Two days after her meeting with Pontifex, Clarity was told she could meet her newest teammate. She couldn't say she was looking forward to this.
Clarity had never liked children. She had tried, several times in fact, to grow accustomed to them. She had to, when she saw them so frequently as a Dream Eater. Yet, for whatever reason, she simply couldn't find it within herself to appreciate children as some other Pokemon did. She didn't like their helplessness, their inability to keep quiet and ask too many questions, their ignorance despite that insatiable need to ask questions, their boundless energy, and many more things she could ramble on about for hours. She didn't tolerate young Pokemon, and that's why she would always be a good Dream Eater. She would never have to choose between her duty and her family.
She supposed she had Griffith as "family", but that was different. Uncomparable.
In fact, she wished she had him right now as she made her way to the young Zorua's home that bright and sunny morning. She needed him to water down the dread creeping upon her. Unfortunately, Griffith was busy today. He went to visit his parents and likely wouldn't be back until the afternoon. Today, she had Nibiru in her company.
Using him as her connection to the world was odd. She made sure only to keep a superficial tie between them, never going beyond surface-level thoughts and sensations, but it was still strange. His mind felt like a disjointed mess, a half-completed puzzle whose remaining pieces were strewn across the table, and because of his sensitive ears, he picked up on every little sound. Through him, Clarity could hear the leaves down the street falling, the pebbles underneath their feet breaking ever so slightly, and the conversations of other Pokemon in the vicinity who were just beyond their eyesight.
"You don't need to listen to an inane conversation about the different patterns on a Caterpie body," she scoffed mentally to the Clefable.
"And no one said you needed to listen," he shot back with a toothy grin. "You can block it out if it annoys you that much."
"I could, or you could pay attention to things that actually matter. I hardly think it's useful to know that some Caterpie have perfectly circular marks while others have slightly oval marks."
He grinned a little wider, and Clarity was abruptly bombarded with images of Caterpie crawling all over her, gnawing at her fur with mandibles that belonged to Spinark and Araidos. She abruptly cut off the connection and ended the nightmare. Silence filled her headspace as her mind became her own. She took in a deep breath, held it, then exhaled. Nibiru started laughing, or at least that was what she thought it was, before turning away and continuing on his walk. Clarity followed alongside him, grumbling to herself. She didn't reestablish the mental link. She'd cope well enough, and if trouble were to occur, Nibiru knew how to get her attention in other ways.
After a while, the two arrived at the house. Nibiru approached the door and gave it a good knock just as Clarity reconnected their minds. Since only dark-types lived here, Nibiru was her only option if she actually wanted to hear. And seeing as how she needed to talk with not only the child, but the parents…
The door opened, and there stood the father on the other side. Nibiru held up a paw and wiggled his claws as a greeting. Clarity gave a simple wave from behind.
"Good morning," the Zoroark spoke. "Come in, come in."
He opened the door all the way, allowing the two to enter. They made their way into the living room to find the mother sitting in a chair, the Zorua child in her lap. She was fiddling with the little tuft of fur atop the Zorua's head, puffing it up and assuring that all the strands of fur at the top formed into a neat and tidy point. The Zorua had her eyes closed as the mother played with her fur, content and making low purring sounds with each brush from her mother's claws.
Clarity and Nibiru had just stepped into the living room when the Zorua's eyes opened. A wide smile broke across her face as she leapt from her mother's lap and bounded toward the two. She was smaller than most Zorua, so she didn't tower over Clarity. She stood as tall as Clarity's shoulders, which felt rather odd to the Meowstic. She couldn't remember the last time she had to look down to maintain eye contact with someone.
The Zorua's tail wagged as she stood in front of them, eyes wide and glimmering with excitement.
"It's you guys! Hi! You're finally here!" she squealed, her voice lively and full of cheer, giving no hints that her life was near its end. "You guys are the bestest and greatest!"
She pushed her head into Nibiru's front and nuzzled him playfully, making high-pitched giggles as she did so. Nibiru reached down and scratched at her ears, giggling along with her. Her parents looked touched. Clarity had to resist looking away awkwardly.
