Chapter 4
No one was ever ready for when a loved one dies, much less a parent. Fortunately for the Smythe sisters, they had been. During the time when children finally left the nest, their mother had been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Despite the estimated two-year lifespan for such an aggressive tumor, the cancer had been a slow one, giving them almost half a decade to gather their resources and make the necessary arrangements for her impending death before the discovery of a second tumor four years later. Then, on an unremarkable Sunday at the beginning of February after years of fighting, it had been over. It was an ideal death- slow but peaceful, lying in a perfectly made-up living room at home, surrounded by her daughters and closest friends while breathes turned into short gasps spread out in long amount long silences, dying in the middle of a prayer. Key Smythe, the youngest of Dora Smythe's two daughters, had kept her comfortable, applying moist, water-filled sponges for her mother suck on like lozenges to give her an easier death, like Jesus Christ had been given wine during his final hours. Apparently, people who were close to death suffered more if they had food in their bodies, so for the past week or so while she noticed her mother's appetite diminish, Key had only fed her water through those green sponge sticks, the occasional morphine paper, and any of the other opioid drugs the hospice nurses had ordered for the transition. Death drugs were truly miraculous.
What came after was a blur. The first week had just been a series of checklists and things for Key to do. Her older sister, Locke, had been there the first week as emotional support, having used her bereavement time off from work to be there for her, but she was hardly any help when it came to the death dealings that came after, having not been the closest to their mother even during her final days, but Key was fine with that. She knew her sister and the triggers she had. Autism didn't exactly give you a full toolset for handling disruptions like death and funerals, and there had been a lot to plan for. Key understood her mother's wishes, having heard them years after the diagnosis during the casual hours of the day, even before her mother had been bedbound.
Key didn't even mind planning the funeral. If anything, it was cathartic arranging all of the memory boards, photos, and decorations. Her mother had been a high-school athlete, Move Tutor, and a phenomenal elementary school teacher. She was social, put-together, independent, and a fashionista in both clothes and décor, and had touched so many lives, both in her career and personal life. So much of her last few years had been Key meeting and reconnecting with her mother's old family friends, colleagues, and hometown neighbors, creating their own network to build off of. Their mother had been the center of a large community that neither Key nor Locke could ever recreate, even if they compiled a list of every person that they had known and combined them.
Key had also been the primary caregiver for their mother. She knew what her mother's plans and wishes were intimately. She knew all the numbers to call about cremation, death certificates, insurance, and financial agents. She even knew what songs her mother wanted played at her funeral. What she didn't know she relegated towards their aunts and cousins, who were old enough to have planned many funerals to know what they were doing. By then, it was only a matter of coordination and assigning jobs, absolute child's play.
It was the future and life after her mother's death that Key hadn't been prepared for, the lull of the day-to-day life. During the last year of her mother's life, Key's sole purpose was caring for her mother at all hours of the day. Caregiving had taken up so much of her life that she rarely had time for herself or her own interests. Now here Key was with more time than she knew what to do with, sitting and trying to figure out what her new normal was, who she was and what to do with herself.
So far, she had been spending it scrolling through her phone on the living room floor. It had been harder to wake up lately, finding herself waking up well past lunch curled up in a fleece blanket on the fluffy, faux fur rug on the floor. The ground had been much more preferrable than sleeping on the couch. So often did she wake up in the middle of the night at the smallest sound to check on her mother, only to be reminded there wasn't anyone there. She could not recall the last time she had slept in her own bed. She knew it had been after her mother's second surgery, but she couldn't remember the exact date when she stopped sleeping on the second floor. Probably around the same time her mother had come back from rehab and found she couldn't walk anymore, muscles atrophied to the point that she had to sleep in a hospital bed parked in the living room on the first floor. At least with the rug she knew where she stood- plus, it was incredibly comfortable, like burying her face in an Arcanine's mane.
"The first you need to know when fishing for water pokemon is-"
Her finger swiped past the Instagram video.
"You want to live a healthier life? Try moving around for three minutes. Studies shown that drinking fresh water and walking for three minutes after waking up gives a person increased energy-"
Swipe.
"WE WERE ON A BREAK-!"
Swipe.
"'Can the best male tournament champion beat the best regional female champion?'"
