Companion to the black wind
"A star shoots bleeding across the skyline, a companion to the black wind. Silence comes sweeping across everything"
Joe Bousquet
I own nothing but my own ideas
This story makes use of the second person POV. It is not intended for immersion so much as narrative ambiguity.
"She looked in the mirror, but the reflection may as well have been the one that stared back at her on her first day in Kalos. " Legendary, 2013
Shauna gets away fast. That's the important thing. Lysandre has never played fair. He trips you up, as you try to leave. You feel hands helping you up as your knees sting, arm around your waist, tugging you to the exit.
It's all a bit too late.
You don't know that at the time. When you can stand to come back to the town, you will look into the hole, wondering if you dared to dig, would they be as untouched by time as you are? Would they be dead and decaying, or a perfectly recognizable corpses.
The thought of them being alive and trapped down there will haunt you more and more over time, but you have always been too afraid to learn for sure.
But this is all in the far future.
When you get out, you see ash falling from the sky, and your knees hurt from the cuts, and you are terrified. But you are all alive, and that's the important thing. You sigh in relief.
You continue on your journeys together, trying to forget what happened here, trying to ignore the horror of it all.
It's not obvious at first.
As time goes by, you are always buying clothes, changing your hair, and shorter than your friends.
Save for your neighbor. Your rival. Who has stayed at the same height, whose hair is just as dyed as yours, who is dressed like a child, as if intentionally trying to play up that image.
"What would you say rival, if we went on vacation?"
Understanding and relief is clearly visible, even through the coloured contacts.
"What if it worked?"
"Then we have time to find a way to undo it"
You travel a lot. You keep more in contact by cards, and letters, and rarely do you go back to visit. Whenever you do go back to Kalos, you always play up how youthful your travels have kept you.
You go to Aloha first, then Orre and Unova. Then Fiore. Then Kanto and its surrounding regions. Sometimes together, other times apart. You go back home for your mom's funeral as your grandchild. Your friends are aware of your reasons, though they don't quite understand them.
It's lonely. Your Pokemon don't seem to be getting any older than you. While your rival is always a constant in your life, a companion at times, neither of you want to be near each other for every second. It's important to have space, new stories to hear from an old friend.
Whenever you do go home, the visits get harder. You see your friends grow older, grow families, slow down, and stop. It's easier to talk with their kids sometimes, then it is with them. You can't do the sorts of things you did with them in their youth.
You can show them the Pokedex, and dance moves, and contest medals, and berrylicious creations, but its not shared stories anymore.
Adult friendship can be painful like that.
"AZ didn't"
"AZ was looking for someone else. We should still try to find him."
"We will"
"He's one person in a world of billions"
You get into any sort of competition under the sun that you can, with your rival.
Academia, is always fun, even if you need long intervals in between studies. You can keep it going for a long time through the use of students to present findings in front of people. You both started at the easiest available to you, the Pokedex, and made up tree based professor names. Professors Spruce and Alba, are renowned rivals studying how biomes bring about species variation in Pokemon, and Natures respectively. They often debate how environmental and Nature affect the growth of Pokemon.
It started back when you took the first vacation in Aloha, and saw the regional variant Raichu.
Well, the Alola variants of everything, actually, but Raichu, was the first you were able to have an easy way to compare, having caught one for the pokedex. Together you caught a ten Pichu's there, evolved four into Pikachus with plans to evolve them into Raichis when you went back, and three into Alolan Raichu's. The others would be trained back in Kalos, to see origins it affected evolution, or area.
You had also taken notes in the Pichu's differences in performance, which started the nature debate, and had inspired you both to sign up for studies online.
Then, had come your trip to Kanto, and the team up against the PC, which had sent the computers world into a bit of a tizzy, and you both mutually decided to stay out of academic spotlight for a decade at least.
Besides, it was time to go home.
"We have forever"
"And yet still the world turns without us. He has had forever to learn how to hide, remember?"
Your friends children, have children of their own.
Trevor doesn't remember his family, but he recognizes the two of you.
Shauna looks younger than them, though not nearly as unnaturally youthful as you two or you Pokemon are.
Perhaps she caught an aftereffect of the blast. Perhaps she wasn't as far away as you hoped. Or perhaps you are losing perspective, and she was just the youngest of you all. She certainly seems to have taken care of herself.
Though you are young, your skin has calluses, built up on your feet from walking, built up on your hands from climbing, on your fingers from writing, drawing, building, everything really.
"Have you created good memories?" Shauna asks.
You have a lot of regrets. You regret that you never asked to learn how to dance, you regret that you never stayed behind to listen, that you were always rushing ahead, challenging, aiming to be the best. You were so focused on that goal once, that you have left a million little but important things in your wake, things that there is no longer time for.
Its bitterly ironic. You have all the time in the world, you have forever, after all, and you still need more time.
That's not what she wants to hear now.
You start to tell her a story, of a memory long ago, of a boy who loved to dance.
"Team flare found him"
"Team Flare could listen to everybody."
"We will find a way"
"What if he's nowhere to be found?"
When Shauna, the last of your friends, dies, you leave Kalos again. You might come back to check their families someday, but now it hurts to much to stay.
You wander towards Alola again, towards stories of holes in the sky. You think you might have a project to study again.
"Do you really think he would have left?"
"What reasons would he have to stay?"
Your rival looks at the tear you have created, hair for once undyed, and eyes free of contacts.
"It's called an ultra wormhole."
"And you think we should just go through one of these?"
"What reasons do we have to stay?"
"Small ones. But that doesn't mean I don't want to stay for them, for now."
"Alright"
You hold hold hands with your best friend. No need to leave now. You have forever.
"What reasons do we have to stay?"
"We don't."
"Then will you come with me?"
"I'd hate to be left alone. It would be a slow death."
"Then don't. Let's start over together."
Somewhere, there is a world without sun.