EIGHT: NOCTURNE

Wednesday, 14th September

It's starting to get dark. Sooner than Gwyneth was expecting, too. Summer's nearly over. Eight days and it's official.

Eight days. And she's still the wrong side of White Forest. That's at least a two-day hike, if you're going through it, and Gwyneth doesn't see that she has any other options. Although if she's honest, she's not sure that the hike's an option, either. Not without supplies she doesn't have. And some way to get over the river.

She sighs and kicks a pebble down the street. What are you gonna do, right? She just has to keep going, somehow. One foot in front of the other, and don't die. It sounds so easy when you put it like that, she thinks, and sighs again.

To give herself something to do, she stops and takes off her backpack so she can put her jacket back on. Then she puts it back on her shoulders again, and lifts the venipede back into place, and finally gives in to the cold emptiness in her belly and goes off in search of something to eat.

A couple of streets away she finds a fast food restaurant – this is one of the benefits of Gwyneth's particular Aân Hen, her middling Unovan blandness: there's always junk food somewhere nearby – and she throws the last of her money at something that will, if not exactly nourish her, at least keep her going through the night. She eats too fast, sitting at a chipped Formica table under a glaring light, and then when her stomach starts to cramp she eats slower again.

The venipede scratches around the tabletop, running its antennae over the plastic to soak up whatever oily smells linger in a place like this. Sometimes Gwyneth offers it a fry and it takes it from her fingers with surprising delicacy, holding it between its forelegs and pushing it slowly into its mouth. Something about it reminds Gwyneth of a watch she once had where the back was transparent and you could see the clockwork moving. Bugs are like that, she thinks. Like intricate little machines.

She lingers over the last of her food until it's cold and unappetising, trying to put off having to go back outside. Beyond the glass, the sky is the deep blue of twilight, punctuated by a half-moon and the bright dot of Venus. The other stars are all invisible because of the light pollution. It's okay. Think what Nika's Romans would say: an omen, right? Diana for not marrying. Venus for love.

Gwyneth laughs at herself for thinking it, but it's an honest laugh; the hot food has put her in a good mood for once. Romans, huh? Okay, Gwyneth. Romans it is.

"You know about Romans, asshole?" she asks the venipede, giving it the last cold fry. "Basically they were these dudes who liked civic engineering and masculinity." She wrinkles her nose. "Not sure why Nika was so into them."

The venipede's jaws make a little scrunching noise like paper crinkling. Gwyneth thinks it might be looking at her, but it might just be staring into space while it eats.

"I guess she liked the stories," she says absently. "I guess I did too."

She sits there for a little while, in her uncomfortable fast-food-restaurant chair, and then she runs her greasy fingers through her greasy hair and sighs.

"Okay, dude," she says. "Hope you enjoyed that, 'cause that's the last food either of us are seeing for a while." She picks the venipede up and then has to put it down again, the fingers of her left hand going weak with pain. She counts to three, slowly, ignoring the interesting colours staining the bandages, and then awkwardly scoops the venipede up into her right hand. "Help me out here, dude," she says, trying to put it on her shoulder. "Just get on there, all right?" It gets the message and hops up onto her backpack. "There you go."

It clicks at her, and Gwyneth nods.

"Okay, then," she says. "Let's go."

She goes out into the deepening night, leaving the noise and the smell of hot fat behind, and looks up and down the street. It's virtually empty. Everyone has gone home.

Her good mood does not seem to be lasting.


Gwyneth goes for a walk. She's doing the thing again, with the modem and the blurred vision and the sense of being meat, but not so much. It's okay. She only has opinions about this state of mind after it's over. Right now, in the thick of it, she doesn't care about anything at all.

Nimbasa is sort of pretty at night. Not so much this part of town, but she can see the lights of the fairground over the rooftops to the southeast. She registers this as she registers the sidewalk beneath her feet, as a mere fact of physical geography. If she sees the Ferris wheel, shining like a frozen firework in the night, it is only as an object and not as the place where she and her girlfriend of nearly nine years first became an item. The world is empty of meaning: everything is itself and nothing more, coming to her free of all history and intent. On other nights these streets might move past her like black ribbons, the lights of houses like fireflies, but tonight the road travels beneath her like a length of asphalt and the houses on either side like rectangles of brick. And Gwyneth walks through it all like a thing with legs, irresistibly singular.

She doesn't have a destination, but she doesn't need one. This isn't that kind of walk. Gwyneth crosses empty streets and strides down deserted boulevards, takes corners as decisively as if she knows where she's going, and somehow she feels she knows this place, these offices and parks. She's in the city's northern quarter now. The place where she made her catastrophic decision can't be far away.

She remembers, distantly, her idea earlier that day that she might liberate the venipede. Her decision that it was impossible. She grins, sharklike, mirthless.

