn't it?"
Grace nodded. "Must've been."
Carlos re-positioned himself on his cot and sighed, remembering the brief and indecipherable exchange between Ruby and the green gardevoir shortly before they retreated without further molestation. "You've got an idea of the worst that can happen to a poached pokemon, especially a gardevoir, especially a shiny. But that's as rare as it is horrible. I've been to Well's auctions. Most of the pokemon he deals in go to affluent people who pamper them. If anything, they'll want for nothing but the excitement of a normal trainer's journey. Is being Joe's domestic pokemon partner, all that gives you and all that leaves out of your reach, worth the lives that ended that night? You probably would've wound up living in a mansion doing maybe two hour's work a week as a hostess and spending the rest of your time floating around in a big swimming pool or practicing playing the harp or something else snooty like that."
Grace glanced away at the wall. Hostel rooms were spartan and narrow, two meters wide less the thickness of the wall, which thankfully wasn't much. Grace reached up and pulled down a second bunk, levitating to lay herself upon it. After sharing a bed proper with a stranger before, even if it was but a vision, taking the top bunk did not seem like an impropriety. "I hope so. There's no going back. Was he a good man, the other poacher?"
"He was a man. That judgment you speak of was made by God."
"Did he have a family?"
"I don't know. Probably. We were familiar through the profession, not personally. We didn't talk much about ourselves when we shared a job, but when an opportunity would come up, he'd make an odd phone call. The single guys don't do that, the married ones do sometimes, the married ones with mistresses always do."
"I guess I can't blame only poachers for destroying lives, then." Grace shifted and whimpered; the cot was very stiff and gave no allowance for her horns. She rolled onto her side.
"You can blame, but then you have to stop blaming and either forgive or forget. If you stay on blame, it never stops hurting. What happened to my Ruby was the fault of the pricks at the day-care, but they were just doing their jobs, badly for a moment, but as long as I blame them then that's what I think of when I think of Ruby, and that's not what I want to think of. I want to think of her life, right up to her last moment that Rosa remembers and Junior helped her to show me, and nothing else. So, between that table and the help desk here, I decided to forgive them. Not forget, but forgive."
Grace hoped that she could do both. "Wait, I'm confused. You said that you and Rosa survived, but Ruby tried to tell you where I was--and now you say that something happened to her at the day-care--"
She heard a thud as he struck the weak wall with a balled fist.
"--but I remember from the vision my mother left that there were three dogs. This doesn't add up. Was Rosa in a ball?"
"Rosa was in her mother."
Grace gasped.
"Did that clear something up?"
Grace could not speak, so she instead projected, "Everything."
Both she and Carlos slept dreamlessly through the night.
Standing before Hexyloxy Pokecenter One, Grace watched Carlos and Rosa walk off into the crowd and vanish. She held her book, still wrapped, with her purse and looked about herself. She was alone. She had followed back the path, and she felt like she had gotten what she came for, but truly there was still something more to it. She walked south until she reached the harbor docks that ran east and west as far as could be seen, populated by boats ranging in size from massive cruise ships at one end to a fellow in a rowboat gliding along at the other. She looked out over the water. She knew the island was out there, and the next step of the backtracking path. Everything else was somehow true, so Daniel must be out there, too. Why not visit him? She had already come this far. Maybe go to marker 1-1 and see if there is a tree with a hole punched into its trunk that perfectly fits one of her horns, the one that interrupted her spinal column. Perhaps she would even find again that entity, that strange face both light and dark and there and not and the massive form that it took when it appeared before her on the beach when it created that hole. Grace closed her eyes and thought about it, about being there, about how badly she wanted to figure out what she wanted to figure out. A strange sensation washed over her, not unlike what she felt when she levitated or when she teleported. It was like both, together, but it was not coming from within. It was coming from--.
Grace squinted and looked to the horizon. Although invisible, she felt like she could see a point of light, a point of dark, a point--.
