As we walked out of the gym, Serena held her badge high in the air. "I got a badge!" she bragged to pedestrians as we paraded down the street. All of them shot her confused or distasteful looks, to which she replied with a smug smile and a repetition of her new favorite phrase.
"Serena, hey," I interrupt, "we should get going, travel across Route 4."
"Good idea, and want to have a picnic? It's basically a giant garden, you know."
"Yeah," I reply. "I was actually getting kind of hungry, too. And if we leave now, we can arrive in Lumiose City by midnight, at latest."
"The Volbeat will light our way to the city!" Serena said gleefully.
We chose the perfect spot in Route 4. It was surrounded by wildflowers, and I might have spotted a few Sunflora, but I couldn't tell the difference. Serena had dressed for the occasion in a grey sweater-like top, with her freshly curled hair tied up in a crimson ribbon.
I set up the picnic, and Serena got to babbling. "My sister and I used to watch the clouds a lot when we were younger," she told me between bites of her sandwich. She licked the crumbs from her full lips. "I'll never forget the first time I recognized a pokemon in the clouds. As I told her, it looked like a Turtwig. She thought it looked more like a Tepig. Always liked that fire-type, she did. Tepig ended up being her starter."
"Hey, I actually never met your sister, what's her name?" I asked.
"Her name was Sabra," Serena answers, now misty-eyed. She falls backward and crosses her hands behind her head, staring up at the sky. "She was 10 years older than me, and left before I turned 5. Went to Unova to be some big-shot gym leader. We never heard from her again. She doesn't even visit…" she pauses, then finally sighs and resumes. "I really miss her."
I was silent, letting Serena's story sink in.
She takes a deep breath, and exhales in a funny way, as if she's holding back tears. She gives a small laugh, which sounds melancholy in contrast to her earlier giggles after the gym battle. "You know, my mom used to say that we have the same eyes," she says finally, feeling under her right eye with her index and middle fingers. "So, now whenever I look in the mirror… I think of her."
I bite my lip, unsure if I should stay silent or try to comfort her.
"Piplup," she says suddenly.
"What?"
"That cloud looks like a Piplup," she repeats, pointing at a small cloud in the cottony array.
"To tell you the truth, they all look the same to me," I say, laying back and stretching my legs.
"Okay, they're all Piplups, then?" she questions, giggling. (Her real giggle, not the one used to mask her sadness.)
We must have dozed off looking at the clouds, because when I opened my eyes, the Piplups had disappeared. The sky was painted black, and tiny, floating Volbeat mimicked the stars in brightness.