Chapter Nine, Part One: Renewal
11.18.2016
THE END IS UPON US NOW - REPENT
TOWO CANTO IX - TIME CRAFTED SHADOWS DESECRATED SPIRITUAL PHYSICAL WHAT WE HAVE WROUGHT AND CONTINUE TO ... ABSENCE OF GOOD WE ARE ALL ONE HOLLOW ONENESS DARKNESS HOPE LIGHT IMITATE FOREVER
Whatever message the creator had attempted to get across had been thwarted by poor planning: the cardboard square they had scrawled it on had too little space to host it, and they had abbreviated the quote to the point it lost its coherence. If Sun squinted, he could see at the very bottom there had been another attempt to replicate the words in (an extremely dubious) Alolan. The ultimate result was more of an attempt to evoke the atmosphere of the original quote than to reproduce it faithfully, and Sun did not tend to commit texts of religions he did not follow to memory, so its meaning, if it even had a meaning, would be lost on him.
He pressed his knuckles into Kukui's shoulder. "Where did he get that date from?"
In response, Kukui covered the boy's brow, mumbling for him to avert his eyes. But it was far too late to scrub it from Sun's mind, and he chuckled at how much it seemed like a poster promoting a blockbuster film or something. Don't miss it! - the end of the world, coming to a theater near you. How thrilling!
At this point, he'd take anything to distract him from the sun boring down onto him over the flat roofs of downtown Hau'oli. It may have only been nine in the morning, but his forehead and underarms had already collected a discomforting layer of moisture. He fanned himself with one hand.
The trinket strung around his fingers had an uncharacteristic heaviness to it, as if it had been crafted from the purest gold, and not from wood so finely whittled he thought one might be able to prick their finger on its corners. Ilima had even gone through the trouble of carving Sun's full name into it at the top, right above the four jagged triangles symbolizing the four islands.
Sun Kamalei Freberg Alaka'i, island challenger, 2016.
The Alaka'i was a fairly recent addition; the result of a quick stop-in to Hau'oli Town Hall. It was an addition and not a replacement because, just like how his mother had kept his father's surname even after he left them, Sun had decided he'd retain his last name, too. He could be a Freberg and an Alaka'i. The marriage of past and future.
Even if it did lack the slickness of Mizuki Kazakami or Hau Leokū.
But today, something about the amulet troubled him. Knowing his was one of only five granted.
Sun had assumed Ilima would be kind to the challengers. He had assumed he would be willing to forgive all their trivial little slipups and silly errors. That all the bluster at the start about separating the wheat from the chaff was just that - bluster.
Sun had been wrong.
And no amount of maybe or what if would be able to lift this weight off his chest. If there was something embedded deep inside him and Mizuki and Hau granting them some pizzazz the others lacked, he was blind to it. He wasn't intelligent, or athletic, or cool, or well-liked. He wasn't even good.
But the longer he thought about it, the more he justified it to himself: Ilima had given them an out. For all the challengers knew, the preliminary would be a one-time thing - after all, Ilima seemed to have been the one to make the decision to reinstate it, and he was close to aging out of the Trial Captain position entirely. They could have had a chance to start anew with a whole year's worth of additional experience.
If they didn't take it, didn't they only have themselves to blame?
A horn blared from across the horizon, commanding the attention of all present. Kukui's fingers idly tapped Sun's shoulder, tap tap tap. Sun chanced a look back at the Enraptoran doomsday sign, which the ocean breeze had pried from its precarious position and left on the ground face-down. Families with young children and dull-eyed office workers and gaggles of giggling teenagers whirled by, crushing it underfoot. Bits of morning sun danced upon the crests of waves near and distant.
The usual ferry came at noon, but was usually choked with tourists now that summer was upon them, so Professor Burnet preferred to hop on with a friend of hers from university, who owned a small research vessel. Saved them all a lot of time and money. The only downside was that their ship didn't have clearance to dock in the ferry terminal building, and had to settle in alongside the other boats - fishing trawlers, speedboats, yachts, even a gargantuan commercial cruise ship.
As agonizing as the wait for the ship to pull into port may have been, it was the sort of agony one forgets the moment it ends. In his case, the sight of Burnet dressed up in her tie-dye T-shirt and sweatpants, her luggage in one hand and her other in the air, was all he needed to erase that pain.
As soon as her feet touched solid ground Kukui sprinted up to her and wrapped his arms around her, and the two teetered together there at the edge of the water, soaking in the moment, their lips brushing. Sun couldn't hear what he whispered to her, but she pressed her forehead into his chest in response.
