Chapter 18 - Gone With The Wind
What should've been a short-distance search for two disobedient kids would instead skip straight to a long-distance search for two runaway delinquents. We had lost valuable time. There was meant to be a buffer for us in the form of the village defeating itself with its own confinement, but not anymore. All because we tried to do the right thing.
The morning sun had long since arrived, now nearing the summit of its skyward climb. It was hard not to imagine Carracosta and Nuzleaf awakening to find that Leah and I, respectively, were missing from our beds. It had probably already happened. What should've been at least a half-day of confusion circulating around the village to our whereabouts was now narrowed to the time it took for anyone to speak up that we had declared Lively Town.
Perhaps we had been too naive. Not an ideal start embarking into the big bad world.
I shook off the thought. There was no one to fairly blame. Asking around for support was the right course of action at the time even with the obvious risk in mind. Well... in hindsight it wasn't so much, but it was a desperate last ditch effort that was, if nothing else, good-natured. At least we tried to do the right thing.
The only positive, besides how elementary our midnight-escape turned out, was the distance we had made during the minimal hours of nighttime at our disposal. We had trudged past the foothills on the far-eastern ridge of the valley, and as the sun came up we could look back and see an expanse of land stretching out behind us, distantly calling us back. We were high up at that point; in contempt of the weariness that had settled upon our spirits, we were lifted up a bit by the view.
I could see it all—Serene Village, all the dungeons that we had charted and conquered. Our valley. I could even see as far as the general region of woodland where my fateful awakening had taken place.
It was all simply beautiful. This world was simply beautiful.
Notwithstanding, I was tired physically, mentally, and my emotions were all tied up in a knot in the aftermath of my psyche's poorly-times disintegration. Thus, my real work began.
Footsteps to my left served as a correcting reminder—our real work.
I shot Leah a quick glance. It was hard to tell what was going on in the Fennekin's head as she walked alongside me, but it was plain she wasn't operating at one-hundred percent either.
I began to briefly wonder why she had so fervently insisted on coming with me instead of staying back. There had been little discussion on the issue, as it had been her to suggest it and I had seen no reason to argue. But something told me that if I had contested her on the matter, then I would've been fighting a losing battle.
Sure, I could believe that she wanted to leave that place at the first opportunity she got, and it didn't really surprise me that she actually went through with it. Rather, it was the fact that she kept after it even after our initial plan collapsed that wouldn't lay off my mind. A couple times it was actually me who needed encouragement to figure it all out, and her providing it, rather than the other way around. Wasn't I supposed to be the resolute half, the one seeking purpose? The commitment she put into her aspirations was industrious on almost an unrealistic level, even if those aspirations were built around someone else's necessities rather than her own.
I could learn from her selflessness.
For the millionth time I wished I was a psychic-type, on this occasion so that I could read her mind and maybe come to understand her dynamic personality.
Boom. Guilt.
Psychic-types. Mind reading. Espurr. Left behind. The one who who had helped me carry the hidden burdens that were my tormentors ever since I woke up in this beautifully malevolent place.
Every time she crossed my thoughts, an endless pit formed in my stomach that threatened my breathing rhythm. My principles were in my legs: I would keep moving no matter what. I would reach Lively Town no matter what, and if that didn't work out, then I would fignite this out elsewhere.
Still, the depth of the pit in my gut, the weight it held on my heart, the speculation of how she and everyone else would feel, all made me wonder just how much of myself I'd left back in Serene Village that I would never get back.
Espurr would undoubtedly feel tossed aside, regarded as nothing more than a temporary accomplice.
A temporary accomplice?
I scowled at the thought. All because of me. It stabbed at my heart knowing that everyone that I considered my friend would feel this way, but after my breakdown on the hill, the thought of Espurr hurt the most. It was not a question of if she, or anyone else in the village for that matter, felt betrayed. It was simply a question of just how resolutely it was felt, and if it would ever fade in time.
But it didn't matter. I wouldn't be going back, right? I would never see any of them again, or at least not for a long time, probably after this whole memory loss thing was figured out. And then who's to say I wouldn't go back to the human world, in which I wouldn't have to worry about seeing anyone again? These were things I had to consider for the sake of keeping myself sane in this unstable predicament. It was as simple as not getting too attached to anyone, and staying focused on my own needs...
