Warning for death, non-graphic violence, child soldier (implied), troubling unchildlike behavior, disabled character, severe canon divergence. (EDITED 01/05/17)
Chapter One - The Will of the Fae
Pinks and blues darkened to reds and purples as the sun sank down.
To her, all of the world was red now. Red with flames, red with love and blood and heartbeats. Red tinting the cage of her god, her green, wild god.
No, not her god. Her precious friend, who had howled in her dreams.
She had failed him, and now here she was, sinking in the darkness of the sea, skin nothing but black and red, blood floating over her head.
It had all come to an end.
She wanted to say it was because of human greed, because of technology and desire and the changes of today's world, but those were her mother's rants, not hers. She had only failed due to her weakness, due to her impulsiveness and haste. She had no second chances and would not have deserved any as it was.
She didn't know that death would be so clear, but it was. She closed her eyes. If perhaps, this once, she could meditate, her death would take her before she knew it.
So the Lorekeeper closed her eyes and let the pain wash away, or attempted to. The endless onslaught of pins and needles as salt touched burnt skin failed her for a few seconds, but it faded.
A rainbow light filled her world of darkness. Sharp lines of gold and pink and blue washed and struck, filling her once limp limbs with power. It made their weight all the more apparent, burning and twisting decay into life. The water flowed over the dark skin, pushing it down even as the light lifted it up again.
She sighed and instantly started to cough, unable to spit up or stop the water. Her painless death started to burn a second time.
Oh hush. You are alive.
Aster, like a milotic reaching for the sun, burst from the water. She spat and coughed, making to splash back down. Instead she landed on soft cotton down, knowing it by the touch of her fingers (the thing that ached the most). She coughed and retched, unable to open her eyes.
I should be dead… it was what I deserved.
The water dripped from her ears, unable to block out the soft voice in her mind. Don't be such an ungrateful fool. You have much to do, hence why you are alive.
She coughed, barely able to hear the cries of the Pokemon and the person riding them. Something I need to do… my duties will be passed on to another now… Her head was surprisingly clear, perhaps because of the pain. I have no reason.
Are you so willing to give up all you have trained for? Your heritage, your training? This world? You know, surely, who will replace you. There is no one your age who is prepared. Surely, you understand.
She did know. There was no one who can fulfill the duties of the Lorekeeper as an elder and no youth that had been drenched in it. There was only one. The one who had trained her to begin with.
Her mother, too young, too desperate. Her mother, who had not known love for a long time.
Her heart started to throb. If she died then… what was the point of it all? What was the point of everything they had worked for?
Yes, there is your reason to continue. Your reason to live. You must, and I will assist you. As one human assisted me. I will return the favor to your kind. Unfortunately, do not misunderstand. This is not a blessing. This is payment, and you too, will have to sacrifice.
She could not nod, and she did not need to. She didn't really understand either.
You do not need to now. Enjoy it, your new life.
Aster opened her mouth in a scream as the pain flooded back like the very heat that had struck her in the first place, and passed out.
When she awoke, it was on a soft bed and to the smell of antiseptic. Aster opened her eyes slowly, wincing at the brightness of the light. She shut them again. Her body still ached. She didn't want to think about it, so she dozed off again.
When she woke again, Aster could move her hands and wiggle her toes. It was a warming feeling, but it didn't get rid of the cold dread in her stomach. Someone had saved her from death.
She touched the bandages that were mysteriously at her waist and throat. Well, it wasn't mysterious. Even Pokemon Centers knew how to take care of humans, if that was where she was. Perhaps it was a regular hospital. It probably was, but Verdanturf was the last hospital that she had been to, for her shots, and that had been only a small clinic. So, she could be wrong. She would have to ask, well, when it mattered.
Aster opened her mouth to make a sound, and all that came out was a ragged sort of hacking noise.