"Good to see you out of bed," Nibiru said. "You heard the good news, yeah?"
"Yeah! I can go with you guys on trips to Dreams!" she said, halting her affection to look at him, tail still wagging softly behind her. "Are we going on one right now? Are we?"
"Oh no, not right now. We only came by to meet you. We'll let you know when we're going into Dreams though, okay?"
"Okay!"
The Zorua looked at Clarity and drew closer to her. Clarity kept a blank look and readied herself for the Zorua's cuddliness. At least she wouldn't get literally smothered thanks to the Zorua's small size. The fox looked ready to pounce, playful smile on her snout, when she suddenly stopped. She paused, tilted her head at Clarity, then hurried back to her mother. She leapt back into the Zoroark's lap and curled up in it, eyes locked onto Clarity. Clarity stared back, raising a brow at her sudden change in demeanor.
"Hazel explained to us that our daughter isn't going to live with you while she accompanies you into Dreams," the father said, bringing Clarity's focus back to him.
"That's right," Nibiru replied. "She's a kid, and we're not going to take her away from her family just because it might make some things a little easier."
"Not to mention you would pull all your fur out if we did," Nibiru jeered privately to Clarity.
"Shut up," she shot back.
"I appreciate that, though how often do you venture into these Dreams?" the father asked.
"Oh, like once a week or something like that," Nibiru said with a shrug. "And the journeys in the Dreams themselves are like… uh, a couple of hours or so. Nothing crazy like what I hear some adventurers do when they go find new caves."
"That's reasonable. Much less time than I expected, honestly."
"And will she be safe?" the mother asked, frowning nervously as she ran her claws through the Zorua's budding mane. "Hazel assured us that your team is his finest and most dependable team, but…"
"Nothing'll happen to her as long as she's with us and does exactly what we say. And if she gets hurt, well the good news is that we can get her out pretty fast. In some ways, being a Dream Eater is one of the safest kinds of 'adventuring' anyone can do."
"If you ignore that if you die in the Dream, you die in reality," Clarity stated blandly to the Clefable, "then yes, it truly is the safest adventuring one can do."
Nibiru couldn't stop himself from choking out a laugh, much to the Zoroark family's confusion. He stood up a little straighter and fluttered his wings.
"We'll take good care of her, I promise," he said solemnly.
"I'll hold you to that," the mother said, not looking the least bit convinced.
The three then began to speak about the arrangements regarding Dream visits and understanding what exactly were Dreams and how they functioned, reaffirming some words Hazel had shared with the family, all presumably to set everyone's mind at ease. It all very much felt like Clarity's orientation when she first became a Dream Eater, so she tuned out the conversation and instead let her thoughts wander.
She had to admit she was surprised the Zorua's parents were okay with all of this. She wasn't exactly a parent herself, but she didn't think she'd be comfortable allowing a small child to wander into the nightmarish realms that were Dreams. It was a battle of willpower and wits there, and she didn't exactly see children as being the most intelligent or the strongest creatures to roam the planet. It sounded suicidal to her.
Then again, this was a dying wish, so maybe their love for the Zorua and wanting her to be happy outweighed their need to keep her safe. Clarity looked over the Zorua that still laid in her mother's lap, and through Nibiru's sensitive ears, heard the decaying of the body. She heard the weak heartbeat, the sluggish breathing, the fatigue from being as affectionate as she had been, and a soft trilling sound from deep within the core.
What was that sound-
"Oh, I just realized I never got your name!" Nibiru said to the Zorua. "So rude of me!"
"It's okay!" she said, smiling brightly. "I'm Moonwatcher, but you can just call me Moon! I like that better."
"Well nice to meet you, Moon. I'm Nibiru, and that's-"
"That's Clarity! Dad told me all your names. You guys have long names! And they sound funny!"
"Moon, don't say that, that's rude," the mother uttered.
The Zorua's ears flattened against her head and she muttered out an apology. Clarity blocked out everyone's voices again and tried to focus on that trilling sound, but it was gone. Maybe she had imagined it, or Nibiru had been picking up the sound from something outside.
Even still, it had sounded so familiar. She just didn't know how.