Once the two had pulled apart, Sun led them into the blessed shade under the marina building's overhang. Burnet slumped against a structural post, letting out a weary sigh.
"It's never been this busy before," she said, holding her hand to her forehead. "You don't know just how grateful I am to finally catch a break from it all. Anomalies have been up 400% the past two months..."
If anomalies start becoming routine, then they aren't exactly anomalies anymore, are they?
"Yeah. It's certainly been a real challenge for us these past few weeks," she said, rubbing the back of her head. She closed her eyes once more, leaving in her silence only the sweet sound of the waves lapping at the docks. When she reopened them, she flashed a faint, almost apologetic smile. "But I want to hear about you guys! What have you been up to these days?" Her eyes skirted past them, darting around the area, looking for someone... "What about that girl you told me about? Or did you leave her back at the lab?"
Sun and Kukui exchanged glances. The air grew as heavy and charged as it had been during Tapu Koko's visit.
"Sun," Kukui directed, "tell her what happened. Tell her the truth."
The accusatory tone to his words annoyed Sun - this wasn't his fault. If he'd known they would try to pull her away from them, he'd have warned her, every time. Every time.
"Lillie's not staying with us anymore," he said. "She's over with the Children of Starlight. They invited her to come with them, and she accepted."
Burnet stopped. Gave a nervous chuckle. A cautionary chuckle.
"You must be playing some kind of joke on me. Aren't you?"
Sun shook his head. Kukui suddenly found the tops of his sandals absolutely fascinating.
Her lips curled into an O. "You... you're serious?"
"Serious as I'll ever be," Sun said, wincing.
Burnet's face fell, and a skin of darkness slid over her eyes.
"Kukui," she said. "Kukui. We need to talk."
"How in the flying Farfetch'd could you let this happen?! I trusted you!"
"Burnet," Kukui said, holding his palms in the air. "Please, I..."
"You know what those people intend to do to her," Burnet said. "You know what they are."
What they are. Something about that combination of words pricked at Sun's brain, and if it hadn't come from the lips of the woman he considered a mother, he might have stepped out and challenged her right there and then. The tone she used would be more suited to a discussion of hostile aliens or craven monsters than his best friend's family.
By now they had traded the morning heat for the dreary chill of the ferry terminal, and the two professors stood in front of the restrooms, backs arched in confrontation. They'd directed Sun to sit in the main waiting room while they conversed, but he instead lurked around the corner, cupping his hand to his ear. The mousy-haired receptionist trained her eye on him from behind the front desk, but he did his best to quell his broiling self-consciousness. This conversation was too important to go unheard.
Burnet settled her hands on her hips. "Aren't you the one who's always on about helping the people who need it the most? And you're just going to sit on your behind and twiddle your thumbs while they try to brainwash an impressionable child? A child, Kukui. You cannot let them do this."
Kukui put a finger to his lips, his eyes darting down the corridor. Sun swiftly ducked to the side, escaping his notice. "Pipe down. They could be anywhere..."
"Let them hear me," Burnet snarled. "Let them. This is too important not to say. I don't know if you understand this, Kukui - " in spite of her previous words, she looked over her shoulder " - I don't know if you understand this, but every second she's in there is a second she's in danger. End of story. If you don't do something, I swear, I'll march in there myself and get her out of there if I have to. If they want her in their fold, they'll get her over my dead body."
How she would plan to accomplish this, Sun had no idea. No one outside the Children knew the exact location of their complex; only that it lay somewhere on the northern side of the island. Even Mizuki had only ever given out vague hints, and she couldn't tell east from west, so he doubted their reliability.
Besides, why did she care so much in the first place? She'd never met Lillie. Did she even know her name?
"I don't disagree with you, but that wouldn't be wise," Kukui was saying. "You don't know what they might be willing to do to the rest of the island if provoked. Hala -"
"Has put up with them for far too long," Burnet asserted. "I understand he wants to keep the peace, but it's downright shameful to Melemele that we've allowed them to proselytize here and grow their numbers for so long. Is it not already bad enough that we've got to deal with Team Skull here as well?"
Well, Sun thought bitterly, the Children wouldn't be the only ones proselytizing.
Burnet swayed and shifted on her feet. "And, one more thing. Sun's friend. She's involved in this somehow, isn't she?"
A hollowness opened in the pit of Sun's stomach. He touched the tip of his tongue to the roof of his mouth to rid it of its newfound sliminess and gulped.
"I feel bad, almost, for allowing her around him," Burnet continued. Her voice had taken on an almost staticky intonation. "I don't care what his mother said. I just don't see how it's possible someone could be brought up in that kind of environment and come out even halfway normal."
