"You do realise he's a rogue, don't you?"
Joy shrugged, lazily chewing on a wad of gum. "So are you, they say."
Josh gave her a tired look. The Yellow Rock move tutor was a barefaced rogue tradesman. Yesterday he'd refused to allow him to sit in on Meg's training, on the basis that Josh might steal his techniques. Then he'd tried to charge double when Josh insisted Ivysaur sit in instead.
"I think you're more common than roguish." Joy shrugged again. "He helps pay the bills, what the fuck."
Josh looked down at Ivysaur sitting at his feet. "Look after the babby."
Ivysaur just grunted. He didn't like the move tutor either. The small class of pokémon were gathered around him in a loose knot, Meg trading Absorbs with an oddish.
"She'll be fine. I'm sure your girlfriend wouldn't let me forget it if she weren't," Joy said flatly.
"Friend, actually."
They all see what they want to see. Well, at least this one wasn't trying to be heartwarming. Ordinarily he quite liked time to himself – or at least, he didn't mind it any more. He remembered the beginning of this journey in March, when he'd gone more than twenty four hours without speaking to anyone.
"I'll be back this evening," he said curtly.
He hadn't said much since leaving Cianwood City – most of it arguing with people – it occurred to him as he left the Clinic. The streets had that narrow, claustrophobic quality of an old fishing village. The road was hardly wide enough for one-way traffic. A van was trying to inch its way trough the milling pedestrians towards the sweetshop on the corner.
Eve had been strangely … taciturn, come to that. He had been expecting her to relay stories of lording it over the Gym trainers and sundry other exaggerated exploits. If not frequently, then at least enthusiastically.
He found himself looking back, again, at the text thread.
Hey, settled in yet? How's the training going? Mon 20:38
Yeah I'm settled in. It's fine. Rhe 06:54
With Meg at the Clinic he didn't really have anything to do with the day. Josh wandered aimlessly through the village, letting his feet lead the way. Everywhere in the Whirl Islands was at least a bit of a tourist trap, for good reason, really. Ok, so admittedly there was the usual cream-tea-and-fudge tat here, but Yellow Rock Isle also had some genuine character. The island boasted an inordinate number of jewellers, almost all of them working in corsola coral. He browsed them with amateur interest. Some pieces were on the flamboyant side, but others – often the ones worked with smaller or irregular shards – were really rather beautiful.
Yeah I'm settled in. It's fine. Rhe 06:54
You'd love this corsola jewellery. x. Rhe 10:11
He hesitated over the text for a moment, finger hovering doubtfully by Send. Was it too much? Too, for want of a less loaded word, intimate?
He sent it anyway. They all see what they want to see, he tried to remind himself. Except. In the corner of his heart he wasn't entirely sure what they should be seeing. Most of them were someone's wife or girlfriend, right? Ergo, they had a greater breadth of experience in these matters, logically?
He bought a pasty from a bakery and headed down to the beach to think. This far from the bucket-and-spade holiday coasts it was an unusually calm beach. He sat down on a gabion, watching the sea roll and break onto sand gritty with bits of pulverised krabby shell, striped with stringy green threads of Chaetomorpha linum exposed by the falling tide. The calmness of the scene coyly belied the wildness of the Johtoan west coast.
Open your eyes …
The pasty was piping hot beneath the crust. He did say 'I love you'. But he remembered it was, for want of a better concept, easy. No nagging fear of immanent rejection.
Open your eyes, then open your eyes again. Just what did that mean? Obviously I was something to do with Madison's belief he was latently psychic. He'd tried the obvious solution but the internet stubbornly refused to give up the answer. Psychics are a secretive lot. Almost all the forums he could find required you to prove membership of a guild to join.
Open your eyes … was it a riddle, or advice? An idea occurred to him.
Do you remember whether that psychic, Warbeck, ever said anything about opening eyes? Rhe 10:33
I need space. Leave me alone. Rhe 10:35
That was stupid, he told himself. One text too many. He shouldn't have sent that. Obviously she wouldn't be interested. He just thought that, maybe, after everything that happened, if they weren't together she'd at least want to hear from him. Hopefully.
10:35. Josh velcroed the Pokégear from his wrist.
"Hey Ma, how ye doing, I bin ettin ok," Mum answered.
"Hey Ma, how ye doing, you'm a cliché."
"How was it, a-seeing Valencia Island? Ye never said."
"I dun know," he said vaguely. "It's a long way from Five-'n-Six."
"We should've gone together."
"Yeah. I'm sorry," Josh said, and meant it. "It wor a planned visit."
"I saw it once, when I was a little girl. I remember being disappointed it wor like coming home."
"Mum, am there any psychics on the Valencian side?"
