Hi. Before we get into the story, I would just like to say this story is affected by FFN's server sync glitch as of March 2025. For this reason, you may not be able to read all of the posted chapters, as the site has trouble recognizing they have been posted. This is unfortunately completely out of my control.

I would like to say that if you are having issues reading the story, it is also crossposted onto Archive of Our Own, at [the URL for AO3 followed by] /works/62271801 . I will still be posting the fic here on FFN, but I am just putting this out there as an alternative for anyone having issues.

Prologue: An Awakening

/have

/have you ever

/have you ever dared dream of starshine?

The night Lillie sealed the world's fate, the stars were breaking into fragments.

Outside her window was an explosion of light and color and sound and feeling: spurts of crimson light streaked across the night sky like rivulets from a punctured artery. The cry of the clouds accompanied it: fizzing and popping and growling, a symphony of holy desecration.

She clambered onto her feet and stood on her bed to reach the high window, to ensure what she was seeing wasn't a simple trick of the light. But she concluded there could be no way - not with the reflections winding down her walls, vivid red against shadowed nothing. Not only was it real, but it felt to her as if every sensation she had ever come to know paled in comparison - as if she had been living in a fantasy and had only just now awakened.

She shook her head and settled onto her knees, pulling her sheets around her.

Then came the whisper of her name, slow and drawn out. Lillie. So faint she could simply toss it away and ascribe it to the howling wind outside, or to the hoot of a Noctowl in the conservation area carried too far. A mere fixture of the night. It could have been coming from right beside her or from the other side of the earth and she would never know. It was everywhere, reverberating through every particle of the air. And yet only within her mind.

A rootless prayer.

Please help me.

She stumbled, throwing off her bedcover; toeing into her slippers. Her eyes burned from both her fatigue and the streaming light outside and yet she could not stand to tear her gaze away. The sky was breaking. The night was breaking into premature dawn and the moon was the color of blood.

I don't want to vanish. I don't want to fade away. Not like this...

Now she could hear the voice more clearly. Tender and innocent, like a child's, but also chipped with distortion. Its subtle hiss was somewhat pleasurable to her; a note of yearning bedded deep within. Sounding in concord with the note within her own heart. Trembling, she whispered back:

"Where are you?"

The directions were innate: instinctual, as if they had been planted in her heart long before she had ever even been dreamed of. Her mother's room. Even at this hour of the night its intended resident would be in her office, slavishly devoting her time to... to... to what, Lillie didn't know. Important things. Things a million times more important than love or nurturing.

She marched up the steps to the first floor in a trance. She was not there. She was with the scene of rapture outside, floating, drifting, rippling. She was on the moon; she was with the stars; she was viewing the world from high above and her outstretched wings brushed against its crust.

Inside Mother's room the keypad awaited her. She had never even noticed its existence before - never dreamed of what wonders or terrors might lie beyond it - but now she knew to tap four times: the code. Oh seven three one. Activated.

The secret door slid itself open to reveal an awaiting teleportation pad, oscillating with rings of sickly green light. She stepped upon it and allowed it to carry her away, to -

To a wasteland. A forest in the dead of winter, suspended in time. Her eyes settled before anything else on the faintest splotches of yellow mold on the ceiling and the walls and she thought of something she had once read, about how damp conditions sowed the seeds of festering rot and decay. Here it was, right in the heart. Lurking in the corners of each glass case - to say nothing of what their centerpieces were. She didn't dare to name it.

Now her legs moved without her input. Weaving through the massive prisms of glass, unthinking. Like a stray meteor unable to resist a black hole's tug. Her cheek made contact with a pane of glass and -

I hate you.

Flickers of images too quick to register, but burning with undeniable intensity: a star collapsing into itself. The earth cracking beneath her feet, and spraying plumes of lava rising between. Waves taller than any human construction striking the shores, crashing inland. Pain and sorrow and hunger and terror. She let out an involuntary whimper, clinging to the pedestal below the glass case she'd crashed into.

I love you.

Another set of images: dust motes suspended in a ray of sun; sweet maple syrup poured onto a thick stack of pancakes; droplets of water dripping off swimsuits on a hot summer day. Lillie smiled at these memories, although she could not recall when she had made them. But the reminder of love, the love of a parent, once so far away, was enough to quell any doubts she might have had.

Look at me. Meet my eyes.

Slowly Lillie turned her gaze to the case's occupant. A sputtering ball of ethereal chaos, like entropy itself taken physical form. Brimming with colors so rich she was sure she had never seen anything like it before; not even in her dreams. In her nightmares, perhaps.

"You're just a child," she breathed. "Just a baby."

I am what I am.

"They've been... hurting you, haven't they? Oh, please don't tell me..."

A nausea bubbled up in her. The creature's dull yellow eyes, solemn and haunted. Its body sagging there at the bottom of its prison like a deflated balloon. Its protrusions hanging limp by its sides, too weak to lift them.

Just imagine, it whispered. Just imagine what I could be someday. What you could make me into.

Lillie shook her head. She was too weak, too powerless. Nothing more than a stray leaf tossed about by the wind.

Help me. If you help me, I will help you in return. You aren't as weak as you think you are. You aren't reaching your full potential. I want you. I want to help you become what you have been made to be.

"I want you"... Lillie shivered. Wanted. She had never been 'wanted' before.

Then: a shift in the air. Her attention snapped back to the teleportation pad.

You can feel her, can't you? She is coming. You must return to your slumber, or else we will both face retribution.

"I must..." Lillie's words faded as she moved to obey. Taking a step back. Her mind still abuzz with the rattling word: 'wanted'. Thinking of how, maybe, she could transmute 'wanted' into 'loved'.

But first, promise me. Swear on your life you will return. Swear on your life you will dedicate yourself to my salvation.

At first, the words wouldn't budge from her throat. There was something transgressive about them, as if she were breaking some natural law older than time itself. The wrongness of it all was undeniable, but it scorned all attempts to put a name to it.

But it was just a little Pokémon. A little Pokémon, suffering here in the land of the dead. A Pokémon who wanted, who needed her. Her help, her aid, her companionship. Her friendship.

She thought back to the stars. The splitting and fizzling and crackling fragments of stars, the stars she could spend a lifetime watching. Order and chaos caught in eternal struggle against one another.

Lillie placed her hand across her heart.

"I swear on my life."

And the covenant was made.

/you

/you and I

/we can dream together, if you so desire

/together, we'll make a heaven on earth

/from the ashes of civilization, we'll build up our paradise

/will you join me?

/join me, if you dare

/I'm counting on you.