"Don't blame Mizuki for this," Kukui said, as if reading Sun's mind. "She's just a child. Hala and I wouldn't have trusted her with one of our Pokémon if we didn't truly believe she had good qualities! She's always been a loyal friend to Sun."
"Her loyalty is worthless when, ultimately, she serves her father's will. And Sun hasn't told you what he's told me she's said to him."
Irritation flickered inside him, subsuming his hollow feeling. If he had wanted Kukui to know about it, he would have told him himself!
"Burnet," Kukui said sternly, "he's having a difficult enough time as it is. For his sake, leave her out of this."
Burnet quieted, and the two stood close to each other, staring down at the linoleum tile and their feet. After a moment, her fingers fumbled for Kukui's, and as they entwined them she pushed her head into his chest. Sun leaned in to catch any stray words, and bent himself for so long his upper back punished him with a dull ache.
Kukui was the one to breathe into the silence. "I'll go talk to Hala tomorrow."
Burnet let go of his hand, stepping back. The authoritative stance she assumed seemed to shrink the height gap between them.
"No," she said. "No. I will talk to him, and if he doesn't demand her safe return from Tenshiro right this second, then mark my words: there's going to be hell to pay."
It began at eight in the morning: sharp. Tardiness would not be tolerated, not even for the eldest daughter of the Spiritual Guide. Mizuki had prepared herself by setting the beat-up alarm clock beside her bed to six-thirty - not that she was getting much sleep these days anyway, between the drafts in her closet of a room and the myriad holes in her air mattress. But when she heard that shrill peal of dings, she leapt to her feet, shocking Frostfire off the mattress' edge, and slipped into the set of her uniform she had ensured her mother ironed the night before. She wouldn't miss this for the world.
She fell into the ranks of the procession marching down the residential halls, banging on doors, proclaiming the wondrous event upon them. But many of them were already awake and giddy with excitement for what they were about to see. All of the devotees were well aware of exactly what their awakening meant.
All except one: the very subject of the occasion.
Mizuki was the one to fling open Lillie's door, and discovered her already awake, lying in her bed staring at the ceiling. The girl sat up and gripped the edge of her blanket in one fist, holding it to her cheek. When her bleary eyes finally focused on Mizuki, she didn't move, but let out a defeated groan.
"Why... why are you here... it's too early..."
Mizuki found she didn't need to force the layer of cheer in her voice. "Rise and shine, you sleepy Slakoth. It's time to get up."
"Just… can I have..."
"No. No, you can't." She tapped her fingers on the threshold, bouncing from side to side. "Come on. It's not my decision. They're going to be angry with you if you don't get ready quick!"
She swerved back into the hallway sensing she could trust Lillie to obey her command. And to her credit, Lillie did not fail her. When she saw her again, having hastily shucked on her own uniform and poking her head out into the hallway, Mizuki snatched her by the wrist and led her away to a cluster of the elders who had gathered there to oversee the awakening.
The old fossils sized Lillie up through their sharp slits of eyes... one adjusted her bifocals. While no one had yet told Lillie about the purpose they served in the compound, she seemed to soak in their aura of power and dignity, and wisely refrained from disturbing their peace with her inane questions.
At last, they clicked their tongues, and a murmur of agreement rippled through them.
"She is ready. It is time."
So the procession marched to the auditorium, Lillie and the elders leading, Mizuki a little ways behind with the rest of the devotees. Her sisters, freshly arrived from their home, flanked her, but she did not acknowledge them. Up the stairs, to the stage. Yes, all the rest of you, too. Sit here, stay silent, and you might be granted the esteemed privilege of witnessing the wonder about to be performed.
To the guest of honor, they whispered: relax. Lie down and meditate, to clear your anxious mind. When we're at your side, you'll never have anything to be afraid of…
Someone knelt down and pushed her long blonde bangs back, applying a peculiar-smelling pink ointment to the spot between her eyebrows. Mizuki, discomforted by how Lillie's eyes had come to flick over and over in her direction, scooted back until she was out of the other girl's range of vision.
The Children encircled the ailing girl. It had been a long time since this ritual had last been performed - two years at the least, if Mizuki recalled correctly - and many of the newer devotees had never seen it before. Even though they had no knowledge yet of the disease plaguing her, they sat on their knees, captivated. Minami and Misao chomped at the bit.
Yūra, sweet, all-loving Yūra, clasped her hands together and chanted:
May we receive all your succor;
Slay these shadows unfolding in our hearts.
We venerate you, O gentle Azumarill;
Fill us with your unyielding, undying love.
