Four - Into the Moon
Morty tossed another paper to the pile with disgust. "Remind me why the mayor doesn't see these things before me again?"
"Because you can't trust the mayor as far as you can throw him," Eusine replied over Aya's head. He continued to run the brush through the pink locks as he spoke. "And the people who make these proposals just want to ruin you for the gym. You've been winning too much." He flourished with one gloved hand. "This is why you need to pick a successor soon, Mort, so we can retire on Unovan beaches in luxury. It'll take you seven years just to make a worthwhile medium out of them. They'll do your paperwork!"
Ayame giggled, freely, as she always did whenever her parents made noises like they were old. Morty only scowled, gripping his pen again and going further into the pile. He scanned another, and grudgingly set it into the pile he took with him to the office.
"You know I can't, Eusine," he said with a chuckle. "I'm too young a leader for an apprentice."
"Stupid," Eusine mused.
"Very," Aya agreed, now playing with her dad's cast off gloves and turning them to look like hearts. "Just like Delibird's too young to be a gym leader."
"Don't remind me," Morty grumbled. "She's too young and too buneary-brained. The League's still following the old laws here, even if Kanto dropped it like coals. We'd need someone else to come here, or to Cherrygrove or any of the towns."
Aya made a face. "There's nothing in Cherrygrove."
"That's the problem." Morty laughed and put his pen down. He began to tuck his things away. His daughter really was good at distracting him. "It's difficult to justify putting a gym out there because of it."
"The fairies love the routes though."
"If you say so darling." Morty raised an eyebrow at Eusine. "Si, are you really braiding her hair?"
"Pigtails are ugly, Mort. Our daughter is adorable."
"I…" Morty shook his head. "Our niece loves her pigtails."
"Yes and she frowns and ruins them."
As her parents bickered over her head, Aya ran her palm over the burning wick on Jericho's head. The ghost had slid up through the floor and was now making his way over her crossed legs.
"No eating, Jerry," she said and got a tinkling noise in reply. "What are you going to do about Ho-oh, Dad?"
Morty glanced down at her and shrugged, eyes flickering towards the simple red and gold feather and the silver one beside it on their mantle place. "I'm not sure. Ho-oh is confirmed to be passing over, but I'm not sure if it's stopping here. It is the right time for it to take a pause however, it's been roaming for almost five hundred last incarnation was around two hundred and fifty."
"Why's it matter if it's been a lot of years? He's a giant birb!" Ayame waved her hands as if to express just how big the bird was. Jericho's flame exploded brighter and larger in emphasis.
Eusine tutted and pulled her hands back down. "Hold still, I'm almost done now."
Morty snapped a picture of the pure disgruntled pout before his eyes before he replied. "Usually when it passes over here, it's going to the Bell Tower to shed its life and start anew. That was how my ancestor got his feather there." He gestured towards it.
"It should really be dust by now," Eusine grumbled, half in distaste, half for their daughter's curious eyes and earas. Not that it didn't look dusty, it was almost gray with age and preparing to crumble like toasted bread, rather than fraying apart as feathers were supposed to do.
"It's a feather of rebirth, Si. They'll never truly die. This one will perk right back up after the Burning Ceremony. Someone recorded it in an old scroll. And it's been copied every ten years. You can find it in the library tablet archives now."
Aya's eyes turned positively round. "And it'll just come back when Ho-oh does!"
"Apparently so." Morty turned his tone incredibly grave, barring the way his lips were twitching into a smile. "If the burning goes well, then Ho-oh will come back. It's only in writing of course, since your father and I are way too young to have seen it."
"If you had dared imply that I'm getting old."
"I've implied much worse things than that."
By this point, Aya was trying to escape Eusine's still combing hands. She, like all children, had a very strong preservation instinct in case of her dads starting to get gross. She wriggled a little more and scampered to her room as quickly as possible. Kissing was okay but that was flirting and weird and… ew. Just ew. She didn't need to know how much her dads held hands under the blankets, as Su-chan put it.
Jericho floated beside her with a low cooing sound.
"No, you can eat outside, there are lots of plants."
The flame exploded and fizzled, rather like a raspberry. Aya ignored it, rolling out her futon and determinedly ignoring her dads laughing downstairs. SOon as her bed was out she was shutting her door!
As she thought this, Jericho swung the door shut.
Ayame blinked. "Thanks Jerry." SHe paused. "You're still not eating me today."
Another gust like a raspberry. By the time she turned around, busying herself with the blankets, her pokemon was gone, presumably to wander the streets and feast.
Aya hesitated a moment. She could call him back, scold him, mind him. But he ate life force, and she was never to give him her own, ever. And this was her hometown… there were-
Well, if she was allowed to think so, there were a lot of dead bodies nobody talked about. And he would probably chase down some bugs or something.
And like her fathers said… she wasn't really great for ghosts. She could hear all right, couldn't see, and that made her connection with Jericho just not enough. He would listen but would he ever be hers? Nobody knew, not even her dads and they were the smartest people she knew about ghosts.
Still… better to be safe than sorry.
"Gregory!" There as a pause, a brief silence. Then a cackle, the cackle of a loving grandfather. Or whatever the old ghost could be considered anyway. He'd been around since grandma was born. A tongue formed out of the wall and wiggled, followed by two large red eyes.
"No," she said, though the smile was threatening to hurt her cheeks. "I need you to watch Jericho. He's gotten hungry and fussy again."
The ghost cackled out what equaled a yes on his part and vanished, leaving her and her open window and the moon waxing high overhead. She set her blankets down and looked up at it, staring at the clear white it was here, just far enough away from modern cities.
"It's always pretty," she said to herself. "The fairies use it to guide them, make them strong and… I don't remember the rest.."
Papa said those were usually ralts or zorua, or in their worst moods, a phantump of their child. Papa didn't like telling her these things, of course but daddy -father- he didn't see much point in not telling her. She lived in the town of the dead after all. The world could do worse, he always said, and there was no reason not to tell her. Mostly. There was some stuff he wouldn't say because she was young or something.
Still, it was pretty. And round. It was too bad it wouldn't be the full moon when Ho-oh got here. Everyone on her way home, when she hadn't been arguing with Rina, had been saying they'd have a couple weeks and the festival was always on the new moon no matter how inconvenient that got so…
Maybe Ho-oh timed it that way on purpose…
Aya laughed at the thought and laid down to stare at the ceiling instead.
Sleep would come in due time, preferably before her dads started to get loud.
I'll tell mom when she calls again. Hopefully it's soon.
As the little girl closed her eyes, she couldn't help but feel as though she was being watched. But then, she was living in a house full of ghosts. Of course she was.
It was probably nothing.