Anyone observing from the seaside would have seen a strikingly blue gardevoir standing on a dock vanish and a faint white trail of disrupted water extend in a straight line from where she stood to a spot on the horizon. To Grace, she saw nothing as she quickly clenched her eyes shut. The sound of wind blowing across her gills was nearly deafening, and only in that they were exchanging gasses for her did she not expect to suffocate as she was being pressed through the air with such force that she could not breathe with her lungs, no matter had her torso ten times its own strength.
Her velocity slowed gradually and when she felt her fabric dress settle and touch gently her legs under a cool breeze she opened her eyes and saw it. Well, it was not merely a face, light nor dark, but the outline of the form was that of the entity. Only with this perspective did she realize that it was the same form as the little creature she met named Junior but on a larger scale and in a different pose.
The Keymaster asked with an annoyed tone, "Why do you keep contacting me? And, how? You use her voice but you are not her. Explain yourself."
Grace stuttered a little, intimidated by the power that this creature had. It emanated a psychic energy stronger than anything Grace ever before felt. Glancing around, she was nowhere near any land, and it clearly required no effort for it to keep her suspended in the air, even forgetting the force that brought her this far out to sea. "I don't know what is happening to me. I don't know who or what you are, really. If I did something, it was an accident. I--I just want to go home." Grace could not clutch her purse and book more tightly, but she tried.
The Keymaster glared at Grace. "I am going to investigate you. You will feel it. You will not die. Do you understand?"
Grace nodded helplessly. The sensation was intense. Grace appreciated the reassurance that she would not die from this experience. It took some time, because when Grace realized that she was conscious again, the sun had moved in the sky.
The Keymaster spoke with a sympathetic, but disappointed, tone. "You have allowed a xatu to exploit your mind."
Grace nodded affirmatively as though that statement were a question.
"That was not wise. They meddle. I viewed many of your memories. Some have been sealed away by the xatu. I don't know why it did this, but it did so to thwart my investigation."
Grace nodded affirmatively, caught herself, and shook her head. "Wait, it knew I would come here, and that you would read my mind?"
"It also knew how to make me think that I could get around its seals, wasting my time, patience, and energy." The Keymaster's telepathy wavered near the end of her statement, either to convey, or because of, that exertion.
"Is the xatu why I keep seeing someone--another gardevoir--in my dreams, telling me about bad things happening in the future? I can't see the future in visions but it seems to give me them."
"No. That entity is a gardevoir, but I cannot identify it precisely. It is familiar to me somehow, and it is the one that speaks with her voice, through you."
"Whose voice?"
"Your mother's. Our paths once crossed and she asked a great favor of me. I felt a compassion for her cause that I would have been wise to suppress, but I aided her anyway. That effort was in vain. I do not know where the gardevoir that you see comes from, but you are not possessed or haunted, it is not a xatu or other Psychic-type influencing you, and most importantly, I see no malice toward you in its nature. However, I do believe that it may not share your goals. If it returns, do not refuse to hear its message, but realize that the consequences of its will are yours to bear." An uncomfortable silence held for a moment before the Keymaster continued. "And, one more thing you must know before I send you back: If you meet Simon face-to-face again, before you do whatever the situation and the anger inside you compels you to do, ask him to let you see the day that he retired from the League. He will let you synchronize with him to see it. After you break contact, then you may do whatever you feel that you must. But--"
Grace's vision became distorted, the sound projected into her mind seemed to echo ominously, and her body itself began to feel like it was being slowly and carefully stretched and crumpled and boiled and frozen.
"--Do not exploit his mind during that connection or cause him any harm before you witness that memory. If you do, I will destroy you. Estranged as we are, he is still my original trainer and thus part of my family, and I will not tolerate anyone taking advantage of any one of them through treachery."
Grace had no opportunity to agree to Joan's terms before being traveled back to the docks. No longer interested in following back the trail, Grace fled.
An eerie familiarity swept over Grace again, this time as she entered Hexyloxy Terminal. The voice on the public address was the one in her dreams, her nightmares. The people were thinking the same thoughts. Feeling the same feelings. Not exactly--each was unique--but in whole, in average, the same. She approached a ticket counter, specifically a window with an image of a pokeball illuminated on a sign above it. "I want to go to Rennin." She did not see anybody and glanced around for a service bell.