Her Azurill by her side lent her power to the chant, the tempo of her squeaks matching Mom's. Mizuki's eyes were pulled by her bounces, up and down, up and down, slow as a feather falls.
Lillie mumbled something no one would hear about hunger or sleepiness. Compared to the matters of the soul, physical needs were but a trifle. So they would not indulge her now.
On this particular morning Ilima and his father, Senator Edwin Ma'amau, had crawled out of their mansion at the edge of Hau'oli to come witness the ritual. They sat among the others, hands folded across their laps; stone-cold, solemn, and dark-eyed, taking in all of the girl. Ilima donned his beige sweater-vest; Edwin, a stiff suit and forest-green tie. While there may have been little familial resemblance in their features, their poised, formal manner was exactly alike. They breathed in sync.
So now there were eighty or ninety crouching on the stage, the chosen. The complex housed about two hundred fifty devotees in total, and the overflow sat on the steps and on the gym floor. But many of them, unable to see or hear the ritual, would simmer in discontent and speak among themselves, and some of them would smile, hoping their smiles would rethread the strands of fate in their favor*, and that by the time the next ritual came around they would find themselves with the best view, or that when they were sent back into the hall they would find a dropped Starlight Ticket with which they would purchase a novelty eraser or a square of chocolate at the We Find Wealth Only In Righteousness Rewards Stand.
The ocean of crowd rippled and cleaved to form two distinct halves. Dad made his approach from the wings through the strip in between them, his hands clasped behind his back, his voice joining in with Mom's Azumarill chant. Curiosity flickered in Lillie's expression: perhaps when she was older and wise to the Truth, Mizuki could teach her what the words meant, and the two of them, just the two of them, could speak her language together.
Once Mizuki's parents had completed their benediction, Dad kneeled beside Lillie and placed his four long digits on her forehead. When he removed them, the ridged imprint of his fingerprints still lingered in the splotch of ointment.
"Here we are," he said, his regal voice skating into a lower register. "Here - we - are." He took a long, deep, anticipating breath. "Let us begin. Now, Lillie, I am sure you are well aware of why we have called you here today..."
This was another of Dad's techniques: making even the more alienating parts of the Children's traditions feel natural and obvious ensured an effortless transition for the new initiate. Because it was natural, but society had primed the virgin mind to reject it. Stupid society. Stupid minds.
"No, I, uh..." Lillie bit her lip. "Should I have known?"
Dad ignored her question, but placated her with a weak smile. "I suppose, then, now is as good a time to find out as any. Now, when Ilima made the initial decision to bring you here - " the crowd subjected all their attention on the unruffled trial captain - "he did so with the belief he had observed evidence of a disease within you. A disease that cannot be diagnosed by any doctor, which only we know the proper methods of treating."
"I think I might know what he meant," Lillie confessed. "The evidence."
"Well, then, might you be willing to enlighten us all on what that could be?"
Lillie struggled to hold herself upright, her mouth wrinkling. The crowd hushed to see her so severe.
"I have these odd… episodes," she said. "Where I black out, and even though I try and try and try I can't remember a thing. Back at the cemetery, I ran into Ilima, and we were talking, and then…" She hunched her back, covering the sides of her head with her palms. "I don't know. It's been scaring me. I'm scaring myself."
"Poor dear," a woman in the crowd cried out - a reflex, a muscle spasm, a sudden upswell of sympathy. "Poor, poor, poor dearie..."
Dad narrowed his eyes, winding his wrist in a circular motion. "Yes, yes, and how long has this been going on for?"
"I don't know, I don't know, but it hasn't been long," Lillie stammered, plaintive. "I'd say it's only been since I arrived here on Melemele, if I had to estimate..."
"And when, exactly, was that?"
"Two, three weeks ago... I don't know what day today is exactly, so it's hard to tell."
It was discouraged for audience members to interfere with the ritual, but Mizuki wouldn't withhold knowledge from her father: "Three weeks ago. On the eighteenth."
Dad put his fingers to his chin. Someone in the very back of the crowd was crying for Lillie: obnoxious sobbing accented by the occasional overexaggerated wail. How kind of them, Mizuki thought. It might have been wasted on Lillie, but that didn't make it any less kind.
"It's not the fault of anything you've done," he said at last. "Terrible things happen all the time to those least deserving of them. Unfortunately, it's a byproduct of living in an imperfect world, and an imperfect civilization. Prolonged exposure to this material society has the potential to do terrible things to a vulnerable mind. Corrupt you."
A tremble stole into Lillie's voice. "Cor... corrupt me? What, what, what do you mean, exactly?"
