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In the spring time, you grow, in height and in strength. You give Maxie flowers when he approaches you (which he is grateful for) and shield him from the hot burning sun (which he is not grateful for). He’s digging now in the dirt now, with a pail and spade and muttering about Spinaraks that he thinks should be ground type but aren’t.
You become less confident, in the summer, because its so dry. There’s a flock of wild Fletchling that you’ve picked up with you. You’re half afraid they’ll attack you and set you on fire because you don’t have a Pokemon to defend yourself with (and why would you?) and half scared they’ll fall off your arms and your shoulders and injure themselves. There’s one tangled in your hair now, gazing curious and shrill into your eyes. Maxie carries off with him one that’s about to attack you, he’s a gentleman like that, and together with Numel he doesn’t feel so alone.
The Deerling have grown their autumn coat, a burnished golden orange. The newly minted Sawsbuck raise their head, cantering about to test their new hoofs. You’ve explored the wilderness around you a little further and found a little hollow that Maxie could sit inside if the red head wanted to whisper to you his secrets – and just sometimes you would love to leave home and become a Pokemon trainer to explore the world. Someone, not Maxie, because he has broader shoulders and a more confident gaze has given you acorns.
Cold has fallen enough, quiet and soft. Maxie has settled inside now, wrapped in a turtleneck, trousers and quilt. From time to time, he will glare at the heater, as if suspecting it of having clunked to a stop or reducing its heat output on purpose and other times his gaze will drift softly to Numel. He has two guests today, all welcome and all keen to talk. But when his gaze shifts to you, it’s with love. You gaze inside and your cold hands are pressed against the glass and your breath is not warm enough to frost the windows.
You are a car accident, waiting to happen. Maxie looks to you and finds no reassurance when the world drowns in water.
‘Archie! What have you done!’ He shouts. His hair is flattened to thin ribbons by the rain, plastered thinly to his skin and he shakes.
And yet, it’s not the water that fells you but the lightning of the storm attracted to your central apex. And as your leaves return to the earth and your branches fall once more your atoms once again return to the cycle of life.
You are a sapling, small, thin and gangly like Maxie was with knobbly knees and indecisive small hands that can’t shelter anyone or anything for at least the next few decade.
Archie looks away and says ‘I’m sorry Maxie,’ in that baritone of his.
Maxie says, a little stiffly, ‘Life needs the land to grow to spread its branches and to survive.’
He was proud of how high tall you’d grown (that should have been the other way around as you quite clearly remember him being much shorter than you until recently.)
‘Just as life needs the oceans to grow,’ Archie replies. ‘Without water, life will wilt and die.’ He pinches one of your cheeks (Haha, noogie) as Maxie glares on with an air of reproachfulness and careful indifference but also a soft undercurrent of understanding.
Next spring, you put out another bud which is always refreshing. Soon you’ll be reach the window again, tall enough to observe –
They do that sometimes, they hold hands.