"'Best female champion?' I think the answer is clearly yes.'"
"Really?"
"Yeah, absolutely. Even against regional champions, Leon is way stronger than Cynthia-"
Key rolled her eyes at the two nerdy white men with podcast microphones, about to swipe again to next video when the footage abruptly cut to an Alolan woman with dark hair and Samoan skin that Key instantly recognized as Egaita Tyson- intersectional feminist, top tier influencer, Queen of Roasts, and her idol. Egaita's voice cackled on the screen as one of her long nails pointed accusingly at the viewer.
"Oh word, you think so? LOL! I've made many videos about this many times over, but something that will truly never make sense to me is how mediocre men like to comment about professional, female, pokemon trainers. Shut the fuck up LOL. You're spearheading a conversation you don't have the qualifications to be a part of, bitch. The guy who said 'yeah absolutely' goes onto explain his reasoning, and part of that reasoning is referencing when he was on his pokemon journey, something that people do when they're ten years old. The Pokemon Trainer Club told him that they would regularly challenge the female pokemon champions and beat them all the time. They told you that? Oh, so the justification you have is from a group of pokemon trainers you don't even know? Hello? Oh, credibility shot in the face LOL! Then the other half of his reasoning is referencing men that he is not.
"When men's justification for dogging other professional, women, pokemon trainers is by referencing other male trainers that are not them, not only are you misogynistic. You look fucking embarrassing LOL. To be honest, I'm surprised I can understand you with their balls so deep into your mouth LOL! You are dying on a hill that you can't even climb, player. These are the same men that look at women like Cynthia and Hapu and think 'oh yeah, I can do that.' Bitch, I could give you three wishes from a genie, and you couldn't do that shit. If Arceus made you 7'1ft and let you use him on your team, you couldn't do that shit. Lie to your mom, bitch LOL.
"And the comment section is just filled with men like that, all the men that I'm sure also competed in pokemon trainer club tournaments which, mind you, is a stone's throw away from the worst dudes you know- the ones who play TGC tournaments at the fucking game shop. Bunch of dudes under five eight with three badges thinking 'if I just had five more badges and caught a pseudo-legendary, bro, I could do that. Freaking Cynthia Shirona? I could easily fucking do that.' That bitch has a full team of pokemon, half of which are pseudo-legendaries, and half of them that are monsters that don't need to be. That bitch is scary. If I gave you the badges and handed you a Master Ball while pointing you in the direction of a Garchomp, you couldn't do that shit. Shut your fucking mouth.
"Even the women who aren't champions are a force to be reckoned with. Freaking Hapu is a Hakuna and Elite Four member in the Alola League, and that bitch is three nine in heels LOL, and she earned her spot. The Tapus chose her- Tapu fucking Fini, the mermaid queen herself, chose her -so hey if you want to take it up with the island guardians, be my guest. They'll fucking Nature's Wrath your ass so fast I'll be here eating malasadas to watch the show LOL.
"The irony is the men who are the loudest about female champions are, first of all, can't even spell 'champion,' and second, don't get paid for a living to be a pokemon trainer, do they? All the dudes in the breakroom at State Farm LOL. I bet they eat those jokes up, bitch. I bet they laugh so hard while they go door-to-door selling solar panels, huh LOL. All that being said, we could be playing this hypothetical game all day long, this whole 'what if tournament male champions played against professional female champions.' Let me ask you this- how many times have you had sex? How many dates have you been on in the last year? Yeah, worry about those stats, bitch. Why don't you worry about getting those stats up, and we can have a different conversation. Fuck all those men, for real LOL. Bye~"
Key's mood elevated for a moment, getting a nice hit of dopamine that she almost managed a laugh before the next video evaporated her good mood.
"Crude oil and other various chemicals have been pouring into rivers all over the Galar Region. Many people online have been posting footage of black rivers where it should be clear. New data suggests that energy companies have been reinstituting fracking and mining practices in order to compete with the rising price of oil markets in foreign countries. A controversial topic, it is suspected that fracking with improper drilling has led to contaminated waterways due to weakening the pipelines where the materials are gathered. As a result, tons of water pokemon and people have been made sick by the water. The company Macro Cosmos, Galar's leading company in providing clean, renewable energy, has been pending an investigation into the incident, having just acquired the now defunct company, Offshore Energy, suspected to be the perpetrators in the incident. Chairman Rose, the president of Macro Cosmos had this to say. 'We are always looking into new, alternative energy sources. It breaks my heart that such an incident has sped up the search. Our aim is always to do the right thing for our rivers and communities who love and value them. Hopefully our acquisition of Offshore Energy will lead its remaining employees to follow better business practices.'"