"Well, for one, it plants the seeds of these sorts of illnesses. Now, this disease - " and here, the methodical track-shift, awe-inspiring to see in action - " this spirit, plaguing you. Let's give it a name. When we have something to call it by, we'll have a much easier time separating it from Lillie. So I'm giving you the choice: what would you like to call it?"
Lillie closed her eyes, and for a moment was so still Mizuki feared she'd given in to her fatigue and skipped off to the land of dreams. Feared what Dad and the crowd would do or say to her in that case. But she re-opened her star-speckled eyes and released a deep-souled sigh.
"Ishmael," she said. "That's what it's called. Ishmael."
Dad nodded. "That's right. Ishmael it is. It seems it came quite naturally to you. That's good: it means you're in touch with yourself. It bodes well for your healing."
He motioned off to one of his attendants at the edge of the circle, a gray-haired, heavy-set woman, and she disappeared into the ring for a few moments only to re-emerge with a sheet of paper in hand. He accepted it with a nod. "Thank you, Flora. Now, Lillie, do you recall the document we gave you to fill out a few days ago? The diagnostic test?"
At first, Lillie squinted at him, frowning. He brought it closer to her, holding it up a few feet away like an optometrist administering an eye test. Then her eyebrows shot up, and she bolted upright, wincing at the strain.
"You told me no one else would ever see that," she whimpered. "You told me it would stay a secret."
Dad sighed, motioning for her to lie back down and relax herself. She obliged him, but her bottom lip still trembled.
"Lillie, are you aware of what ego death is?"
She clearly only heard the word death : her eyes went wide.
"That's precisely as I thought. What the world calls 'ego death', our church calls 'kōshin', or 'renewal'." He leaned in closer, and for a moment, Mizuki could have sworn his lips brushed against the top ridge of her ear. "Would you like to learn about kōshin, Lillie?"
Lillie shriveled. "I suppose I don't have a choice."
Dad nodded. "That is correct. You're very clever for your age, you know - and quite mature." (At these words, jealousy prickled in Mizuki's heart: he'd never called her mature before. And she was definitely a thousand times more mature than Lillie of all people.) "Kōshin is a technique we use to facilitate spiritual growth. Now, Lillie, you can think of your soul as a garden. While you have the potential to grow beautiful flowers, a few weeds have taken root within you, and unless we can find some way to clip them, these weeds will choke anything else that tries to sprout there. It's perfectly okay. It happens to the best of us."
Not to the real best of them, Mizuki thought. Not to him.
"The finer details may be too complex for a young one such as you, who still has so much to learn about the ways of nature; but in short, this is the most probable cause of your 'episodes'."
Lillie pondered this. "But you said it isn't my fault."
"It isn't," Dad said dismissively, and he held up the paper again. "Now, let's move on to your answers... number one. 'What is the worst thing you've ever done? Please provide as much detail as you possibly can'. Now, would you like to read your answer, or shall I?"
She mumbled something too low for the crowd to hear, and her head bobbed with uncertainty.
"All right, then. 'The worst thing I have ever done is steal something important.'" Eyes sly, he looked around the ring, ensuring the devotees were hooked on every word. "Next - uh, heh, ah - the follow-up question: 'why did you commit this act?' 'Because I knew for a fact it was the right thing to do.' Now, this question is not intended to have a right or wrong answer. But this isn't what we were looking for. Think about this: you believe this is the worst thing you've ever done, but you also believe you were wholly justified in doing it?"
"I just... I..."
"This is not an uncommon occurrence when we ask this question," Dad said. "It is very rare the one answering will be truly honest with us - or themselves - about the evil inside them, and the twisted ways in which it manifests."
Mizuki twitched.
"In other words, it is not necessarily your fault you tried to pull the wool over our eyes in regards to your true nature. In fact, I believe there is someone who may have influenced you to do this, to conceal their presence... might this have been Ishmael's doing?"
Without hesitation Lillie inclined her head, eyes round and glimmering.
"It was," she breathed. "All Ishmael."
"Quite right. So smart, so clever, you are. There is no doubt in my mind you are worthy of our forgiveness." He turned to the crowd. "You forgive her, don't you?"
The devotees murmured among themselves, the majority concurring. How gracious they were; how loving! But that was the character of the Children of Starlight. Their character and their duty.
"Definitely good," Minami whispered over Mizuki's shoulder. "Mizuki, why's it that good people have to be the ones to get sick?"
Mizuki didn't tear her gaze from the circle's center. "Be quiet."
Dad let out a low little hum and returned to the paper. "Now for the second diagnostic question. 'What is...'" His eyes flicked over to Lillie momentarily, and his smile became a little more smug. A little less loving. But for only a moment. "'What is the one thing you like most about yourself?' You answered, 'The thing I like most about myself is that I'm smart and I have a good heart.'"