She had no voice, and there was no pen and paper around to communicate with. She probably hadn't been expected to wake for quite some time, if at all. There was a beeping noise above her head, the sound of a functional heart monitor. Aster looked for a window and found it too high to reach. She reached for a belt at her waist that had been tugged off before her falls in the water. There was no pack either, and, now that she looked a bit more carefully (eyes aching with every squint), the remains of her clothes were nowhere in sight. She had left most of it behind when she had jumped on her friend's back, as it would have been extra to carry, and therefore a waste in the end. So now, she was alone. Kind of helpless even. She could still barely see.
When the nurse came in, she had almost gone from drowning in the water to drowning in self-pity under blankets which made every free part of her skin itch, but underneath the bandages of her stomach, it was painful.
"Oh look at you!" The woman fussed. "You shouldn't be trying to move by yourself, you're covered in dragonbreath burns, at the very least, and no amount of heal pulse and floral healing will just wash the effects away you know!"
Aster nodded absently, still staring at herself. Her chocolate brown hair, once short and cut with awkward bathroom scissors, was now ebony (like mother's, you don't look anything like your father now) and buzzed short, skin an ashy gray, scarred and mottled. If she scratched with her nails, she could see the darker skin beneath each ugly patch, likely a patchwork of burn bubbles and popping like grumpig rinds beneath forced restitching of skin.
The Draconid people had always been dark-haired and the color of clay bricks, tattooed by flames and the falls of the meteor. The girl looking out of the bathwater was not a Draconid, or at best, a washout of one. Even the plump of her face had thinned away.
Aster splashed her reflection with a force that made her palms sting. Don't be so dramatic, she told herself. You died, coming back differently is likely better than not coming back at all.
Aster slowly edged herself out of the tub with the nurses hands, limping the toilet. Her nurse was waiting for her to finish with new clothes and a babbling mouth. A much better way to fill the silence.
"You're very lucky Lisia found you," she heard the woman say and nodded along, not knowing who that could be. They were presumably famous, and related to cotton down. Related in her mind due to the faint recollection of her skin (Aster had always found textures easy to remember.), but the connection just wasn't there. She spoke on and on and when she asked for her name, Aster rubbed her throat to try and speak again. She failed.
The nurse left and got her pen and paper (and wasn't she efficient? Mother had exaggerated a little) and before she knew it, she was able to spell her name with shaky fingers around a pencil. Then, of course, she dropped it.
"Aster," the nurse chirped, and it was almost annoying in how perky it was. "What a beautiful name."
Aster smiled a little, and went back to practicing making a fist. Or at least holding one.
Two weeks, then three passed like the crawl of a shelmet. She was very lucky that near-death and no identifying paperwork allowed her to be a part of the funds used to care for emergencies. She would still donate it back when she had money. If she could. Theoretically.
Her legs were now back to decent use, ie, being able to walk again, and her throat was mostly healed (She could chew and swallow and spit, but her voice was nowhere to be found), she was able to leave the hospital without nurses panicking over her every twitch. Aster walked out towards the mouth of Meteor Falls and stared out at it for a moment. She couldn't go there. Rough cliffs aside, she had no pokemon to fight with anymore. And in order to complete her task, she would need to get new ones.
Getting one from her old home wasn't an option. Like this, she looked like a thief. A soot covered thief.
Her next best bet was Littleroot, but she had to go through three cities and a good few routes to get there. Plenty of places to get attacked. If she had a trainer license (which Draconids simply did not get for a reason she did not understand, she could just buy a pokeball and go shroomish hunting (she had studied many pokemon in her training and they were a good fighter for early gyms and general survival provided you survived getting one. She was probably better off hunting for a zigzagoon.), but she needed money and patience.
Aster looked up to the sky. Her eyes closed and she opened her hands, raising her arms to the clouds. Then, after a moment of prayer, of reaching beyond reach, as the sky did, she lowered her arms again, wincing at the relief that brought.
She could be wrong, but she might have time.
So. Littleroot. Through multiple routes, the eyes of a gym leader, and a lot of wild pokemon. She had no weapons, no money, no items.
For the first time since coming back from the dead, Aster grinned from ear to ear.