"Psychics? Well, they said things about your great-grandma, but I dun think so. Besides, ye know what kind of people they were. Who would have taught them?" Mum said. "Why do ye ask?"
"Oh … just trivia."
"Kiddo, woss the real reason you'm calling?"
" … Ma, ye know how you always used te ask me what I wanted te do?"
Mum didn't say anything. She was always good at warm silences.
"Well now I do. I'm a-going te the Ranger Academy."
"Is this 'cause o' what happened on Cianwood Island?"
"This ay a passing phase."
"I know it ay. But don't yet have te enrol in Uni or something?"
"The Region Commander says if I win five Badges by September I can apply."
"Kiddo, what's the matter?"
"Nothing at all," he said unconvincingly, he knew. "I'm fine Mum."
Josh didn't speak to Eve all evening. Or this morning, either. He supposed he would have to get used to it … somehow. And somehow concentrate in spite of it. He eyed the opposing pokémon - a young totodile showing off his teeth.
"Are you sure about this?" he asked.
"Perfectly sure," the totodile's trainer said, a tomboyish-looking girl in a check shirt. "He's stuffed himself with rindos."
Josh glanced at the sky. Overcast, but not dark. Not ideal for battle, but it would probably do for practice.
"Alright, Meg, come on," he said. "Try your Solar Beam."
Meg eagerly hopped forward, her brighter pink-white flower raised to the sun, the other, white-pink, aimed at the totodile. There was, perhaps, a brightening of the fuchsia of her flowers, a slight luminosity at the edges of her petals – followed by a desultory spark, like a blown lightbulb. Josh wasn't really surprised. Meg was never going to get it right first time. The second attempt wasn't much better – the genesis of a beam, but still too dispersed to be of practical use. Again and again Meg tried to charge and fire at the same time, her beams flickering and spitting. The more she failed the more enthusiastic her attempts became.
"Ok, Megaera, that's enough," he started. "Meg, Meg! Knock it off."
He knew Solar Beam worked by converting adenosine triphosphate back into photons. In theory, the reaction should be finely balanced, as many photons released as absorbed. He didn't pretend to understand the chemistry, but the upshot was that Solar Beam could make the user especially thirsty.
He tapped at his Pokégear, halfway along to texting Eve about Meg, before he realised: 'I need space. Leave me alone.'
The sea was a rich, inky black. Unseen waves plashed gently against an unseen shore. The breeze feather-light, coyly rising and falling. Red Rock Isle was just visible in the northwest, a shape above the horizon just darker than the night. And so many stars. The more he looked, the more he saw. Vega in Lyra. Altair, the Pidgeot Star. So many more whose names he'd ever learned. Gauzy wisps of cloud drifted north.
Josh wandered down from the cliff path, boots hushing through the fine coastal grasses growing on the dunes. A long strand ran east, narrowed by the high tide. The rhythmic euphony of the waves, the clean-tasting air, the clear unblemished horizon … he'd missed this. Josh looked out towards that horizon as he headed down the beach. There was a faint red flash beyond the breakers, almost obscured by the rippling waves. Another one. And another.
The sea was twinkling. Thousands of red stars, flashing like some form of cryptic Morse code. Something glinting in the shallows caught his eye. A staryu had somehow washed onto the beach, its core blinking lazily. Then, for no apparent reason, it evolved.
Spots of shimmering light bloomed beneath the sea's surface. The pure light of evolution transformed the water into a lucent, sparkling aquamarine glow. The evolving staryu seemed to mirror the patterns of the stars in the sky.
"C'est beau ça!" he breathed.
"It's something, isn't it?"
The beach wasn't quite empty. There was a middle-aged bloke a few yards away, receding hairline, with a camera on a tripod.
"It's gorgeous."
"You've got good timing," he remarked. "I've been waiting four nights for this."
Josh fumbled for his Pokédex one-handed.
"Staryu, Gemmaria secobrachia. Staryu is among the most common and widespread of benthic pokémon species, and also among the least understood. On clear nights staryu may gather in huge numbers in the infralittoral zone. On rare occasions, these gatherings may preclude mass evolution.
Starmie, Gemmaria celestris. Typically found inhabiting the abyssal plain, starmie occasionally migrate to the euphotic zone. At these times starmie broadcast radio waves into space. The reasons for this are not understood."
"Why now? Why all together?" Josh wondered. He realised he was crying. Because 'Why?' was the most wonderful question you could as at this moment.
"Nobody really knows. Personally I think the answer is in these islands."
"I wish Eve were here to see this."
"What about a photo, then," he said, tapping his camera.
Josh wanted to say 'yes'. He was certain Eve would love to see this sight in normal circumstances. But … Eve's phone ringing from another text. No. Not again.
"… do you have a printer, or something?"
"For your girlfriend?"
"Not my girlfriend. But I wish she were here."