Gwyneth heads north.

The streets grow twisted and narrow. The city shows its age here, in houses that sag like old meat. Litter. Graffiti. A hump, half-glimpsed down an alley, that Gwyneth knows is someone sleeping. She notes without rancour that this is what she can expect from this night for herself.

The sky thickens into the washed-out dark of a city night: black, but not so black the stars show. Gwyneth sees other people. They keep their heads down and move quickly, although in secret they are watching her as they watch everyone else they pass. Just to be safe.

It's getting late, after all, and this isn't Coldside. There are no sports stadiums or theatres here. This is the Old Town. Gwyneth doesn't know this, but she has an inkling. A year and a bit in Aspertia's east side has taught her to recognise these things.

She is aware, on some level, that she shouldn't be wandering around here after dark; that she is small and people feel able to harm her in a way they don't with other (white, cis) people; that she doesn't know how to use her switchblade properly. It isn't that she is ignorant of this. It's that it doesn't matter.

Gwyneth keeps walking, keeps heading north, and somewhere in the tangled maze of narrow streets she stops.

"Hey, dude," she says, as the man approaches her. She does not quite recognise the situation as one which warrants fear. Not yet. "What's …"

She trails off. He is taller than her, and broader, and almost certainly stronger. A big, simian thing whose flanks steam gently in the cool air walks on its knuckles alongside him. It has no neck and barely any head, face stretched grotesquely across its chest.

There is a conversation. It is brief and unsatisfying. The man swears at her and calls her a word that Gwyneth in her present state of mind has some difficulty registering: six letters, begins with T. She blinks and tells him she has no money. He swears at her again and his darmanitan bares its teeth. It has a lot of them, and the biggest are longer than Gwyneth's hands.

She tells him again that she has no money and the man asks for her wallet and phone, although ask is perhaps too polite a word. He calls her another six-letter word, this time ending in T rather than beginning with it. He grabs Gwyneth by the front of her top and says it all over again, slurs and all. He seems afraid, young, desperate. Gwyneth has been mugged before, does not think he really knows what he is doing, although she thinks he is probably fool enough to really hurt her in an attempt to convince her that he does.

The static fuzz in Gwyneth's head stands between her and fear, but she is aware it is the right reaction now. She takes her switchblade from her pocket and flicks it open, and the man, the boy really, smashes his arm into hers with a blunt panicky force that sends jolts all the way up to her shoulder and knocks the knife into the gutter.

The boy swears at her again. His vocabulary is limited. Gwyneth does not judge: so is hers. She tells him she doesn't have anything and his darmanitan whoops and he says he will not ask again and he leans in close as he says it and the venipede, silent until now and unnoticed, leaps out from behind her head, screaming that awful scream it screamed before in the tunnel, and he swears and lets her go as he recoils and the poison sting flies overhead and the darmanitan tears fire from its eyebrow with one hand and lobs it with perfect accuracy over Gwyneth's shoulder to cover their retreat as it follows the running boy still swearing and spitting out slurs and the venipede falls from her with flames licking at its shell and hits the sidewalk without a sound.

Gwyneth stares, but only for a second. Quickly, without thinking, she throws off her backpack, ignoring the wrenching pain in her wrist; she takes off her jacket and throws it over the venipede. She picks it up still swaddled, still hot, and as she learns what burning chitin smells like she runs.


No one stops her. They stare and swear as she shoves them out of the way, but they do not stop her, not here in the Old Town and not south in Coldside, where she barges through the queues outside the theatres. Not in the town centre, where she trips going over the bridge and twists as she falls so she lands on her shoulder and not the bug cradled in her arms. Not in the South Bank where she nearly knocks some kid and her watchog into the river.

No one stops her, and Gwyneth crashes through the sliding glass doors into the bright lights of the Pokémon Centre unchallenged.


She sits waiting in the hallway and drinks black coffee that someone gave her. She doesn't remember who or when. It's very sweet but almost completely cold.

For the first time in years, Gwyneth cries.


Thursday, 15th September

The prognosis is not good. A little after midnight, a nurse takes her aside and asks her how long ago she caught the venipede, and Gwyneth says just a few days. The nurse nods understandingly, and tells her as gently as he can that the venipede is not healthy.

"We think she's maybe two years old," he says. "But it's not been a good two years, I'm afraid. Whatever she's been eating, she hasn't got the minerals she needs to maintain her shell properly. Her lung is inflamed – we think bronchitis, probably from air pollution – and the shell that's grown over her missing eye has gone too deep and is putting pressure on her brain."

Gwyneth listens without answering, almost without comprehending. She wills herself to remain present, to not let this information flow past her ears without entering. She needs to know.

