A/N
Probably a one shot, but I might end up continuing this eventually!
A sylveon casually walked down the sidewalk, eyes lazily flicking about from focus to focus. His ribbons dragged along the ground.
The sky above was pitch-black, in contrast to the brightly lit concrete below his paws. Numerous buildings towered overhead, some even casting their own often warmer light down onto the streets.
The sylveon's eyes turned dejected as he took note of which lights in particular were in, and which were off.
They were the same ones they always were. Well, not always, of course. He fondly recalled a time where one could never guess what buildings would be active when. Sylveon no longer knew this era.
He could say with one-hundred percent certainty that none of them were ever active for any length of time. The same lights would shine day in, day out, for the rest of eternity until the day they inevitably fizzled out, as all things would.
The sylveon felt a deep pang of emptiness sink into his chest. He felt dread at one point, but that was a time forgotten, as well. When you accept the inevitability of your future's course, you generally cease to fear after a while.
If the unknown is the scariest concept to the intelligent mind, then knowing all leaves nothing left to be scared of. Perhaps a stronger Pokémon, he imagined, would be able to continje to find meaning in their life, even when there's nothing left save for themselves. But, not him.
The sylveon had never cared nor lived for himself; it was always for the sake of others that he acted. With no others to act for, living had lost its meaning.
And yet, he survived. He dragged himself through the monotony of living in this timeless time. A time where the sun was to be feared, but the barren light-polluted night sky brought little sense of any moments passing.
No, the sylveon didn't know why he continued the way he did. Perhaps there was some slight glimmer of hope left within him that some semblance of normalcy would return. A small shred of stupid, ignorant, childish hope. That's what he was, right? A child.
Sure, he could smoke, he could drink, he could mate, and he could do all of those other things adults could supposedly do, but he never felt like he'd grown up. Not really. Not that any of that mattered, of course; laws don't matter when there's no one left to enforce, break, nor be protected by them. Adult or not, he could do as he pleased. If there were anyone to do it with, he just might.
Or, maybe he didn't have any hope. Maybe he was did feel fear, after all. But, fear of what? Death? There's nothing left to lose, other than endless hours of walking, sometimes fleeing, between bouts of sleep, before he'd do it all again the next night.
For the first time since he'd gotten up that evening, the sylveon sat down. He simply rested in the middle of the once bustling street, foreseeably forever vacant. He released a long, miserably sigh that he hadn't realize he'd been holding in. He almost collapsed into sleep then and there, but he begrudgingly kept alert just in case he needed to move.
Sulking, he defeatedly reached a ribbon into his backpack and lobbed out a calendar, crossing off another day. Sure, it wasn't sunrise yet, but it would be eventually. If he was lucky, he guessed, maybe he wouldn't even live to see it.
The sylveon blinked as he gazed down at the notebook, a very slight frown crossing his otherwise stoic features. It was almost funny. It felt like years, maybe even decades had passed by then, but no.
It had only been four weeks since the end of the world. Four weeks of endless wandering, four weeks of nothing changing. Four weeks of nothing. An entire month, yet, only a month. Did that make sense?
The sylveon hadn't ever given it much thought, but those kinds of contradictory statements have always sounded particularly prophetic to him, even if they were ultimately melodramatic nonsense.
He tried to think of another, tilting his head, grimacing in thought.
How about, "Rivers flow, but never do they flow." What the hell did that even mean? It meant nothing, of course; that was the entire point, yet it still made him think about it. It was almost annoying how well nonsense could lure you into considering its illusionary meaning.
You may find something, but it will never be something put there. Yet, maybe the meaning you create yourself is the most profound meaning of all? No, he was just spouting more pretentious nonsense philosophy, now. He knew better. Nothing meant anything anymore, and it'd be foolish to think otherwise.
The sylveon blinked, shaking his head. With a dejected sigh, he stuffed his calendar back into his backpack, then just let his feeler linger inside. Without moving it an inch, he simply took in the tactile sensation of the contents of his bag. It was a new thing to him; he hadn't stopped to take it all in before. However, like all new sensations after the end of the world, this, too, would pass.
Groaning loudly, the sylveon curled his ribbon around a cylindrical object, raising it out carefully. He eyed the vacuum-sealed bottle for a moment before carefully unscrewing the lid.
With a short puff of air, it unsealed. He raised the canister to his pristine white muzzle and began to slowly sip at his lukewarm soup. Only about a quarter of the container was still full. Once satisfied, he screwed the top back on and lazily tossed the bottle back into his bag. He stood up again and continued on walking, mulling over the thin film of taste left on his tongue.
It tasted like... Soup, he guessed. He'd never really been one for picking out flavors. Of course, he knew that he tasted onions, carrots, potatoes, and spinach in there, but that was only because he'd been the one to make the soup.
His eyes once more drifted up to the buildings, eying the ever unchanging states of the lights within. He'd practically memorized every light there was by that point. Every shade, state, location, luminance...
His eyes drifted along to focus on the large hospital building a fair distance ahead, right behind a ninety degree turn in the road. Counter-clockwise, at least from the angle he approached it at.
The hospital was particularly interesting to memorize. Basically it's whole entire front face was one giant window, with a grid of rooms either lit up or not. That has been the first set of lights he'd committed to memory. In his mind, the two-state grid of light and dark seemed to almost look like a serpent chasing a star. But, that was just him placing meaning on nonsense again, wasn't it?
As his eyes settled on the star pattern of windows, he almost jumped right out of his skin.
A light just turned on.
Were his eyes playing tricks on him?
No, that room definitely wasn't lit up before, nor ten seconds prior. If it was a light shutting off, he wouldn't have questioned it, but no. Lights don't just turn on by themselves.
The sylveon felt his heart flutter with a swell of emotions he hasn't felt in weeks. Relief, apprehension, confusion, anxiety, excitement, fear.
Hope.
With a determined glare, the sylveon pushed off from the pavement, beginning to furiously bound his way down the road. His ribbons and tail flowed elegantly behind him, in fluid harmony with his rapid movement.