After meeting with Moon and her parents, Clarity and Nibiru decided to have lunch at a local diner called Stardust Stop. It wasn't anything particularly fancy, a small building that wasn't much larger than the coffee shop Clarity visited for her book club. The interior resembled that of a fantastical take of outer space. Murals of colorful planets and asteroids covered the walls. The flooring had several constellations, real and fictional, etched into the smooth, glassy tiles. Drinks and foods all had spacy names to them, like "Black Hole Sandwich" or "Supernova Supreme".
The two sat at a table in the corner of the diner, the surface worn and scratched up from years of use. They had already put in their orders and were waiting for their meals to arrive. Nibiru seemed content to trace his claws along the table's surface, softly dragging his claws through the past marks, while Clarity listened to the other patrons of the diner through Nibiru's ears. There were only two other groups of customers with them, one being a Pyroar and Luxray couple sitting on the other side of the building, and a group of three Eevee friends having what seemed to be a pre-evolving celebration.
"You sure you wanna be a Leafeon?" one of them, the biggest one, asked. "I don't know, they sound kinda boring to me."
"Yeah, I'm sure," said the one with ears that flopped over some, instead of standing tall like normal Eevee ears did. "I really thought about this and I think I'd be really happy being a Leafeon. I won't have to eat as much and I can grow plants real easily. That sounds pretty good to me."
"Still sounds really boring…"
"You know if you want to be a Flareon instead, I heard Evan down the street has a Fire Stone he's willing to trade for a Leaf Stone," said the third Eevee. "But he also wants one of those red Wooloo scarves with it…"
"Come on guys, stop trying to talk me out of being a Leafeon. You don't see me trying to talk you out of being a Sylveon, Poppy! Why would you want a bunch of weird ribbons and big bug eyes and-"
"I don't get how anyone deals with being able to choose what to evolve into," Nibiru cut in. "If I was still a Clefairy and I could choose between being like, a Wigglytuff or a Clefable, you can bet I'd probably spend years fixated on which one sounds better. And then when I do make a choice, probably spend the rest of my life wishing I picked the other option."
Clarity looked away from the group of Eevee to look back at Nibiru. She found him smiling fondly at the Eevee, but with a hint of bitterness to it. She got flashes of him imagining his life as a Wigglytuff, flying around by puffing himself up as though he were a balloon. It looked wrong.
"Then I suppose it's a good thing you don't need to deal with that," Clarity said simply.
"Yeah. Maybe."
He looked away from the Eevee just as the Medicham at the serving counter called for his name and Clarity's, stating that their food was ready. The Clefable slid out of his seat and went to retrieve their meals. A few seconds later, he came back and pushed Clarity's meal over to her. She had ordered something called the Cosmo Bowl, which was a variation of Pidgey soup mixed with a small amount of Slowpoke broth. She didn't know how it'd taste, but at least it smelled decent.
Nibiru picked up his sandwich, one that was stuffed to the brim with vegetables and no meat, and started to eat. Clarity watched a few crumbs fall into his lap and then tumble to the floor. She sighed as she softly picked up her bowl and lifted it to her mouth to slowly lap it up. It was more salty than she would have liked, but it wasn't entirely an unpleasant soup.
"Moon was a cute kid. It's going to be fun working with her," Nibiru said.
"Speak for yourself," she muttered distastefully. "We shouldn't let a child be with us."
"Kids are more resilient than you think they are. Besides, I don't think she's going to be that much of a problem. I've been around a lot of kids and I can tell which ones are going to be troublemakers and which ones aren't."
"Her potential for trouble isn't the issue, for the most part anyway. It's that we shouldn't be involving children in any of this to begin with. I don't even know if she's blessed or not, only that she can follow us into Dreams. Though considering her age and her frail body, probably not."
"Not every Dream Eater has to be blessed. Just makes it easier. My old friend Shire never took a blessing and he could take on Nightmares just fine."
"Shire was a Noivern who had spent years prior as an adventurer. Of course venturing into Dreams and combatting Nightmares was but an easy transition for him."