The crowd, uninstructed on how to feel about this, remained inert.
"Certainly an improvement over the last one. Although I must point out we requested only one answer, and you provided two."
Beautiful! Perhaps there would be hope for the lost little girl after all. The Children let out a collective sigh of relief... excepting Mizuki, who tensed.
"'And, the follow-up question: 'what is the one thing you dislike most about yourself?' 'I wish I were -'"
Mizuki could only hope her father didn't notice her jamming her fingers into her ears. A stormcloud formed in her stomach, rolling and angry.
The kōshin process had to be painful to work. The doctor has to hit your leg to test its reflex. The teacher has to mark you off so you'll get it right next time. The father has to hit your hand so you won't err again.
Dad's words might have escaped her, but the murmur of the crowd didn't. Beside her, Miki chuckled, triggering in Mizuki an unwelcome impulse to choke her out right there and then.
Count to ten, a distant Reason whispered. Ten, straightforward. One, two...
Lillie mumbled something else, and Dad spoke again to her, only her. A reassurance or a condemnation - his flat expression made it all the more impossible to tell. Her lack of reaction. Mumbling, warbling, croaking, teary-eyed. Someone was crying. Who was crying?
It was Mizuki. The tears had snuck up on her while she'd been counting and gripped her throat and her lungs betrayed her, forcing out a choked sob. The roar of the war under the earth, which the morning's excitement had reduced to mere murmurs in her ears, arose in her mind again. As if Lillie had conjured it in her, conjured the aftershocks of hurt and pain and sickness.
While her tears may have escaped her sisters' notice, her mother pressed her hands into her back, her fingers crossing over her nape and collarbone in glancing strokes. The touches were familiar and - though Mizuki would have rather curled up and died on the spot than admit it - not unappreciated.
"Rolling away with her, I suppose," she cooed in her ear. Beside her, Azurill bounced on her tail and chanted her soft squeaks. "It's all right, my baby. It's all right."
It wasn't. But she was deaf to the lava flows.
"And lastly, the self-portrait." Dad passed the paper to another one of his attendants, who sized it up, her face curling with visible disdain. She handed it to the devotee at her right, who handed it to the next, to the next, all through the circle. Mizuki surreptitiously wiped her tears with her sleeve, and when it came time for her turn, blinked heavily to ensure she truly had cleared her vision.
She'd had a certain image come to mind at the words self-portrait, and while she hadn't exactly expected a Burgh Artemisio painting from Lillie - after all, judging from the thick, waxy streaks crossing the page, she'd had only a box of stubby crayons to render her masterpiece with - she'd thought she would have at least drawn something... sensical.
Instead, a blocky triangular figure gaped back at her, its dark body hardly visible behind its tent-like yellow parka. Its little red eyes drooping half-moons. It had a row of orthogonal teeth like the white keys on a piano keyboard.
Lillie, when tasked with drawing her own body, had chosen to draw a Snorunt's. Mizuki studied the paper for so long that when Miki snatched it from her grip and shuffled it down the circle, she continued to stare: at her hands, at the speckles of grime peppering the stage floor, and, finally, back at the vulnerable girl, who had shut down again, covering her ears. The reactions rippled through the circle - some of quiet shock, some of contempt, some of compassion - until someone at last handed the sheet back to her father.
Dad drew in a ragged breath.
"Lillie, why did you choose to draw yourself as a Pokémon?"
"I don't know," Lillie said. "I don't know. It felt natural. I never thought everyone would see it." Her fingers curled into her uniform. "I don't want to be here right now."
"It's alright, Lillie. You're quite safe here. You're safer here than you would ever be anywhere else." Dad smiled, and perhaps intending to assuage her bubbling emotions, crumpled the paper into a ball. "Now, a Snorunt. What an odd little Pokémon for you to choose to represent yourself. Hiding behind its own coat, shivering. Icy, cool, demure. Lacks emotion - or perhaps wishes to. Might those have been tears I saw in her eyes?"
Lillie blushed, and as if with the intent to fulfill his prophecy, drew a curtain of her hair over her face.
"I think there was something you meant to get across with this drawing, Lillie - consciously. And I also think there is something else, closer to your heart, you didn't intend anyone else to see. But you've drawn it, and we all have eyes."
Mizuki found herself leaning in closer with the rest of the crowd; or perhaps they were moving with her.