"All this means she's not like a trained pokémon," the nurse says. He has a name badge. Gwyneth cannot at this moment in time make out what it says. "She can't just rest and be fine a day later, especially not after a fire attack – that's not just physical damage, it hurts her essence too." He hesitates. Gwyneth can see he's thrown by her lack of response, but she cannot speak. "Dr. Marsden is a bug-type specialist, and he's doing all he can, but I'm afraid we can't be sure she'll make it."

Gwyneth stands and watches him. He watches her back, and she sees doubled in his eyes something tear-stained and grey. Something broken.

A long moment passes, and the little line of worry between the nurse's brows grows more pronounced.

"What's her name?" he asks, trying to make a connection, any connection, and Gwyneth drops her eyes to the floor.

He waits until the silence is uncomfortable for both of them, and offers her another cup of coffee. She nods her acceptance, because if she does he will go away, and then as he leaves to get it she sinks back into her seat and wishes fervently that she had something sharp.

After a while, a severe-looking Henuun woman comes out of one of the doors. Gwyneth recognises her as one of the doctors she saw earlier, on her journey through the inner corridors of the Centre to this place in the infirmary.

"Ms. ze'Haraan?" she asks. The word is flawless in her mouth, the pit-of-the-throat aa and soft z pronounced perfectly. Here is a woman who knows her history.

Gwyneth nods. The doctor continues, introducing herself.

"Dr. ze'Naarat. I'd like to take a look at your hand."

Gwyneth blinks slowly. From somewhere beneath her feet, words move sluggishly towards her mouth.

"I … I can't pay," she says, and ze'Naarat shakes her head irritably.

"I don't care about that. Your hand looks infected."

"It's fine," insists Gwyneth, and ze'Naarat glares. She has no patience for this kind of patient, the kind who brush off their illness in the hope that it will get better, only to come back when it's harder to treat and a real risk to their health.

"Really," she says. "When was it last looked at?"

"Uh … Saturday, I―"

"And what have you been doing to it since?"

"Nothing, I – look, I've been travelling―"

"Do you want sepsis?" asks ze'Naarat bluntly. "Come with me, Ms. ze'Haraan."

And Gwyneth can feel herself slipping, collapsing into that state of mind where she can't really think and can only do as she is told; but not yet, not while the venipede is still hurt, so she shakes her head and stands her ground.

"I'm waiting for my venipede," she begins, and ze'Naarat sighs irritably.

"Your venipede is being taken care of," she says shortly. "It won't benefit from you losing a hand to infection here in the hallway. Now. Come with me."

Gwyneth just doesn't have the energy to resist any more. She gets up and follows the doctor back into her office.

"Finally," mutters ze'Naarat, not quite quietly enough for Gwyneth to not hear. "Now, sit down here, please, and let me take a look."

She unwraps Gwyneth's hand with quick, professional movements, uncovering something swollen purple and yellow with bruising and fluids that Gwyneth cannot name but which she knows are never meant to see the outside of her body. There's blood too, and a faint smell. Gwyneth looks at it for a moment, unable to comprehend that this bloated broken thing is her hand, is part of her body, and then looks away again as ze'Naarat clicks her tongue in dissatisfaction and reaches for a bottle of something.

"All right," she says. "This needs cleaning. And I want to run some blood tests, too." She shoots Gwyneth a dark look. She does not have what Gwyneth's mother would call a good bedside manner. "You haven't taken good care of this."

"Haven't been able to," mumbles Gwyneth, too tired to be ashamed. "Slept in an alley."

And ze'Naarat pauses for a second, looks at Gwyneth again; she sees now not just an irresponsible patient but all the other things too, the scarred arms and bad skin and unwashed hair and everything else as well, and she sighs. She sounds irritated, but perhaps at herself as well as Gwyneth.

"Right," she says, with the curtness of someone too belligerent to admit to embarrassment. "Hold on. This is probably going to hurt."

She's right, it does. When she touches Gwyneth's hand, her whole arm goes weak with the pain of it. But she sits and bears it, partly because there is no choice and partly because she needs pain now, to remind her that yet again she has failed as a person, and she does not so much as flinch.

Ze'Naarat cleans the wound, thoroughly and without emotion, then dresses it and binds a splint to her wrist with bandages, so that she does not accidentally flex it and stretch the wounded skin on her hand.

"It hurts when you move your arm, yes?" she asks, and when Gwyneth nods she ties a sling around her neck so that she can avoid that too. "There," she says, viewing her work with an acid sort of satisfaction. "I'm going to put you on some antibiotics, too, and then once the bloods are done I'll review."

Gwyneth says nothing. She thinks about how much that might cost, and then her thoughts go right back to the venipede. It's actually quite small, when it's lying still like that. It only seemed bigger because of all that movement, all that anger.