"And Moon might be the same. Besides, you and I both know as Dream Eaters, it's how strong your mind is that counts, not your body. I dunno, I think you're just saying all this because you don't want a kid around."
She lowered her bowl to glare at him and found him still eating, not appearing particularly bothered. She huffed overtly and set her soup down on the table, before crossing her arms over her chest. Her tails swiveled irritably behind her.
"Maybe I don't like children, but that's besides the point. I don't think combating Nightmares in an environment that actively tries to kill you is ideal for children, blessed or not. Not only that, but children are liabilities. They're not equipped to handle Dreams and Nightmares as we are. They're too easy to scare, too fickle, too rambunctious, too naive about far too much, have barely scratched the surface of their own potential…"
"Then we'll just have to keep a close eye on her. And Clarity, I think you're not giving kids enough credit. Sure, they're a pawful, but you underestimate what they're capable of. In some ways, I think having a kid Dream Eater might be better than having an adult one just because of how their brains work. Adults like us, we think too logically, you know? When a big old building like what happened last time comes flying toward us, we panic because we know we can't do anything. I mean, it's a building, for crying out loud. We don't remember right away that we're in a Dream and that we can do a bunch of nonsense like run up that building about to crash into us.
"A kid doesn't let stupid things like facts and logic get in their way. A kid keeps going because he can and he will. A kid wouldn't even think for a second that running up a building isn't possible."
Clarity sighed. She knew he was right, but everything about this felt wrong. She wanted to say it was because there were a number of rational reasons to not have a child on their team, not because she was letting personal feelings get in the way, but she wasn't sure. And worse yet, she couldn't find a way to express it.
She felt a headache growing in her temples. She pressed her paws to her head and rubbed them vigorously, but the headache wasn't going away. Tendrils of darkness started to creep into the corners of her eyes, threatening to encroach her vision.
A single blue eye appeared in the midst of her darkening sight.
"Why couldn't this have been a normal headache?"
She staggered out of her seat, suddenly feeling her entire body begin to shake. Her ear flaps threatened to unfurl as the headache spread to the top of her head and hammered into her ear canals.
"I'll make sure to take your leftovers home if you don't come back soon," Nibiru said nonchalantly, as if this were an everyday occurrence. "Think there's a big empty field just west of town you can use if you hurry."
"We'll talk later," she grimaced as she made her way toward the door, paws forcing her ear folds shut.
He might have said something, but she didn't hear him. The mental connection had been severed as the pain intensified. It was knocking on the inside of her skull, like a demon demanding to be let out. She ran as fast as her tiny legs could carry her, darting through the streets as she saw the world through her psychic lens. The colors of the world faded as shades of black and gray filled her sight.
She needed to be as far away from Pokemon as possible. Somewhere nobody could be caught up in what was about to unfold.
Through her psychic sight, she fled west and sure enough, found an abandoned lot of land with nothing but withering grass and decrepit buildings that had seen much better days. She spotted no one hiding out in the husks of wood. Not even wild Pokemon. She would have felt something resembling relief if her body didn't feel it was on the precipice of exploding.
She wrapped herself in her telekinesis and launched herself into the field, right outside what she thought had once been a house.
The second she hit the ground, white light shot out of her ears, and the world became a void.
It was nearly evening, and Clarity still lay in what remained of the field. She could have gone home many hours earlier, when the sky wasn't soft shades of orange and lavender, but she remained here. She laid on the dry, sandy ground, taking in the nothingness that was her world. The skeleton of the buildings nearby had been reduced to piles of splinters. The dying remains of the grass had been reduced to atoms, scattered to the winds. An unfortunate tree that had happened to be nearby her had been snapped in two, lying broken and jagged.
No one would bother Clarity, despite the damage she had done. They would take one look at the scene and leave her be. It was better that way, safer. Only when she got up and returned back to civilization would anyone speak to her again. They'd trust she wasn't a danger anymore.
"Done feeling sorry for yourself?"
Clarity didn't even need to look around to know who was there. She frowned as she closed her eyes. She felt him stand over her a moment, contemplating picking her up and dragging her home, before considering otherwise. She felt her shame through him, her regret that it had come to this. She focused on his water-down perception of it, took it in, and continued to dilute it.