A dodrio raised one head while its other two used their beaks to return scattered wadded papers to a recently toppled trash bin. "West line doesn't go to Rennin. It goes to Nixymyl and Linalool." The speaking head went to work and another continued, "Linalool's a good choice. You can shop till you're poor and take a bus from there to Rennin." The third head spelled the second. "You should get off at Buchu. That's a little closer but you gotta go around the mountain. So it isn't any better. Probably worse." The first head popped up again. "After that the train doesn't stop till Nybomy, goes south from there to Coroxon before coming west again, so that's probably the last stop you might want, if you've got some pokemon business in mind."
"Linalool, please." Grace advanced what remained of her money; coins came back.
"Poor already?" asked the second head, "Why go to Linalool when you can't shop? Or afford a bus ride."
"Riding alone?" the third head asked with a hint of suspicion.
"My--my master is waiting for me in Rennin."
First clucked with an appropriate timbre for a customer service engineer. "Alright, then. You've got about forty minutes to pass."
Grace turned around, saw there was no queue behind herself, and turned around again. "If you don't mind my asking, do you have to have three heads to be a pokemon working here?"
"It helps." "They pro-rate you for the extra hats." "You don't need three heads but you do need an employed master. Why?"
"Oh, my sister needs a better job, so when I see a pokemon with a human job, it gets my attention."
"Her, or your, master got her a bad job?" "She should break and find a better trainer or just go wild." "I have to pick up garbage with my beaks when I don't have guests at my counter. What is she doing that makes this an improvement?"
"She's a masseuse."
"She touches humans on purpose?" The second head only shook itself. "I have a stiff muscle she can rub." The first head nipped at the third's neck. "Read my mind, if you can sort it out from my others." The other two heads removed the hat from the head that spoke last.
Grace concentrated. "No, no. I'm not asking for her for myself, and I do have a master. And he's good. But she doesn't, really."
The heads re-placed the hat. "Alright. But if she does want to go on her own without being on her own, or getting a ticket to Coroxon, there are options." "Rennin, right? Waitressing in Rennin pays good if you know where to go." "Starboard for men, larboard for 'mon!" "That's backward. We do the work, they sit and be heavy." "It's right from where you come in from."
The rightmost head laid itself on the counter and grumbled. "Can I be of any further service, Ma'am?" All three heads squawked when the leftmost bit the middle's neck to shut it up.
Grace shook her head and left their argument to entertain the next patron unfortunate enough to be a pokemon needing a ticket.
Grace stayed near the walls, away from foot traffic, and tried not to pay attention to anything. Driven by thirst, however, she felt a need to go to a place she had never before been, but knew well. Approaching the vending machines, she noticed a security guard standing nearby. She recognized his face, although it was obscured by a beard and moustache. She sensed him watching her as she submitted payment to the machine. She touched the button for lemonade, but hesitated. "This machine gives wrong flavors, sometimes," she muttered to herself.
"Sometimes they do," commented the guard.
Grace pushed the button. Both watched as a yellow can dispensed.
"Other times it's less interesting," continued the guard, returning to his duty.
Grace opened the can and drank slowly. Something was on his mind. Something was on her mind.
"Don't take this the wrong way, please, but, aren't you going to hassle me, for being a pokemon running loose in the terminal."
The guard did not break his gaze from the crowd. "Nope. You have a ticket and you paid for your drink. Psychic-types who try to teleport beyond the turnstiles or cheat the machines get hassled."
"Does that happen often?"
"Mostly it's the abra-kadabra-'kazams; they think they're so smart. Your kind is usually well-behaved, but I catch one once in a while."
"I reminded you of that when I came over here, didn't I?"
"Yep. One in particular. She lied to me, straight up. I remember it because that's something else your kind don't usually do. But, I was watching the whole time, and I knew why she lied, so I let her go. After that, and getting the wrong flavor of drink, I figured she needed at least one thing to break her way."
"He left her," Grace whispered.
That got the guard's attention. "Are you reading my mind?"
Grace sensed his evaluation of her about to shift in a very big way. "No. I just--"
"Then, how do you know that? I know Psychic-types can pick up stuff when they go somewhere another one's been and used their powers fully, but you can't tell me that you're picking up what happened here years ago by using the same soda machine."
