Filloma's freaking hysterical. I trust nobody's super weighed down by her backstory? It's... yes it's a lot, but I had to get it out of the way first because a LOT of other crazy things are gonna happen in this story. Her backstory's critical to understanding and foreshadowing what happens next, but... yeah I understand it's a lot to throw at someone. SHE WAS A POKEMON TURNED INTO A HUMAN BY GREEDY PEOPLE WHO DIDN'T ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT HER, AND HER ONLY FRIEND BETRAYED HER TO HER CAPTORS. Yeah yikes.
Anyways let's hope this gets less edgy hahahaha
Chapter 13: Forgotten Village
Once I hurtle down the stairs and exit the center, I realize I've not a clue where I am. Sheepishly I reenter and snag a promotional Unova map, then let the doors shut behind me, a finality.
Burying my head into the map, I track our journey from Nuvema Town and promptly come to the conclusion that something is very wrong with our calculations.
If we walked a straight route from Nuvema to the next town over, the map would mark Accumula with the happy little You Are Here lillipup sticker.
Somehow, according to this map, we managed to get so horrendously lost last night in the forest that we took an incredible turn northwest and landed in this town completely outside of the Gym Leader Pathway as marked along the region's standard route. Bermuda Village is its tiny, barely legible name.
I look up and face my surroundings. Open air, tree-lined pathways of gritty soil, a tiny house here, or there, or there, their outlines hidden by tall pine branches and leaves. Sparse population. I can hear the buzzing sound that overwhelms my senses when the world is too quiet to ignore it. Shuddering to myself, I start forward at a fast trot and search the expanses of our new discovery.
What's the point of following the typical gym route anyways? I've little desires to battle with the designated tools of the trade. Besides, if there was some freak anomaly universe in which my strange chronicle was shared as if a book to another, I feel as if my story would be more interesting without such a vanilla arc in my tale.
I have no idea where that thought came from. Flushing, I glance back down at the map.
Bermuda Village is awkwardly sandwiched off the beaten trail of Unova's gym league. It lies in a confusing spot past Accumula Town but almost near the next town after it—Straighton City. It's at such a strange axis that I have no idea how our exhausted selves found the place.
Surrounded in forestry, it's like nobody knows we exist now. We could stay here and never experience the entire rest of the region. It's so secluded, so isolated that I almost do want to stay.
Then Juniper's words slither deep inside of me, wakening, cutting into my insides with frigid, finger-like jabs.
She and Marlun don't want me to stagnate. They want me to change, somehow, on this wayward journey. But... goodness gracious, what do I want?
My mind flits to the melody I heard, then to the boy who sang it, the boy who promptly proceeded to hijack our adventure. Grimacing, I close my eyes, delving into the forest, letting the shadows overcome me and the faint voice of nature lead.
Its singing is so soft... like N's.
My desires lie so intermingled with the black spots of my past that it's hard to pinpoint exactly where anxious fear ends and melds into hope for the future. His gruesome visage continually resurfaces, like a corpse thrown about in a nightmare ocean's stormy waves. Ghetsis, I keep hearing in the back of my head, Ghetsis—and that is when I decide to stop thinking about it.
I take a quick survey of my periphery (what are N and Marlun doing?) and allow myself to disappear into the forest's shadow.
Above my head, pokemon are roving about the day's work, white squirrel pachirisus bickering softly with one another. Beneath them, dumpy blue duckletts quack and splash about in the woodland ponds. I follow the sounds as they grow louder, as I delve into the fronds of nature and catch the hurried bumbling of pokemon. They do not bother with the extra precaution of avoiding me; my psyche still registers as one of them. They know, even when my body tries to make me forget.
Deep in the trees, shadowed by swaying branches, I find a large, mossy rock. Great for sitting—there's already a trove of pokemon fighting for purchase of the sunniest spots. In the light, warm weather, this space offers itself as a sanctuary for the natives.
And there's a girl at the very top of the rock, staring into the leaves.
"Ah, it appears I am tardy," I mutter to myself, only for the girl's head to snap back, her thick violet hair spilling over one shoulder.
Her round, brown face opens up, welcoming. "I am not alone, it seems!" I have no idea how she heard me. I was quiet enough that, from the distance between us, I didn't think a soul would register my voice, save for the pokemon. "What is your name?"
I glance up at her. "My name is Filloma." Her charming brown eyes twinkle with the knowledge. "And what is yours?"
She nods to herself, and her massive violet hair shudders. "I'm Iris! I thought I knew everyone who lived here, but I guess not, uh?" Patting at the spot beside her on the rock, she gestures to a bumpy efface I could climb up to join her.
Her cheeriness gives me reason to question whether I should just turn around and leave. But she has my name, and, well, that would be a little rude of me. Besides, I have nowhere else to be. Releasing a breath, I follow her instructions and soon take a spot at the top of the rock, above all the clamoring pokemon. Below my dangling feet lies a nest of bird pokemon, a massive family of unfezants and their little gray children hopping about. One of them is singing, and in her voice I can discern the words.
