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~x Piano Keys x~
Spring
Chapter One: Prelude
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There were a few things you needed to know to understand Blair Liath.
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She was on top of a tower, alone with silence. Wisps of cloud floated by, the sky's ceiling feeling close enough to touch. Where was she? How did she get here? The place seemed familiar to her in an eerie way, like looking at old photographs of people you thought you knew.
"Have you made your decision yet?" A voice interrupted her thoughts. It seemed to come from everywhere, high and deep at the same time, both question and accusation.
She shook her head, turning around though the origin of the voice made no appearance. Something about the situation struck her as terribly wrong.
"Truth or Ideals... One will make you a hero and the other a villain." She got the feeling that she'd heard this before, though she couldn't remember where. The voice continued impassively, "And you, you are destined to be a hero. So what will it be?"
Before she could answer, there was a crash to her right. The sky darkened instantaneously and wind coiled around her pulling in every direction. Red. Blue. Red. Blue. The colors were bright percussive bursts of color against the black. This was familiar as well.
The voice continued as if it hadn't even noticed. "Tell me. What is your answer?"
She opened her mouth to speak-
Blair's eyes snapped open, her heart thrumming staccato against her bedsheets. She counted one-and-two-and-three-and-four-and ritardando. It was a rehearsed schedule by now - the dream would come and Blair would forget. That's how it went. The brunette girl opened her mouth wide in a yawn, though no sound came out. She then reached over to her bedstand and turned the radio from a slow Bach to Unova's Hottest Hits. An upbeat tune rang in the room, pulling Blair up from her drowsiness. Sitting up, she caught sight of her calender pinned to a wall across the room. Today's date was circled in red. Blair rubbed at her eyes and sighed.
On cue, the door opened; her mother had heard the music switch. Her face was smiling, but Blair still read signs of weariness between the lines. "Happy birthday, sweetie." Blair tried to smile, but couldn't. The result was a face twitch that was either funny or sad. Her mother didn't laugh, so Blair guessed it was the latter. "I'm sorry."
Today was the day her friends Cheren and Bianca would leave on their Pokémon journeys, their shared dream ever since they could remember. They would go and become famous Trainers and catch Pokémon and win badges. But not Blair.
"You know I would let you go if things weren't so... complicated," her mother persuaded.
Words flew through her mind. How she would be perfectly safe with a Pokémon. How she could protect herself. How she would have Cheren and Bianca with her. Instead, she just nodded.
"You'll still get a Pokémon, though, with Cheren and Bianca. You can still train, and you can help Professor Juniper." Her argument sounded weak to both of them. "Oh, sweetie. I'm sorry."
Blair nodded but didn't say anything, even as voices protested in her head that it would be no different from keeping a pet. Instead, she sat down at her piano bench. Her mother, understanding that the conversation was over, closed the door behind her. Blair rested her fingers on the black and white keys, fingers curled, knuckles flat. She took in a deep breath, recalling her piano teacher's words. "Don't think. Just breathe." She breathed and Moonlight Sonata was heard in the house.
She couldn't say anything to her mother. She hadn't said a word in seven years.
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One, Blair Liath was mute.
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The door opened again in the third repeat of the second movement; Blair didn't know how much time that actually was.
"Blair! Happy birthday!" The chord Blair had been playing was jarred as she was tackled out of the bench by a blond blur.
"Bianca, she was nearly finished with the movement," a black-haired boy chastised from the doorway, though he held a rueful smile. Blair noticed his new outfit: a neat lapeled blue blazer and freshly ironed pants, bought especially for this day. "Nice playing, by the way."
The blond girl—Bianca—pouted, adjusting her green hat (a gift from Blair a few months ago) and smoothing out her favorite white dress, worn at the hem and slightly stained from that one incident with the soup that was never to be spoken of again. "Sorry, Blair. I was just excited to see you. And we brought presents!"