Grace's nervousness began showing. Letting her purse hang heavily from one arm, she held the soda can before her face, lowered her eyes, and spoke with undue difficulty, "I don't know how I know. Please don't..."
The guard looked back to the crowd. Grace lowered the can and looked up toward him again. He removed his cap and feigned a need to scratch his head, revealing a shiny silver netting within it for a couple seconds. "You Psychic-types are weird. You know that?" He reclaimed his composure. "Get yourself to him, and stay close."
Grace nodded and soon, aboard her train, she departed Hexyloxy Terminal.
The passenger cars were lightly populated and, per regulation, pokemon without escorts were grouped together. Grace soon sneaked into an unoccupied box and made herself comfortable. Riding toward the sunset, a panoply of colors graced the partly cloudy sky, stands of untouched forest, splendid lakeside homes, and the surface of that massive lake, Nixymyl. Already half-asleep, the rhythmic thrumming of the train car and picturesque view behind the window carried her the rest of the way.
"Understand, I am not happy but you make me do this." Pierre fiddled with his gardevoir's opened ball. "There. You will stay in this room and be good, no?" He waited a beat to see her response, but she was numb to his words. "Now, I make preparations some more, and when our guests are here, you will impress them with your grace and obedience, yes." Pierre exited and checked with a hired chef inside the kitchen.
The gardevoir gazed through a large window over Lake Nixymyl and toward the forest beyond. Linalool lay behind one part of it, Lake Muramis another, but between them; that's where she longed to be. Her power began welling.
"He has you," Fouroughs commented again in his dull, somber, eerie voice.
"I know. He said, 'in this room.' You will keep me here."
"No. The ball will. Your last try at escape upset him. He does not trust you now, even under my eye."
"Only this room. What about when I defecate?" She imagined planting a fresh steamer centered squarely upon Pierre's grand piano's middle-C.
"Carry the ball with you. It will recall you if you try to leave the ball, or carry the ball too far away. He will prefer that you disobey his precise order to stay in this room than to foul it with your sarcasm."
Hearing a call for his aid in a matter, Fouroughs left the gardevoir alone. Turning away from the view that tantalized her, the gardevoir circled about the room, feeling caged and uneasy. She ceased her circuits and seated herself upon that piano's bench. Bored by the empty room, she turned about and tried to find amusement in the ivory. Pecking at it spontaneously, she passed time alone till Fouroughs returned. She did not sense his approach, and jumped slightly when he touched her shoulder.
"You are thinking only of pure emotion. To use this machine, you must put rhythm and mystery into the keys."
"I'm not using it. I'm waiting for Master's next command."
"It is to wear this." Fouroughs put within her reach a costume. The gardevoir balked. "It is a uniform so our guests will know your role as a server and not be mistaken." The gardevoir slumped slightly. "I will wear mine. You will wear yours."
Standing to take the clothes-hanger from the dusclops, she examined it. At least it was designed to accommodate her horns.
"Your predecessor became adept and played this piano for our master. If you do, too, it will improve your relationship with him."
The gardevoir struggled a little bit, having worn clothes only once before, and then out of curiosity rather than necessity. "I want no relationship with him. I want to leave."
"I know. I, too. He has us. We won't."
Pierre re-entered his great room. "Oh, you two look absolutely marvelous, and you," he approached his gardevoir and adjusted her uniform slightly as it was not quite straight, "are almost downright scandalous! Now, who was touching my piano when I wasn't looking?" He asked with an accusing, but playful, tone.
Fouroughs sold her out.
"Well, well, mon petit, I give it to your care to use at your will whenever you are not busied with your chores. Now, our first guests may be arriving any minute, so off with you both to the kitchen and learn what the chef expects of you."
Pierre went about further preparations while his pokemon obeyed their orders.
Within an hour, Pierre's lake-side property became filled to capacity with every important person he knew. Being surrounded by humans inundating her antennae led the gardevoir to seek refuge in the kitchen, specifically by putting Fouroughs between herself and the crowd so his Ghost-type bulk would serve as a screen. Fouroughs grunted with annoyance when she followed his movements. Replying to offer an excuse, she whispered, "They won't stop looking at me; judging me."
