My traveling companions eventually stopped sawing logs in the little blue and grey tent and joined me out by the remains of the campfire. With some distance from them, the snoring was actually too bad. I conceded that it was only when the sound came from directly above my ears that it really got to me.
"Sleep well?" I asked, in their direction.
"Good morning, Fireball." With a stretch, Yvonne clambered out of the tent and reached upward. "A morning 'mon, are you?"
"You could say that." I responded in the blandest way I could manage in an effort to get my point across the language barrier.
It partially worked. "Oh, don't be so grumpy, today's going to be a great day!"
At least Sylvie wasn't as chipper as our trainer. "You really shouldn't be like that to her when she can't even defend herself properly." The other eevee yawned hugely, and zombie-walked over to the edge of the coals to lay back down. "If you were looking for an actual conversation, though. Yeah, we slept well. Bit of an odd dream where I was a dragon princess, but someone was trying to carry me away from my hoard."
Yvonne got the fire going again while I struggled to follow up on what Sylvie said. "Well… you know what they say about dragon princesses."
"…No?" With a couple of blinks to get the brain going, Sylvie continued, "Sorry if I'm half asleep, but where are you going with this?"
Where was I going with that?
I blamed the sleep deprivation.
"Hey, Fireball. I know I shouldn't spoil breakfast like this, but, as a new member of the team, I got you a gift." Thank you, Yvonne, you've saved me from myself. She held out a moderately-sized piece of what looked like hard candy. It was kind of orange-colored, and see-through like a Jolly Rancher. "It's like candy, you just put it on the back of your tongue and it dissolves! Or you can swallow it whole, the person I got it from said that it makes you feel really warm like that."
She sweetly offered it to me, but I was an adult and more in the mood for real food. I shook my head and hoped that non-verbal communication was universal.
"No? Okay then." She blinked a few times. "What would you both like for breakfast?"
I reflexively said, "Eevee and vee, breakfast of ch-…" My jaw dropped, because it was right about then that I heard it. My bacon and eggs had been censored.
Sylvie simply asked what, while Yvonne talked over her. "I can't say that I know how to cook-" She made a pair of yipping noises that I guessed must've been what Sylvie and myself sounded like. "But, how about…"
I stopped paying attention, because I had much bigger problems! Why would bacon and eggs be sacrilege to the world I was in- Yvonne and her family named me when I hatched. Sylvie's voice floated to me in a memory.
Whispering, I simply tried to deny it. "No." Bacon getting the axe was probably because of all the pig-pokémon, too! "No, no."
"Hey, you alright?" That was Sylvie, our trainer was busy tending to a pan of dough set up over the fire.
I stared into the crackling fire. "Just… just realizing I may have lost something that I thought to be timeless."
"Really, now?"
"Pretend, for a moment, that the greatest thing in your life- No, the objectively greatest-thing-in-the-world was suddenly gone. Stripped away. Didn't exist anymore."
I didn't look to her, but Sylvie was giving the loss of my world's top breakfast food the weight and seriousness it deserved. She hummed. "If I thought it was the objectively greatest-thing-in-the-world, I would have to question whether I had an unhealthy fixation, or not."
That caused me to look at her in pain. How could she say such a thing? "If eevee and vee are wrong, I don't want to live in a world that's right." Except that I was doing just that. I let out a shuddering gasp.
"Ah, come here little wildling." Sylvie scooted a bit closer to me. "You can cry on my withers. Just, try to stop saying words like that. They're hard on the ears."
I am not ashamed to say that I cried for the loss of greatness. My own loss, as well as the loss that the world I was in suffered every day. They didn't even know what they were missing out on…
