Title: Cycle
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 419
Genre: Character Study, Drama, Horror
Warnings: Purple prose, general fail
Summary: Erika. She is the caretaker of her garden and everything that breathes within it.
Disclaimer: Pokémon isn't mine.
Author's Notes: Written 23 Sep 2010. This is riffing off of Ibuberu's horror work, I don't know, I'm sick and my brain won't shut up and what the hell is this? Laurel wreaths are ancient symbols of victory and poetry, worn by Apollo and given to the winners of the Olympic games.
Erika sits in her garden and waits for the seasons to change.
Spring, summer, fall, winter: she watches as they bloom and die and bloom again, guided by her unhurried hands. Grass-types blink and wave amidst the flowers, and she is not sure who is more alive sometimes—the plants who reach for the sun, the Pokémon who fight at her beck and call, or the gym leader who sits and waits, sits and waits, guiding but never herself finding.
Her wards climb walls and windowsills, needing sunlight and air. They drape the greenhouse in a carpet of perfume. She sits patiently, a breathing, living center, and watches the room grow thick and warm around her, blindingly bright, beautiful.
And then it dies.
Her first Pokémon had been a shivering, small, needy thing. She had cupped her hands around it and lifted it high, fed it air and light and deep, rich earth, and when its life had ended, it fit into the hollows of her palms and lay still. She placed it in the ground and from it, more life had sprung.
Her first battle had been against a Rattata, a lively, quicksilver thing. Her teacher called out commands and from her Tangela flew vines upon vines, a laurel wreath to wrap around its neck. It screamed without voice; it turned to her for aid, clawing tiny furrows in the dirt as Tangela dragged it down.
Erika watched until its eyes became glassy. Her teacher left and the Rattata, too, was laid in the dirt.
Now she waits, kept company by the life that beats within and without her, blocking the windows and doors. Eventually another will come to follow in her footsteps, and when she is ready Erika will find another Rattata in order to teach her pupil how things begin and how they end. Then she will leave the room and watch her pupil bury the corpse she leaves behind, and she will never return. She will find another place, a place where nothing grows, and her own life will begin at last. She will be free of the breathless cycle, of plants that never sleep and always reach for the sky.
A flower blooms by her cheek, a riot of color in the tangle of green. Erika pets it and waits until the eyes blink open. "Not much longer," she tells it, watching as it slinks into the undergrowth. "Not much longer at all."
She folds her hands in her lap and waits.