The Bike Route took most of the day, so we chilled in Oreburgh in the late afternoon. Gripping the rental bike's handlebars probably wasn't great for my hand, but whatever. It was a Sunday, so it was a safe bet Tricia wouldn't have internship stuff today. I figured I ought to call her again.
She didn't pick up the first time, but within about ten minutes the nurse at the front desk informed me I had a call. Tricia was on the vidcall screen, her straight black hair hanging wetly down her arms.
"Hey," I said.
"Heyy," she said, "It's been a while." She sounded more excited than anything. With a jolt I realized I hadn't told her what I'd told Megan a week ago. I'd have to warm up to it. With Megan it was easy cause she suspected something was up. Tricia had no idea what was in store.
"How much did Megan tell you about my internship?" Tricia asked.
"Not much," I admitted.
"Bruh," she enthused, "It's great. Professor Rowan's letting me help with an investigation on Lake Verity's water quality, and so much about pokemon life at the lake is connected to it…"
It was a lot. And it was fascinating. The trends in pokemon life around the lake were based on salinity, algal growth, microorganisms, minerals, acidity. And those were just the water quality factors.
"And you guys are helping with the lake trio investigations, right?"
"Yeah," I said. "When's that starting?"
"He said he's waiting for you guys to have a flying type. Or at least for a few of you to."
"Oh, that makes sense." Transportation. "Can't guarantee when we'll get to that point, though."
"I mean, at some point you'll have to go through Veilstone's gym. Usually people find flying types for that," Tricia pointed out.
I grinned, thinking of the starly I was going to catch. "I suppose."
Tricia bobbed her head up and down. I mirrored her. We laughed. "Anyway," she said, "I hate to cut this off early, but I gotta finish a project today, and I barely started."
"Oh, yeah, no, that's fine."
We said our goodbyes and hung up, and only then did I realize my mistake.
Looker pinged my poketch around 6:30. I called the training battle off briefly to pick up the call.
"Yo."
"Hey Lyn. The orbs are with the IP. We've replaced them with fakes."
I did a quick run through my brain to figure out what he meant – Adamant and Lustrous Orbs in Hearthome, right.
"That's good to hear. Anything else new?"
"Well, there's an increase in Galactic activity in this part of the region. Seems we were right on. I have you to thank for that."
"The battle's not over yet. Did you get an update on our excursion in Eterna?"
"I attached a tracker to one of the joltiks, and it seems they're doing fine. So I guess it was a success?"
"Yeah. Close call for me, but we accomplished what we wanted to."
"That's good. By the way, have you told anyone about the app?" Time travel, in other words.
"I, uh… Yeah. Only one."
"Who?"
"Megan. I was going to tell Tricia too, but I don't have to."
"No, no, it's fine. Just make sure you can trust the people you tell; if news leaks or Galactic finds out, then you and I are in danger."
"But it's fine to tell people."
"Sure. Just a few. It's good that you're building a support network."
"Okay."
"Anything else?"
"Not that I can think of. Haven't seen Galactic since the HQ."
"All right. You know my number."
We hung up. He and I didn't have each other's contacts saved; for security we just memorized them. Poketches don't save recent calls past 24 hours.
"Sorry about that," I called across the battlefield.
"Hurry up and do something," Thomas yelled back.
"Faith, sucker punch!"
She was getting faster; she'd finally caught up to the speed of the punch itself. Esther – Thomas's flaafy – dodged.
"Go from below," I said.
Faith shot into the ground. Confused, Esther chose a direction and ran. Faith popped out of the ground, ramming her teeny mass into Esther. The dark energy more than anything stopped Esther in her tracks – reversed her tracks, really, toppling her off her feet and sending her rolling.
"Dang, nicely done," I said, impressed.
She grinned. "Plum," Faith said.
And she started glowing.
"Okay, I appreciate the evolution," I said to my now-haunter once the glow was done, "And I understand where that came from, but… plum?"
Thomas was walking over. "Nice," he said.
"Plum," Faith repeated.
"Plum?"
"Redwood."
"What happened to plum?"
"Redwood plum. Spruce."
"You confuse me, child."
It was pouring, water pounding down in sheets, the world more ocean than air. Bree had noticed a crevice in the rock walls on the side of the road, and we ended up taking cover for the night inside it. I don't even remember where it was, except that it was sometime between my fourth and seventh gym badges because everyone except Jirra was there.
I let everyone out – it was barely big enough. Owen, who was already an arcanine, noticed I was shivering, and curled up behind me. His soft fur radiated warmth. Thank Arceus for fire types.
Bree, who was a prinplup, was still out in the rain. She had a habit of – maybe not habit so much as hobby – of spinning in the rain. In the storm she looked like a torpedo, a flashing whirligig of water and grace.
Quasar, who hated the rain with a passion, settled on Liana's back. He was still small enough to do so comfortably, as a staravia, and she was big enough as a newly-evolved luxray to barely notice. Still, she gave a soft growl, not in aggression so much as to say "Okay, I feel you," and with a gentleness that suggested "Stay as long as you'd like."
Emmy was still an eevee at this point. She climbed onto my lap. I leaned back against Owen's warm body, stroking Emmy's fur. Bree waddled in from the rain, joining us in our hideaway.
And how can I describe the warmth that came from more than just Owen's body heat? How do I convey the peace that was more than our collective sleepiness, the companionship that was more than between just Quasar and Liana, the comfort that wasn't just me stroking Emmy? How do I explain the perfection we were?
I knew it was a dream. That was what made me sad. I stopped stroking Emmy – she looked up, noticing something was wrong. I picked her up and held her close, held her tight so I might never let her go.