A few moments later she becomes aware that the doctor is talking to her.

"… tonight?"

"Huh?"

Ze'Naarat sighs again. It's a sharp sigh, the kind that someone makes at half past midnight if they have been working since eight in the morning with minimal breaks.

"Do you have a place to stay tonight?" she asks. "I'll need to see you again tomorrow when the results of the blood test come back. And your venipede isn't going anywhere for a while, either."

"Oh." Gwyneth shakes her head slowly. "No. I thought … I thought I'd just wait."

Ze'Naarat visibly bites back her irritation.

"You need rest, Ms. ze'Haraan," she says. "Real rest, just as your venipede does." She starts typing rapidly on her computer, index fingers stabbing like the beaks of hunting herons. "I'll sign you in as a trainer. There should be a room available somewhere, and that will cover your venipede's treatment as well."

Gwyneth stares. She isn't sure she heard what she just heard. It doesn't seem possible.

"Here?" she asks, stupid with shock and fatigue, and ze'Naarat raises one eyebrow without looking away from her screen.

"Yes, here. Another night out there isn't going to do your arm any favours. Neither of us wants to―"

"Thank you," says Gwyneth fervently, suddenly waking up, lurching forward with earnest gratitude. "Oh my god, thank you―"

"Yes, yes," says ze'Naarat. She has darker skin than Gwyneth, but Gwyneth can see the blood rising in her cheeks all the same. She makes eye contact briefly and then breaks it again, embarrassed. "It's – I'm a doctor. I have a duty of care."

"And you mean it," says Gwyneth, which is as close as she can come to saying I've met a lot of doctors, and I know that they're people as well as professionals, and they are capable of all the same malice and hatred as any other person, and you are not like them.

And ze'Naarat hesitates, for once, and her mouth twitches at the corner in an awkward almost-smile.

"It's nothing," she says. "Really."

But it's not, it never is, and Gwyneth will carry this not-nothing with her forever.


Gwyneth does not sleep so much as she passes out, on the narrow Pokémon Centre bed between deliciously fresh sheets, and as consciousness flees her she feels as if her body is melting into the dark.


Gwyneth wakes very late, especially late for her, to a riot of the sort of aches and pains you feel after a return to comfort from a hard few days. She lies there for a few minutes, trying to work out where she is and why, and then she remembers and makes a brief attempt at getting up before she realises she isn't quite up to that yet.

"Ugh," she says, slumping back down again. "Fine."

It's just noise. She isn't angry really. She's worried, and in a little pain, but she's comfortable, which she hasn't been since she left – and perhaps not then, either; her own bed isn't as nice as this one.

Gwyneth rests her eyes and allows her muscles to untense. She feels weak, which she supposes she probably is, after everything, but there's a kind of pleasure in it. There's the sort of helplessness that someone forces on you and the kind that you relax into, and this is the second kind. Right now, Gwyneth isn't sure she can actually sit up, and she's also not sure that this isn't okay.

She thinks about the venipede – her venipede, somewhere three floors below in the infirmary, connected to tubes and wires and the detritus of modern medicine. She remembers telling herself it's just a bug back on the ferry, and almost laughs at the idea of all that time and effort being put into saving the life of just a bug.

Almost, but not quite. It isn't really very funny, under the circumstances.

She makes a silent promise to stop calling the venipede 'it'.

After some time, she edges her way out of bed and over to the window. It's raining outside, hard. From her vantage point on the third floor, she can see the water splashing in the gutters of the roof across the street.

Gwyneth imagines sleeping out there and shivers.

Turning her attention back to the room, she fumbles open her bag, one-handed. She inspects the clothes she has been wearing for the past few days and decides that that particular tank top is not so much white any more as it is grey. She dresses in fresh clothes, inelegantly, then grabs her key card and shuffles down the hall to the bathroom.

Pokémon Centre showers are not particularly good, but this one, after the last few days, feels like heaven. Even having to constantly manoeuvre to keep her hand dry doesn't spoil it, and Gwyneth comes out feeling vaguely human, which for her is no small achievement. She shaves, plucks, conceals, and takes the elevator down to the lobby.

There are kids in there with her, who stare and try without success to hide it, but Gwyneth closes her eyes and leans against the wall and feels them melt away into nothingness all around her. It's okay. More or less, anyway.

"Hey," she says to the receptionist on duty. "I brought my venipede in last night and i― she was hurt real bad, and I was wondering if she's okay?"

"Right," says the receptionist. "What's your name, please?"

"Gwyneth ze'Haraan."

She tries to say it the way Dr. ze'Naarat did, the way a Henuun woman would, but the botched sounds ring loud in her ears. She sounds like a white girl reaching for someone else's ancestors. Like what she is.