"Why are you here?" she asked grumpily.
"Nibiru told me what happened. He said to leave you be, but I know you well enough to know you want to be found in moments like these."
She saw images of herself as an Espurr in his mind. She saw countless memories of her retreating from home, school, her parents, her circle of friends, imaginary threats. She always fled to the woods not far from her hometown, deep into the thick of it where the canopy was thickest and it became increasingly difficult to find your way out. Every time she went there to escape reality.
And every time, he always found her.
Sometimes he was already there. Sometimes it took him a few minutes. Sometimes he didn't appear until she was starting to think he wouldn't show. But Griffith would always appear, one way or another.
"I didn't power purge soon enough," she admitted with a disgusted mental scoff. "I thought I had more time."
"Our outing last week wasn't enough for you?"
"No. I must have had more power built up than I realized."
She felt him pressing into her memories, trying to dig deeper and see more of them. She let him in without resistance, freely showing him the events of the day. He observed it all without remark, nor with feeling.
"What's done is done, nothing more to it than that. Besides, what else were you supposed to do? Overload?"
She sighed in defeat mentally. She felt him smiling at his little victory. She finally opened her eyes to find Griffith still standing above her, glancing down at her. Something seemed off about him, but she couldn't quite label what. She pushed the thought aside and wondered instead why he didn't bother to sit down. It couldn't have been comfortable to tilt his neck that way to stare at her.
"It's not especially uncomfortable," he told her. "It's far more preferable to sitting amongst all this filth."
"You're a psychic; you can use your telekinesis to make a platform. Or toss all the dirt off if anything gets on your gown."
"And why would I waste my energy doing any of that?"
Even though he said that, she saw him consider her suggestion. His eyes wandered to a spot beside her ear and after a few seconds, he gave in. He sat down beside the Meowstic, hovering a few inches off of the ground, before bringing his gaze to one of his ivory hands. Black seeped out of his palm as a familiar bident formed, the orange light flickering softly as it swirled around and around the weapon. He tossed it at one of the debris piles that had once been an empty house.
The moment it struck, a gaping hole opened up, and all of the wood and metal were abruptly sucked into it, as though invisible strings had yanked them in. Every single piece was dragged into the hungering void. If a piece was too large, it was splintered into a thousand more fragments from the vacuum.
He recalled the bident when it had finished its work and sent it after the next ruined heap. As he did this, Clarity saw his memories of the day play out in his mind. She watched them as he had watched her memories, being silent and respectful, as though she were watching a play.
His visit with his parents had been uneventful for the most part. His mother and father, a Gardevoir and Lopunny respectively, were perfectly ordinary parents who never particularly stood out amongst all of the other parents she knew when growing up. While Maple's parents might have been known in the neighborhood for their constant inside jokes that alienated everyone else, or how Autumn's parents always had a tense air about them whenever they spoke to one another, Griffith's parents were rather boring. They never had particular drama about them, no strange quirks that everyone silently judged, nor strong opinions they made known. They reminded Clarity of background characters in a story, content and simple Pokemon.
She saw Griffith sitting at their dining room table with them, that large oak table she used to eat at when visiting or staying over for the night, and enjoying a freshly brewed jasmine tea. They asked him the usual questions of how he had been, what he had been up to, if he had any exciting stories about Dream venturing, all the like.
And of course, as they had always asked since he and Clarity were seven, if the two of them were together.
"Disgusting, never," was his answer in that memory, as it always was whenever asked that question. They'd laugh and laugh, and he'd laugh too until they moved on with the rest of their mundane visit.
Clarity started to leave the rather uninteresting memory.
It'll happen to you next.
You'll end up just like your parents.
Powerless.
Useless.
She stopped. She heard these faint voices echo softly throughout Griffith's mind, so softly that Clarity almost thought she imagined them.
The memory skipped and she noticed that both of his parents seemed rather grim and uncomfortable. Not only that, but she could feel their apprehension through Griffith's perception of it.
