Why can’t I move? Why is it so dark?
I am just laying here on nothing and in nothing.
I feel a pressure on me from on all sides but nothing is touching me.
All I can hear is a low buzzing sound. It’s distorted and nearly a screech at times but never loud. I am just here with this pain coming from everywhere.
“Come on Flame!” Yells Chloey as she runs past me. Her voice is loud and echoes through the trees of our favorite park. The light is dim but there is light here! “Chloey, Wait for me!” I yelled out to her. My legs are shorter, and I feel so off balanced. I can’t move fast enough. Chloey is already so far away. Hot tears burn down the sides of my face and my vision starts to blur and darken. “I can’t keep up sister! Please! Please!” The tears are holding back my words as I struggle to run.
Strong arms pick me up and long legs start to catch up with my sister. . . no. . . that’s not right.
I pick up a small boy and I walk fast to try and keep up with my children. They are always leaving him behind because he is so much younger than them. It’s ok. I don’t mind walking with him. They are growing up so fast.
I look down to my youngest son crying in my arms. . . but find a young girl there instead. She has purple hair and lavender eyes. Her tan skin is covered in bruises. She is wiping at her tears with mud covered hands as she looks up at me. “Who are you?” She asks. “My name is Flame.” I respond, but was that right? I said it without hesitation, but was that right? Am I Flame?
“Ma’am you’re not Flame because I’m Flame. You can’t be me.” the girl tells me. She looks so sure of herself. She looks much more sure of her name that I am so I ask her, “Then who am I?” She puts a muddy hand to my face and ask me, “Shouldn’t you know who you are?”
I look at the older woman as I hold her face with my muddy hand and ask her, “Shouldn’t you know who you are?” Wait. . . no. The little girl asked me that. Didn’t she? But I’m the little girl. Aren’t I?
The colors in the world suddenly disappeared with only gray outlines left to prove the world actually existed. I turn left and right. . . searching, but the world is so big and everything in it is towering above me. I look down at my body. I am a child now. . . again...am I? No. This isn’t right! I begin to run in a panic. I don’t care where. I just need to run until everything makes sense again. I need to run until I know who I am. The bright gray world swirls with black shadows and I start to hear voices calling out.
“Mom. It’s ok. I like the job, and it pays well. You don’t need to shoulder all the bills anymore.” says a woman’s voice.
“I knew you wouldn’t do anything for me. I’m not your favorite!” yells a male voice.
“Thanks for driving me to work Mom.” says a deep masculine voice.
“Mom! I got tickets for the entire family! It’s really happening!” A young man says in a loud and excited voice.
“Chloey, Zoey! I can’t find your little sister! Baine, Raine, where’s your baby sister?” asks a woman’s voice.
“No, you need to study hard in school to become a respectable breeder. Your Journey is superficial and this custom should die.” says a man.
The voices begin to overlap. “Mom!” “Flame!” “Sis!” “Help!” “Why?!” “What are you doing?” “Try harder” “Stop!”
My legs are aching. It is getting too dark to see anything in my path. My lungs are on fire, but I must run away from all these voices! I can’t take it. The world stumbles under my feet and I feel myself falling forward.
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I jolted forward and my head collided with someone. I was knocked back into the pillows with a stinging pain in my forehead. “That is one hard head!” said a masculine voice. “I feel like I just got hit by skull bash. My wartortle can’t even hit this hard!” The voice continued on and continued to complain but my own head was spinning and throbbing. Whoever he was, he needed to shut up. I had a head injury that was still healing! What had he been doing hovering over me to begin with?
I heard the familiar sound of plastic crackling as the man opened a package with a small vial in it. He deftly filled a syringe from the vial and injected something into the catheter, I think that’s what it’s called. Wait, I have an I.V. bag this time? The man opened a cabinet and throwed the syringe into the red biohazard box inside.
“Who are you?” I weakly croaked. My throat was very dry. He glanced over while he looked over his spectacles. Those things were way too fancy to simply call them glasses. Still rubbing his forehead, he walked to a food cart at the foot of my bed. I noticed something was laying on my chest as that man starts looking under the cart for something. Curled up on my chest was a tiny drowzee. It was the absolute smallest drowzee in the world!