"Okay," says the receptionist, not noticing anything wrong. "Venipede, venipede … it seems she's stable."

Gwyneth lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding.

"Can I see her?"

"Sorry, I don't think so, yet," says the receptionist, and then adds, at the look on Gwyneth's face: "I can call the doctor and ask―"

"Nah, it's okay," says Gwyneth, shaking her head. "I'll wait."

She's about to turn and go when the receptionist calls her back.

"Oh – one other thing, Dr. ze'Naarat left a message for you. Apparently you have an appointment with her at four o'clock."

"Four o'clock," repeats Gwyneth.

"Yeah. That okay?"

"That's fine," says Gwyneth, as if she had any other plans for today. "That's just fine."

She goes to the canteen and pauses in the doorway, struck for a moment by the tables full of kids, eating and laughing and slipping their pokémon morsels of food. Nobody here is over eighteen. Gwyneth stares and feels – not old, because she knows she is not old, that she in fact has a depressingly large number of years left to get through, but sad, and tired. She remembers all of this so vividly, and what comes after. Summer is ending. Most of these kids will be home again before October's over. And that will be it: no one will ever be as kind to them again as they are now, and no one will give them presents and advice. In some ways, Gwyneth decides, the trainer journey is a cruel idea. What's the point of showing kids the woman with the ultra ball, if you're only going to take her away again afterwards?

She joins the queue for breakfast, her slight build and height helping to disguise her age, and shows her key card in exchange for food. It works, thankfully – Gwyneth was half-expecting them to demand she show a trainer card she doesn't have – and she takes her breakfast to a quiet corner where she can eat and watch the kids enjoying the morning. Oh, they won't all be happy, she's aware of that: trainer journeys don't solve everything, and they have all the usual teenage nonsense to deal with, on top of whatever's going on at home. But they're travelling Unova, with the League providing food, board and medical care, and they've all got pokémon. Some of those pokémon will stick with them for life, and so will some of the people they meet.

Gwyneth remembers what Jackie said about Team Plasma coming back, and a coldness settles around her heart. It will happen again. This thing, this impractical, colossal, fantastic thing, that costs the country millions of dollars to run and pays out in nothing but the happiness of children – this thing that redeems Unova will be poisoned again. There will be thefts and abuses. There will be thugs with uniforms and slogans. She looks at these kids, these trainers, and she is furious that even just a few of them may have it taken from them.

She still hates that they have this and she does not, of course. But she hates anyone who would spoil it for them even more.

On her way out, she steals a couple of bread rolls and some fruit. She's got to move on from here at some point, after all, and she needs to start stocking up.

There's no word on her venipede at the desk, and even if it wasn't raining Gwyneth wouldn't be able to face going outside today when the alternative is a warm lounge and complimentary coffee; she gets the wifi password from the receptionist, finds herself an armchair out of the way of the kids watching TV on the other side of the room and starts going through news websites on her phone. Hilbert ze'Haraan: Is he Getting Married? asks one headline, and Gwyneth rolls her eyes. She should call up the tabloids and offer them the story, she thinks sarcastically. Might be a couple dollars in it for her. Unusual Weather Phenomenon Spreading Across Hoenn, announces another article. Gwyneth watches four seconds of heavy rain falling on white stone buildings before scrolling away, unable to see any difference between that rain and the stuff falling outside.

There's the usual political horror stories, although they all seem to be referring to something that happened while Gwyneth was underground and so not paying attention; there's a report saying that some third-party researcher has cleared up the crustle swarm on Route 4, opening up the highway and trainers' trail again; and then at last she finds it: Reports of Plasma Activity in Virbank City. She reads the article and is irritated by the constant use of the word 'allegedly'; apparently not even the word of a Gym Leader is enough for this to be taken as fact. Gwyneth guesses no one wants to believe that Plasma could be back.

There aren't many details given. Gwyneth gives up and goes back to the front desk to ask about her venipede again. The receptionist tells her that there's still no word, and offers hesitantly to send her a message as soon as there is any. Gwyneth is touched, although also annoyed that she comes across as that desperate, and accepts.

Gwyneth goes back to her corner in the lounge and sits, listening to the rain hammering at the window and watching whatever the kids have set the TV to over the back of the sofa. It's noisy in here, with four or five different conversations going on at any one time – no one wants to go out and train on a day like this, except perhaps for a few water-type trainers who can't pass up this opportunity to keep their pokémon in shape – but that's all right; it's a good kind of noisy, even a peaceful kind, if that makes sense. She feels out of place and yet at home. She feels clean and tired and calm.

She worries about the venipede, but she's used to worrying and this specific fear joins the other nebulous ones at the back of her head, half drowned out by the white noise she carries with her wherever she goes.

