chapter nine: kamikaze pilot

I continued to follow Aimé's lead for days, and for days, we didn't run across anyone.

I didn't realize just how barren the trails were presently. My dad used to tell me stories of his childhood, when he went on his journey. Back then it was all a kid needed. School wasn't required because kids learned so much more from going on a journey anyway. It was a kind of practical education, not what they taught us in school these days.

At some point, my dad stopped talking about his glory days. At some point, I realized, he stopped talking altogether.

Even under the circumstances, I saw the appeal to adventuring. It was freeing, exciting in the moments I could push the ever-looming presence of my uncertain demise out of my mind. As the days rolled on, it seemed to be getting easier to do just that, however. The more days we spent in the woods, the faster nature became my solace.

Aimé didn't offer much in the way of information. He seemed to, more often than not, want to talk about something else whenever I tried to broach difficult subjects. I don't know if he noticed it, but I could tell he had a profound interest in trivial things. He was an over-thinker, just like me. And he liked to talk about them. Often. Aimé talked a lot.

"My favorite tree is the evergreen," he said one day as we walked, he a few paces ahead of me. "They're like the kamikaze pilots of the tree world. One time I was out alone on the night of a really bad storm. I mean a really bad one. The winds got up to probably ninety-or-so miles per hour. I ducked for safety in a nearby cave until it passed, and when I went back outside, tons of trees lost their branches, some snapped almost completely in half, just hanging by a thread on their trunks. Not the evergreens though – oh no – most of them had been uprooted completely. I just imagine them flying through the air like 'well if we have to die, might as well take as many things with us on the way out.' Their roots are so short, though, like they're just waiting for it. Just waiting for a bad storm to hit so they can have a chance to murder everything. It must be nice to be able to throw caution to the wind like that. I suppose the best Soldiers follow the same ideals."

At the very least, it was charming.

"Maybe it's like a privilege thing. You know, evergreens live practically forever. Other trees can't afford that, so they have bigger roots. Evergreens probably don't know adversity." He chuckled. "Kind of like the upper-class who live in Lumiose, right? I swear, those hoity-toity types think they can do whatever they want without consequence. They wouldn't last a day in the resistance..."

My attention began to wane. Our current circumstance was a great one in terms of distraction, but I still couldn't push the apprehensive feeling out of my gut. I had a million questions to ask Aimé, but I didn't feel comfortable asking any of them – not that he would talk about them anyway.

I looked at the ground, hands stuffed in my pockets. It was nice having company, but ever since the night I became a fugitive, I just wanted to be alone. I had this feeling that I couldn't put words to, like a dark cloud loomed over me and my entire world. It was upsetting, conflicting. I was ashamed of it and myself.

I don't know how I ever faked the confidence long enough to still be alive, but in that moment I just felt...wrong.

I let out a deep sigh before almost walking into Aimé. He grabbed my arm.

"Do you need to rest?" he asked. I shook my head. He had a concerned frown plastered on his childlike face.

His expression softened a little, but I could still see the traces of doubt underneath the lines of his face. "We're almost to the Connecting Cave. We should be in Cyllage City within the day."

"How are you going to get me in?" I asked.

Ever since the oligarchy took over, cities were required to upkeep checkpoints as a way to regulate the flow of people in and out each day. With smaller towns, like Camphrier, it wasn't much of an issue. We didn't get a lot of traffic, so the stasis officers were pretty lax. On the downside, with smaller towns it's a lot easier to keep an eye out for anything out of place. With my face apparently plastered all over the region, I would definitely stick out.

He turned his back to me and continued walking. "I have connections."

A soft cloud of dust fell on top of my head as we entered the cave. It was dark, but with the daylight filtering in through the entrance, I saw Aimé grab inside his bag for something. He pulled out what looked like a high-tech walkie talkie. He messed with some of the buttons before holding it up to his mouth.

"We're close," he said simply.