"This Snorunt is the she-demon inside you. This Snorunt is Ishmael. Now, Ishmael might just be a cute little baby in the present. But someday - someday soon - she won't be so little or so innocent. Someday, she's going to evolve into a bloodthirsty Froslass and cause a lot of trouble: both for you and for everyone else. So it is imperative we nip her presence in the bud."
"I wasn't thinking of Ishmael as a girl," Lillie said. She was ignored.
"Now, it's not often we allow self-portraits to be drawn here..." - in the compound, he meant; it wasn't soul-nourishing for one to preoccupy oneself with the self - "but this is just for the diagnostic examination. After all, art is the vector through which we showcase our true selves the most. When we create, we are unable to hide the deepest parts of ourselves." Dad's face puckered, as if he had eaten of a rotten Berry. "You can see the corruption of society - its vapidity, its emptiness - in the art it produces. The themes it chooses to focus on..."
Mizuki pulled her eyebrows together. Not this spiel again. It would not be beyond the pale, she supposed, to do Lillie - and the rest of them - a mercy.
"You mean," she interjected, "if a particular theme keeps showing up in someone's art - like, say, death - it means they've got a fixation on it, even if they don't realize it? It's a part of their soul?"
A wistful smile came over Dad. "Mizuki understands. Yes. Yes, it's like dream interpretation for the waking world. It's even more reliable."
She expected pleasure to bloom in her at those words, Mizuki understands, but her heart was silent. The earth trembled under her knees. From the rafters the lights strobed blue as flame. Blue as - blue as the ocean. The ocean.
This dream was familiar - a childhood half-memory, like a fragment of a novel she'd once read but couldn't recall. The compound shifting around her, rooms in the wrong places, staircases her mind had invented moving, steps splitting apart - the floor an open mouth under them. Sunburst-shaped tapestries lined the halls, vivid bronze against lead white. Out in some faraway here a Lycanroc howled.
What was happening? Why was this happening?
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to untangle her reality from the dream and from the percussion in the background, the one made to escape your notice, low, hammering, forging you one with the crowd, you are the crowd, every one of its members is a cell of your infinite body…
"It doesn't make sense to me," Lillie was saying. "None of this makes any sense to me. I don't understand..."
"You don't understand now," Dad corrected her. "It's okay, my dear. These feelings are perfectly normal."
He took Lillie's head into his arms, running his fingers down the length of her hair, like he would do to Nene when they were younger and she was sad and her face was blotchy and he loved her.
The percussion and the memory, the former bracing the latter, until they both threatened to topple over and smash Mizuki to bits. She pressed a hand to her forehead, certain she would vomit.
"It's a long time you've been suffering. A long time you've been aimless. I knew it from the very moment I shook your hand back at the school. You're still very young, and you don't have to let Ishmael steal your life away from you. Because if you don't have someone in your life who knows how to deal with her, she will."
Lillie's expression had gone blank, her mouth slightly open, her front two teeth coming down slightly onto her bottom lip. As usual. Pity was easy; a constant. To focus on pity…
No, her pity wouldn't be a waste. There always needs to be someone more screwed up than you, or else you'll lose your grip on what little hope you have.
Gradually Mizuki let it uncouple her. Returned to her body. Breathed.
"I don't mean to frighten you with this. I say it because it's the truth. I've seen it happen before with my very own eyes. People, otherwise good people, with good hearts, giving in to drink, drugs, lust, avarice, covetousness, gluttony, their own festering hatred - all of the many vices this world seeks to tempt us with. Our demons desire them. There is something Ishmael desires, whether you are cognizant of it or not, and she will be willing to do anything to you to have it.
"Knowing this, I ask you: Lillie. Would you be willing to give yourself over to the forces in this universe that are good, and swear your life to our church? It's more of a formality than anything - you've already been living here. It's not often we permit outsiders who haven't sworn themselves to us to intermingle with us. Really, finding one's way here to us is the hardest part of the whole process. Most never will."
"My life," Lillie mumbled.
"Yes, your life. I cannot lie to you: you must know the initiation will be difficult." (Understatement of the century.) "But it is the best thing you can ever do for yourself, your friends, your community, your world. And, of course, your immortal soul. It is a decision you will never - never - come to regret."
He took her right hand in his and ushered the rest of the crowd to move in, so they would all be equidistant from her. "Come on in, now. You may look, but please afford her some space to breathe..."
Lillie shut her eyes, seeming so much tinier with all the gray-clad devotees confining her to what little space she had. A lot more pallid, too - Mizuki hoped she hadn't caught a cold in the compound. Disease spread like wildfire with everyone in such close quarters.