Gwyneth remembers sitting in this chair before, a little over nine years ago. Sharing it with Nika, the two of them perching on it at angles that her older self can no longer see any comfort in. Sitting and waiting for Nika's pokémon to be healed, Gwyneth's right arm twined loosely around Nika's left, fingers just about touching in a way that might plausibly be claimed to be an accident.

They're both very nervous. This is new territory for both of them, and despite the fact that this is, in part, why Nika went on her trainer journey (much later she will admit, laughing a little at her past self but also nostalgic, that she did have a romantic notion that she might travel Unova and fall in love with a cute girl), even she isn't sure what to do now that it's actually happened.

They talk around the subject. They talk about the Gym battle and what they might do next. They even talk about pokémon liberation, a subject that Gwyneth brings up and which Nika, surprised, carries on with. Both of them agree that Gwyneth is doing better now.

Neither say that Gwyneth's journey is over. The thought that she might go home is unbearable, and they both know without having to discuss it that they have to hide what she did, because if anyone finds out then her card will be revoked, making her a child again instead of a trainer, and she will cease to be able to wander the country as she pleases and have to return to Nuvema and explain herself to her mother.

(It's not quite as bad as this: they make it scarier by worrying about it, and forget that the League would be sympathetic, would want to use Gwyneth's story as ammunition against Team Plasma. It's understandable. They're only kids, after all.)

So they don't talk about that, and they don't talk about the Us they have become, either. Nika suggests they go to Lostlorn Forest tomorrow – there are buses that take trainers out in groups a couple of days a week – and Gwyneth says okay. It can be like, Nika begins, and then breaks off, embarrassed. It's all right. Gwyneth knows what she means.

Lostlorn Forest is a good day out. On the bus they meet Delarivier, whom Gwyneth will forever remember for the withering sarcasm she picked up as a result of being stuck with the name Delarivier, and they make friends. They will never see each other again after today, but when the sourness that has been growing in Gwyneth over the past few weeks starts to become visible, Delarivier's acid disposition will provide it with a template for its development.

In the forest itself, Nika and Gwyneth go off alone, and Delarivier leaves them to it; she's no fool and she has seen the brief contact between their hands for what it is. They go deep into the woods, Nika's pokémon fluttering stomping crawling all around them, and they find what seems to be a lost child and which, when Nika calls out, flickers out of existence and is revealed to be an illusion cloaking a zorua that dives into the undergrowth and escapes beyond their ability to track.

It's magical. There's a lot of did you see? and oh my god and their shock is a convenient excuse to cling to one another. Nothing happens, of course – they are still too shy even to think of going any further than hand-holding – but it cements what was built yesterday, wears away some of the newness of it, and when they come back late that afternoon, out from the dark eaves of the forest into the rosy evening light, this thing called Us is starting to seem believable to them.

By now they have been in Nimbasa for nearly a month. Gwyneth seems to be doing okay, all things considered. (She keeps her shame locked away deep inside, using her growing infatuation with Nika as a jailer.) It is time, they both agree, to leave.

Route 5 is beautiful at this time of year. The later flowers are in full bloom and the trees are so brightly green as to make your eyes ache when the sun shines through them. Each of them feels giddy to be here with the other; they stay up long into the warm nights, lying on their backs and learning constellations from a booklet Nika bought in Nimbasa. Even the pokémon feel the change in the air. Astyanax gets more and more energetic as the days get hotter, and starts under Nika's direction to rear on his hind legs every now and then as his bones begin to change shape beneath his skin. Hekate's wings start lengthening and she learns to flap-jump her way up onto Nika's shoulder, crowing triumphantly. Only Britomartis does not seem to take to either the change in Nika or the deepening summer; she boils inside her heavy steel armour, hisses when touched, refuses to leave the cool interior of her poké ball except if there is a pond or stream she can lie down in. Nika lets her have her way. She is too happy to fight.

And if Gwyneth envies her this (which she does), she says nothing. When Astyanax sheds his skin and comes out with longer legs and clever grasping foreclaws, she congratulates Nika and shares in her delight; when Hekate manages to stay airborne for a full thirty seconds before crashing back down onto her armoured rump, she applauds along with her. And when they see wild minccino, scurrying through the long grass with their tails held out like pennants, she says nothing at all.

Nika tries to offer her a poké ball, once. She could try to catch something, she says.

Gwyneth does not answer, and Nika understands that she should not offer again. She puts her arms around her instead and rests her head on Gwyneth's shoulder. The gesture surprises both of them, but neither move to end it. They sit there for a long time, taking stock of this new pleasure, until at last Gwyneth has to move to put more wood on the fire.

