Hello everyone! It's been a while, I got computer problems. Here is my second story on Pokemon. It is a bit different from the text I wrote on the first place. This has been beta-reviewed and I really thank once more the one who helped me make this text greater than it was. If you still have comments, remarks or advices, don't hesitate ;)

Enjoy.

There was no thunder but he was making himself deaf, there was no rain but he was running in fear, there was no wind but he was closing himself to the outside.

There was no storm in the sky nonetheless he was looking for somewhere to shelter.

He made a hasty prayer toward the horizon, so hasty he felt like stumbling. A lonely tree, with huge branches and a dense foliage, answered to his ask. It was high like a temple and risen on his road like a hazardous inn. He ran forward with as much hast as relief.

The sky was so empty it let the sun free to shine heavily on the atmosphere as it wanted to.

Shadows there would be good to him, while he'd keep light within reach.

Eve would be glad too, he perfectly knew it. So much brightness was excellent for plants torest. For life to grow up. Although Hilbert was aware he and his pokemon would not separate so much.

The young man was moving fastly. The heat he received onto his back was pushing him further like an engine. At the same time, he was looking up at the blindness becoming oblivion beyond the peak of his cap. Since he came on, he felt a peaceful breathe growing within him and he was eager to let it go.

The trunk became bigger and bigger.

The leaves became more visible.

Then, he reached the reef made of wood and peace.

He gave out for a moment, both palms on both knees and breathed with force. He felt warm perspiration drops run along his forehead, thin wet trails where his heavy hair would come to soak, move down his face, and fall from his noise. He felt as satisfied as the adventurer he was supposed to be...

Then he got up, hands on hips, and smiled at once when he thought :

In the end, I'm the winner.

His look went across the tree's bark, traveled it and felt it rude and irregular. When he reached the branches crown, Hilbert stared at it. He observed it shivering, so powerfully its leaves were shaken, sheltering him from the sunlight.

The tree seemed to boil in its very core from the sap, heated up by the sunlight all around. It appeared to be like its blood. The tree was breathing too, he recalled it while appreciating a soft and cold breeze passing over him. And as he was listening to the beat in his temples, he thought it was the tree's in fact, echoing through him.

Hilbert could feel its life like an extention of the earth's own, which remained invisible beneath them all, which could only be heard within graves or seen under footprints. He had the conviction of it, deep in his mind.

He was nowhere alone.

By this moment, he found out the world he had seen and looked for existed for real. He was surrended of it, merged into it, here under the tree. It was so great it could be reached anytime, anywhere, here under the tree.

But he knew he could be deprived of it, there. If ever he wanted to, he could flee back to his own roots. Where he felt now as jailed.

Hilbert began to hold out his hand to the light he was released of, under the umbrella of leaves. It was so brightful, so hot. So blinding, so warming...

But he stopped his fingers right onto the border between both worlds : the one he had left, and the one he had joined. Right where past and present were becoming oblivion.

The tree was now the keeper of it, and so of himself for the moment.

So he fell lighter on the ground, between roots appearing from the ground, going along as if to cradle him.

"How about peace...?"

Afterwards, he let go of his bags and took off his trainer cap, passing a hand through his ruffled hair. He hadn't forgotten the only PokeBall he had brought with him for the travel, and took it firmly in his palm as if he was clinging to it. He pressed the button and threw it in the wind. It fell almost religiously, in silence, merging into the soft grass like a stroke. As though the critter it contained was perfectly aware to what place she had been given to arise another time. It had felt it, Hilbert knew it.

The two jaws of the object split suddenly, then spat out a white and glowy beam, which eventually took the form of Hilbert's companion, appearing with all of its colors in the middle of a starry dust. Camouflaged within the countryside, the pokemon seemed at once to stand where it was meant to stay.

From the scene, Hilbert hadn't had missed anything. He found it more relishing than ever. And it is even more, since she turns on herself towards him, adorned with her sharp irises, her white ivory teeth, her long and graceful tail. Shivering like a big burning leaf in the wind.

"Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiv!"

"Hi Eve !"

Both coming up with arms wild-opened.

