Dusk had well and truly settled over the streets of Venesi City by the time Rosalind's family left the opera house.
The warm yellow light of street lamps struck and danced on the surface of canals which ran insidiously alongside roads, beneath bridges, hugging the dry islands of the city. The rivers would run day and night, in rain or shine, whether there was anyone out to watch them or not. The rivers always ran.
"Did you have a good time?" one of her mother's friends addressed her from atop stacked heels and expensive furs.
"Yes," Rosalind answered. "I would want to go again."
A group of Ratsy scurried across the street in front of them, and her mother drew up her long skirts with a screech. Rosalind noticed that one of the small rodents bore the tail of a sparrow… curious.
The park Gargryph drew itself into solid stillness as they passed, but Rosalind saw the last twitch of its tail and lifted her hand in a wave.
"…my first time, – who's there?!" the friend was still talking and Rosalind quickly consolidated the soliloquy in her head lest she be quizzed on it later.
"That one is a Gargryph, the third one from the left."
The friend squinted into the park. "Those mangy statues? You are a funny child."
Rosalind was scowling as they approached their apartment block. "Ros is such a funny child," her mother was saying, her high-pitched pealing laughter carrying in the night. "She told me she wanted to act in the opera…" The women burst into a fresh round of laughter.
"Child," the friend said kindly. "You'll understand when you're older. This is just how the world works."
"Next week she'll want to be a nurse, or a Ranger," her mother assured her friends. "You know how kids are."
But Rosalind had never felt about anything the way she felt now. She imagined what it would be like, to put on a mask and become whoever she wanted… She would never be talked down to again, she would be powerful, and free, and she would have a secret.
Reality was a powerful weapon, more so because nobody expected it to be.
Control of a gun was fearful; control of reality could bring hope or an apocalypse on the entire world. Rosalind felt dizzy thinking about the possibilities. She didn't have to be a nurse or a ranger. She could be both. She could be nothing, or everything…
"A girl in the opera!" the friend said again, her voice reaching upstairs and creeping under Rosalind's door. "What a preposterous idea!"
"The poor child," said another. "She just doesn't understand… How women are too easy to read, just like she is. How could a woman hope to dedicate herself to an illusion?"
There was a scuffle beneath the window. The Ratsy with the bird tail, hounded by a pack of snarling Tancoon… Rosalind whistled to distract the dogs, but it was no use. They advanced on the hapless rodent…
Little Rosalind gasped. Right before her eyes in that alley down below, the Ratsy dissolved as if in some cosmic acid bath, and from the ensuing space rose a perfectly formed, magnificently feathered Eshouten.
The Tancoon whimpered and ran, tails between their legs, as the creature began to attack them with its wings. Rosalind's heart beat faster; she noticed the unmarked fur of the Tancoon as they ran underneath the lamps. Could it be possible… that this was all an illusion?
Though the Eshouten was large, not a leaf stirred beneath its beating wings. The Tancoon had been so terrified, that perhaps the pain they felt had only been an expectation affirmed by a visual illusion.
Rosalind's breathing caught many times as she tiptoes down the stairs, tiptoed past the kitchen and eased open the front door. She could not let this go. There was something about this creature which stirred the dream inside her until she felt ready to burst at the seams.
She pulled her cardigan tighter around her as the cool evening breeze nipped at her arms. The big stone blocks of the apartment were damp to the touch, and a candy wrapper crunched underfoot. Eshouten was startled by the found, and fled behind the bins.
"Hey," Rosalind said, crouching down and craning her head forward.
"It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you." She made her voice gentle.
There was no sound from behind the bin.
Rosalind coughed and swept back her curly black hair. "Well hello there, little miss," she drawled in her deepest voice, mimicking the intonations of Lizzie's handsome lover. "Might I have the pleasure of knowing your name?"
She giggled despite herself. Poking her head round the edge of the bin, she could see the pokemon lurking in the shadows, an indistinct blur, its stature reduced again to that of a Ratsy or a small bird.
Seeing that it wasn't running, Rosalind plopped herself down on the pavers and leaned against the empty bin.
"I saw what you did just then," she said amicably. "How'd you do it? I would very much like to learn."
A soft cooing… for a split second Rosalind was certain she'd been sat talking to a pigeon, and blushed deeply. But she remembered her new friend's special abilities. I'll show her she's not alone, Rosalind thought as a matter of fact.
"It's a cold, cold night," Rosalind said, letting her hair fall over her face and her imagination run. "All I ever wanted was a friend…" She hugged her knees and gazed up at the strip of starlit sky between the crowded rooves.
"I can't help thinking, this can't be as good as it gets. But maybe I'm wrong. Would you come with me, and we can move on together?"
"Rage, rage against the dying of the light," came a voice from beside her. Rosalind jerked her chin up, wide eyed. The shadow in the corner was unoccupied… the strange hollow cooing came again from her shoulder. An unassuming white and black bird with an eyespot on its sparrow-like tail feathers. It sat preening on her right shoulder and played with the long strands of her hair.
"Did you just speak to me, birdie?" Rosalind asked, not even a little afraid. What a wonderful pokemon.
"I might have," the voice came again, but the birdie didn't move.
"Depends if you count what happens in your head as… reality."
Rosalind giggled. "I can really hear you."
"You mean you're not going to shake your head and say, 'well, well. I must be going quite mad'?"
Rosalind pouted. "Don't you think that would be just a little rude?"
The birdie chuckled, the sound hollow and foreboding. "You're getting too close," said the voice in her head.
"What makes you sure," Rosalind said, daring to let herself go, "that the person you're meeting is really me?"
The birdie looked at Rosalind and Rosalind looked back, and she felt that the next act of her life was beginning in earnest.