But then why did thinking about them make me feel so awful?
With a small gasp, I steered myself away from walking right off the sloped path. Audibly exhaling out of my nose, I shook my head. This place was dangerous. This entire trip was dangerous. But, in large part, that was because my existence was apparently dangerous. That had been exactly why I left.
Perhaps it was just weakness in my heart that allowed myself to get attached to what had been given to me in this world. Or—Or maybe a better explanation lied in the circumstance of how life in the village was quite literally all I had ever known. A home. Three meals a day. Education. Friends. Friends.
Adapting to a different environment was never something I really had much reason to consider, and not knowing hardly anything about myself made the concept exceptionally more intimidating. Now, I had no choice but to acclimate to whatever our destination held. The idea of an urban society instantly set me on edge when I thought about what I should be able to expect. All of the faces and the noise; would I be overwhelmed? Even the Fennekin beside me, who had been chomping at the bit to reach Lively Town ever since our encounter with that strange Ampharos fellow, would likely experience some initial complications trying to harmonize with such a drastic change of pace.
Or... maybe she wouldn't. Perhaps maybe I wouldn't either, and this would all go smoothly. But somehow, I doubted that. Even the tiny settlement of Serene Village had me in a slightly flustered state upon my arrival. The circumstances were a bit different then, sure, but still not enough to balance the proportions of a little village to a bustling port-town. Would I fit in? Would we stand out at all? What if the stuff we were looking for wasn't even there? Once again, to the dismay of my fatigued mind, pessimism and realism were on an alignment course.
"Sage!"
Something yanked on my collar. Back to reality, I nearly stumbled but was caught on the shoulder by Leah's stabilizing paw. The ground right off the side of our path dropped off steeply—down thirty meters at least—and I had just narrowly missed it. I stumbled back a few more steps, now out of fear from what almost was.
Leah bopped me on the forehead, hard.
"What's the matter with you?!" she exclaimed. The timbre in her voice shattered the peaceful air of the cloudless morning. Anger and condemnation were absent from her tone, but there was definitely no shortage of exasperation.
"Shit," I hissed under my breath as I retreated from the cliff. I flashed her an apologetic look and shook my head. "S-Sorry... I need to focus."
She tried to glare, but her eyes matched the delicacy her voice. "Just... If you die on me out here, I swear I'll kill you." Her whole face softened up, although her grip on my yellow collar didn't. "M'kay?"
Aided by the brisk clip my heart was beating at, I forced the pit in my stomach down enough to grin and laugh. "Fair enough, twig-head."
Despite my wobbly legs, I tried to start walking again. Really, this was just me wanting to forget this happened and forget that worry that covered her face. But her iron grip on my collar remained, and so I was forced to face her again.
She eyed me for a moment before finally speaking. "...Sage, I get it. You're not the only one who can't stop thinking about the weight of what we're doing." Finally releasing my collar, she began to pace a bit. "...I can only imagine what they must be thinking—Runaways. Delinquents. I'm—I'm used to this, I'm used to being judged."
She turned to face me again, but this time her eyes had sparked aflame. A small grin of determination materialized on her face and revitalized her trademark shine. "So that's why we've got to put it behind us! We can't go walking off cliffs worrying about the past, nor can we kill ourselves stressing about the future! We just have to take it as it comes!"
I smiled back. I had to.
"I... yeah, you're right. I guess I needed that. Thanks."
Her smile grew bigger. With a feeble, feminine chuckle, she scratched the back of her ear. "R-Really? To be honest, I just said the first thing that came to my head."
I rolled my eyes and scoffed jovially as we began walking side-by-side again. "Of course you did. That's who you are."
Our spirits rose with the altitude, now nearing a peak as the valley was all but well behind us. For the first time in either of our lives, we had made it out. The mutual despair that eclipsed our morale had, for my partner at least, transitioned to the morning animation that she had all but patented. Even though she wasn't jumping for joy in regard to our escapade, her posture had regained its flare and her eyes had been full of life ever since the sun had peeked over the tops of the crags we had yet to climb.
"Check that out! This cliff is crazy!" she gasped after an uncertain time spent walking, snapping me out of my contemplative trance. I looked to my left and beheld the altitude we had reached.
We paused to admire for well over a minute.
