We established a pattern, I suppose – him following about ten feet behind, my pokemon jumping around and burning energy in the vicinity, neither me nor Thomas speaking. Trust kept glancing at me in confusion, like he wanted to know what was going on between us. Promise didn't question it.

This went on for a few hours.

"Why aren't there pokemon around?" I could hear the Johto in his voice.

I looked blandly at him. "Did you want to see pokemon?"

"It's weird they haven't shown up at all."

I turned so I was facing forward. "It's cause we're on a busy trail."

"Say it again?"

I said over my shoulder, "This trail is used a lot by trainers and tourists. Most pokemon avoid this one."

"But not all."

"Sure. The starlies like to be fed."

"Ah."

Back to silence. This one was shorter.

"But you're a new trainer."

"So?" Wow, thanks for reminding me.

"You're not interested in seeing a ton of pokemon? Pokedex research?"

"There are few pokemon we don't have sufficient data on, none of which are found in a forest like this."

"But you could still be around pokemon." I gestured in response at the two rascals making the underbrush dance. "I mean other pokemon. Wild ones. You're losing a great experience."

"I've met pokemon before. Especially in these woods. Came here all the time when I was little."

He nodded, accepting my reasoning. "You're not interested in catching any?"

"Later. There's, ah, an arca– I mean, growlithe pack around the Eterna side of the woods."

"Wait, even though–"

"Yes," I interrupted. Even though I had a monferno.

"Why?"

"Why not?"

"Ohh. I see." He nodded in understanding.

"What?"

"You're the kind of person who plans out their team. You're dead set on the rest of your team. I'm guessing you wanted the grass starter."

"Water." But the rest was true.

"Close enough." Thomas pulled a water bottle from his backpack. "Just don't be too worried about what you plan out. Cause things change."

I cringed. That's what I didn't want.

"Hey," he said, noticing my expression, "It's just for fun. People always say it's a game, being a trainer. I mean sure, it's for research and learning about pokemon and stuff, but ultimately it's all fun."

"All fun and games 'til someone gets killed," I said under my breath.

"Hm?"

"Don't worry about it."

It was past noon, so we rested our legs and ate lunch. He was apparently unprepared for a journey longer than four days, so I gave him half a sandwich. In around twenty minutes, we headed off again.

We spoke on and off during the afternoon. He was the youngest of his family, and despite looking much older, he only had me by one year. I brought up the subject of his five badges and one year.

"What about it?"

"Is that regular for Johto? It's just kinda slow for Sinnoh…"

"Oh." He looked down. "To be honest, it's even slower in Johto. Your fifth gym is rated stronger than ours. I went back to Ecruteak all the time to visit my girlfriend."

"Couldn't you vidcall?"

"I guess. She'd have to go to the library, though, and the library usually closed right when I reached a town–"

"Still more convenient than going home all the time."

"Doesn't matter anymore. Can't do it from here."

"You can vidcall more easily, because of the time difference."

"I mean I can't visit."

"I know, I'm just saying you can vidcall."

Thomas shrugged. "I don't need to. We broke up."

"Oh." Well. Surprise.

He was quiet, and when I glanced over he had a downcast look on his face.

"Whoa, don't get all down about it," I said, startled. "You guys didn't work out for a reason."

He breathed a laugh. "She said me visiting her was holding me back."

"Which it was." The impact of his statement came over me gradually. "She did it because of that? That's really noble of her."

"I guess."

Enough of that. "Anyway. I've seen your noctowl. Who else is on your team?"

He frowned for some reason, but said, "I'll introduce you next time we stop. Some of them might trample the forest."

We were in a dense patch of undergrowth at the time. "Okay. You've met all of my team," I said, nodding at Trust and Promise. They'd burned off energy and were walking at a leisurely pace, talking again.

"Yeah. Do you have older siblings?"

"I – No."

"Has anyone in your family trained before?"

I shot him a suspicious look. "My uncle."

"Do you see your uncle a lot?"

"Not often."

He puzzled it over. "Kay."

We set up camp at the foot of Rapitail Falls, a 200-foot cascade that fell into a disproportionally tiny pool, drained by a pair of streams. After taking turns in the waterfall, we fell asleep in our sleeping bags.

Thomas fell asleep right away, but I had trouble getting there – which was unusual, for me. Eventually I gave up and went on a walk.

I wandered down the stream (an easy path to follow back). It grew wider as it traveled down the gentle forest slope. The water bubbled softly, like a lullaby.

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream

A pokemon swooped over my head, but I didn't flinch. I breathed in the fresh, cold night air.

As I walked, I heard voices from the other side of the stream. Curious, I stepped across on the drier rocks.