Fouroughs resumed arranging a tray of hors d'uvre. "You are performing as a bad hostess. Show them that you are happy to serve your masters and mistresses."
"I'm not!" The gardevoir spoke so loudly that her ejaculation sounded like a bark.
"You project that, that you are not, into them. Then, they are not happy and they blame you. Project happy. Fill yourself up with the glow of a sunny sky."
"I can't. You do it."
"My form does not permit smiles, sunny or no."
The gardevoir shrugged. "I haven't felt like smiling in a long time."
Fouroughs lifted his tray. "You do sometimes. When you dream, you find something to smile at." He returned to the party and distributed bite-sized bits of things.
The chef sniffed the air. "Be a doll and flip that meat for me, Sunny." He was a very darkly skinned man whose blue-collar attire, including a grease-stained apron that told a tale of one million meals, contrasted strongly against the pristine articles that the guests wore.
The gardevoir turned to face him. He gestured toward the stove top. "Spatula's there if you want to do it the clumsy way, but I bet you could put your mind to it."
"SAAAA--NNNnnn--iii," the gardevoir said aloud to herself while flipping hamburger patties the easy way.
Jerome passed near her, carrying a bowl of shredded cheese. "That is your name, right? Or, at least how it translates. Straighten me out if I'm wrong, but I'm sure I heard the mummy say part of 'sunny-side up' in that poke-nese you all seem to be born knowing, and I'm sure he wasn't talking about the eggs we're fixing up."
Pierre approached the kitchen and summoned his gardevoir to duty, indicating a tray of drinks that needed to circulate. He entered the kitchen after she glided off. "I'm sorry if she has gotten in your way. She is obstinate and refuses to adjust."
"In my way? I could serve twice the food in half the kitchen if you brought me another just like her."
"Another?"
"Yeah, don't be blaming her for not 'adjusting,' it just means you and her ain't meant to be in the same house. Nothin' wrong with that. Trade her for another one and keep switching until you find the right one."
Pierre straightened up, feeling insulted, "I hired you to cook, not for critique."
"Sure did. But, that don't make me wrong."
Pierre left his kitchen, looked at his wait staff, and thought for a moment. He could have another one easily enough. Across the room, the gardevoir sensed him committing himself to that end, and shuddered faintly when she realized how he planned to achieve it.
Grace left the southern edge of western Linalool with a small berry in her purse, the last thing what remained of her money could afford. She continued south into Muramis Forest, letting instinct guide her, letting the faint emotional radiations of wild pokemon deflect her antennae, and thus her body and path of travel, like a compass needle. Time and trees passed without much thought until something stopped her. A glint of reflected light; a spark that stole her attention and her momentum. But for that flash it was invisible. She floated back, around, forward and backward again, first slowly then quickly, impatiently. Again she saw it, and now sensible she set a bearing and nearing where its source must be, she let fly a gentle spark by casting thunder-wave upon nothing in particular.
Embedded in a tree, a tranquilizer dart's chassis reflected arcing light.
Grace turned to face the direction that arrow pointed: East, to Rennin.
Despite her nap on the train, which proved not at all refreshing and brought her a strange dream that she did not consciously remember upon waking, fatigue began overtaking her again. She decided to stop soon if she could, expecting to find an old, abandoned cabin ahead. It had served as a refuge for herself and her mother many times when weather turned sour, and if it had not been discovered and re-occupied, or otherwise ruined, she expected it would serve again.
Approaching it, she stubbed her barely-elevated toe upon one of a few broken shingles that slid from its roof over a year prior. Inside, she awakened an ariados, but in offering it a juicy berry, quickly made peace with it. Although the cabin was practically bare, it was shelter. She took off her fabric dress and wadded it up loosely, unsure if she should use it for a blanket or a pillow. Feeling what it had covered, she realized that she no longer needed to wear it for the sake of human modesty; her skirt had re-grown long enough that if anything, she would be seen as fashionable. It was the length of skirt that Scarlet seemed to prefer.
