Hello warmints ! (Just tryin' to learn that word don't worry ;).) Here is the English translation of my story "Rencontre avec une ombre" !
As I wrote on my profile description, may I ask you to "check" upon my text ? If you've got time, please read it and find the awful grammatical mistakes (I'm sure there are some of them) it flaunts, in order to help me improve my writing. As the french student I am, I'd be very grateful.
BEWARE !
This'd be voluntary work Xd.
Hope you'll like it either way, wish you'd at least enjoy it !
It is late in Mistralton City, at the ending of a still warm autumn evening,
after the nurses have taken over from each other to smile at the coming night,
after the occupied couchs have shivered one last time from cold air thrill,
and after sleep has the dreams all squeezed in together,
a young girl desires, from all of her fifteen years of age, to escape the oblivion that looms over the entire city, since dusk has fallen.
She makes the decision to leave the centre where those invisible and unstoppable arms are heading, escorted with one pal of hers who she knows is capable of keeping them safe.
Her long dark dress slides like the spectre of a dance everywhere her own feet are walking.
Her big blue gaze falls upon every place they meet, fixing on them intensively.
The empty reflects of those empty lanes and blind houses seem all familiar to her.
This terrible anxiety that cotaminates the night submits to her eyes.
The unseen shadows are ruled tonight.
Thanks to her Gothitelle, to her eyesight under her own power, to her dress that is faithfully following her, Rosa feels as the mistress of the night-time world.
The victorious procession sneaks soundlessly on the roads outside the city, and moves aside the darkness on these dusty paths.
Rosa takes a deep breath.
"How appreciable it is to breathe in the night." she whispers glancing softly to her companion.
The latter lightly smiles, and by giving her usual serious look, utters a sweet cry of her own.
The teen then turns to the shades which are still before them.
Two of them suddenly appear from the depth of the night. They are more distinct than the others. Nevertheless, Rosa swears they weren't in front of them just two seconds ago... Her heart beats faster, like a sharp fist knocking on her chest, she stops. Her pokemon does as well, but slightly behind her, without any way to notice the strange apparition in front of her trainer. They seem to remain balanced on the path's border, between grass and dust. There are no trace of their arrival left, no prints on the sand, weed didn't move, trees didn't growl...
Their form are shapeless and seem to constantly change, as a vision deforming dimensions. As tall as her own Gothitelle, similar to illusions that night would have cast on the world she begins to haunt and cover by day's end.
Their shape get more precise, since Rosa is still walking toward them, as if attracted by a call from beyond the grave. In her spirit they look more and more like pictures of the past, like spirits released on earth by the blackness in order to crawl among the living. Until the sun delivers them.
They're only some feet away now.
T-They moved...
Very slow movements... they moved very, very slowly. As if time has ate them.
Dear Arceus...
Making one step, further, the young girl finally recognizes one of the shape she has in front of her. Of course she actually just left one at the centre...
An Audino.
What for god's sake...?
The one on the right... is indeed a big pinkie pokemon, an Audino. It has exactly the same figure that those which mutter politely in all pokemon centres. Except this one appears to be a wild one.
Doing some supplementary steps, Rosa manages to identify the second figure, the one on the left.
A human shape.
...
It is a human.
A little more impressive than she is.
He has a bag, a cap. He's surely a trainer.
And a male.
Who is hitting the pokemon's nose with weak flicks. Then stroking its forehead, ears and antennae distractedly. While the critter agrees loudly, probably happy to find someone to give it caresses this far in the depth of the night.
What if this Audino was in fact his own ? Not only nurses were allowed to capture them, right ?
Suddenly, the naive chubby and content head of the pokemon turns up toward her. Its ears vibrate a bit. And short after, Rosa sees the trainer's face gazing at her with a similar heaviness.
He reminds her a bit of Hugh.
"S-S-Sorry, I-..." she stammered.
He seems not so older than her, although his features, as well as the shadows of his cheeks and eyes, are tired and dug. His chin and jowls are covered with thin brown hair. Rosa gets a little disgusted from it.
"Is this Audino yours ?"
The unknown boy stares at her from under his cap which sharpens his gaze. The latter doesn't reflect anything of aggressive or ill-intentioned. It only appears exhausted, but with a certain power in its iris. Like a wounded pokemon. The girl gets pity for him.
"Less than the Gothitelle which stands on your right I guess." he utters in a guttural tone.
The dress-suited pokemon finally put her attention on them, hearing herself called in the dark. And on the forgotten night, the two trainers and pokemon face each other.
Sat next to the other on the early weting grass, he doesn't end his stars contemplation, she doesn't finish to learn, by putting nervously her fingers in the dirt. They haven't talked about him, as she wants them to do. As if he would be in fact, a sort of messenger. Maybe he's right here in order to indicate her the right way to walk on, and to answer her questions that owe to be answered.