We now stood totally beyond the valley, our view instead occupied by the summits of mountains in the distance. We had never gone nearly this far before, or even really talked about it. This was the crux of the Sheer Mountain Range, overlooking a large section of the natural rocky ascent. Fortunately, it didn't look like we could get much higher than we were in this mostly-unobstructed path that we had chosen, and my tiny burning legs rejoiced at the thought of an easier trek from here on out.
How easy exploring was compared to this. The dungeons themselves were of little concern—but the walk, the preparation, the verticality! It had always been a teasing card among our classmates how conditioned Leah and I were, for spending days fighting ferals and chasing each other down river beds let us run faster and longer than anyone in the village (even Hawlucha!). Pancham pouting when he lost a race to a snake with legs the size of a twig never failed to bring a smile to my face. Now it was nature taking my place and me taking Pancham's. If only there had been a little more time to prepare our bodies for this, if not in the form of development then at least in the form of extensive rest.
We had already traversed several minor dungeons on the way, a couple of them we had already charted before and a couple others dotting the mountainside as fresh territory. It was all beginning to add up. We were both used to lazily resting away the fatigue after a day's worth of exploring in mystery dungeons, and our midnight escape was pouncing on the opportunity to challenge our physical endurance.
We didn't ever rest for longer than an hour simply because I wasn't comfortable with the distance we had put between us and the village. Leah pouted about our haste at first, arguing we could benefit from taking our time, but she soon came to appreciate my precautions when we had stood atop the edge of the valley when the morning sun had just barely peeked over the horizon. Now that we had put forth a bit more distance and the sun was well into the sky, perhaps a rest could be approaching.
"It's been pretty a rough hike thus far, but it looks like it should be a downhill ride from here." Leah didn't miss a beat by audibly assessing the situation.
"Literally," I added.
"Yeah, literally," she giggled.
"Do you want to rest now?" I asked her, willing to conform to her previous prodding. Out here we were awfully vulnerable, with no significant resources fathomably obtainable through means of a simple stroll. Still, it wasn't like things would improve much up here. Now was as good a time as any to rest.
We had been going hard since midnight, with remarkably inadequate sleep to support our one-way expedition. As much as the paranoia of potentially being chased was nipping at my thoughts, it couldn't live up to the thought of one of us over-exerting ourselves and possibly getting hurt or overheated in the process. Maintaining safety was more important than completing our objective. After all, safety was the objective.
Instead of the repressed affirmation that I expected, she shook her head defiantly.
"We may still have quite a ways to go," she responded with a flick of her ears towards the awaiting eastern front. "I'm feeling energized. We can rest when we get off these mountains."
I glanced down the path we would be traveling. It would likely take all day to get through, but that was really just good cause to get moving now. I shrugged and nodded. "Alright."
She was about to continue onward when she halted, and shot me a slightly-worried glance. "...Unless you're tired? If you want, then we can stop."
"Me?" I shook my head. "Nah, I'm fine."
"Are you sure?" she pressed. "You're sweating, you know. We've never really gone this far before. It would suck if one of us got a heat stroke."
More than anything, the thin layer of sweat that had formed was just a natural reaction to doing any kind of work under this beating sun. I couldn't deny that I was pretty tired, but I felt no reason to stop and rest simply for my own comfort. The only real ailment that I could identify was the ache in my legs that would probably remain for a couple of days due to the extended period of time we had spent hiking uphill. But even this wasn't anything close to chronically bothersome.
"No, I'm good," I reiterated. "As long as you're ready to go, I'm ready to go."
She hesitated a moment before nodding and turning back to our path. After stretching my legs for a moment, I followed suit. That would serve as our break, then.
Based on what I could see, the next part of the journey wouldn't be that difficult along the path we had found, as it would take us from one mountain to another without compromising our altitude too extremely in either direction, saving a lot of time and energy. The idea of actually climbing each mountain all the way up and then descending all the way down was just absurd in light of what we were doing. The way they interconnected naturally was a blessing for our legs, even if it took a bit of maneuvering along mountainsides to reach those points.
Unfortunately, it wasn't that simple. By now, most of the wild Pokemon had woken up from their nighttime slumbers and were in quite an unrest to discover two intruders so deplorably disturbing their land. The chain of mountains we were traversing, in some weird conformity of nature, developed into a mystery dungeon that Leah and I had found ourselves in the middle of. It was no big deal; we'd done this before.
