Chapter Six: A Wishful Reverie
Kata, Keiji, Leigh and Travis were sitting in a cozy reception room in the Gooseberry Town Pokemon Center. The sofas lining the room were a pleasant cream color and sitting on them felt like floating on a cloud for the children and Leigh after a night of sleeping on the floor. They were waiting for Contremo and Fern to be healed. Travis was looking very animated at this point, no longer absorbed in his Pokedex, and was telling the others fantastic tales of how he had rescued a flock of Spearow from a burning building.
What crap, thought Leigh. But she was too happy to be comfortable to complain about Travis' so-called heart wrenching story. She yawned lazily and looked around the reception area, making some attempt to drown out Travis' monologue with her observations. There was a well-dressed lady wearing an elegant pink suit and her dirty blonde hair was pulled into a tight, intricate bun. She was pacing in front of the front desk, looking worried. Leigh wondered what was wrong with her Pokemon (assuming that that was what her worry was about), but realized that there was no use in pursuing her curiosity.
Then, a nurse appeared from out of a pair of large white, swinging doors. She wore the traditional nurse's outfit, a bouncy pink dress with a white apron tied over it along with a white hat bearing a red cross. Her hair matched her dress, but it was so obviously dyed because the color was faded. Her makeup was smeared and she didn't look like she had gotten enough sleep. She held two pokeballs in her hands.
"All healed," she said lazily and handed them to Keiji. He said his thanks and then she disappeared behind the same swinging doors, muttering something about a long shift. The children and Leigh exchanged looks and then, with some hesitation, lifted themselves out of the comfortable sofas and headed out of the Pokemon Center.
They spent the remainder of the day doing normal things – buying supplies like pokeballs, healing potions, and, more importantly, food for when they camped. Occasionally another trainer noticed that Kata, Keiji and Travis had pokeballs and challenged them to a battle. Keiji seemed to be excellent at battling while Kata was rather mediocre, and Travis was the worst of all, although you wouldn't have ever guessed it if you had only listened to his bragging and not seen him in action.
It was night now, and they were heading back to the Pokemon Center where they would spend the night. Travis felt that the day had been a particularly bad one – he hadn't won a single battle or caught a single Pokemon, and Keiji had been vastly more successful. New Pokemon, lots of wins… how was it that he could get so lucky? And then Keiji was also so much closer to Kata than he was. Travis wouldn't dare admit it to himself, but he was madly jealous.
A magnificent blue Pokemon with shimmering feathers swooped over Travis; its eyes were glittering rubies, and it circled over him while the entire town looked at him with envy. At last, the legendary bird Pokemon landed in front of him, beaming at the young boy. The most envious eyes of all came from Kata, while Keiji and Leigh looked jealous and began to sulk away.
"Let me come with you," the bird spoke in a soothing voice. Travis' mouth gaped open, and he nodded his head, and then Kata was running up to him, and the entire town was cheering for him, and children were coming to pet his new rare Pokemon, and….
"TRA-VIS!" yelled Keiji as Kata waved her hands in front of Travis' face, pulling him out of his daydream. He frowned. There was no Articuno, no cheering crowds, no impressed Kata; he had imagined it all. Instead, he had nearly run into the closed door of the Pokemon Center. Leigh wasn't sulking, either; she was looking at him as if she questioned his eyesight. After all, he had held that Pokedex so close to his face, Leigh reasoned.
They entered the Center, walking through the reception room that they had lounged in earlier that day, and into a large room filled with beds that were to be used at a traveler's leisure. The beds had thick, quilted bedspreads the same color of cream as the sofas in the reception, and there were huge windows on the far end of the room that had been thrown open while a gentle breeze blew in. They weren't the only ones in the room, however – many lamps were lit on the cherry nightstands next to each of the beds, where trainers were reading their favorite magazines, studying their Pokedexes and writing things. There were also those who had already fallen asleep, and because of this any talking was only a quiet murmur.
Leigh, Kata, Keiji and Travis walked quietly to a grouping of beds that were unoccupied and slipped beneath the warm blankets. The sounds of other trainers whispering to each other, turning the pages in their books and magazines and tiptoeing around lulled everyone to sleep – that is, everyone but one person.