“He is not a baby.” The man announced. “His name is Churro, and my name is Milo Bones.” he continued as he opened a bottle and poured it in a cup for me. He even popped a crinkle straw in it for my convenience as I leaned back against my pillows so as to not wake tiny Churro. “I study human medicine. Churro was born a run and never flourished, much like me so he decided to become my partner.” Milo Bones takes a seat in a chair next to my bed as he continued. “My parents started breeding Lucario when I was a child and new breeders often get surprise-eggs the first few generations when they breed wild caught pokemon. He is not the only drowzee that was born but he was super small, even his egg was small.”
I felt a sort of pressure around my mind. Not my head but my mind. It reminded me of Espeon. I sat up and winched at the pain and stiffness in my limbs. Churro tumbles down into his partner's waiting hands. Sitting up had taken more out of me than I had expected but I didn’t like this pressure I was feeling. The pain seemed to cause the pressure to back off some which just fueled my suspicions more.
“You are not a doctor.” I announced. “Researchers rarely seek a doctoral degree. We tend to be reclusive and zealous in a preferred field.” He recited the deadpan response with a practiced and measured voice, but his lips twitched as a thought occurred to me. “Sorry about that. I have been monitoring you while you slept and I forgot how rude it can be to read the thoughts of others." He flushes a bit, but his voice seems more active now.
Rude he said? Rude is probing my emotions. Rude is not asking me if I like lemonade before you hand it to me. Reading thoughts is a touch more than rude, especially when I am sleeping. . . then again. . . I think I was a little more than asleep this time. I sighed as my anger petered out. “A lot of people like to read minds when they show off espeon. You’d be surprised how quick folks are to forget that she is a psychic type when she is purring around your legs. You could use some practice.” I decided to tell him as I thought back to Nana’s Espeon. She wasn’t a strong pokemon. For some reason I was reminded of the day that Blink landed a Swift attack on her and sent her flying into the wall. Mr. Bones laughed. “Sorry, but I’m good at reading facial expressions too. You have had a few run ins with psychic trainers?” He asked. “Worse.” I grumbled. “Family.”
“My family actually continued breeding drowzee.” Mr. Bones said. “We have psychic and fighting in the nursery and psychic and fighting/steel in a stable. Those guys tussle a lot. Our riolu have earned a reputation for having a high psychic resistance but it is not really true. The young pokemon in the nursery just butt heads all the time.” Mr. Bones stares down at Churro as he talks.
Something about the way he sats there pulled me back to my visits to Nana’s house. Baine sat on the couch in much the same posture and with the same far off look on his face. “Nana told me that anytime, she uses psychic, she can read the thoughts of others. Some trainers can only feel emotions. Those are further split between all or just the most intense emotions. Some trainers can take a peek into your mind. A rare few can do everything.” I began to recite the lesson that Nana had taught to each of her grandchildren. She wanted us to understand something very important before we ever decided to train a psychic type ourselves. Mr. Bones only nodded along like a bored child. “Mr. Bones?” I said to get his attention. He looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Would you like to know a secret that Nana told me?” I asked and rubbed my eye with my knuckles. He responded by saying, “I thought your Nana’s espeon was not very strong. What kind of secret could you have to tell?” He sounded a bit testy. Some researcher he was to scoff at a secret. I giggled a bit at that. “Fine, you only get half the secret then.” I teased and my statement made him frown. Oh? Was he pretending not to be interested? I yawned before I continued. “If you use psychic and connect with a living creature, you leave a little bit of yourself with the creature you connect with and borrow a little bit from that creature as well.” He frowned deeper. “That is no secret.” he said with . . . was that pity or pain in his expression? “Yes, it is.” I continued despite the worry spreading across his face. “It is a secret because none of you understand what that means.” I end with a weak smile as a lean back heavily into my pillow.
That was fun but I was tired. “Ms. Oline, can you stay awake a little longer?” His voice sounded worried, but my body was trembling with fatigue. “Talk to Carmine Joy. She is my friend, I think.”
Carmine understood what that meant. I was sure of it. She could explain it to him. I wondered if I said that sentence out loud. I hoped so.
What does the pokedex say the average size for a drowzee is?