A chill swept over her as Key's stomach turned in disgust. Yet another example of people and pokemon suffering because of greedy corporations. Didn't they realize that what they did affected everyone? Yet even the disgust and outrage of greedy corporations was already slipping away into the void of apathy. She was about to check on there being any new podcast episodes on her Spotify for Egaita Tyson before she felt something clamp onto her cheeks like they were being pinched, before being pulled apart into a Glasgow smile. "Owww! Sschtoooooppp…" Key whined, her frown stretching into a fake grin despite her irritation as she swatted the space around her with one hand and made contact with a cooler patch of air. Her cheeks were released as a large purple pokemon with red eyes and a wide smile appeared behind her, floating overhead. "Gojo! What the hell?! You know I don't like to be woken up like this!"
"Geng? Gar-har-har-har-har!" her Gengar laughed, spinning upside down as he gave her a classic smirk.
"I was not crying," she scowled as Gengar continued to cackle at her. She blew a piece of hair out of her face in exasperation before turning away from the ghost pokemon in a huff and tugging the blankets over her head to block the chill his presence always had. "Just leave me alone…"
"Geng…" said Gojo, a frown evident in his tone.
"Garde?" spoke a new voice, this one lighter and with a curious lilt. Key didn't have to turn her head to know that her Gardevoir was in on the action now. Since her evolution, Eden had been the self-proclaimed mother of the group during Key's journey in Alola and was known to intercede during conflict that she could sense from others. Now she had stepped up, taking on the role of self-proclaimed matron of the household, especially during last year where Key barely had time for herself. Now Key had nothing but time.
"Gen-gar gengar," Gojo answered back. Despite not understanding pokemon speech, Key could tell they were discussing her. How it was almost three, and she still hadn't gotten up yet. How she had been like this off and on for months. How she still had yet to sleep in an actual bed instead of curled up on the floor or the couch in the living room. How she had the worst sleep cycles because she found herself constantly waking up from the lightest noise at night thinking someone was asking for her or that she was finally going to make use of her Lewyville Slugger and bean some burglar over top the head with it, only to find no one there.
The tall green and white pokemon swished over to her side, face etched with concern as Eden kneeled down to look her trainer in the eye as Key glanced up from her phone. "Voir gardevoir."
"I'm fine, Eden. I'm just running a bit slow today." Eden held out her arms to embrace her trainer before Key flinched and held out a hand, rolling away from the attempted embrace. "Thank you but, please don't hug me. I'm not in the mood right now."
"Garr…" Key felt a twinge of guilt for rejecting the embrace- Gardevoir was, after all, the Embrace Pokemon. She knew her pokemon only wanted to make her feel better- even Gojo, in his own prankster way -but for some reason, she just didn't want to be comforted at the moment. It wasn't like she was sad. She just felt… tired, like she was devoid of all feeling. The only thing that seemed to temper that was her phone. The device in question began glowing around the edges in a light blue aura before it floated out of her hands.
"Hey!" Key frowned, sitting on knees and reaching for the device that now dangled out of reach. "Give it back. That phone is really expensive." She swiped at the phone above her, but it instead moved to float next to Eden.
"Garr."
"I mean it, Eden. You can't just decide I can't be on my phone. You're not my mother. I am the mother, and you are the child-!" Key stopped short, pausing at the familiar words that her own mother had said in the not-so-distant past. It had Key wanting to curl back up on the rug again, that empty feeling in her chest now a chasm expanding outward. "'Trainer'… I meant 'I am the trainer, and you are the pokemon'..."