"And do you think I... I could finally make it ?"
Eternity seems to take her when she stares at him.
"If you believe in what you do, you'll certainly do it."
Still without a glance from him since they have joined, Rosa leans forward with her arms crossed on her lap, whispering by looking at her pokemon watching the stars, straight like a dancer :
"Is believing always what's hardest ?"
The young man answers as he has always done it, petting the pink pokemon's head that rested on his thighs :
"Believe in what you want, that is easy. Believe in what you got, this is generally more difficult. Nonetheless it's always with what you have that you obtain..."
"...What you want." she said with him.
This ows her the unknown boy to look at her, coldly but smoothly. She stares back shily, and smiled.
She sweares that he imitated her, under the shadow of his face.
Now she wants... to stay with him... or him to stay with her. She wants everything to remain as possible as it seems to be since he's with her. As much achievable.
She would have wanted to always trust what she is and what she has, as much as she does now.
Right this instant.
May all of her wishes become reality.
It'll might be now or never.
"We..."
"It is all a question of Ideal and Reality."
She utterly comes back to him, and finds him still looking up at the burning stars.
"Which one at the cost of which one ? I don't know if there is a truth for that... It's maybe for you to decide."
Here, she is lost now. She suddenly gets the impression he went on another path, totally different from the one they were making their way through until now.
Is he a real human in the end ? Does he exist as she does within this night ?
Is he alone there ?
And so unreachable...
Maybe he pursues something on his way too. In spite of all the suffering he seems to get from it. His eyes, his features...
Is it because this way is only his own, that maybe she doesn't possess the right nor to join nor to interfere in his wandering ? Does that mean that she has to run another path, totally different from his own ? And so to never meet him again ? Never ?
Is this really the way he came to lead her to ?
She doesn't know anything anymore, and has abruptly too many questions to ask.
But a fear makes her forget all of them in the moment. An unbearable fear. The fear to lose him, maybe forever, without any information about him, or any clue that could lead her to him again.
"What about this Audino ? Do you put up your own team ?"
He smiles, appearantly amused. Then answers :
"He helps me feel good."
Rosa recalls an extract from the pokedex she has read about this pokemon species :
Using the feelers on its ears, it can tell how someone is feeling...
A first hint of his knowledge about pokemon. Nothing to be surprised with.
But her own pokemon appears to have something to say.
"Something's wrong Gothika ?"
The creature just came to stand right in front of the unknown trainer. She now stares at him, as usually for her, analyzing him from head to toe. Looking for something that she should be the only one to notice.
But when she finds it, a dark light shines across her eyes as she utters a complaining moan :
"Swewwwwwwwwwwwww"
"What ? What are you saying ?" worries the young girl approaching.
Rosa leans over her companion, which continues to look blindly at the invisible.
"What's wrong ? Say, do you think...?"
Already taken aback by her pokemon's sudden strange behaviour, the young girl turns to where the unknown boy and the Audino are standing. She realizes, frightened, that nobody is still where she is looking to. Both of them have come to disappear.
They haven't got up to go somewhere else. No, she would have heard them. And they cannot be that fast. They have... simply disappeared. Vanished in the night air. Like ghosts, like shadows.
The young girl feels the wind blow slowly on her face ; in her ears, she is able to catch a raspy cry, that this cold wave brings to her. She is sure it sounds like the echo of a human voice, dying somewhere. Like the very last breath of a laughing fate in the night.
Rosa stares with her wide-opened eyes at the obscurity within she knows, she is sure of herself, they existed. With her.
Something could have swallowed them off, any darkness she sees there appears able to do so...
Her Gothitelle's groans grow suddenly, pulling her back to reality. The pokemon convulses in her mistress's arms. Fortunately, the young girl is now able to try pacifying her.
"Gothika calm down ! Calm down ! I'm here !"
"Roooooooooooor !"
She feels something like fear growing up and filling her stomach, crushing her heart, making her want to chuck it up. It is so fast and violent she sees tears starting to heat under her eyelids. And she becomes almost deaf from hearing all of her pokemon's wild screams spreading everywhere within her head.
"PLEASE CALM DOWN ! PLEASE GOTHIKA IT'S ME !" she finally shouts to the being clinging to her shirt.
At once, the pokemon eventually subsides. The creature is only calling for her mistress.
To head back to the centre.
Crying, Rosa is out of breath too from relief, as they're back in the silence.
She strongly holds her friend in her embrace, in order to comfort her as much as herself. She sniffs, shaken by some little calmed sobs that have ran across her wet and red cheeks. Then, she leads her head to the stars one more time. Trough the water upon her eyes, she watches the starry space which has not leaving them wherever they have been.
On that moment, she remembers another article from the pokedex, concerning Gothitelle :
It can see the future from the movement of the stars. When it learns trainers's life span, it cries in sadness.