Later that night, Nika looks from her booklet to the sky and points. That's Cassiopeia, she says, her classicist's brain clicking into gear. She was beautiful and she knew it, which pissed off Poseidon enough that he tried to feed her daughter Andromeda to the sea monster Cetus (which is actually a constellation itself, over there she thinks). But Perseus, you know, the gorgon guy, he rescued her on his way home from killing Medusa, so Poseidon went for Cassiopeia instead and chained her to the sky. The constellation's right next to the North Star, so Cassiopeia gets hoisted up and suspended upside-down half the year.

Gwyneth stares, tracing lines with her eyes.

"Poseidon's a dick," she says.

"Yeah," agrees Nika. "They all are, actually. Everyone was very unhappy about it."

They are one day's walk from the bus stop at the end of Route 5 that ferries trainers across the Driftveil Drawbridge. They are at a campsite where nobody else has stopped. The world is huge and dark and incredibly quiet, a place made just for the two of them.

They kiss, once, hesitantly, and in the morning they move on to Driftveil.


Yes: Nimbasa is a town full of memories. This Pokémon Centre especially. Gwyneth thinks that the time she spent here was the weirdest of her life. She still isn't sure how she managed to negotiate both her first relationship and the aftermath of the liberation at the same time. Probably she shouldn't have done it. It's got to be more healthy to take these things one by one, right? But then, that isn't how life works. Everything happens, all the time, so unreasonably.

She thinks about going to ask the receptionist for news of her venipede again, but holds herself back. She'll wait for the call. The receptionist has definitely got better things to do than answer the same questions over and over. And besides, getting up from this chair seems like far more work than Gwyneth is ready for right now. She took the tablets Dr. ze'Naarat gave her, but obviously they're not really doing anything yet; her arm still hurts like hell, a brittle pain that fractures when you feel it so that splinters cascade throughout your body. The doctor was right. There is something bad going on there.

She's lucky. Just the bill from the hospital in Virbank alone is probably going to be crippling. What the cost of dealing with these complications would be Gwyneth doesn't want to think about. It's a good thing ze'Naarat has ethics. Or no, really it's a bad thing that Unova itself as a country doesn't, but this is a pointless way to think about it. Unova is Unova, huge and careless, and Gwyneth could waste her whole life screaming at it without it so much as blinking.

At about midday, the receptionist's voice chimes over the PA system asking for Gwyneth ze'Haraan to come to the front desk, and she levers herself up out of her chair with as much speed as she can muster, heedless of the kids that stare. When she gets to the desk, she gets directions to the infirmary that she barely acknowledges before she's off again, frantic.

Dr. Marsden is tall and black and younger than Gwyneth expected. He looks at her and Gwyneth detects none of the usual recognition in his eyes, no minute shock of revulsion. She is surprised, and a little flattered, and a lot irritated that she is flattered by what should be common courtesy.

"She's stable now, and improving," he explains, walking down the ward with her. Gwyneth tries to keep her eyes ahead, to not see the pokémon and their pain on either side of her. She isn't completely successful. "It wasn't just that it was a fire attack, it's that it hit her with a lot of force – like being punched, if you like. Some surgery was required to address the internal trauma. But she pulled through, and I have hopes that we might be able to wake her in a day or so."

The venipede is lying on a padded table, a tiny dark hummock in an ocean of white and mint-green. Her shell is black and flaky all down the left-hand side, and under the antiseptic smell Gwyneth can still make out that awful burning-chitin stink from last night. One part has been cut cleanly away and replaced with a pale fibreglass panel.

She was wrong about the wires. There are only four: two cables attached somewhere on her underbelly that lead to a machine whose screen is thick with unintelligible meaning, and two tubes that terminate in what look something like oxygen masks, strapped to the venipede on either side.

"What are those?" asks Gwyneth, because she feels she has to say something and she doesn't dare ask the more important questions.

"Venipede breathe through holes in their carapaces," says Marsden. "Spiracles. Here and here. These machines are helping her to breathe."

"Oh." Gwyneth stares. "Is that like … fake shell?"

"We had to remove some to do the surgery. It will grow back, eventually." Marsden pauses, watching her. His is the careful face of someone used to having difficult conversations. "I know it looks bad," he says, "but she's doing well, believe me. It was a darmanitan that hit her, right?"

"Yeah. Flame burst, I think." In the bathroom mirror, Gwyneth saw the singed ends of hairs, and light burns on her cheek and neck: the evidence of a tiny explosion. It hurts, a little, but the louder pain in her arm drowns it out.

Marsden nods.

"That's what I mean. Urban venipede, isn't she? And fresh caught? Most of them wouldn't have survived that, but she's as tough as they come."

Gwyneth feels the ghost of a smile touch her face, even here, even looking at her venipede half carbonised like a cookie left too long in the oven.

