Hello, I am back with a new update! It's the 29th rather than the 28th because I spent the day with my dad yesterday and I decided to be present with him rather than trying to edit and upload this while with him or come home earlier to get this posted. I've wanted to write this chapter since I first came up with the whole concept of Letters That Changed Everything to be honest with you. Each month, however, didn't feel like the right time. June did, though. This letter is my character, Eli (Misty's dad's cousin in case you're not familiar with him from Pikachu Tales) to himself wanting to remember and try and make sense of something very life-changing happening to him. I think I'll just let it speak for itself then talk more after the story :3 I hope you enjoy!
Elias. Eion. Eldar. Elio. Eli. Elijah. Whatever you call yourself now. You need to read this. You need to remember.
Whoever you are, it's me. At least, I think so. Even before that fateful day, I've never been exactly sure who I am – who Elijah Bay Alderaan truly is. I know now even less. But whoever you are. Whoever exists in this skin that I have right now but in the future, you must read. And you must remember.
Do you remember?
It feels like yesterday. It was yesterday. I was foolish. I thought that I could make a difference. I thought that I could help. But now I realize that I was stared at with disgust before and hidden from those children enough before. And that is going to get only worse with what I have done.
I don't think I look any different anymore. The blinding, white hot light that spread apart cracks in my face that I had long forgotten about has since healed from its cindering appearance and is softer than ever. While my eyes are naturally as big and as bulbous as they always were, they don't speak of my mistakes. Perhaps they could if someone looked into them for more than a second. But why would anyone want to do that?
It's times like this that make me grateful that gazing into people's eyes makes my skin crawl.
I just realized; you might not even know what I'm talking about. Shit, I might have blown my chance and lost your attention already. Please, let me try again.
Do you remember what happened to you? To us?
It started out as an idea. I always have plenty of those. We always have plenty of those. I needed to make money and I needed to make it fast. Plentifully, too. There was no way that Jordan's mother was going to let me near the memory of her son, let alone the four children that he and Lynne left behind. So, I decided that I would support them without even having to go near them.
I've had plenty of jobs since graduating university in Kanto. Unlike a lot of other people who whined about accepting the first thing offered to them – I didn't feel too fancy with a degree to take an entry level position. I didn't care about money either. As long as I had enough to pay rent. Buy food. Fund my computer habits. And the occasional plane ticket to visit Jordan in Johto.
Once the two of them passed away though and it became obvious that providing cash would be my only way to support my nieces, Daisy, Violet, Lily, and Misty, I quit the position that I had at the time and searched for a higher paying one. With my degree, it wasn't that hard. With my mind, it was pretty challenging doing something so dull.
But I knew why I was doing it. I was doing it for them. Doing it for the people that I had to say goodbye too. Then I stopped knowing why I was doing any of it. Reality hit. To put it simply, Jordan's mother found out about the transactions and didn't want any of my – as she called it – dirty money – near the children.
She didn't believe how I acquired it. She insisted that someone of my kind of person must have gotten it from the depths of the gutter. If only she knew! If only she knew I wasn't like that anymore.
Still, it broke me. I've always been the kind of guy to need a focus – a purpose perhaps. And just like that, being an eager cash cow for my nieces was stripped away from me. I could've got angry. I could have sought revenge. Instead, like I often did, I got thinking. And eventually, something occurred to me.
I had to make so much money that even Aunt Florence was impressed. Or better, make so much money that she couldn't resist asking for a bit in her usual passive, greedy way. I wouldn't have minded. I would have given it to her. Gladly. As long as I could keep providing for those girls. Not that I even really knew what they were up to. I heard that the youngest one was back in the Cerulean Gym and the other three off gallivanting.
It didn't exactly matter to me anyway. As long as they had the money to live their young lives. As long as the bills were taken care of, and people were prevented from pestering them.
My second plan came to fruition almost as easily as the first. It's times like this where I am glad for my flitting, absorbent brain, wanting to learn every single detail about anything and everything that interests me.
You see, I remembered back from a job in Unova that a visit to the Nacrene Museum told me of a treasure buried far in the depths of Desert Resort. A new trip for old times sake confirmed that memory of mine and told me of new information.
There were findings telling where exactly it was located Desert Resort. In the Relic Castle!
Needless to say, I stayed in Unova and planned a longer trip. The planning was easy. The doing not so much. My backpack was heavy, and my bones grew weary, and my headtorch kept packing up no matter how many batteries I packed. It dully flickered the deeper I got into the depths and then cut out entirely.
But that wasn't a problem for all that long. I fell into quicksand. But that was no problem at all. Somehow, by chance, luck was winking down on me that day and I fell into a pile leading me exactly where I needed to be.
I found the treasure!
I know what you're thinking. You're imagining Aladdin's cave with everything glittering all around you. And if you've watched as many movies as I have, then perhaps you think of a huge boulder chasing you away from glory.
It wasn't like that at all.
In fact, at first, I didn't realize I had found it at all.
With my torch intermittently flickering, it seemed I had just fallen into an empty pit with nothing but specs of sand as far as the eye could see and truly nothing else.
