8.
For FeɅr of Strings (Ʌnd FloɅty Things)
Delicately, she pulled the final knot taut and placed the little ring of twisted grass on the floor.
Cyllene had eighteen of them now. She'd plucked the longest blades she could find in the Fieldlands, slipping them under a sleeve until after supper, when she retired to her quarters and began the painstaking process of tying.
She was distracted, of course. Her quarters were a mess — smelly clothes draped over the mirror, ash and crumbs of loose leaf tea ground into the oozing pine floorboards, strange blue spots of ink smeared on the walls from the previous night, a deformed candle frozenly spreading over a stack of paperwork on the writing desk, her little collection of agates spilling out of their painted beer-bottle vases, the pile of unpainted beer bottles stowed beside the storage trunk, and the storage trunk itself rather empty, save for a few buttons and feathers and fascinators made out of seashells and nutshells and rusted bits of wire and pins.
So she tidied all of that up. And then took a walk to get fresh air. And then bathed in the secluded pool just northeast of town, dousing her short hair in enough camellia oil for the sweatiest Snorlax to smell like spring. And then she scrubbed Abra's fuzz and scales, too. And for a while she idled on the waterwheel bridge, aching for some new friend to appear by her side and at the same time abhorring the thought of personal connection.
(No one spoke to her. This was acceptable.)
And now, nearing midnight, by the pale, prismatic sheen of Abra's Light Screen and a turquoise oran flower tucked in her hair, she sat on the driest part of the floor and finished tying eighteen blades of grass into eighteen little rings. Then she placed them all down in six neat rows and scrutinized them. Abra held the parchment open like a scroll. Cyllene traced a finger over the ultimate lines of her poem again:
When six rings Ʌre tripled
The world is begun
"What part of my brain did this even come from?"
Abra's eyes were still open. She knew it wasn't evil — it had saved her life too many times to warrant suspicion — but it was still unnervingly alien. Those large glazed golden eyes proved a power that lay beyond human understanding. Secrets, perhaps, that Pokémon would happily and cheekily keep from the humans who studied them. Abra could disappear one moment and appear again the next. It could float in the air and sense the world around it while asleep.
"Did you see me sleepwalk last night?" she asked.
Abra's little ears twitched. It motioned with the scroll it carried.
"Yes, I know I wrote that, but I don't remember writing it. Do you remember everything you do while you're asleep, and what it means?"
The pointed tail swished, but Abra did not speak to answer.
"'Where SINNOH shows true might.' I must have been dreaming about the Clan leaders' bickering, and the beer in me made it something romantic. Really, a bloody feud between poetry and prose. Hisui makes less sense by the moment."
Abra yawned with a squeak. The eyelids began to slip, but it swished its tail and spun in the air, fighting to keep awake and alert.
Cyllene let out a deep breath. She flicked and scattered the grass rings, then flopped over into her futon and let all her limbs loosen. It had been a long two days. Longer, it seemed, when fire and poems and teleportation stretched her mind in baffling ways.
"Go to sleep, Abra. You don't need to protect me tonight. I ate veggies, like iridA said. No beer. Not even mirin in the mochi sauce."
Abra wasn't convinced. It forewent floating and lay down beside her, wrapping one three-clawed hand around her slight form and squeezing as tight as it could. As it snuggled up close, she could hear its breathing, like a quiet purr. Two sets of eyelids closed over the gold, and the creature was still.
Not alien, Cyllene reminded herself with a tired smile. Just different. That was the point of the Survey Corps. Learning what made the different important, perhaps even useful.
Still, she wouldn't welcome any accidental sleep teleportation, when sleepwalking was a proven fact. As discreetly as she could, she slipped out of Abra's grasp and returned it to its Poké Ball for a greater, longer rest. This she stowed under her pillow, and then lay sprawled out and restless under the moonlight, smoke and sparks and collapsing teenagers blotting in blue within her imagination.
A shadow passed over the curtains covering the front windows and lingered.
Cyllene almost jumped. She lived in one of the singles' lodges on the west side of town, only slightly nicer than those of her bachelor neighbors, with real curtains instead of papyrus screens and the four-petaled plum blossom insignia of the Survey Corps emblazoned above the threshold. No one came by this late, especially not to see her.
She threw herself up from the futon at once, raking fingers through her hair and kicking her feet into sandals. If something had happened… if someone needed to speak with her… If it was Rei, or Eiffel… Kamado? Was there an attack? A Pokémon-related conundrum?
She slid open the door and gawked…
At nothing but a dim purple night. The narrow path was bare, the ditch sloping steeply down to where the creek flowed past, and all her neighbors' windows were dark.