With a savage hiss, a pokemon with glowing red eyes dove at me out of nowhere. I gave a strangled scream and slipped from the rocks, falling facefirst at a jagged boulder–

The world went dark. But I was breathing, and alive, and if I looked closely I could make out the filtered moonlight reflecting off Thomas's glasses.

I groaned. Another night, another nightmare. Thomas was sleeping with his back to me. Shifting so I mirrored him, I wondered why the peaceful little lake pokemon haunted me still.

Besides, you know, the obvious.

He was already packing up when I woke up again, which surprised me. I thought I was pretty good about not needing much sleep anymore.

"Morning," said Thomas.

"Morning."

It was a foggy morning that turned into a misty noon. We traveled down the same stream I had traversed in my dreams. Besides a sturdy wooden bridge growing moss on its edges, we never crossed it.

"So you've been here before?" Thomas asked conversationally.

I nodded. "This was my favorite place to vacation when I was little. We used to rent a room in the Lodge and go hiking every day. When I was seven we came in the winter and tried to hike up to Spring Falls, but it was completely icy. I was complaining the entire time about how we were going to die, and at the very end my dad slipped and fell on his butt."

"Camping out is new to you, then?"

I started to shake my head, but remembered I'd only camped before in an alternate reality. "My mom didn't like camping, so we never went together. But I camped in Oreburgh Gate, on the way here," I added, saving myself.

"Cave camping's a lot different."

"I can tell already."

"Which do you prefer so far?"

"Forest," I said immediately.

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"You're a lot more exposed when you camp in a forest."

I nodded. "I'm okay with it. The forest is alive; caves feel dead."

An echoing image of a boy – dead – lying in a damp cave made me shudder. "So, uh," I said, trying to change the topic, "What's Johto's forest like?"

"Ilex?" Thomas paused. "It's pretty straightforward. If you take a wrong turn you won't figure it out for days, but there's really only three or four wrong turns to take. Not like this." He spread his arms to indicate the entire forest.

"Eterna's not that bad."

"Yeah, well. You haven't been here for six days."

"It's only been five and a half, for you. And I've been here many times before."

"Then that's why!"

"I bet if I went to Ilex I'd get lost."

"I bet you wouldn't. We still send in ten-year-olds."

"You what?" I said, surprised.

"Ten-year-olds are still eligible to become trainers, in Johto."

"The heck…?"

"As far as I know, it's just Sinnoh with a higher minimum age."

"How do you guys choose, then?"

"Whoever wants to be a trainer goes through a registration process. Paperwork and testing. That's about it."

I let it sink in. "I can't tell if that's really nice or really dumb."

"Me neither. But Sinnoh's system bothers me because of the upper age constraint. It's fourteen to eighteen to start, right?"

"By the official procedure, yeah."

"Yeah, I'm almost eighteen and it seems odd to end the starting age there."

"Oh, when's your birthday?"

"October. When's yours?"

"Ap–" I started coughing violently to get time to think. It was April… but was it still?

"Are you okay?"

I finished my coughing fit. "Yeah. Uh, it's a secret."

"You were going to say April."

"No I wasn't."

"Yes you were."

"I was going to say it's a secret. And then I started coughing."

"But you–"

"Anyway, trainers are welcome to start later than 18; it's just not the League-based program."

At that point, we reached a fairly large clearing in the forest. "Oh look," I said, "This means it's break time."

We stopped for lunch on a gentle grassy slope, me digging into my third-day supplies already. I could live off berries fine, but I didn't know if Thomas could, and I didn't want to ask because that would key him into the fact that I could live off berries, which usually only trainers can do. Meaning, trainers with practice. Though I'm sure I'd dropped enough clues to my past as it was. Ugh.

"You never did introduce me to your team," I mentioned, biting off a piece of a cracker.

"Oh," he said in surprise, reaching into his pockets. With a well-practiced flick, he let out a bunch all at once. Silvery streams of energy solidified into a quilava, noctowl – Silver – sandslash, flaafy, and absol.

(It's not unusual for a trainer to keep their pokemon in the ball for days. The balls have some interesting techno thing that allows the pokemon to stay healthy in there for longer. It's mostly just an issue of claustrophobia and fresh air and exercise).

"Cassie, Silver who you know, Swaine, Esther, Marcassin."

"Mar-what?"

"Marcassin. Mar-ca-san."

"Ah, very good. Hi, I'm Evelyn," I greeted them. The quilava and flaafy gave their hellos loudly, Silver vocally but softer, the sandslash and Marcassin the absol tacitly nodded. I could sense the wide range of personalities already, but the comfortable way they stood in a group indicated that they were very ok with each other at worst, close friends at best.

"Wow," I said softly. His team was a team.

