Work Text:
Spring had been fine enough, if a little dryer than normal; Pa hadn’t been all too concerned. Then there’d been this big volcano that erupted somewhere way up north – hadn’t seemed like too much of an issue at the time, just something to take up dead air on the evening news – and in the days that followed, a thin grey curtain settled over them, a soft ashy mist that smelled burnt and turned the sun a sick pale red.
So: a quiet, bone-dry, eerily cold summer. The spring planting had come up fine enough and spread itself onto their dinner table, but it would be a hungry, hungry winter.
(“Take care of Ma for me,” her brother had said, lacing his boots, double-checking his rucksack. He was off to the city, to get a job that would send some money home – and for someone good at shutting up and getting a job done, that meant Team Rocket.
“‘Course I will.”
He was taking all the family Pokemon that could possibly help in a fight; which is to say, all of them except one. “And don’t forget to water the Sunkern.”
“Sure.”
“No, I’m serious.” He reached over to rub its leaves between his fingers, where it was sleeping in her arms. “It’s a seed, yeah? You plant ‘em ‘cause you figure they’ll grow someday. Seeds mean hope.”)
So he’d left; one less mouth to feed. The money as promised had come from the city, a little at a time, alongside short, perfunctory letters. He’d been told that the volcano was the fault of some kid farting around doing fieldwork, who’d stumbled accidentally in a cave onto something phenomenally ancient and powerful. Another ten-year-old shoving a god in a ball. Sometimes she’d spook at a sudden shadow, would look up to see one of those kids riding some giant majestic winged beast, going somewhere, going somewhere…
…And winter blew in, cold and fierce, and there was never enough food, and she had her Sunkern.
At the worst of it Ma got sick, so sick she could barely sit up, and Pa spent all day sitting next to the bed, empty-eyed. She would swallow her hunger and throw on her coat and brave the cold to hike into town to barter for a bit of bread – or on one particularly terrible evening, when there was no money left, to forage for whatever was technically edible under the snow.
And Sunkern, damn it, hopping along behind her, chirping happily, spooking at the shadows of Spearow above. Some Pokemon go to space or shoot fire from their mouths or summon volcanoes, she thinks, truly, utterly miserable. But Sunkern does its stupid little wiggle, and licks dewdrops off the undersides of leaves ‘cause it can’t jump high enough to do anything else .
And maybe she’d gone numb to the cold, or maybe it really was a little warmer and a little wetter than it was a week ago. And maybe having to water the Sunkern each day gave her a reason to get out of bed in the morning. And maybe the winter had been a little easier when you could always count on its smile, and hear it chirping away at the window, a seed in conversation with the sun.
And maybe spring is just around the corner, she thinks. And maybe, if I made it another week or two, I’d see my brother again. She feels her legs giving out, crawls into the shadow of a fir tree, sits propped up against its trunk. And maybe I’ll just rest here a bit before heading home.
The sun sets. The moon rises, fierce and resplendent. Sunkern hops into the crook of her arm. She dozes, fitfully, and wakes to the noise.
Years later, she’d tell her kids that she’d thought at first she was dreaming in the grey dawn, but in truth the sound had woken her immediately, to an irritation that had eventually given way to understanding and then joy: the rhythmic tap-tap-tap of melting snow, and of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Sunkern falling out of the tree, plopping onto the ground all around, foraged spring greens held delicately in their mouths, professed towards her. Food. They had brought her food.
Sometimes hope is a rainbow or a god or a majestic, immense creature arcing across the sky. And sometimes hope’s just a seed on a spring morning, promising you’ll make it another day.