Jumping at shadows, she thought. How long did it take for the magic of veggies to calm her nerves and grant her energy?
She was about to slide the door closed again and force her eyes shut when movement caught her eye, and the sound of heavy footsteps off to the left. A guard, then. Patrolling the perimeter. Kamado must have ordered extra vigilance after the Shinx.
Extra extra vigilance, she realized, seeing a tall, curvy figure and a high ponytail made of billowing red curls.
"Zee!" Cyllene called, chasing after the other woman, who was moving quite quickly. "What kind of schedule does the Commander have you on now? You scared me!"
Zisu didn't even flinch. She wasn't gliding silently on a roll-step like the night guards usually did. Instead she seemed to stumble side to side, spine slightly dipped and heels dragging. Cyllene caught her left sleeve, but she pulled away, continuing on the northern path toward Floaro Main Street.
Then Cyllene saw Zisu's face.
Her lips were loose. Her gray eyes bulged, unblinking — unseeing. She was mumbling something while her muscles jerked, propelling her forward with just enough grace to walk.
Utterly unconscious.
"Zisu!" Cyllene cut. She slapped her friend's arm, then her back, then her breast, then her cheek. "Zisu, wake up! ZISU!"
Zisu was oblivious. She kept going, meandering down Main Street until she stood before Ginter's caravan. Mechanically, her back straightened, and her eyes bulged even more. She threw herself forward, tearing open the canvas flaps and crawling up onto the platform, into the wagon.
"Zisu, what are you doing!? Leave Ginter alone! WAKE UP!"
But Cyllene couldn't hear Ginter complaining. Only a loud clunking and scraping and Zisu making frustrated moans as she tore everything out of the wagon and tossed it on the ground. Purses stuffed with coins. Extra sacks of granola and bottles of that mysterious beer. Piles of glowing evolution stones. A pair of gold sandals with straps criss-crossing and coiling up to the knee. Rolls of paper. Blankets steeped in sweat and phlegm. Strange wooden crates bolted shut and full of scrap metal that rattled and clanged.
"Woman, you're being ridiculous. Get out of there," Cyllene stressed, yanking on Zisu's thick right leg until she came tumbling down onto the ground and whimpering.
Even… crying?
"Not here," Zisu said clearly and simply, actual tears glistening on her cheeks.
Cyllene knelt down and put a hand on her shoulder, though the large woman seemed to stare right through her. "No, Ginter's not here," she said. "Probably because he doesn't want to be pestered. Now put all this back."
For a moment, the smokey eyes almost focused. Pupils centered. Lids raised.
Then the moment was over, and Zisu shrieked.
"LET GO OF ME!"
Violently, she shoved Cyllene into the dirt, the slight woman barely catching herself on her elbows before her skull could crack on the wagon wheel. Zisu hauled herself to her feet and sprinted down Canala Avenue.
Cyllene was left heaving and stupefied. Leaping up again, she tore the flaps open herself to find Ginter actually absent, and then watched the wild woman in red slowly getting smaller as she put on a burst of speed toward the south gates.
She ran after, somersaulting to pick up speed. The gates opened a crack, then wider.
"No, what are you doing? Fools!" Cyllene spat.
"Captain Cyllene," Ress greeted as she approached. "You're out past curfew. Nighttime surveying with Captain Zisu?"
"You just let her outside the walls!"
The man looked confused. "Is… she not with you?"
She wanted to start slapping him too. Him and his stupid sideburns and all his bumbling doppelgängers climbing down from the watchtowers. "She's sleepwalking, idiot! Like I was last night! I can't wake her up! She's in a frenzy!"
The guardsmen shifted uncomfortably. They all looked to Deputy Ress, who shivered under Cyllene's furious glare, utterly confused.
"One of you scour the village for that Ginkgo Man," she commanded. Then, on silent sandals, she bolted out into the night.
If I am to die alone in the wilderness, perhaps this is the perfect night for it, Cyllene mused.
It was a grim and fanciful thought — one she entertained too often, though not for any want of her own destruction. Someone would find her at daybreak, (or days later, like the one-eyed merchant,) and fall into beautiful sorrow at her appearance. Unbreathing in her blue silk gi over the nightgown, but with clean and tousled hair. A white camellia behind her right ear. Pursed, dried, small, pink lips. Missing sandals. Too much skin showing somewhere.