Both of her pokemon shared a look before the Gengar and Gardevoir lifted their paws in unison as the blue aura built up around them, their red eyes now glowing a shocking cyan with the power of Psychic. The mystic energy enveloped Key, Gojo floating her several feet off the ground while Eden began pulling away the blankets, cellphone still floating effortlessly next to her. 'Teach more of your pokemon Psychic, they said. It will give you more coverage, they said.' Key thought glumly. It had been a great idea at the time. So far, Eden and her Espeon, Butters, had been the only psychic pokemon she had, so unless she wanted a pokemon like Pangoro to sweep her entire team, it only made sense to teach a few of her other pokemon a psychic type move to help balance out her team of favorites. Too bad it had to be taught to her most well-meaning pokemon, the ones with initiative. That is the last time I take move tutor advice from Locke.
This time, however, instead of fighting it, Key relented, allowing the pokemon to lift her up onto her feet. She had to get up at some point. Her sister was going to be coming over to help sort through photos, and Key still hadn't even gotten the boxes out. Not to mention, she hadn't eaten a thing since waking up. Had her pokemon even eaten yet?
Maybe that's why Gojo's been so irritating lately, Key thought as the shadow pokemon still kept her in the air, floating her behind him as he glided through the air. At first, Key thought Gojo was taking her to the kitchen so that she could make him lunch, but he could have just as easily helped himself to the pantry like many of her pokemon did when she slept in late. Gojo did have a gluttonous appetite, after all. Then she thought he was floating her to the bathroom down the hall, the one where her lone toothbrush sat in a jar and had a safety rail installed into the toilet. Only once were they started moving towards the stairs did Key realize what was actually happening. "I can walk upstairs on my own," she announced in a panic, though the Gengar ignored her along with Eden, who followed behind them in a graceful calm. The anxiety of viewing the second floor only grew more as Key struggled to break out of the psychic hold. "Gojo, this isn't funny anymore! Put me down! I don't-" Key grunted, her kicks aimed at him phasing through him like air, "-need your help!" The ghost pokemon continued floating her up the stairs, cackling at her vain, childish attempts.
For the last year and a half, walking upstairs had been a struggle, both physically and mentally. Outside of showering or doing the occasional laundry, Key never went up to the second floor. Without her mother or sister living in the adjacent bedroom, it had become a pit, a veritable landfill with clothes and cardboard boxes scattered on the ground like the clutter of dead leaves from a tree. The first floor was the most presentable of the two stories, hiding most of the mess upstairs albeit with a few dust bunnies by the baseboards and a layer of dust and pottery clay on table surfaces, but without her mother's Minccino to pick up after them, a keen eye could spy the amount of dirt and grime that began to gather on hardwood surfaces and linoleum floors.
That being said, Key really didn't feel like going up there today. There was a reason why her contact case was downstairs, but that didn't stop Gojo, however, her Gengar feeding into the chaos by using his own psychic abilities to hold her still while Eden began to rearrange the clothing on the ground into organized yet messy piles on the couch. A disgruntled Butters growled at them, the Espeon interrupted from her afternoon nap of sunbathing on the floor as a pile of slip socks and leggings avalanched on top of her head from Gojo's meddling. Even though the mess was being cleaned up by Eden, an anxious part inside of Key started niggling and raging in full force, screaming louder and louder that her pokemon needed to stop. It turned visceral as Eden started tossing the piles of her mother's clothes into the pile of clothes that were supposed to be donated.
"Both of you, stop it RIGHT NOW!" Key's voice screeched into a scream, her voice raspy from disuse as her fists shook at her sides as Gojo and Eden paused, the calm and smirk dropping from their faces. Finally, the ghost pokemon relented, wilting at her terse tone before dropping her onto one of the piles of clothes. Key 'ooff'd' from the abrupt landing and pushed the clothes off of her before getting onto her feet. "I'm sorry... I know you both meant well, but I need to go through this stuff on my own. You messing around with it is only stressing me out."
"Voir…"
"Geng…"
Guilt for upsetting her pokemon made Key force her lethargy back down, the emotions a vile, black thing in her throat. "If you want to help, go into the truck of my car and start putting the photo boxes in the dining room." With some hesitance, Eden and Gojo relented, the Gengar disappearing through the floorboards to start gathering the boxes in the garage, with Eden following after him to supervise, though by floating down the stairs instead of through floors. Honestly, Key had thought about cancelling the whole thing. She didn't have the energy currently to deal with her older sister and whatever 'zoomies' she had to tell her about that day. Hell, Locke wouldn't have thought twice at the cancellation if Key had told her she wasn't up for it. They had an understanding about the amount of responsibilities Key had to deal with, all the bills and lawyers and personal effects she had to contend with- Key would do them as long as Locke remained out of the way. Tasks were the one thing that helped keep her mind and body busy, as long as they weren't too overwhelming, and it had gotten the G-Duo out of her hair for a moment.