"I'm on in ten. I'll see you soon," a deep voice replied. The connection ended with a buzz.

"Who was that?" I muttered.

Aimé turned to me, his bright demeanor illuminated by the intrusive sunlight. "It's a goal of the resistance to always have at least two Workers employed to each city's border patrol. It makes it easier for us to keep under the radar."

I immediately thought of the stasis officers in Camphrier Town. I knew all of them personally, some from a very small age. This resistance could have been right under my nose for most of my life, and I had no clue. I realized this sentiment wasn't restricted to just stasis officers as well. Reflecting on my past, a good handful of people I knew were kind of ambiguous in their devotion to the state.

Connecting Cave was not daunting. It took us at most two hours to cross. The hard part, however, was the hordes of zubat that all took flight at once with any startling noise. This was not altogether a negative, however. In the darkness, it would have been easy to miss people passing by us, no matter how seldom it happened. The zubat became an effective warning mechanic. If we heard the frantic flapping of wings and piercing shrieks, we knew someone nearby had startled them, and we'd shut up until the we could make out the person passing by us.

A larger problem was trying to keep my voice down. Aimé had clearly been in enough caves to realize that noise reverberates off the cave walls. Being new to this, I didn't realize that this was the case. I learned quickly that the volume of my voice could make or break the flight of zubat from a significant distance.

But maybe the biggest issue was the floor covered in zubat excrement. I was still in the same wardrobe I had when I first met Ampharos, including the shoes, which weren't made for adventuring and had become very worn over the past few days.

I can only describe the feeling of it soaking into my socks as...unsettling.

A single man stood at the end of the cave, hands in his pockets. In the sunlight I could only make out his silhouette. He was very much the stereotypical stasis officer: tall, broad, and daunting. I stayed close behind Aimé as we inched toward the sunlight.

"It's us," Aimé said quietly. The officer didn't move. Aimé led me up closer, and I got a better look at his face. He was very handsome, with short dark hair and a thick neck.

"Good to see you again Aimé," he responded. "And this must be the infamous Moira." His eyes lingered on mine. "You should have mentioned she was a fox. I'd have offered to put her up for a few days. We'd have fun together."

I blushed uncomfortably in response and averted my eyes. He smirked and looked me up and down. Aimé looked back and forth at us expectantly.

In a government founded around science, all kinds of sexual treatment was often tolerated. This may not sound like such a bad thing, and ideally it wouldn't be, but there were not many laws in place protecting against sexual predation. Cat-calling is not such a big deal, until it turns into molestation, harassment, or rape, all of which receive little to no punishment.

After all, other living things don't necessarily consent either. However, needless to say, behaviors allowed to be perpetuated have taken their toll on sexual practices, especially when it comes to females. Under this regime, we as women are conditioned from a young age to believe that the way boys treat us sexually is just natural, which I've been told is actually not so different from beliefs of the old world.

I saw this man's muscles flex briefly under his uniform.

"Can we get by?" Aimé said finally.

The man diverted his attention from me to Aimé. "I gotta make it look good," he said condescendingly. "We're being watched after all. Wouldn't want to tip anyone off." He offered a slight smirk before stepping aside.

Aimé turned to look at me. "Put your hood up," he said quietly, "and keep your head low." He hooked my arm around his and led me out. "Lean on me," he muttered, eyes forward. "Pretend you're sick. We've got a long walk ahead of us."

As I lifted my hood, it seemed as if I became rooted even further into perpetual discretion. I wondered in that moment if I'd ever be able to confidently walk down the street, not without fear of being caught, but without care. I wondered if I would ever become an evergreen tree. I wondered if at the end of it all I'd be able to weed out what was destroying me, not the pigs who viewed me as a trophy or the officials who wanted me dead, but the cowardice inside me that prevented me from saying what I thought, the cowardice fostered by the oligarchy.

I had a story to tell, but I didn't know what to say.