"I thought you should know, since you have a blessing from someone else, but something happened to Firestreaker…" his mother started to say, holding her hands tight.
Firestreaker was the name of the being Griffith's parents had received a blessing from. His old name used to be Moltres, but he had taken up this new name and preferred to be called such after becoming a spirit that bestowed blessings to mortals. Griffith's parents adapted to his power quite well, and though they weren't nearly as ambitious as most Pokemon who took power from Firestreaker, they occasionally did serve in his name.
"He's gone," Griffith's mother went on. "I don't know how it happened, but we don't feel his power in us anymore. We went to visit the mountain his spirit resides in, but there was nothing left. All of the trees were burned to the ground, ash replaced all of the grass, every wild thing chased far away… it was like a massive fire wiped everything out."
Pontifex will disappear too.
He'll disappear and you'll have nothing.
Nothing at all.
Memory Griffith sat composed and sipped his tea, but on the inside he wanted to scream. He knew his mother could sense it and pity came out of her. He hated that she could read him, but there was nothing he could do. Focusing on the watered-down perceptions other Pokemon had of his feelings didn't work for him, unlike when Clarity did it.
"You're certain his blessing no longer resides inside either of you?" he asked, keeping his voice even. At least he could fool his father.
"Pretty sure," his father confirmed, staring down at his fuzzy paws. "It's been three weeks now and we haven't felt anything. Haven't even had a power overload."
You'll have nothing.
You'll have nothing.
You'll have nothing.
Memory Griffith swirled the tea in his cup with a strand of telekinesis and watched it. He watched the water go round and round as his parents sat there in front of him, their tension flooding into him. His father said something else, but it was fuzzy and muffled.
Firestreaker couldn't be gone. Another god couldn't have been eradicated. Their spirits were forever bound to where their physical bodies perished. They belonged to the world eternally, they couldn't be killed.
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Clarity removed herself from the memory and grabbed his wrist. He paused in the middle of hurling his bident, then slowly brought his gaze toward her grasp. He seemed fine, but Clarity could feel the tremors in his arm. She clutched him tighter as she sat up.
"Nothing is going to happen to Pontifex," she told him.
"Firestreaker isn't the first god to be exterminated."
"He's the first one to be killed in ten years. Besides, Firestreaker didn't have someone like Hazel. He doesn't have a mouthpiece, a protector. He was always alone and vulnerable."
Griffith still stared, the bident clutched tight in his hand. She held him just as firmly and conjured up a memory, a happy one from when they were both young. A time when Clarity was still an Espurr and he still a Ralts, when they'd hold hands and twirl around for as long as they could before falling down together, laughing in a dizzy stupor. A time before they both evolved and that started becoming increasingly difficult to do, given their height differences.
She felt him take in that fondness and breathe in slowly. The bident remained in his grip, however.
"We're not going to lose Pontifex. We're going to keep our blessings," she stated.
He didn't say anything. She still felt the tremors and heard the whispers returning in his mind.
And she saw in his mind the temptation to do what he always did when he was overwhelmed. She saw countless memories of him giving into that temptation, with her in nearly all of them. She considered her options for a moment and wondered if there was anything else she could do or say.
There wasn't.
She released him, only to hop into his lap. She stood on the tops of his legs so that she was eye to eye with him, or at least as close as she could get.
"Fine, if it'll calm you down," she sighed.
She grabbed his face in both her paws and harshly buried her lips into his. He reciprocated instantly, closing his eyes as he dispelled the bident. He pulled her toward him as he fell back, hitting the ground and giving no regards to the dirt now smeared into his gown. She felt his tension leave his body and mind as he took her in, chasing away the dreaded voices with every caress of his hands, every shuddering gasp, every fervent kiss.
He was right to worry about Firestreaker's disappearance and what that could potentially mean for Pontifex. If Pontifex disappeared, then so would her power and she'd be back to being an ordinary Meowstic. She wouldn't be strong enough to combat Nightmares. She needed that extra edge, that extra divine power coursing through her veins. Without that power… what did she really have?
She didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to think about it. It was best they both forget about it.
Best not to be reminded that at the end of the day, they had no real power to call their own.