She liked those odds.
As she turned her back on Rustboro, a flower began to rustle beneath a tree.
Of course, still being human and senses not quite as good as before, she did not notice.
Aster walked carefully, testing her stamina. She ignored any passing trainers as she did, seeing as she couldn't actually fight them. It wasn't a big deal. She would face them when she came back through. That was all. Or at least she would try.
The few times she had visited Petalburg Woods with her father before his passing, she had liked it here. It was cool and a little wet and the pokemon left her be for the most part. It wasn't like she had anything to eat or anything valuable. Well, no, she had the free trail mix Pokemon Centers gave to trainers who were going these short distances, but there was no trainer starter kit all the way out here.
Aster sighed to herself. Her optimism was really just stifling at times. How would other people stand it?
Aster stopped walking and groaned gently aloud. Now I've gone all the way to thinking to myself, she said without making a sound, sitting on a ledge to give herself a quick rest. "I need friends."
Her friends had all been Draconids. Of course, 'friends' was the loosest term that she was going to get out of herself right now. Even thinking about them made her heart beat faster and palms sweat.
After a while of watching wurmple climb trees and silken webs fly about, Aster got up again. She was almost starting to miss the nurses now. They were noisy company
If a pokemon didn't kill her, it was plenty possible that the silence would.
As she moved towards a ledge to climb down, a patch of grass rustled behind her. She stopped like a cornered buneary. They continued to rustle until what looked like a tiny tree stump popped out, floating in the air.
Well, a tiny tree stump with eyes. It blinked its blue flaming irises (would they be irises or pupils?) at her, even in the dark of the trees the white color of its stumpy head shining like a freshly cleaned bone. It almost reminded her of the dragon skeletons harvested for Key Containers. Aster squinted and saw the stubby arms and wisp of a body in the outline of the tree shadows.
She made to make a noise and could not, mouth moving with little more than creaking flesh and bone. It paused, blinking again. Birch type phantump, she realized after a tilt of her head. Made sense for Hoenn, and was probably some type of ironic humor.
Phantump, a typical species of Kalos, were rumored to be spirits of children who had died in the forest, taking up residence inside a tree stump. This was likely just a confused, terrified child who died to the bugs and the spores and the poison of a forest. Like she had almost considered. Yikes.
Aster smiled and knelt, holding out her hand. The phantump stared at her again, this time without blinking. Then it floated over and touched its head against her hand.
Well, close enough.
Then a chill rattled her skin. Energy trickled up, purplish-pink and before her eyes spiraled away from her fingers like vines.
This may pose difficulty. It seems as though you left your voice in the hereafter, along with your common sense.
Aster paused and looked about. The phantump jumped away, floating around in a spiral of alarm. That voice from her dreams, from her revival… surely it couldn't be from this small thing?
No, I am afraid it is not. I am merely a benefactor. But this child might prove helpful. The voice vanished and the floating stump let out a squawking noise, frozen in the air. Silence reigned over the forest for a few moments more. Then the phantump spun dizzily until Aster caught them. Might is the key word there. We never know what the world may offer us.
'Who are you?' She mouthed the words as she thought them, and the frustration at mere sound, hoarse and nonsensical, was enough to make her hiss at the end.
The voice laughed. Just someone. Now, look after that little one. He needs a friend just as much as you do.
Silence reigned again, barring the strange, ragged whines of the pokemon in her hands.
Well, she had said she needed company.
A/N: All right, last one until morning, which is going to be rough. Anyway, I have been thinking this idea about since my first playthrough of the Delta Episode, so I ran with the interesting head canons and thoughts until just how it might work slipped into my head. So, here we are. Please read and review, it's going to be an interesting ride.
Side note: I do kind of take a look at alternate coloring for pokemon. Not necessarily shiny pokemon, but alternate colors. So there you go. Thanks so much guys!
Challenges: Epic Masterclass (Pokemon Game), number 7, story starter challenge, and Mega Prompts quote prompt 37.