"She's a vicious little," she begins, and then decides not to swear. "She's a vicious little monster," she says. "Put me in the hospital when I caught her." She indicates her arm, without looking away from the venipede. "She's tough enough to … I mean I hope …"

She can't go on. She looks at her boots, all worn and scuffed with flavours of dirt from Aspertian to Nimbasan. She senses rather than sees Marsden rearrange his face into something soothing.

"It's looking good," he says gently. "She's got a long way to go, but it's looking good."

Gwyneth doesn't say anything. She is astonished at how upset she is. She wants to be angry about it, too, but she finds she cannot.

She supposes she should have expected this. What has she learned from her history with pokémon, if not that she is not chosen? No, she thinks, she should never have let herself forget. Some people get chosen and some do not.

Gwyneth drags her eyes up to meet those of Marsden. She opens her mouth and absolutely no words come out.


After lunch, which she goes to only in order to steal more food – she has no appetite after her visit to the ward – Gwyneth's phone goes off and she stares at it for a moment, confused. A call. Really? Apparently so.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Gwyn, it's Shane." (It's … Shane?) "How's things?"

"Oh. Uh, hey dude." Gwyneth gets up from her armchair and goes over to the window, where the noise from the kids is less overpowering. The rain is still coming down hard, splashing on the asphalt of the practice court where a bedraggled kid is chasing an incredibly excited oshawott around in circles. "Things are … things are weird."

"Yeah? Maxine called, said her niece Sadie―"

"Saadiyyah."

"Huh? Okay, Saadiyyah, she called to let her know she got to Driftveil safe, so I figured you probably had signal again for me to check in. So how you doin', Gwyn?"

Gwyneth is silent for a moment, considering her response. The kid still hasn't caught the oshawott. Both of them are getting wetter by the second.

"I'm okay, Shane," she says in the end. "I'm in Nimbasa."

"Nimbasa? Hey, that's not bad, Gwyn, not bad at all. Halfway there, huh?"

"Sure," she says. "Halfway there."

(In the alley behind the video game store, standing on a carpet of ageing cigarette butts, Shane frowns slightly, blows out smoke like a breaching wailord.)

"What am I not gettin' here, Gwyn?" he asks. "Somethin' up?"

It's hard to speak. Gwyneth holds her breath for a long time before she lets the words out.

"I caught a venipede," she says. "Accident. In Virbank. Stupid thing attacked me and I threw the ball at i― at her without thinking. Now she's hurt real bad and I'm in the Pokémon Centre, waiting."

Pause. Breathless anticipation.

A sigh down the line, crackly with proximity to the mouthpiece.

"Oh man," says Shane. "Sounds rough, Gwyn. Sorry."

She can hear how adrift he is. It's barely been a week, if that, and there's already so much in the way between them. A journey will do that, Gwyneth thinks. Especially on foot, through Unova, with pokémon.

"Thanks, dude," she says, trying to feel her way back towards the place she was in when the two of them last spoke. Before the venipede, before her injury, before Saadiyyah. It seems much longer ago than it was. "I'm okay though."

"Yeah?" He sounds unconvinced. Gwyneth can't blame him. She doesn't believe it either. "You, uh, you sound kinda―"

"I'm just worried about the venipede," she interrupts, before he can get all kind and awkward at her. "Like, I … she's awful, she scratches and spits and she tried to kill me, but I like her. I think. I'm just worried, Shane."

Silence. (Shane shifts uncomfortably. This does not sound like Gwyneth: something is wrong here beyond his capacity to diagnose, let alone address.)

"Yeah, I can hear it," he says in the end. "You … doing okay? Like in terms of gettin' where you need to be?"

(No.)

"I'll get there, dude," she says, pushing hard at her anger, knowing it is inappropriate. "I got this far. I'll get there."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

The rain comes down like white noise on a TV screen. The kid outside makes a grab for the oshawott, and it slithers through his hands and between his legs. Gwyneth hears him curse, the sound muffled by weather and glass. She reads his lips: c'mon, buddy, please.

"Hang in there," says Shane, in a tone of voice Gwyneth has never heard him use before. If asked, she could not say what it means, but it makes her skin crawl. "'S a crazy damn plan, Gwyn, you know as well as me, and yeah, man, hang in there."

A soft thud: Gwyneth's forehead against the glass. The noise comes at her before she realises she has moved and surprises her.

"Okay," she says, exhausted. "Thanks, Shane. I will."

He lets her go. Gwyneth stands there and watches the kid until he catches his oshawott and trudges off in the direction of the door.

"If you die I'm gonna kill you, asshole," she mutters, aware of how stupid she sounds, and goes back to her armchair, to sit and wait and hang, as Shane suggests, in there.