However, along with the fall adding a new crick to my neck that for once was not a computer injury, the laces of my boot came untied. Right as I was staring down at my shoe on the floor, crouching my body into a tight fetal position and tying that pesky shoelace, something glistened against the dwindling light of my head torch and caught my attention.
My shoelace became the last of my worries!
I brushed sand off whatever was twinkling up at me and picked it up into my hand.
It was the treasure! I couldn't believe it.
It's true what they say, you know? Or at least, it's true what they depict in cartoons. As soon as the Desert Resort relic was in my possession, my eyes filled with money symbols, and I could not stop my mouth that hadn't spoken a single word to anyone in days, from twitching open. I chuckled with all of my might!
The girls would be okay! Their future was secured! All I had to do was take the treasure to the museum and claim all the glory. I was a little worried about the fame. That's the last thing that I needed. But it was the girls that were important. So, I tried to focus on that.
I have to admit that worries did begin creeping into my mind though, as I often did, and as usual, it was the worst thing that I could've done. Shrugging my backpack down onto the floor because I did not need the extra weight, I ran my finger along the serrated edge of the medallion.
And it was then that it all happened.
It occurred slowly at first. I let out a curse word – my first word aloud in days – and recoiled, my finger making its way into my mouth when the jagged edge formed a cut in my skin. I didn't think all that much when the metallic taste of blood touched the tip of my tongue. But boy, I thought of everything and anything in the split second.
I still do not know how it happened.
It was as if my mind suddenly left me – my heart rate pounding like a drum in my ear. I thought of anything. I thought of everything. It's true what they say. My whole life flashed in front of my eyes. I thought of Jordan. I thought of Lynne. I couldn't push my sisters out of my mind, though now I do not dare think of their names.
I thought of Mother. I thought of Father. I thought of him. He who once encouraged me to be myself. The greatest mistake of my life.
That particular thought made me long to burst into tears while my brain still felt like it was outside of my body. But no tears would come. And they still haven't come.
I thought that the feeling could not get any worse. Thoughts hitting me like a freight train and while meaningless ones fell away like a discarded deck of cards, the big ones strangled me. I thought that it all could not get any worse.
But then the emotional pain left me and the physical started. A bright light filled the relic room, and I knew where it was coming from when I doubled over, screaming in pain. The beams of light escaped through my fingertips that were no longer holding the medallion as my hands rushed to my cheeks.
It was coming from there. Those long-forgotten wounds were open, and they were blazing. They were scorching in a pain I had never felt before. The pain made me dizzy. And then it made me lose consciousness.
God knows how long I was asleep.
All I know is that when I finally came to, everything was different and not because I was on Route 4, right next to the exterior of Relic Castle, and my torch working perfectly again. When I got to my knees to stand, I felt dizzy and not in the way like you do when you drink wine on an empty stomach.
It was as if the world was leaning. And I was struggling to lean with it.
Through blurry, sand gritted eyes, I fought to bring my hand to my face and inspect the cut that I remember getting. Or remember dreaming about getting. No, it definitely happened. But there was no cut. There was no gash. There was no graze.
It had not healed. It hadn't existed. Yet I know that I had.
I can't tell you why. I can't tell you how. All I know is since that day – since yesterday – everything has been different.
My mind hasn't quite settled into feeling like its back inside my body once again. I feel peculiar. I am used to feeling that way. I thought that nothing could surprise me anymore. But I feel odd in a whole new way.
Like I explained, there is no redness left on my cheeks – certainly no luminescent light shooting out of the craters. My eyes speak of nothing but normality. Yet my mind and heart know something as happened.
I used to feel so much. Even when I tried not to, and I tried to block everything out to protect myself – even as far as pretending to be another person – I have always felt so much. Almost as if those first baby cries of mine are still rattling around inside of me and still longing to be heard. To be seen. To be accepted.
I used to feel so much. Not anymore. My heart still beats sporadically as it always has done. But it seems like that is it's only feeling.
Elias. Eion. Eldar. Elio. Eli. Elijah. Whatever you call yourself now. You need to read this. You need to know this.
Something has happened. I don't feel the same way that I used to. I don't feel anymore. We don't feel anymore. The anger doesn't rise in the pit of my stomach. The tears do not come. The grief does not awaken me. The loneliness does not haunt me.
Alienation has prevailed. But it's a new kind.
Shit. I always knew I was a bit of a cursed boy. Down on his luck. Now I am a cursed man.
I know even less what the future holds for us.
Who knows if any version of me is even reading this at all.
There you go, thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed! :) So yeah, Eli is cursed and for around three decades is stuck at the age of 34. Eli has been a big part of a lot of my stories and has always been a soft spot in my heart as well. I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've actually addressed what happened to him! It's funny that even though I have always known of his ordeal, I wanted his character to be more than what happened to him if that makes sense. Of course, it's a huge part of him. But his life over the years nurtures into the person who is prevalent in my stories. And indeed, as he grows and he learns to love, he stops feeling as cursed even before the curse actually ends :3 Thanks again for reading and I will be back on July 12th with Pikachu Tales so perhaps see you then!
Amy signing out :P