Blair had to smile as Bianca fumbled with a box. It was fifty percent covered with wrapping paper, fifty percent with tape; it looked like Bianca had done the wrapping job. Blair made a series of fluid hand movements: "You didn't have to."
Bianca giggled and made a gesture back, a bit clunkier than Blair's: "Just open the presents."
The first thing Blair's mom had done when Blair became mute was to get her a sign language tutor. It had taken months of convincing, of saying "See this? This means book. Can you say book?" before Blair finally relented and grasped onto a tiny, tiny part of her lost voice. A large part of it had to do with Cheren and Bianca finding out and wanting in. It was only after they started coming to her lessons that Blair first reluctantly signed back, "Yes, I can say book; I heard you the first time. I'm mute, not deaf." But the looks of shock and joy on their faces made it worthwhile.
Blair shredded the wrapping paper apart with seamless grace, lifting the inhabitants up to eye sight. Running Shoes from Cheren and new headphones from Bianca. It was one of those times when even if she had words, there were none to be spoken. She threw her arms around her two best friends: Thank you.
Cheren adjusted his glasses awkwardly around Blair's arms. "Um. Blair. You can let go now."
Blair let go and poked Cheren in the face. Bianca giggled and poked Cheren also. Sometimes words weren't needed to express friendship.
"Stop it," Cheren said when the girls had degraded into child-play. "Blair, your mom should be receiving the box with the Pokémon from Professor Juniper, correct?"
Blair and Bianca quieted, looking at each other. Bianca with barely concealed excitement, Blair with barely concealed frustration. She was used to silence, but the silence between them then was even more awkward than usual. Cheren's face was completely blank, but to Blair it read of his almost bursting excitement, feverish anticipation, and burning ambitions to be Champion. Bianca's face was about to split with the force of its grin, but to Blair it read of fluttering doubts and a deep secret fear.
Once you shut your mouth, your other senses want to compensate. That was something Blair had realized rather early. She heard and saw new things, in the structure of a stride or sound of a sigh. In the way the postman dragged his feet or the way her mother looked when she was alone. The only problem was that she couldn't do anything about them. Her thoughts were broken off as the door opened.
"It's here!" Bianca shouted, jumping up and down.
"Bianca," Cheren said calmly (or at least appearingly so). "Let Blair's mother through."
"Oops. Sorry, Ms. Liath." Bianca sheepishly let the woman with the brightly wrapped box through. Blair's mother smiled.
"It's okay, Bianca. I know all of you have been waiting a long time for this. I'll just leave you to it." The door closed and the neatly wrapped present was left on the table.
"Blair should open it and pick first," Cheren said before Bianca could lunge on the box. "It's her birthday, after all." The unspoken words 'and she's the one who doesn't get to leave on a journey' were left unsaid, but Blair heard them anyway. Sometimes she thought she heard far too much.
But she still opened the present, the red bow sliding apart and the box collapsing. Three PokéBalls laid innocently on a black cushion. She took a breath and put her hand on the first one.
Its surface was temperate, neither warm nor cool. And faintly, she felt the thrumming like a heartbeat. Fast as the wind, interwoven with flutes and bassoons. The feeling of the wind rustling in the leaves of the trees, leaving shifting shadows. And within the lilting melody: a seething ambition.
Blair opened her eyes and put her hand on the next PokéBall, which felt warm to the touch. The heart beat was slower but steadier, like a drum beat: constant, rhythmic, the image of a tribal dance around a bonfire. Within the steady dance: burning energy.
She moved her hand to the last PokéBall, which felt like cool still water under her hand. The beat was steady as falling rain, the singing of a storm. Within the storm's symphony was a loyalty as steady as rain and fierce as a torrent.
Blair closed her fist.
Cheren quickly picked up the woodwind one, and Bianca the drums. The music in Blair's head had lowered to a hushed murmur, growing into a crescendo. The three friends looked at each other and nodded. Three flashes of white light.
A green reptilian creature with gigantic scarlet eyes wandered up to Cheren, the leaf on her tail swishing as she touched her head to his palm. An orange piglet bounded up to Bianca, the ball on his spiral tail bouncing as he jumped excitedly over her.