His Servine couldn't hold it too long, and ran to the vast green ocean, and jumped into it. It was calling for her to explore it, to merge into it. Eve's muzzel was like a boat prow, allowing her to cross the herb waves the wind was drawing on the tall grass.

She was almost entierely disappearing under the stirred flood where her body sank. A short moment, just a few seconds, Hilbert believed she had made the step of too much. He feared she might be flowing away, or be drowned in the weed any further. He was about to call her to make her way back to him on the shore, under the tree. But her muzzle changed its course, and leaped suddenly as Eve was surely chasing something.

He fell against the trunk, relieved : she had stopped just before the border he had forbidden her to cross without her being aware of it.

But as he opened his eyes, just after a sigh, he felt and knew.

He had lost balance. Through Eve's flight, peace had run away from him too. And he heard the thoughts coming back, putting him on the nerve of hesitation once again. A foot in the space. So fastly, so easily.

Now he was forced to look at the sad questions inside him, flying around his mind like vultures and making him want to shelter under a tree.

And he applied himself to do so. He wanted to take them down once and for all, so they'd only come back as a resolved past, showing him how much he had progressed.

He told himself that maybe his body had been hit by a hurried desire of loneliness in reflection of his spirit, tormented by all these questions that prevented him from seeing straight in front of him anymore.

He thought he simply could have got tired from having the excitement of adventure constantly following him. Would it have been so heavy he'd have ended only wanting it to leave his side and rest away? Even if it would only be for a moment.

He counted the months, assessed the time separating this moment of doubt from his days of confidence and excitement. He listened to the emptiness left inside him after determination had disappeared. And wondered how it could have done so quickly.

He recalled the time of infancy. And saw somehow, through flashes, all the old toys, the old books, the old songs which were taking care of him in his bedroom at that time. He mixed up in his mind the voices of enjoyed discussions made with the others, arguing, the pictures of himself he created and kept until his very departure, expecting... It was clearly the usual childhood of people nowadays. Nothing strange wasn't it?

So what had made his own soul to recede so much and so fast from the path he had enjoyed waiting for years?

Wasn't it his purpose to become a trainer? Maybe he had already reached that.

"Impossible, I'm not who I expected to be yet."

So were those dreams of conquest not his ? But somehow he had managed to keep them lovingly in his arms during all of his youth, so he continued to be rocked by them.

Hilbert took his gaze down, and watched his hands resting on his knees.

He had changed. It suddenly came to his mind. The old time was gone, the child he had been wasn't but an old memory now. To be honest he didn't feel the same as before. At all.

Was that it? Was he the problem in the end?

But as a child he had only taken what had been offered to him. Would he have chosen to enter this universe if he could have been presented to another choice? Maybe he didn't like Pokemon so much after all.

He looked in his memory for the first time he had heard off those critters. He went far, as far as he could. But couldn't recall.

He sighed, suddenly all his life appeared to not be truly his. As though he had never possessed anything of himself. But rather his being had been given to something else.

...

What was he imagining so suddenly?

He didn't know, he felt tired now. His head was painful against the hard trunk. So he rose it up from it. He didn't want to think anymore. Just to enjoy the moment, to take advantage of having something listening to him to express and free himself of the pressure a little more.

To let go for a moment. To stop the race. To breathe.

He followed his heart, it led him to a great idea.

From his bag he showed up to the world that had welcomed him another of his faithful friend. One he would never question the part of happiness and infancy he had given. He knew also Eve liked her.

So he called for her to come back to him. And as soon as she identified what was resting between his hands, she became eager for her ears to hear it, forgot her exploration of the green sea and ran faster out of the grass.

Hilbert enjoyed seeing her take place on his right, lifting up her tail like it was a tailcoat or a dress before sitting lightly on the ground. He even began to giggle at her stare on the instrument, waiting for it to begin.

But as his fingers remained motionless above the strings...

"Huuuuuuuv!"

"Yeah, I know!" he laughed.

Then he concentrated on his guitar. He put his fingers in the right position, ready to action. Breathed. And started.

The strings sang first, setting and repeating the chosen melody. Then it was for him to complete :

This world will never be
What I expected.
And if I don't belong
Who would have guessed it?
I will not leave alone
Everything that I own
To make you feel like

It's not too late

...