"What?"

"Wait, there's five?"

"Something wrong with that?"

"No, it's just rare."

"Well, I've got five."

The flaafy suddenly bleated loudly at him. Thomas looked exasperated. "Esther, shh, it's okay." She baaed again, sounding annoyed.

"Fine, Esther." Turning to me, he said, "There's a sixth. But he's my secret weapon, and I can't just pull him out all the time."

"Weapon?" I made a face of disgust.

"Not like that," he said, "Not like a tool. Like the team member who's the last resort, but really great. Secret weapon in a team context. Like, uh, a super slow pitcher in baseball. Harder to hit off than you'd think."

"I get it, I get it. Don't you ever take him out of the pokeball?"

"All the time. Just not around people."

"There's no one else around."

"No."

"What's wrong with me?"

"I might battle you someday."

"You're four badges ahead of me," I said, surprised.

"In Sinnoh, we're the same," Thomas said.

"That makes you five badges ahead, total."

"Well you see," he said, digging in his bag for pokemon food, "the difference is that there's something about you that's different. You're just unnaturally good at being a trainer."

My stomach clenched nervously. "How so?"

"Just little things you do or say. Referring to pokemon like people. Having both your pokemon out of the pokeball constantly. You've got no interest whatsoever in catching 'em all." He located the box of food and opened it up.

"Catchemalls are ridiculous–"

"See? Things that make you a good trainer. They give you a head start. We'll battle someday, you watch."

"This implies we're going to keep in touch after this."

Thomas paused in the middle of filling a paper bowl with pokechow. "We're on the same badge route. We'll probably see each other around."

Trust and Promise, who were exploring the clearing, finally noticed the other pokemon and scampered over to where we were. The seven started chatting, and I filled up some bowls of food for Trust and Promise.

"Why didn't we see each other–" I stopped myself before I could say "last time."

"What?" Thomas prompted.

I scanned my brain for a solution and came up with nothing. "Nope," I said, getting up, "I'm out. No idea how to explain this one. Nope."

Feeling dumb, I walked to the edge of the clearing, where I could hide for a bit. Wow.

The rest of the day went by thankfully uneventfully, except for the point where Thomas stepped in a hole.

"AH MEW THAT'S A NINCADA HOLE."

"DUDE RUN!"

"OW!"

"GET SILVER OUT!"

"WHAT?"

"SILVER!"

"WH–

"DO YOU WANT TO LIVE?"

Fortunately he got Silver out in time, and we managed to get away from the angry nincadas despite Thomas's swelling ankle. He held on to Silver's legs and ran like he had a crutch hanging from the sky.

He asked later, "Why Silver?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean why not Marcassin or Swaine? They could have helped me, too."

"Your absol and…?"

"Sandslash."

"Too much underbrush, very few tree trunks. Silver could fly more conveniently than they could run."

"But you knew the flying-running trick?"

I threw my hands in the air. "Oh no, I'm acting like I know what I'm doing again. Shoot me."

"Wow, calm down."

Our best location to camp that night was just alongside the stream, at a spot where the trees let up. We went into the river one at a time again, and went to sleep.

It was a cold night – I'd pulled Promise and Trust into their pokeballs because of the cold. I didn't realize how cold until I opened my eyes and saw white dust floating down like ashes, surprisingly bright for nighttime.

Closing my eyes and rolling over, I suddenly felt myself falling, tumbling over the edge of the river bank, except it was way too high to be a river bank, and below was snow, the kind of snow that could either cushion your fall or cover up rocks that would break your bones, and at the bottom I saw Dawn, her face pale, leg jutting out funny, bleeding where bone broke through flesh. The ground zoomed up–

I awoke this time with a clenched moan, sounding like a whimper. A flashlight snapped off suddenly. Thomas was awake.

"Bad dream?" he asked quietly.

"Yeah," I groaned. My vision adjusted; I could see he was holding a square of paper in his hand.

"Do you want to talk?"

"No," I said harshly.

"Okay."

I exhaled. "Sorry, I… it's too much to explain."

"Okay."

I rolled over, hoping there wasn't a cliff behind me. Thomas must have thought I fell asleep sooner than I did, because he turned the flashlight back on not long later. I didn't ask what he was looking at. If I didn't tell him about my dream, he didn't have to tell me about this.

The Spring Falls anecdote is a true story about my sister and my dad one year. It's not called Spring Falls, and Rapitail Falls obviously isn't the real name either, but Eterna Forest is basically a mashup of all my favorite forests.

Bonus points to whoever can guess where Thomas's pokemon's names are from ;) Hint: It's my favorite video game that I've never played.

Hope you enjoyed this somewhat long chapter (making up for last week :P). See you next week~