Author's Note: Written on a whim in the midst of other projects.
Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon.
Red hydrangeas, I love red hydrangeas, though hydrangeas themselves are normally blue. When dawn is peeking over the water behind my small, cozy home, I get up to water them.
Their color this season is especially vivid; I wonder if it is something that I've been doing differently or just plain luck that me and my Destiny get to enjoy such lovely blooming.
She's an Ivysaur, my Destiny. Has been for a long time. Lovely girl, she is, a bit timid at times, but only because she's not as agile as she used to be. Destiny thinks I care about that sort of thing but I don't.
Oh, the adventures we've shared together. Us, that's always how it was; we were completely inseparable, Destiny and I.
Growing up as a child in Kanto, my first Pokémon was a humble Rattata, Hector, who was as weak as he was fearless. You can imagine how crushed I was to lose him to poisoning.
Viridian Forest: not a speck of mercy can be found within those suffocating tree beds. Lost in strong eternal anguish (for my age, at least), I was inconsolable. My room was a place of solitude so impenetrable that I myself was frightened at the prospect of leaving it.
Red and white: a Pokéball. It was the first day out of my childhood house in a little under a month when I came across it, just nestled in a grassy hummock.
Eager to see what was inside, I pressed the button. Some people are introduced to their life long companions through a friend or relative. Mine was by way of a click.
Light and dark green, blue the shade of a dying day and eyes the color of its rebirth. Those eyes, how much they changed with the years we spent battling, training, learning and loving. You can't forget times like that.
Destiny crushed all competition with a swift whip of her vines; nothing even cared to stand a chance. Team Rocket? Not likely. The "Elite" Four? Laughable.
It never came down to strength in the end, just the two T's: team work and tactics. I didn't believe in destiny, but I did believe in Destiny, if that's not too painfully corny to admit.
When a town offered no shelter – which was most nights – we would sleep in dead fields of wheat where the night sky's massive expanse of jewels were ours to gape at. I can still feel, sixty years later, the stout amber rods beneath our backs and bulbs.
Destiny's evolution into Ivysaur was a horrifyingly painful one; no one could have seen it coming. She screeched ceaselessly during the entire process, then afterwards fell into an unshakeable death grip. I was more worried than I had been in my entire life, dealing with a repeat of Hector's tragically abrupt ending.
The Poké-Center had answers, albeit non-specific ones. "Unwilling but unable to stop the process," was most prominent amongst the morbidly interested doctors. She recovered in a day.
My next year was spent looking high and low for an Everstone, eventually finding one in a cave festering with Zubats.
We made a necklace of a shard, Destiny holding one end of the string in her mouth and me holding the other with careful hands. The crystal was hardly flawless, bumpy and nearly opaque with little translucence, yet it was hers. She wore it with the decorum of a humble princess.
That was our relationship, relying on one another for problems large and small. I must admit that she solved more of my conflicts than I did hers, but than again, Destiny never had anything truly serious.
I had the eventual loss of a wife and daughter, both via illness. On their graves I would sit for hours, unaware to the extent of Destiny's limitless patience. So now, I repay that the only way I know how: red hydrangeas.
You have Passed,
And so shall I
Nothing Lasts,
But our bonds shan't Die
Destiny's stone isn't too well cut or polished and I know she wouldn't mind a bit, but it still bothers me. I'm grateful for everything though, and happy now. Such is life I suppose: shorter than you want it, but sweet as summer's perfumed breeze.
One day, not too long from now, I'll join her, my wife, and child. Until then, the bloom this season is particularly nice.
THE END
Hope you enjoyed! Review if you'd like, I'd like. :)