The night would come to an end. I might have two hours, five hours, five years and it would never be enough. Not ever enough.
Could we just pause time, just get Dialga to pause time right where we were? Heaven smells like the soaked forest floor, feels like arcanine fur and an eevee in my arms. Could we just pause time right here, right now, just wait here, stay here, last here forever? I didn't believe in forever and this was why. I liked to say eons. Eons are the closest thing to forever without the infinity, without the pressure to keep away endings. I'd had too many endings to keep saying forever. But here we were in a dent in the granite and a dent in reality, just resting and feeling each other's presence, and I knew that technically our eon was over, technically this wasn't even happening, technically we were all on separate paths already, technically we weren't here like this and would never be ever again – and yet we felt too complete to end.
You make me want to believe in forever.
Numbly I awoke. Numbly I packed and ate breakfast downstairs before Thomas woke up. By the time he was ready to go, I'd taken everything I'd felt in the dream and shoved it behind me. I didn't have time to deal with this. It would die away.
We arrived in Jubilife the next evening. It was light enough that I wasn't concerned for my life, but too dark to start looking for Liana on the other route. So we just went for the Center.
I unwrapped my hand. The few open wounds had scabbed over, and the rest of my hand was patchy blue. Brilliant Evelyn poked a bruise.
"Hooooooly hell," I hissed.
Thomas looked up in surprise. "What?" I said.
"I don't know whether to be surprised that you swore, or that you really just said 'holy hell'."
"What's wrong with– okay, first of all, what's wrong with holy hell?"
"What the heck is that?"
"Does it matter? And you're really that surprised that I swore mildly?"
He shrugged. "I've never heard you swear to begin with."
"I mean, I don't swear much around other people," I said, reaching for fresh bandages. "That's about as bad as it gets. I've never heard you swear either."
"Pretty sure I've sworn to Mew."
"That doesn't count. Everyone does that."
"Except you."
"Mew, Arceus, same same. I live in Sinnoh."
We played some board games, almost out of obligation. At eight o'clock it occurred to me that I may as well call Megan. It was earlier than we'd usually called in the past.
She wasn't wearing her glasses when she picked up, so the fact that she was wearing makeup was obvious. "What's the occasion?" I asked, recognizing the top half of the dress she was wearing.
Megan shrugged. "Nothing in particular. I felt like dressing up today."
"Ah."
"Where are you now?" she asked.
"Jubilife, for Liana. I'm looking for her tomorrow."
"Good luck with that."
I shrugged. "I'm just gonna hope and not give up."
Megan grinned. "Stubborn as always."
"I think we established that stubborn isn't a bad thing," I reminded her with mock seriousness.
"Back in the day, when we were fifteen," Megan said. "Evelyn – when did you go back in time?"
If this was what I thought it was, then we'd thought of it at the same time. "February… 20th, I think. No, wait. Three days in Coronet…" I counted off. "The 21st. 21st of February."
"What time on September 4th did you come back?"
"Morning. And on February 21st it was mid-morning."
We both did the math. "17 days after the 21st," I said.
"It's March 10th," said Megan.
We sat there in silence. There was a kind of unbelieving awe at the immenseness of our simple math. She was sitting in her room on September 21st. I was in a vidcall room in Jubilife City on March 10th.
"Mm– No," I decided. "No, when I came back to September, I gave up the old timeline. It's the 21st for me too."
"You still went through the old timeline, though," Megan responded. "So you're older than most people think you are… October 19th."
"What?"
"Your birthday. You're older than Tricia and me now."
She was looking away from the screen, checking her math against a calendar. She didn't notice me staring at her.
Why I was staring... I don't know. There was something... touching? Touching that she went and calculated my birthday, even though I'd seen it coming for the last four minutes. Maybe touching that she'd so wholeheartedly embraced my five-and-a-half-months-out-of-place self and I don't know I'm grasping at straws here, but something about it all eased my heart.
Megan's eyes returned to the screen. "You better come back to Twinleaf that day. You'll be what, seventeen already?"
"Dancing queen, young and oh so sweet," I said, making my ugliest face. "I don't know if I'll have a flying type by then. Mid-October I should be across the region in Veilstone. I mean, I could ask Looker to get me there… well, it'd be a stretch. I don't know. We'll see."
"You've got a togepi egg, right?" Megan checked.
"Yeah– oh. Yeah. I mean, first it's gotta hatch, and then evolve into a togetic, and then I'd have to locate a shiny stone and those are hella expensive, and it's within a month…"
"Don't stress yourself about it," Megan said. "At worst, definitely be in a city so we can vidcall you."
I nodded. Then I remembered that this was assuming Tricia already knew. I really did need to tell her all this.
"For sure," I said.
The conversation drifted to lighter matters, like my newly evolved haunter and some things that happened in Twinleaf that day. We hung up at 9:30, and I headed back upstairs.
"Return," I heard before opening the door. Inside, I found all of Thomas's pokemon out, and a sixth dematerializing and swooping into a pokeball. It was already in its energy form; I couldn't tell what it was.
"How long are you going to hide your sixth?" I huffed, letting my three out.
"What use is a secret benchwarmer if he's not a secret?"
"Aha, it's male."
"Okay…"
"It's not a froslass or a latias, and it's not genderless."
"Congrats."
"Thanks," I said, doing a hair flip like it was a big deal. "Just a few hundred left to eliminate."
Somehow we had enough room for everyone – excluding his mysterious sixth team member – to sleep in there. We'd find Liana in the morning, to join us.
Liana in the morning, was the thought drifting through my mind as I fell asleep.
The dream references lyrics from Hamilton, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, and High School Musical 3.