It is not dissimilar to the melody of N's song, from last night.
Everyone seems to be singing in his tune.
"Are... you from here?" I ask Iris, as she distractedly kicks her feet into the air. "This place seems hard to find."
"Hmmm..." She shakes herself. "Oh, yes, yes! I most definitely am." Her hand raises to point out a tunnel leading into the darker parts of the forest, where the ground is littered with rocks. The shadows of larger, more menacing pokemon lie waiting in the grassy fronds. "I grew up with dragons. It was pretty cool, but, you know, it can be scary. Like when one of them gets mad at you for eating their share, and... you don't have claws... or fire breath... and they're trying to kill you." She giggles off the imminent threat of her death. "But I was fine! They were very nice dragons."
I lower my gaze. "How... curious." Perhaps she knows how to speak pokemon as well, then.
The pidove is still singing her sweet song. Something about it makes my heart ache. "I'm... from Nuvema Town. Nothing as exciting as your upbringing. It's a little ways away from here. You probably haven't heard of it. We aren't interesting whatsoever." And that is precisely what I liked about it... but now I'm here.
Now I'm... here.
Iris shrugs, her shoulder bumping into mine. "That's fun. What brought you to Bermuda Village?"
"Uhh... My friend decided that we're going on a pokemon adventure, but we took a wrong turn late last night. We, um, snuck out early in the morning, and somehow we ended up here."
Iris stares at me for a long while. Then her face breaks up into virile laughter. "Wow! Well, I welcome you to my home!" And she laughs for some time, but then her voice drops, and her eyes narrow, and her hand reaches deftly into my personal space to fidget with one of the crimson flowers in my hair. She watches the cringe spread across my complexion, and her brows slightly raise.
"I've been meaning to ask, Filloma, but... your hair sure is interesting. How'd you get these nice flowers?"
I spew out a weak chuckle. "Oh, they're fake." It's the easiest answer, just within reach, to throw at a curious onlooker. "I just got them stuck in my hair, so they're a little difficult to remove. I—Heh—Please don't pull." Blossoming throbs spread within my skull.
"Oh, ah, sorry." Her hands drop away. "Just curious." But this strange matter remains in her gaze, something that keeps returning to me, something that keeps almost... sizing me up, like she's trying to piece me into some sort of puzzle in her head.
Like there's a reason she invited me to her rock. A reason she's poking holes into my questions, peering closer, tugging at me like a specimen.
I ultimately decide that I don't want to keep speaking with Iris. "I'll, uh, see you." I get up and wipe the dirt off of my white dress, then hurriedly clamber down the rock in my boots. They are not the greatest climbing gear, but I am desperate and nervous, so I somehow make it back down and out of Iris's periphery in rather quick timing.
Her voice floats around me, leaving me with one promise:
"Pokemon League is on the far left pathway. Don't get them confused on your pokemon adventure.
"Nice t'meet'cha, Filloma. Have a good trip, will ya?"
Confused... with what?
But the thing that catches me off-guard is the way she whispers my name, almost dropping the "oh". It's like... I've heard it before. Somewhere else. Of course now I don't remember it, but once upon a time, I must have, the way it clutches around my heart and drags it through my bones.
With that fantastically frustrating question lodged into my skull, I stomp through the forest and emerge by the Center once again. Up ahead I notice the path leers left not much farther off, although there is this vague impression of a straight path as well: beaten down grass and crushed flowers.
The other path...
While I'm looking away, a hand slams down over my shoulder. I squeak; Marlun's pink face smirks in my periphery. "Don't run away, Fillmy! How many times do we gotta go over the fact that I have the phone and you don't! If one of us goes missing, the other is basically defenseless, so uh stop doing that. It has literally been twice in almost as many chapters—wait I mean days. Chapters?" While Marlun is off muttering to herself, I catch N behind her, his face quiet, unreadable.
"Hi, N," I try, raising a hand.
His eyes alight. "Hello, Filloma. What did you find outside? We could not locate you for some time."
"Ah, I..." I press my lips together. "There was a girl in the forest. She had lots of animals surrounding her. One of the pidoves sang a pretty song. That's about it."
"That's a terrible story," Marlun intercedes. "You need to learn some storytelling skills." She rolls her eyes. "However, I will excuse you on the account of there being a cute girl within the premises of your tale. Please tell me how cute she was."
"Marlun..." We have better things to—
"This is me begging you. I don't feel like getting on the ground, but if I did, I would."
I let out a breath. "Aren't you silly." She offers me her biggest, most despondent grin, so I sigh and oblige. She'll keep complaining about it if I don't. "I guess she was marginally cute. She had really poofy purple hair, which made me wonder how hard it would be to hug her, and this like... nice outfit on, I guess. It was pink. Uhh... she had a round face. Brown skin. It was okay."