"We've always been willing to help you, Lillie. It's been ordained since long before any of us were born, that you would find your way here. And now here we are." As he spoke, Dad interlinked his fingers with hers, and pressed the knot of their joined hands to her chest. "All of us, here to walk alongside you in your journey towards Truth. Will you have us? Are you willing to swear your life to our cause?"
When the poor pitiful girl opened her steely eyes again, there was only one person she focused on. Mizuki's breath caught.
"I swear on my life."
And the covenant was made.
Nene had her big secret encyclopedia book with all the pretty color pictures, and she would sneak out of the house on the weekends to admire them. And because in those days Mizuki was her tail, she would walk on her toes to follow her without her noticing. Over the rocks, through the mouth of the stream, past a patch of yellow honeysuckle. One of the flowers had toppled over, and nectar burst from it, oozing down its sallow petals. The sight and scent of it had attracted a desirous cloud of Cutiefly, who buzzed erratically, feasting.
Mizuki watched them for a time, but the sound of flipping pages wrenched her from her thoughts. Mizune had set the book on the ground, and called to her, "Ketchup - " (this was Mizuki's nickname, of forgotten origin) " - Ketchup, see here... it's a cathedral, and they took eight hundred years to build it. They took their time."
She didn't look surprised by Ketchup's apparition. Her ears were a Noibat's.
Ketchup kneeled beside her, squinting. "It does look pretty big. But why did it take so long?"
"I don't know. Bureaucracy, I guess."
(Mizune, being the studious child she was, had learned recently bureaucracy was the No. 1 Barrier To Good in the free world.)
Ketchup didn't understand what the word meant, but something about it rubbed pleasurably against a part of her brain. She tried it out on her tongue: "burr... ah... crissy." It tasted like dark chocolate.
But Nene's favorite picture was under the tab SCIENCE AND THE WONDERS OF THE UNIVERSE. The subject: star clouds in teal and magenta, a malformed pincer clasping a condensed pearl of light.
"That's what it looks like for stars to give birth," Nene said.
"Wow," Ketchup chirped. "Give birth to what?"
"To other stars, silly. What else would it be?"
I don't know, Ketchup mumbled, and she felt an all-too-familiar Mizuki shame.
Mizune lightning thwipp ed the page and cupped a hand to her ear. Her gaze settled on a fixed point above the trees, out in the ocean sky. "Dad told me you can hear them at night, if you go out into the woods. A baby star's heartbeat. It's the sound of the world-Ariados spinning fate."
She played with one of her cords of long hair, laughing to herself. When Nene laughed, the world stopped to listen.
"Nature's where you can see and hear its influence the most," she said. "It's where beauty lives."
Rockruff stumbled his way down the porch steps, veering towards the lab's backside. Over these past couple months, he'd accumulated his own little pile of pebbles and implanted them in a cleft of earth - his rock garden, Kukui called it, as if any day now they would crack open and burst into seedlings - and he now tended to them, prodding them with his paws wantonly. As the twin scents of Sun and Harmony wafted over to him, his tail twitched and started into a fit of wagging.
There had been great improvements made between the three of them these past few days. Rockruff sniffed Harmony with glee, Harmony reciprocated with a bubble to the nose, and the two wheezed their approximations of laughter. Sun watched from a distance, leaning against the side of the lab, and a smile came over him. The last remnants of daylight folded benevolently across the land, moments from giving to a burgeoning dusk. A gentle wind drew in from the coast, ruffling hair and fur.
Despite their lack of facilitation, Sun had found he didn't need to give orders anymore, and Harmony didn't need to ask permission. Energy was free use, all for one and the other. Even the hand signals Sun had used with Frostfire had obsolesced.
The trio chased each other around the back of the lab, laughing, Sun almost tripping over his own feet, Harmony trying to beat his own record of how many bubbles he could blow in one breath, Rockruff heaving with pants and hiccuping his staccato barks. Sun's stomach grumbled, and he placed a hand on the wall, dreaming of his upcoming dinner -
His hand slipped into a deep indent. A groove where something had shredded the planks of siding. He jerked his head to the side, eyes trailing up to the roof, the swoop of misaligned shingles, disturbed...
"What in the..."
It came to him exactly where he'd seen these marks before. Two weeks ago, cut into the cinder block wall skirting the perimeter of 'Ale K-8 School, right over his and Lillie's heads.
Sun screamed his throat raw.
* "To be happy, and to share happiness, is the most righteous act one can ever dream to undertake. Fate is kindest to those who spread happiness." - The Holy Testament of Starlight, Chapter 1, page 4.
Unfortunately, I had to cut this chapter in two due to its length. Fortunately, the other half is twice as long as this one. Look out for that next Friday.