Well, not much to say here, but there's a part where parenthesis are in italics and those were Thorton's thoughts that I wanted in parenthesis. Because they didn't really fit there perfectly, but they did fit. Just know they're his thoughts and enjoy.
Pokemon is not mine.
"It's hard to define you."
A statement that would leave even the brightest knowing what the true meaning was.
But Dahlia didn't seem to get it.
Did he mean something more?
Something like… he couldn't find any words to describe her?
…Thank you?
How do you respond to something like that?
Thorton's eyes gleamed with the slightest piqued interest. They used to gleam and shimmer near Caitlin, until she left him no form of note, no form of goodbye, and bolted for Unova.
Such is the life of a boy who over-analyzes everything.
(But that Dahlia… She has plagued my mind.)
He hasn't actually ever looked at her, never talked to her, never even really breathed near her.
So when he lets his mind slip from Caitlin and peeks at her - the energetic, shining star - he, for the first time, is baffled.
He feels like an idiot.
He has always challenged himself to describe someone or something in just one word that fits their personality directly. And he does this just by looking at them, by analyzing them with his piercing eyes.
He knows he's brilliant, so why should he waste his time on some girl who swings and sways when she walks?
He can't find a word for her, that's why.
She's affected him so much, too much, that he feels pathetically guilty for not giving, finding a word for her.
Her word must be brilliant, bright, fun, like her.
In his troubles, he can't stop telling her the statement.
And so, she shrugs it off and pulls him toward her gambling games - things to play with his mind, his heart - and into the bright lights.
She's dragging him, really. He doesn't seem interested at all, though one look at him would show her everything. He's only interested because it's her.
She pouts and she walks - swaying, dancing in the lights - away.
He reaches out, he chases out after her, refusing to let her get away that easily.
(He likes challenges, after all.)
She laughs her chiming laugh, a laugh that sounds like tinkling bells, sounds like bright stars laughing, and lets him chase her.
She skates across the ice of his heart and flies over the thunderstorms in his head.
What is she?
Thorton is even more determined to describe her, determined to get her the word and get her out of his mind.
He can't.
(She makes his hands clammy, his heart race, his cheeks want to burn around her, his insides melt. And yet, he can't get rid of it.)
Thousands of euphoric words run through his mind, words that he only discards because she's too perfect for any of them.
She stops running, stops the chase, and he stops abruptly, not expecting that.
She smiles her dazzling smile, her diamond smile, at him, and begins to walk back to her shining, outgoing, wild arcade — where he can't fit in.
He sighs.
She is an unsolved mystery who he can't apparently solve. He can't find a clue. He can't utter a word to her.
He pauses and runs back to the dazzling arcade because the unsolved mystery wanted him to take the hint, the clue, she left for him.
How dense is she to realize that it'll take him a year and a day to find that evidence? To realize that it was staring him blindly in the face?
He's left brain dead, mindlessly walking back to the lair of the unsolvable puzzle.
(Oh, but without any hints, she's all the more of a challenge, the hardest brainteaser he's ever encountered.)