Marlun thinks on this. "We may have to go talk to her again."
"No we—Marlun." A scowl shreds across my face. "Marlun. Did you hear anything about the hair? She will literally be impossible to hug. Impossible. Just give up on this one. There's like a hundred more girls in Unova and this is only the first one we've met so far."
Marlun growls under her breath. "But we don't know how cute the other girls are!"
"Marlun they will be cute because you have no standards—"
"I hate it when you're right... uggghhhhh..." She scrunches her face up when she blinks, and it's somehow the most passive aggressive thing I've ever seen her do. "I wanna meet other cute girls... but also... I wanna meet this cute girl...
Her pout slowly, steadily upturns, morphing into an ill-minded grin. "Well, Fillmy. You've run off twice, so I think it's about time you owed me." Her pink cheeks heat with a lustful flare, and her eyes glimmer as she asks in her sickest, sweetest tone, "Will you please do me the kindness of introducing us to the cute girl?"
"Uh." I open my mouth. Shut it. Swallow. The stickiness is in my stomach, churning nastily through my veins. "I don't really want to. C-Can't we just—"
Marlun's arms cross over her ample chest; she's replaced the togepi tee with her lilac grimer sweatshirt, the words "pretty ugly, or ugly pretty?" jiggling beneath the image of the mucky grape kool-aid colored pokemon. The grimer's massive grin combats her own. "No. We can't just. Let's go, Fillmy."
Groaning, I roll my eyes and step ahead. "Fine. But only because you're so annoying, and I'm tired of it." Marlun sniggers something about my own irritable qualities under her breath. N, bless his silent heart, moves close to me and asks softly what this is all about.
Our eyes meet; I catch the glimmer of my own frustration mirrored in his enchanting blue gaze.
Marlun dips ahead of me, watching me point into the forest and following the imaginary line forward. While we linger back, my fingers nervously clutch around the flowers in my hair. "She... the girl... she looked at me like she knew they weren't just... barrettes, like she already could tell they were real. I..." I swallow, pitching my voice low. "I don't know if we can trust her."
N's eyes flush. "Wh-Why didn't you say so to your friend? Surely she would listen to such an endeavor."
"No, no..." I sigh. "I think she's more concerned with the girl right now. You don't know her like I do. She'd hear my concerns, but she really wants to be in a relationship. She's, uh, romantically stunted, and incredibly hopeful as to remedying it." Glancing after her, I break into a weak laugh. "Besides, her attraction to this girl doesn't concern me, so long as I don't have to be near her." Maybe Iris the dragon-girl will be so strange that Marlun will absolutely drop her hopes and dreams in order to get away as quickly as possible.
It occurs to me that perhaps the opposite will happen. Then Iris and Marlun will date—fall in love—get married—and I'll be stuck with this awful creepy hair-examining lady as a best friend in-law of sorts.
Well. Darn. Um.
Hopefully the dragon thing will weird Marlun out.
Oh who am I kidding... I'm the one who told her she has no standards...
To the shock of warmth on my shoulder I gasp—then look over, and it's just N, his fingers gingerly resting against the cloth of my sleeve. "I... I'm sorry. I wanted to ask, Filloma... what are you thinking about?" He steps closer, just slightly, and his head tilts down toward me, filling the space between us with the warmth of his body and the gentle pine smell he carries from all the trees he's been singing in. "Your eyes, they... become so full, like rainclouds. I just want to know what it is you're carrying inside of you."
I try to pull myself away, but I realize I cannot. The sheer, raw honesty of his question leaves my entire body aching. "I..." I whisper, my voice shaking, "I'm not... thinking about anything much. Just... Just afraid that my best friend will marry a scary dragon girl who likes to pull at my hair."
He breaks contact to whisper "oh" and loose a gentle laugh. "That's... much sillier than I was expecting. You're silly, Filloma."
My entire face heats and I cannot tell if it's because of the compliment or the insult. "Uh... o-okay." Just behind him, I catch the shadowy form of Asha crawling out from behind a tree, as if ready to jump in.
But over his shoulder, there is a stir.
Someone exiting one of Bermuda Village's sparse households, far away on the path that Iris said not to take. Split between trees, just hidden save for the swishing of grayed, carefully-painted robes.
My blood runs cold.
N watches my eyes widen and turns, but the person has already dispersed. "What is it, Filloma?"
"I... I saw someone."
He doesn't bother to doubt me, just takes my hand and moves us forward through the shimmering midday sunlight that has somehow grown frigid and distant. He leads me past the fronds and into the trees, as Asha darts in somewhere between our encounter and my sighting, and we race to the fragment of my past that has resurfaced.
The soreness pervades my mind, starting in my head and slowly traveling, bruises down my arms and legs and patterning across my soft stomach, once the underbelly of a squishy pokemon.
What is a lord of the Plasma Dukedom doing here?