Maybe I'll feel better after getting some food into me, Key thought, though her appetite had been small lately. Once she was sure they were gone, Key forced herself to walk inside the two-sink bathroom at the end of the hall to wash up. Since the Gardevoir still had her phone, Key had no excuse to be on the toilet for twenty minutes. Finished with her business, she went to the sink to wash. In Locke's old sink were now dozens hand towels, lotion bottles, and a hairdryer, cluttered yet the only 'clean' part of the shared bathroom. Her sink, meanwhile, was stained black with makeup and charcoal, any other available sink space cluttered with foundation, skin creams, and bars of soap, the latter which left residue. Gross. See, this was another reason why she never came up here. She didn't have the energy to clean, and every time she came up here, it was a reminder that she had more things to go through, more tasks to complete, and that she just didn't have it in her to be that person right now. Why be around all the stuff that makes you feel terrible about yourself?
"You can't keep doing this," Key mumbled, lifting her gaze to stare herself down in the mirror. Hazel eyes outlined with dark circles glared back at her above sparks of freckles and a fine scar no bigger than a pencil eraser under her right eye. "You can't turn out like Mom did and just give up. You need to pull yourself together and do something. They won't stop until you do."
With strength she didn't know she had, Key urged herself to put her pokemons' feelings above her own by taking care of herself and actually managed to lift her charcoal toothbrush to her lips and start brushing. She had been so selfish, lounging on the floor like a Slaking when she should have been making her pokemon breakfast and taking care of them. And here they were, starving and trying to take care of her. She needed to hold herself accountable, and that meant getting ready for the day six hours ago.
After spitting out the blackened toothpaste, she began going through her skincare routine by washing and moisturizing her face with organic, eco-friendly produces, applying the little star stickers over the zits forming on her cheeks and forehead at the end. She had the misfortune of inheriting her father's terrible skin, so she had to stay on top of managing her acne before it ruined her face even more. A lighter smattering of freckles glimmered against her reddened cheeks before she flipped the bathroom light off. Her knees clicked as she trudged back down the stairs, grunting with every third step. Despite being twenty-six years old, her knees creaked as they walked, atrophied from the lack of use and years of lifting fifty-pound bags of clay and pottery. That was how her mother had started. Lying in her hospice bed, weakened and unable to move without feeling pain, even just to roll over to be changed or lifted into a wheelchair. She wouldn't go out like that, just an atrophied lump of flesh waiting for death. She refused.
Once she had freshened up and started working on making herself some food, a Mexican style street corn salad kit and an Arbok's Coffee she had purchased yesterday in a rare moment of hunger, Key felt her spirits lift. It was hard not to perk up at the smell of an iced, hazelnut macchiato. The ice had already melted, but the drink was still cool enough for her not to care. She took a sip from the tumbler that was decorated in copious amounts of stickers and woke up the Roku TV that had been on since last night, pulling up the Pokemon Radio Calisthenics video on MewTube.
Key watched as a girl with cropped pink hair and a bandage on her nose went through the different stretches with her Lucario and Medicham, idly copying their movements until she could hear the joints in her shoulders pop. The shift was instantaneous. All at once, Key had found the vestiges of strength to carry on. Once the caffeine rush hit, it was like she was a new woman that could take on anything, even if that new woman was emoting the positive spirit to fool herself into thinking she could actually feel it.
Her Gengar waddled into the kitchen behind her, cautious yet curious as Key turned and reached out to pat him on the head, giving him a tentative smile. "Thanks for worrying about me, ya goober."
"Geng~" Gojo chuckled, teasing the long wisps of bleached blonde highlights by her ears that had escaped from the messy bun on top of her head before backflipping through the air. Eden, who had finished setting down the last of the boxes, remained unconvinced by Key's sudden mood shift.