Scarlet. Ugh.
Finding a spot with a hole in the floorboard that her mother once created to accommodate her dorsal spike, Grace laid herself down flat, placed one of her hands on her ventral spike, closed her eyes, and listened to the faint noises of the forest, soaking up the faint vibrations of the whole of life's emotions, thoughts, auras, being--whatever it should be called. The peace and quiet of nature and wilderness felt alien to her. But it wasn't--it hadn't been, before she moved to the big city. Rennin, a big city. Only having been through a progression of population, touring Linalool, Coumarin, and Hexyloxy did Rennin seem as small as human reputation suggested it to be. But, the bigger cities were so noisy that they were a din. Rennin was calmer, she could feel herself moving through it when she traveled to the pokemon center and back, or to the park or wherever. It was home.
Her eyes flew open at the sound of a sudden pop. The cabin always made sounds when the temperature dropped late at night. Startle turned to comfort at that recollection.
Was it home? She had lived in Rennin for a year. She lived in the forest for... many years. Enough that they became indistinct when she tried to count them back. She remembered her mother, the time they spent in the forest, this cabin, and elsewhere.
Pieces began fitting together within her mind.
"Don't repeat her mistake," Sunny's mistake, urged the green gardevoir. The great lugia tried to help her, but could not. She was--the gardevoir in the train station, it had to be her mother. Her final gift, an overwhelming communication forced into Grace's mind before surrendering her to Joe's care; why give her daughter these memories, no more, no others? Unless--letting him go. Nothing before that mattered, everything that followed, consequences thereof. "That was her mistake," Grace said aloud, awakening the ariados, to whom she again apologized. Grace concentrated on the memory of the terminal and recalled in vivid detail the same vision she saw in a dream months before. She followed her mother like a ghost as she said her goodbye, got her drink, rode in a van, and was trapped by a stranger. Fragments of other dreams re-emerged and connected one by one.
Grace threw herself upon her feet and burst from the cabin. She looked left; letting her power flow through herself, she could sense the whole of Rennin, like a spot on the horizon. Snapping her gaze to her right, behind a southern peninsula of Linalool, lay Lake Nixymyl. And, upon its shoreline, somewhere, a building where her mother was held. She could not sense that, but she knew it was there.
If this... Pierre still dwelt there, or his Fouroughs, they might know something.
Grace looked toward Rennin again. Her mother was dead, she got away from Pierre one way or another, and it was all after Sunny lost her love, so what good would digging up that relic of the past do her? She had her own future to worry about; not to make the same mistake. Instinctively, she felt guilty. Why did she leave him? Because a brat tried to recall her? Is that all it took to make her make a fool of herself? No, it was after that. It was every day after that. It was that things would never quite be the same as they were. It was that "master" meant two distinct things to her, now. It was that he would not say what she wanted him to say. It was that she wanted to make him say what she wanted him to say. It was that for the first time she wanted to speak with a particular gardevoir and it failed to appear as though it sought to snub her. It was that she knew Carlos was her only lead and that she would find that man in Hexyloxy if she stayed away from home, only for a little while. A day or two. How many days had it been? Years in the forest, days in the forests and cities, the numbers fled from her, causing a frustration that only reflexively casting calm-mind upon herself could dispel.
Then, as she opened her eyes again, two things struck Grace. First, that the green gardevoir, the one that claimed to be guiding her, confirmed to be a gardevoir by the lugia, was still unidentified. But, if it knew Sunny and surely it knew her well, then--Pierre must have gotten another one, another gardevoir. Grace turned again to face eastward. Second, that she herself was absent from all of these memories at the lake home. She started to travel back along the path by which she came to the cabin. She let resolve drive her. "I'm going to find Dad."
In her mind, she recalled the image of Pierre's dusclops. Inside her imagination, he laughed with a deep, cold reverberation, and then spoke. "You have. Now what?"
She telekinetically snatched a spent tranquilizer dart from a tree as she glided past it and slipped it into her purse.
Meanwhile, within a decrepit old shack, an ariados crossed from one corner to another, took up a forgotten dress, and cast it over its body as best it could. It had always wanted to feel pretty.