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Geosenge Town
"Quiet stones speak volumes."
.
"Just call her. She'll pick up."
Serena tosses the holo-caster from hand to hand, not completely won over by his encouragement. She eyes the caster warily.
"Really. Believe me. Here, I'll get you started."He reaches over and taps the call-button, causing the screen to warp on and shimmer incessantly, indicating that it's contacting the other person. Serena gasps and glares at him, but doesn't make any move to turn the caster off.
"Well," a smirk briefly crosses his face and Serena goes bright red, "I'm going to go ahead and check out the cave behind this place. You told me Team Flare was there, right?"
After a few second's worth of reassurances and a nod that sends him on his way, she lolls on to the table, arms crossed with her head resting lightly on top of them. She sets the caster on the table in a way that the fuzzy screen is level with her anticipating eyes. One second, two seconds, three seconds pass but with no reply on the other end of the caster's line. There's only the constant, dead drone of a receiver that's unwilling to receive.
Perhaps her mom won't pick up after all, so Serena jabs the off-button to turn it off. Strange how her mom had only called her once during her journey, and that was sometime during the beginning of this adventure. But even that call didn't make up for the missing ones. It was short and sweet, but unfeeling and preoccupied on her mom's end.
She returns the caster to her bag and rises from the table. This was no matter. She was used to this. She wasn't bothered, and will continue on as usual.
Not knowing what else to do, she traverses around the small, country town called Geosenge by name, passing nicely built wooden houses from time to time and a Pokemon Center. The town truly was remarkable with its many stones lying around in almost every crook and nanny she laid eyes upon, but too small for her liking. Soon, she became easily bored. And with boredom, came doziness.
But then she comes upon the greatest attraction of the town: three incredible, giant stone monuments that depicted exactly that. Stone. After a moment's worth of gawking and attempts to make sense of their amazing height, she crosses the dirt path surrounding the monuments to enter the round patch of grass they lie on. Once at the center of the three rocks, she gets down to her knees, places her bag to the side, and sprawls out on her back, feeling the delightful patch of grass against her skin.
A draft of spring crosses paths with her frequently, and the sun's rays non-existent as it hides behind the thick white clouds. She can't help but smile in this position. Staring up at the bleak puffs passing by in the horizon and the rock trio towering over her was a peaceful sight to behold.
However, her peace was short-lived as she hears a vague 'click' noise and suddenly Chespin's healthy face was filling up her vision.
He brings his head back for a lengthy yawn and Serena watches expectedly, waiting for pandemonium to just happen. He turns attentively to her, his expression apparent in the lust for action. But after watching his trainer shrug and simply lay there, he seemingly gives up his enthusiasm readily with no reluctance whatsoever and mimics Serena's position, nestling beside her abdomen.
Serena's face goes slack and eases into slumber.
(***)
An abnormal language disrupts her sleeping spell.
"Jay-fask-fer-guide-hah."
"Geh-gare-gah."
"Qalg-nata."
Scrunching her face up at the words, she sits up, her vision trying to make sense of her surroundings. That voice she has never heard one quite particularly like it. It was monotone and deep and oddly detached. Like each word took a great amount of processing before it was even out.
She's aware that Chespin wasn't beside her. He must've woken much earlier and ran off someplace to explore. She looks left and right and up ahead for the creature, but nothing. Her bag wasn't present as well. She rubs her eyes to see if that helps anything.
"N-vig-vas." She hears again. She whirls around to see Chespin along with her bag sitting a little ways off on the edge of the green circle. He laughs a squeaky laugh, and it causes her to shake her head in disbelief. It seemed like he was messing with something and was rather enjoying it. Curious, she comes a little closer.
She discovers it was her holo-caster in his tiny little paws. The little tyke continued to laugh and laugh, but at exactly what Serena did not understand. Then he rapidly taps the caster with the tip of a claw, and suddenly a voice comes forth.
"V-nan-alpha. Al-vol-oomf-qua." The holo-caster says aloud, and Serena had to do a double-take as Chespin began another round of giggles.
"Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch!"
She claps her hands once, getting his automatic attention, and shakes her head with a smile. She puts forth a single hand for the caster and he frowns.
"Ch?" He asks, holding up the caster in question.
She hesitates at the sad expression on his face so decides to act differently. Bending down, she lifts up a finger as if to say 'one moment' and puts forth her hand again for the caster as if to say 'can I see it for a moment?' But Chespin doesn't quite understand her, as he hands over the caster with a crestfallen air, though it was okay. At times her actions weren't comprehensible to the pokemon.