"I'm fine, girl. Really. It's just one of those days. I'm sorry for worrying you," said Key. "Actually, why don't you two join me in some morning stretches? I know it's afternoon, but it helps the body stay limber and strong, and if I don't do something now to get moving, I never will."
After a moment, Eden nodded, satisfied with her answer while Gojo cheered. They followed along with Key to the radio calisthenics video, each copying the movements of the pink haired girl on the TV until the end. Once it was done, she put on a playlist of Taylor Swift and started working on preparing food for the rest of her pokemon. Key did everything for herself now. Instead of going back to college days of pre-packaged frozen dinners and cafeteria food, she prepared meal kits and made fresh, organic dishes, always willing to try new healthy recipes, though she couldn't deny the occasional purchase of deluxe ramen at the grocery store. Yet another result of dealing with the finicky and ever-changing cravings of her late mother.
Her own food still lay on the counter on the ceramic plate, only half finished as she began preparing the different kinds of pokemon food; not everyone could just be given a bag of kibble and just chow down. Cat pokemon had picky, refined tastes, needing raw meat and ingredients with protein, and she currently had three of them. Gojo, on the other hand, would be happy to eat anything, peering over the counter, wearing an 'innocent' grin on his face, pupils wide and unblinking as he watched her open cans of Robombee brand pokemon food with a blatant eagerness of a Snorlax.
"I'm not done making the food yet. Just wait your turn," she gently reprimanded, waving her spoon at his obvious impatience before letting out a sigh. "If you want, you can have my leftovers. I'm certainly not going to finish them." Key gestured to the plate on the left with the half-eaten salad, which the Gengar accepted, greedily sucking the dish into his mouth like a lozenge before pulling the plate back out the side of his head with an audible pop like some kind of macabre, street magician. Had he tried pulling that trick a couple of years ago, Key would have freaked out. Now she just took the plate from him and put it in the sink. Gojo strange antics and practical jokes were something she was used to. It was only the other stuff that she wasn't used to, like what to do with all this time she had now.
Key glanced down at her phone buzzing on the counter, interrupting her playlist on Spotify periodically with its beeps from Instagram message notifications. Thinking it was her best friend Miley trying to reach out to her during the few hours of the day they could communicate, she unlocked her phone. Her friend had been studying abroad in Galar for the past couple of years getting her doctorate in linguistics, and with the four hour time difference between Limston and Galar, the time they could talk was limited.
Much to Key's disappointment, the notification had been for large group text for her college friends- her only friends. Key supposed now that she wasn't a caretaker anymore, she could try going back to doing more than just take a twenty-minute walk outside, maybe go back to eating out with them four times a week. The lines of text she found had her reconsidering this.
Peyton: Do we want to make the trip to Chicagoua City a day trip? I need to know if I should be booking a hotel reservation.
Ashlee: We should keep it a day trip. I have my cousin's christening that morning.
KirbyGirl: I'm still trying to figure out if I can go. My soon to be ex-husband is trying to get custody of Espurr.
Peyton: Wow. Fuck that guy.
Leah: wtf aren't you his trainer?
KirbyGirl: IKR! Like, I caught the pokemon. I trained it. I wanted it as a pet when he didn't, and now he claims because Espurr was caught when we were both married, it's suddenly half-his.
KirbyGirl: Manipulative POS.
Ashlee: Yeah, screw that guy- and not in the good way.
…
Peyton: Anyways, back on topic. I think we should keep it a day trip. It's only four hours of driving.
Peyton: but we need to be back by nine. I have a doctor's appointment in the morning.
Leah: If you weren't going to book a hotel, you should have just said so.
Ashlee: Yeah. Why even ask if you couldn't stay the night?
Peyton: Because I wanted to give you guys the option!
Key's brow furrowed. Why were they including her in this conversation? She wasn't even invited to the Chicagoua trip, so why include her in the stressful planning of it? Why didn't they just make a separate group chat for the trip and leave her out of it? Sure, a couple of years ago, Key would have been the sounding-board of the group. She had always been the one providing support and comfort to her social circle, taking in their problems like filling a sgraffito mug full of coffee. But unlike that sgraffito mug, she had discovered cracks when filled up, felt it leaking onto her hand anytime someone tried to fill her head with imaginary problems. Any tolerance she'd had for her friends before had been hollowed out in the last ten months until there was barely anything left to carve away- and now she didn't even have anything left as a result. Time was supposed to heal all wounds, just like firing a glazed mug was supposed to result in food-safe pottery, but the glaze had not taken, and she certainly wasn't healed.