And she'd return to the village in that someone's strong arms — it really didn't matter who, as long as it wasn't Eiffel because he wouldn't care and he was too fat to carry her all that way — and when Kamado saw her still and cold he'd roar like an Ursaring and beat his huge fists into stones until his knuckles broke and bled, and go off somewhere to fast and think for three days, a week — drowning in grief for his favorite little blue moonstone who had been so bright as to counsel him in his grand experiment. If the village survived, the day would be made a dark memorial. From sunset to sunset it would be forbidden to smile, or eat, or play. The ones who could read would not read. In fact, all writing and learning would cease. For Cyllene Selenelion had been the cleverest in the village — the Scrivener of a Veritable Galaxy, interpreter of poems, woman of somewhat enchanting beauty!
(Somewhat. With her luck, the statue would lack eyebrows.)
And they would name a street after her. Perhaps a shop or a park. Why stop there? The next village would bear her name. It would have hot springs like the ones in Hoenn, and everyone there would be required to smell like primroses.
"Positive thoughts," she chanted, right before another creepy-crawly-squishy-squirmy worm fell out of a tree onto her face, sticking its fat round feet to her mouth and forehead. Instantly she screamed, clawing and hacking and seizing it in two thick handfuls and hurling it off into the darkness.
Cyllene shivered, wiping cold sweat off her face and peeling sticky thread out of her hair. Dark clouds had rolled in to cover the moon. Only the pulsing of stormlight over the mountain was left to guide her, lightning flickering in eerie reds, blues, and greens. Her breathing was tense now, as she strained to make river from hill in the darkness, and scanned to make sure the sheen of eyes wasn't following her.
Her fingers snagged on more worm thread, cast between trees and stones and dripping with mist. I'd take a charging alpha night beast over these worms! I can't even see them!
But she could hear them. Chewing on leaves with bulbous mandibles and wiggling their plant-engorged bodies to slither up trees, where they sensed her warmth and waited to drop down and spit sticky strings over her face and sting her with their numerous spikes. She remembered the loose, bloated flesh of the one-eyed merchant, and then pictured that blue moon princess eaten, slime-soaked cocoon subduing and dissolving whatever sinews the venom couldn't.
"I am Cyllene Selenelion, and I fear one thing," she said. "Maybe two."
"You again!"
And again she shrieked, charging through a whole web of worm thread and knocking into someone taller and bulkier. Two strong arms seized her own, keeping her from charging further.
Hairless brows furrowed.
It was Ginter!
In the faint and faraway flickers of lightning she made out his haggard gray face. He was frowning deeply, the biggest scar on his lower lip stretched into a long pink streak. She jerked, and he released her, tired eyes trailing after while she found her footing and struggled to calm her breath. Her chest felt cold now. Summer nights were cold. Hisui was cold.
"What are you doing all the way out here?" she asked.
Ginter pointed at the sky. "I'm trying to determine if those two stars were always that close together."
"Stars?"
She looked up, toward where the crooked finger jabbed at the heavens. A few faint, twinkling stars were visible among patches of clouds. The leg or tail of a constellation curled around the vague line of the milky way.
"They haven't changed," she said. "They looked the same in Hoenn."
"You're from Hoenn?"
"A little farming village called Fall Harbor, in the north. Zisu too."
"Zisu's got a screw loose tonight."
Cyllene looked shocked. "You've seen her, then? She's sleepwalking. I've been searching for hours."
Ginter eased himself carefully down into the grass and worked to retie his boots tighter.
"I've been searching too. For that Shinx you disposed of."
"Shinx?"
It took her a moment to realize what he meant. He was glaring at her now from his seat, the heavy pack weighing on him while he tugged at the strings and struggled with shaking fingers to loop them.
"That Shinx in the village was your Pokémon?"
"Shinx is my partner," Ginter growled. "Where did you banish him?"
Cyllene crossed her arms. "Shinx attacked my youngest surveyor right down the street from your caravan. If he's yours, you could've said something. You could've commanded him to stand down."
"When I was too sick to move? I was asleep for the rest of the day after you harangued me about coughing in your general direction. Then I realized Shinx was gone and went searching."
"And the guards just let you out by yourself."
"Sure they did. I thought you wanted me out of your hair anyway."
"I wanted you to be agreeable. But then you set your price as cursing a child with a Raichu! You didn't even charge Rei for that Thunderstone."
"How is that a curse? His Pikachu evolved. It's a lot stronger now."
"Rei is a child!" Cyllene cut, suddenly self-conscious at the volume of her voice. The chewing of the worms had gone quiet. That coldness was trickling down her spine, creeping in around her heart…
"Down," she told Ginter.
"What's down?"