I was surprised to find that the Pokemon in this area, however, were not of the usual kind that Leah and I had grown accustomed to seeing every day in the valley. Right away we encountered several fighting and flying types, and also a few other that we weren't used to seeing. Brief memories of the Mandibuzz from a couple of days ago flashed in my mind, and I silently prayed that we wouldn't encounter a ferocious beast like that again. These were mostly new Pokemon we were dealing with, and the various knacks and strategies that worked on solid open ground were rendered largely ineffective when dealing with these unfamiliar species. A biped hauling around a block of wood, a bird drenched in flames, and even a walking manifestation of ice would all try their hands at sending us home, all to no avail.
As we trudged onward it became apparent that the wild Pokemon alone wouldn't be something to really worry about. All of the wild Pokemon that confronted us weren't at their most mature evolution stage. Obviously Leah and I weren't either, but this still allowed us to make relatively easy work of the enemies in our path. It was definitely an unusual feeling exploring this far from where I'd ever been since I'd been dropped into this world, but at least it wasn't too different from the dungeons we had explored.
The one thing that did effectively try to throw our rhythm out of balance, however, was the height. The rocky pass running across one particularly large mountain led us through some precarious cliffs, some even rivaling those that we experienced transiently at that forbidden Revelation Mountain. More than once did one of us stray too close for a hatful of reasons, only to flinch away from the promise of an instantaneous end. In one particularly close call, we were caught fighting three fighting-type enemies at once, and Leah ended up perilously close to one of these several-hundred foot drops. Her hind paw slipped on a loose pebble, and I found myself snatching her flailing form over an unstable edge with one vine while defectively holding off our aggressors with the other. Only Leah's psybeam would be enough to save us both from further disaster, which she somehow maintained the cunning accuracy of in spite of the unfavorable position she was in.
As the day rolled by and more of these situations befell us, I was beginning to realize the authenticity of the adults' warnings. I still had few regrets about my decision to leave, but this still gave me another reason to hang my head for leaving in the fashion I did. I just had to try and convince myself not to think about it. All of the confusion that had amounted within me would constantly be dangling my constitution over a cliff even steeper than the ones that surrounded me.
I just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other. The sound became a rhythm, absolute and eternal.
By the time evening came and the sun was well into its descent, the anxiousness I was having about going to a more populated area was now replaced with nothing but dominating mental and physical exhaustion. The sights were still beautiful along our journey, and Leah and I more than once stopped to see the incredible views as we continually got closer back to sea level.
Trees on the mountains, trees in the valleys—trees were everywhere. The massive valley that Serene Village occupied had plenty of trees too, but the vegetation cooped in the canvas of country before us was breathtakingly fascinating in comparison. This was around the time we took more breaks, if not for our aching legs then to enjoy this journey to the coast while it lasted.
As we got closer to the ground, we began to see plenty of rivers and small bodies of water that we utilized to quench our aching thirst. Eventually the mountain began to thin out at an exponential curve, until we were practically on level ground again. Only at this time did we decide to rest for the rapidly-approaching night.
Hastily traveling through the mountains for what was nearing a full day without significant rest had taken its toll on our group of two, and it held no bars. I managed to find an admissible clearing in the midst of trees and rocks to turn in for the night. There was a small cliff a little ways away through the trees, only about twenty feet tall, overlooking a stream where we could replenish our water supply in the morning. Leah and I spent a good forty-five minutes establishing a suitable camp, exhausting the last of the energy we could've hoped to utilize in a single stretch.
In an idle-minded state, we devoured a few of the fruits and berries we had collected on the way, and simultaneously collapsed onto the roughly-strewn beds thrown together on the rough ground. We didn't even bother to light a fire, or set up some kind of guard duty. It wasn't worth the effort at that point.
We laid a few feet apart, each of us now welcoming the exhaustion as our minds shut down and our bodies relaxed. Conversation might've been warranted on any other day, but a million words went unspoken already.
We had made it out.
The presence of sleep, which in recent days had often been fickle, overtook the both of us in an instant.
The sensation of a light breeze ticking my toes was the introduction to a weary awakening. The backs of my eyelids hesitated to reveal what I assumed would be morning light and promptly shot open when they were instead met with consentient darkness. In the depths of my hazy mind I wondered what could have woken me at such an early time, negating the dreamless sleep I had just been so deeply imbedded in.