No, she was already too full to take on her friends' problems, even if it might have been a misguided effort to include her in a world she hadn't set foot in in months. There just wasn't enough of her left to keep everything inside from leaking out. Hearing them squabble over their plans for a road-trip over real issues like Kirby's divorce just felt unimportant and petty.
Annoyed, Key muted the chatroom and locked her phone, going back to the task of preparing lunch. Adding the finishing touches to the scoops of pokemon food, she shoved the screen door open and announced to the backyard, "Lunch time! Get it while it's hot!" and started placing the bowls of pokemon food on the ground. In an instant, Gojo started inhaling his food while Eden daintily ate her meal on her lap. Butters trotted down the stairs at the sound of lunch before taking a graceful seat by the psychic fairy and lapping up the contents from her bowl.
With her team occupied, she moved to place an extra bowl outside on the front porch. Lately she had gotten into the habit of feeding a stray Meowth that liked to travel from her neighbor across the street. Opening the front door of her house, she placed a small bowl of fresh pokemon food drizzled in fish oil to help with his mangey coat. She waited a few moments as watched the tan furred Meowth dart across the street. He gave her an affection headbutt against her ankles, his fur like being grated with steel wool as he wove his way through her legs. Not even ten seconds later she could feel a looming presence behind her as a deep, guttural growl began building behind her.
"Be nice, Kitty," Key warned, watching as the female Incineroar puffed up, growling, and sizing the other up while the Meowth went back to eating his food, expression smug. "You know you'll always be my number one." She leaned down and gave the tigress a reassuring head scratch to which the tiger accepted begrudgingly. Due to some sort of developmental disease she had contracted as an egg, the starter pokemon had required special medical care and therapy treatment that had kept the pokemon remaining on all fours well past the point of evolving as a Torracat. As a result of her early fragile days, her pokemon had become a bit clingy and prone to jealousy in the precense of other cat pokemon, especially ones that could easily walk on two legs. Never mind the fact that her pokemon could easily bench-press a bus if she wished, or that Key loved her pokemon regardless of her disability. Nope, this was the one-line Kitty had drawn in the sand. And now that everyone was fed and Kitty wasn't distracted by her training, there was nothing to distract the Heel Pokemon from following Key to the garage.
Despite having given her pokemon tasks to clean up, Key still had a few things she needed to get sorted before Locke showed up, one of which was to get back to working on her commissions from her Instagram. She dreaded the work, but she almost wanted to see if the task of painting could help make her remember what her life was like before. Her dream of becoming a professional muralist felt so long ago, an art degree turned pottery job once she fell in love with her single ceramics class that led her to getting a studio manager job right out of college. She was a completely different person than she had been six years ago, furloughed during the years of caregiving. Her boss Kris had been very understanding towards her situation, even willing to take her back or adjust her hours whenever, but so far Key hadn't felt motivated to go back to work just yet. She would have to be soon. Her mother's life insurance money would only hold out for so long, and mortgages needed to be paid.
She had accepted the painting commission she was currently working on as a favor to one of her mother's teacher friends, someone who had requested her work after seeing her painting of a Sharpedo in a school of Remoraid. She loved painting and carving pokemon, but she couldn't stop thinking of the Squirtle piece she had done that involved painting over a plastic bag. It was supposed to represent the ocean pollution problem with the biodegradable nature of the painting. She wished she could make money on making a difference like that instead of being relegated to doing pet portraits. Oh well. A job was a job. At least she could say that she did something that she loved, unlike so many others. She should be grateful for all of her blessings that she did have. She had a house, her pokemon, and, thanks to her mother's life insurance, she wouldn't have to worry about money for a little while longer. Why wasn't that enough? Why was she so… empty?
She was trying to paint the outline of one of their region's basketball teams, the Striders, on the six foot canvas, when a Jeep Grand Cherokee pulled up onto the driveway. Looked like the carving would have to wait.