She examines the caster. It didn't look any different as it had before, except somehow Chespin had managed to access a whole other feature to the caster she's never discovered herself. She turns the caster around in her hand, looking at it from all angles possible. She notices there's a white switch on the side, and flicks it. The caster plays a sound and the screen where the holograms project from light up, returning to what Serena remembers seeing every time she would receive a call. This surface would always be a gray as it projects upward a hologram.
She flicks the white switch again. Another sound plays out and the screen of the surface transitions to a sort of touch-screen keyboard, the screen Chespin was seen to be using.
She stares at it in wonder. A minute keyboard within a caster. Who would've known? Has everyone already known about this feature except her? On the keyboard she sees a button with a sort of speaker-like icon on it. A mic, wasn't it?
She taps the mic-icon. Nothing happens. But then:
"Enter a word," it says in its robotic voice, the same voice she'd woken up to. She blanks out, and then remembering her computer she used back at home, types in two words instead of one like the caster had asked for. In the bank above the keyboard she sees 'Hi Chespin'.
She hits the mic.
"Hi Chespin."
She looks up in amazement, her mouth agape, then looks to Chespin who looks as equally as excited as she is. He squeals and waves his hand as if to say Hi back to the voice.
She tries pressing in another phrase.
"Hi Chespin. This is cool."
She cocks her head in question at the words. She hadn't typed in Hi Chespin just then; just This is cool.
Chespin, seeming to understand her dilemma, hops up onto her lap and taps a weird, arrow-looking green button, an arrow that seemingly outlines a square shape. The words disappear from the bank and she gasps, wondering where the words went, but she didn't dwell on it for long. Now she could type in more words!
A great warmth fills her chest like none other before. It wasn't like an embarrassed or comfortable kind of warmth, but a warmth of pure excitement, accomplice, and inspiration. She could use this talking feature to her advantage. Why hadn't she thought of devices like these before to communicate with others? This was genius! It may be slow in the typing, but any con was okay with her.
"Oh, there you are," Calem says, coming into view. He waves in greeting and she stands and jumps in place, waving back exuberantly. Swiftly tapping the screen to get rid of her previous words and to enter new ones, she tries to process her excited thoughts quickly in a sentence.
"Hi Calem, I can talk now." She pounds her feet on the ground repeatedly, barely containing her happiness.
He blinks, more so at her actions, but then he gets it. People had told him the caster could send text messages as well as holograms, but he'd never saw a use for texts. He didn't even know that the caster could read texts aloud. "Th-that's great!" He exclaims under his breath, watching a happy Serena skip around the pasture with Chespin. "How'd you know of this?"
She runs up to him and gives him a bright smile before returning her head downwards to jab in the letters.
"It is thanks to Chespin."
His eyes light up. "Really? Tell me how?"
"Messed with it while I napped."
"Oh," he nods his head. "You're pretty quick at that. The typing, I mean."
Internal laughter rumbles in her chest and she shoves the caster in his hand to go frolic and skip around the circle of grass, absolutely in bliss.
He stands there, dumbfounded.
After a while as he saw that Serena was a lost cause to attempt to talk to, he fiddles around with the device, tapping in sentences, but it was surprisingly hard to do so. He wonders how Serena managed to type so fast, but that's probably because she was extremely hyper right now.
He's texted before though. He remembers back in his high school days that texting was a great norm he used to do. But now that the holograms were invented, there wasn't a need for texting anymore. Rarely had anyone tried to bring back texting because holograms were easier and much more efficient to get one's message across.
All of the sudden the caster starts to trill.
Calem winces at the sound and searches the caster's call identification screen to see that it was Serena's mom trying to call in with a hologram. He looks at the twirling Serena then at the chirping caster, looks to Serena then the caster.
She clearly wasn't in the right mind to accept the call.
Seeing no harm in it, he presses the green button and her mom's hologramic form buzzes to life. He had to hold the caster a bit far from his face because her face was so zoomed in on the hologram.
"Serena? …Hang on, Claire, I'll call you back. Serena? Is that you? I'm sorry honey but I was at another meet and I wasn't able to call back. You've also sent me a few texts I couldn't understand…hold on…you're not Serena. Oh my stars, a boy? Are you Serena's boyfriend? I told her to not get involved with any boys at this age!"
A/N: Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter for those of you that celebrate it!
Here are two of probably six random 'words' I used to write out Chespin's typings:
Jdfasgaghaghda
pqalgnata
Had plenty fun doing that, honestly haha, and I used Google Translate for that!
Happy Roamiiiingg