After a moment of mental collection, I was at least awake enough to judge the time: still a few hours before the journey to Lively Town could be recommenced. I glanced over in Leah's direction, briefly worried that my previous paranoia had been accurate all along and we had somehow been found by a search party from the village.
The empty bed that barely met my tired eyes in the vacuum of night sent a chill down my spine. I shot up into a sitting position, vines tingling and ready to strike at any threatening figures in the darkness. Perhaps she was up and about because—
To my immense relief and slight puzzlement, there were no immediate threats in the camp that I could pinpoint.
I carefully rolled over to Leah's bed and inspected it further, noting the calm position of the leaves and the ambient heat that enveloped the surface. She had not been in any sort of struggle getting up, and judging by the temperature, she hadn't been gone for too long either. But if that was the case, then where was she, and what was she doing up at such an hour?
The aching in my tired muscles begged me to forget about it and just dip back into deep sleep. I knew I would definitely need rest for tomorrow, which was sure to be filled with plenty more walking. My limbs held no control over the curiosity tugging at my conscience, however, and I found myself using them to lift myself off the ground and into a standing position, taking a moment to allow the blood to rush to my legs.
I wasn't really sure where she could have gone considering how little we had scouted the area the evening prior. We were in the middle of the woods next to the mountain we had crossed at the end of yesterday. The one trait of this area that I could clearly recall was the nearby stream overlooked by a tiny cliff, which I knew would prove useful when we needed to sustain our water supply. Deducing that that's where a restless Fennekin must've gone, presumably for that very reason, I headed in that direction with the intention of putting my worries to sleep.
I slithered through the silent night. Passing an incline of trees and empty creeks along the way, I progressed to the top of the overhang in half a dozen minutes with little difficulty. Now that I was close up, I could get a better firsthand view of the location than I briefly jotted down in my tired memory the evening before. Through some of the brambles I could see a familiar bundle of orange and yellow sitting peacefully on the edge. Good. She was alright.
The same breeze that woke me was still operating at a rhythmic constant, gently drifting her fur to the right every so often. I positioned myself with the intention of casually making my presence known, when the distinct sound of tuned vocals made me halt in place.
Carried by the wind was a soft tune that originated from the only source possible. I sat there, still mostly hidden by the bushes blending in with my green body, taking a moment to be captivated by what I was hearing. The voice was so familiar, and yet adopted a deeper sense of divinity and acuity.
Leah can sing?
The breeze delivered the song Leah sang to me unhindered, and I could distinguish every detail and emotion. There were no words to be found in the smooth transition through the verses, or if there were, they didn't reach me. Rather, the melody spoke in a different language, one of relation and depth, one of the heart and soul. She was actually pretty good!
This was no tune casually hummed in the midst of a boring math class, or an insignificant melody strung together in the ambience of an idle mind. This was a confession of one's feelings, obviously directed at the night sky and not anyone in particular. For a moment, I actually felt bad that I was here listening to my partner express her emotions through music in such a personal fashion, feeling as though I was needlessly intruding on a sacred ritual.
Perhaps what touched me was the silver outline of the tune: the loneliness that I related all-too-well with. The sorrow that came with it was there, and I was willingly forced to reevaluate my dear partner's decisions and experiences to the brink of my own limited knowledge. The wordless melody told stories of an outcast; a girl cast down for her tales of riding with the clouds and conquering the world. Small town. Bigger dreams. Struck down.
I didn't even notice my own arm fiddling with my scarf until my mind had already initiated this cynical shift. Had I really been so closed-minded? Suddenly, right there in that bush, I found myself with more self-loathing than I had conjured ever since that first big argument with her. I hated to admit it, but a part of me had her company as nothing more than reassurance for my own goals, telling myself that it was alright as long as she got to Lively Town and lived out her own dream. While this thought process had no moral fault on the surface, it was the general mentality of the whole thing that jabbed me in the side and made my heart ache with every musical note.
Consideration... selflessness... the fundamental keys to social relations. I had never really put myself in Leah's shoes and considered her enough with all of this drama, had I? Here she was, riding on the coattails of my agenda, taking breaks only when I saw fit as she left her life behind. Pledging to go with me for my sake more than anything, not as a personal obligation of friendship, but rather as a mutual understanding that I tossed aside as a positive rather than something to consider. Was that where this loneliness was coming from? My own selfishness?