"Down!" she cried, and slid to the ground, pulling Ginter's apron until it was flush with the dew. Above them, the darkness condensed, mist shifting and swirling and pulsing until it had formed a purplish sphere. A pair of glowing slitted eyes opened within the miasma, and an enormous Ghastly opened its wide, fanged sneer, spitting glowing beams of black and purple that smashed into the earth and made the grass wither even more where it grew.
"Crawl forward," Cyllene instructed, already shimmying through the weeds toward better tree coverage.
"See, now that's your fault. You're supposed to know the dangers of the wilderness, Miss Survey Corps."
"Captain," Cyllene corrected, scooting up against a tree and placing both chilled hands over her heart.
"Captain Survey Corps."
"Captain Cyllene is fine."
"Ginter the First."
Ginter removed his cap and tried to flatten his nest of gray hair. He was winded and coughing again, shoulders trembling beneath the heavy pack.
"Is it… that hard to believe… that I don't want to destroy your village? I just… want a safe place to stay while I… th-think about my own imminent demise?"
Cyllene turned away. "Quite hard. Because whether you're on your last legs or not, we have rules and a standard of decency. Your Thunderstone and your Shinx almost took a life today."
"Well, don't blame Shinx for that. Shinx is sick too. He's confused."
"You're more careless than I thought."
"You are so scared," Ginter coughed. "You're scared of nothing. What are you scared of, great, respected Captain Cyllene? Wurmple. And an old man in a cap sitting on a stool selling granola. I'll never tell you who I was when I was younger."
She felt like kicking him where he sat. Decided that wouldn't be agreeable. She looked at him. Tried to see any bit of sense in those small, dark, hooded eyes.
If she looked closely enough, they were blue.
"You have reason enough to be angry," she said then. "I didn't properly warn Rei of the danger your gift would cause. Then I teleported Shinx away not knowing he was yours. I made mistakes. I overreacted. I'm sorry. Please don't think I'm always this harsh."
The old man managed to catch his breath, then. Grunting, he heaved the heavy pack off his back, working with tired fingers to unbuckle the straps keeping the yellow-and-white striped blanket in place on top. He then tossed it at her, and it unrolled into her arms, soft and draping. She unfolded it the rest of the way, then looked at him again.
"I'm not going to sleep out here."
"You're not going to sleep at all until we recover both Zisu and Shinx," said Ginter. "I just thought you looked cold in that."
She threw the blanket around herself immediately, unnerved at the thought he'd been staring.
"And it's less weight for me to carry," he said, standing up and slinging the pack back over one shoulder. He marched straight through a wall of worm thread, swiping wildly when the white webs clung to his sleeves and beard.
"Well, you don't need that whole heavy pack on you," Cyllene said, jumping up after him.
"This pack can never leave my scrawny carcass, and no one is allowed to look inside it but me, got it? It's full of invaluable merchandise. You can admit you went snooping in my wagon at any time."
"Zisu was snooping while she was asleep," Cyllene stressed, using the blanket as a shield for the webs.
"And so were you, because you were curious."
"Well, I don't want your pack full of gold bricks."
"No? Well, did those gold sandals in the wagon strike your fancy? I stole them from bandits who stole them off a dead man."
"Nonsense!"
"You're nonsense."
"What about me is nonsense?"
Cyllene hesitated before the same parted wall of webbing, then threw herself through it, keeping her eyes on Ginter's tall silhouette for guidance.
"Your fear of Wurmple, maybe," Ginter said. Casually, he stooped down and picked one up, its fleshy body so fat it could barely fit even within his larger, longer hands. The worm was red in color and covered in spikes, with two great black unblinking spots for eyes above its mandibles and two pointed yellow spines on the end of its abdomen.
She hugged herself with the blanket, legs jiggling, shoulders shivering, teeth slicing into the swollen crescent, mind filling with the sound of chewing and wriggling and sharp spines standing erect to stab.
"Put that disgusting thing down before it eats you. That is an order."
But Ginter did not follow orders. Instead he raised the Wurmple to his temples and let it arch over his cap, the feet sticking fast and a slimy drool of thread oozing down the back of his neck.
"I'm not calling them cute, but they are harmless."
Whatever smug look he could give her was short-lived. Right that instant, another dark silhouette burst out of another silver silk wall. In a fluid second, it kicked him in the stomach, wrenched the whole heavy pack off his shoulder, and hit him with it, stealing away with a girlish giggle as he stumbled to the ground and groaned.
the world is yours at night…
~N~
Some of you sickos out there are shipping Cyllene with Beauregard. Stop it.
Double update in one weekend! Ceesus chips. Should probably go work on the original novel now. Giant alien walrus... podcasters?
Published by Syntax-N on FanFiction . Net June 19th, 2023. Please do review! Please don't repost.