And in front of Blair, a proud creature looked up with shining black eyes in a head of short white fur. In a fluffy blue collar and body rested a simple shell. Blair knew what it was: an Oshawott. The two stared at each other for a moment longer. Then:
"Hello, fair maiden. Art thou my Mistress?"
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Two, Blair Liath could understand Pokémon.
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Blair was unable to answer because 1) if she could, then the whole journeying thing would be much easier, and 2) Bianca's and Cheren's Pokémon suddenly bounded over and began chattering in their own language, words as clear as if they were being spoken by any other person, not an orange pig and a snake with legs.
"Friend! Friend! My Trainer is nice!" Bianca's Pokémon beamed.
"Hmph. I suppose mine is preferable to either of yours," Cheren's Pokémon said distastefully, sticking her long pointed snout into the air.
"My Mistress is the greatest of all!" Blair's Pokémon declared, raising his shell to the air proudly. "I hereby swear to protect her Trainerness from all vile creatures!"
"My Trainer is nice, though! She is pretty and she talks to me!"
"Well, at least my Trainer doesn't just stare at everything like a creeper."
"Take back your words, wretched fiends!"
Cheren and Bianca were oblivious to the conversation. "Hey, Cheren, let's have a battle!" Bianca said excitedly.
"In here?" Cheren said, one eyebrow raised, but one side of his mouth quirked into a smirk. Then it vanished as he looked to Blair, almost guiltily. "Well, it's Blair's room... We could try having a three-way battle, I guess?"
Blair stared and stared, searching for the words that wouldn't come and wouldn't matter anyway. Just because she couldn't speak, couldn't order her Pokémon... But they were still right, weren't they? Eventually she just nodded. Bianca and Cheren's faces lit up in some ratio of excitement, relief, and guilt.
"Alright, Tepig!" Bianca addressed her orange Pokémon. "Tackle attack!"
"Counter with your own Tackle, Snivy!" Cheren's lizard swished and pounced.
"..." Only silence in the place where Blair's order should have been. Her Pokémon looked back.
"I await my orders, Mistress!" Still nothing. The Oshawott looked puzzled, but in the next moment he was knocked over by a squabbling Tepig and Snivy.
"Tackle again!"
"Duck, roll, and hit him with your tail!"
The Snivy ducked under an otherwise well-timed Tackle to have the Tepig slam into a desk and then be batted by the Snivy's tail-leaf. Oshawott uncertainly approached the scuffle only to be knocked aside as Tepig charged again. Bianca was shouting and pointing and Cheren was cooly countering with an almost professional air. They both looked animated and happy.
Blair could only watch.
This is all I'll be able to do for the rest of my life, she thought. I'll watch them on TV reaching their goals and becoming Champions while I'm stuck in Nuvema Town playing piano until the day I die. They'll forget about me and move on and I'll never achieve my dream. What happened? Why can't I just speak? Just say one word. Tackle. Tackle. TACKLE.
Blair exhaled as her throat wound itself raw, but no sound came out.
C'mon c'mon c'mon, Blair. It's just air over vocal folds. Say it. SAY IT.
Oshawott moved uncertainly around the edges of Bianca and Cheren's fight, occasionally stumbling in only to be pushed aside again to his indignance. Blair felt his frustration just as she felt her own knotted in her throat, constricting her. Everything felt wrong. The music that always lingered in the back of her head was tangled with discord, meter changing erratically with the beat of her heart.
SAY IT JUST SAY IT.
"..."
Blair would have screamed if she could. Damnit, damnit, damnit. Her Oshawott was experiencing similar annoyance, flailing around madly, attempting to barge into the scuffle before hesitating and drawing back, unwilling to join without permission from his Trainer. The music was rising in volume, a scarlet red ringing in her ears.
WHY CAN'T YOU LISTEN.
Frustration spilling over, she slammed her fist into her piano. CLANG.