Was I going crazy?
I shook my head. I was probably just overthinking all of this. Leah had me, and I had her, and we had pledged on the hill stick these challenges out together. We were a team, and our goals were one entity and were always destined to align that way from the moment we formed Team Prism.
She didn't notice me at first when I approached her. Her posture was pristine: sitting up straight, eyes closed, nose in the air, tail slightly curled to her right.
"Couldn't sleep?"
She jumped in place, her form gathering itself somewhat clumsily in a natural response to my unwarranted greeting. A couple syllables of my own chucking followed, and she whipped her head around and quietly huffed at me, a tiny puff of smoke rising to the air from what I'm sure would've been a nasty flamethrower if she had decided I was a feral.
Even as she scowled, the relief on her face was undeniable. "Don't sneak up on me like that, leaf-head! For a moment I thought you were a wild Pokemon."
"Sorry, sorry," I muttered. "I just... yeah. Couldn't sleep either."
She nodded off to the side, humming in understanding, and then looked back up at the stars. We sat there for a good while, taking in the world. The clouds, the moon, all leaving plenty of room for contemplation.
"Do you ever..." she began. "...ever wonder what you'll do when you find out what happened to you?"
I raised my eyebrows at the question, and lowered my head slightly when I evaluated what my instinctive answer would've been. Going back to where I "belonged" was such an odd concept to an amnesiac in a foreign land that I had never really given it much thought. There were no grounds to even think them on.
It seemed simple enough: I was a human, who belonged with other humans. Or at least, I assumed as much... for all I knew, I had already lived in a Pokemon-dominated world such as this one. Did it even work that way? But then again, that would be ridiculous. From what I'd learned, humans hadn't been documented to have walked this world in so long that they were now considered mythological, susceptible to have their very existence stand as the subject of controversial debate.
So with that in mind, where did I belong? Where was a place that I could truly call home? Not in the familiar sense of Serene Village, but in a sense of true belonging in every aspect of oneself? A place where my old self would remember, not the Snivy that I was now.
What would happen if I went back?
Did I even want to go back?
Was there even anything to go back to?
And what would something like that do to me and Leah's bond of companionship?
Well, the answer to the last one was pretty obvious... It would disintegrate it on a hopeless scale, and scatter its ashes to the wind.
What of Espurr, and Nuzleaf, and—
I frowned. I already had abandoned them, hadn't I? The fact that I had done so with nothing to justify it besides an over-the-top declaration of nobility scared me now more than it did even as I was planning the escape. How would me and Leah be much different? What if it all came down to that choice: go "home", wherever that was, or stay with the only one I could currently lean on and trust with what little memories I had? Neither decision would leave me at peace, I felt.
"Don't know, huh?" Leah answered for me upon my lack of a vocal response. Oh, if only she could hear the cacophony stampeding through my thoughts right now. "That's alright," she continued. "I don't really blame you. I bet that's not an easy topic to think about when you don't even know who you were or where you were from. But... whatever you choose, I'll support you."
Her words stabbed me in the same way that tune she was humming to herself had. She understood so well, and yet had no idea just how much I was considering the concept of leaving her too if given the chance for everything to go back to normal. Would this ever change? What did this world really mean to me? Too many questions. Too little answers. Same old problems. And hanging in the middle of it all was my own selfishness, taunting me, and I felt helpless. It made me tense up at the sheer amount of distress it unearthed within me. Being torn in two wasn't the greatest feeling no matter the context.
"Leah?" I managed to say.
"Yeah, Sage?"
"Do you trust me?"
She looked at me funny. Even in the dim light, I could vaguely make out the features of a thoughtful contortion.
She didn't hesitate. "Of course."
I locked eyes with her and nodded. "Then you don't have to worry about what happens then."
She held her expression for a moment longer before smiling. She sighed in what I assumed was contentment, and rested her head on my shoulder. The act surprised me at first, in part because of the initial awkwardness of the fit (and also because of how soft her ears were) but I relaxed almost immediately as sentiment took over. We sat there in perfect serenity and continued to watch the stars without another word. Sleep must have beckoned us at some point, but that memory too would be gone with the wind.