The discord seemed to rattle Cheren, Bianca, and their Pokémon out of their zone and they looked up, surprised and thrown off guard. But to Blair and Oshawott, that chord seemed to set them on the right path, at once harmonizing with all the discords in her heart. It resonated in them, and in that moment by some strange miracle, both Trainer and Pokémon knew exactly what to do, the rightness there like it had been there their whole lives.
With a war cry, Oshawott took the shell from his chest and flung it at Snivy. Suddenly, the shape of the shell began to change midair, shifting into a rectangle glowing with shades of the rainbow. The transformed shell hit Snivy before rebounding at Tepig, and in one fluid movement, Oshawott caught it neatly in one paw, snatched Blair's violin bow from where it had fallen, and swept both Pokémon off their feet. The two already tired Pokémon were knocked out.
Cheren and Bianca stared at Blair as the still reverberating piano chord faded out, leaving only silence once again. Snivy and Tepig got to their feet again and joined the silence, Snivy's contemptuous, Tepig's wondering. Blair let out a silent huff that she didn't know she was holding and Bianca's face split in a grin, though it was slightly jittery. Blair realized she was still glaring at them and quickly changed her expression, giving Bianca a small smile back.
"Wow, Blair! Your Oshawott is really strong!" Bianca bubbled.
Cheren seemed a bit disappointed, but smiled anyway. "Hey, it was only because Snivy and Tepig weakened each-other first, cheater." Blair elbowed Cheren, albeit playfully (and guiltily).
"Ha! I have won back my pride, foolish peasants! I reign supreme!" The blue otter waved his makeshift sword around. Blair sighed; figured she would get the crazy one. She plucked the violin bow out of his hands, examining it for scratches. It wasn't Stradivarius, but that thing had been with her for a while. "My Mistress, that is my valiant weapon!"
Cheren and Bianca went to their respective Pokémon also. As Bianca pet her Tepig, she told him, "I'm going to name you, um... Carnitas." The newly named Carnitas jumped up happily, causing the blond girl to giggle.
"Nicknaming your Pokémon, huh?" Cheren adjusted his glasses as he met the eyes of his Snivy. Ever the planner, he already knew what he was going to call his Pokémon. "How do you feel about the name Natrix?" The Snivy, now Natrix, hissed an agreement.
Neither of them bothered to ask Blair if she was going to name her Pokémon, and she didn't blame them. What was the point in nicknaming a Pokémon you could never call by name? And it wasn't like the Pokémon would ever even know it.
Blair looked at her Oshawott, and his beady black eyes looked back. In that moment, they connected. She knew that he would never be okay with sitting in her house all day, listening to her play Moonlight Sonata. He was born for adventure. Now that she thought about it—so was she. Bending down, she rested a hand on his head.
Your name will be Kenbu.
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Three, Blair Liath was going to be Champion.
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~Blair's first name means 'battle,' fitting because she's a Trainer and her "original" name, Hilda, also means 'battle.' It's also somewhat similar to the word 'black' and an ironic homophone of the word 'blare.' Her last name, Liath, means 'gray.'
~Cheren's Snivy's name, Natrix, comes from the name of genus of grass snakes.
~Bianca's Tepig's name, Carnitas, comes from a type of pork dish. (hahaha)
~Blair's Oshawott's name, Kenbu, comes from a type of ancient Japanese sword dance. This is sort of meant to symbolize the relationship between Blair and her Pokémon: that of a dancer and accompaniment.
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A few notes:
1. The first half of this fic will partially follow the BW storyline, but the second half will be original.
2. The cover is adapted from artist Tang Yau Hoong, whose work is completely amazing and in no way belongs to me.
3. Writing this is a personal challenge. I've always been really fascinated by selective muteness. I've had the idea of a mute Trainer using music to battle for a while, now. It's also a challenge to overcome the cliche of speaking to Pokémon.
4. If you were one of the first people to read this story you know that I'm a horrible person.