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N remembers how every night, almost every night, he’d open the window and stare out.
There was nothing prettier at the time. Always nighttime, because nighttime was when everything that mattered would glow, when he was expected to be in bed, when the outside felt like a secret.
The glimmering, distant lights of Castelia City, the same shimmers within its neighbour Nacrene. There were soft amber glows from Undella Town far away, bright white lights from Nimbassa, yellow beams from Driftveil’s lanterns. Soft stars of all shapes and sizes were mirrored on the horizon line. Where navy blue sunsets and orange rises emerged like hot balls of lava. The land was a second sky. An ocean of shimmering lights, a dying fire whose embers refused to succumb, the small buds of light on fireflies.
Although dark, it held purpose, longing. Its black hands made of rustling leaves on trees and tall, blocky buildings reached out to him, asking him to join them. And where there was land, there was Pokémon.
The creatures that inhabited it could not be seen from where he was, in his small corner of the world, islanded off. He’d sometimes see a burst of light or some element in the day from a Pokémon battle, would sometimes hear distant cries, see some Pidove fly past his window, out there, far away. He’d always stop playing for those fleeting moments. It was all faint, very faint. Carried by the breeze up to him like they were messages he could only eavesdrop to.
Pokémon were everywhere. They always would be, always are. They always have been. Pokémon carried land on their backs just like the Earth did, nurtured forests, helped build cities, populated oceans. They have predated N’s entire species, entire bloodline.
Pokémon’s existences, capabilities, knew no bounds. Some could control space, control time. Some could harness the oceans and ignite the land. Some could create life and others could destroy it. Others had created the universe itself and could do it again within the blink of an eye. Deities. Creatures that would outlast N, outlast everybody to ever exist. Beings that knew what it was like to live untethered.
They were the natural forces among the winds, fires, tides and lush jungles. Pokemon were as much the land as the land was Pokémon. They were connected in a way humans could never be.
It was hard to feel like he wasn’t doing something wrong when he would listen to faint noises from Pokémon battles, speak with the friends his sisters and Father would bring around. The immeasurable grief he felt on their behalf, the anger. These beings suffering like that. At the hands of these ignorant, irresponsible people.
People who refused to acknowledge what Pokémon could do if let go from captivity. People who refused to let them know any different. They’d normalised it, this sheltered, violent way of life. People who didn’t accept that, if they loved Pokémon, they had to let them go.
Humans could get their own deity, could get it to create their own world, could make their own islands of light far away from Pokémon who never asked to share it. With people who could only ultimately hurt them.
Sometimes he’d wonder where those few friends who stuck by his side all that time ago were now. Were they caught? Had they evolved and moved somewhere else? Had they forgotten him?
He tired of fretting over it.
The sky was the sister of the land, that’s what Anthea and Concordia said, though the two might as well have blended together at some point. N no longer saw the point in acknowledging the difference; it was still beautiful, still glowing, still burning with gentle, unspoken potential. Except, unlike the infinity above him, the land was somewhere N could go.
He could go.
But he couldn’t.
He’d never even considered it a possibility to leave his room, leave the castle. He’d never been told why, though he’d never asked either, so maybe it was just a question away from coming true. That or a lecture. Or worse. It was better this way anyway, even if he yearned to exist past these walls, to burst into his full potential. Maybe it was better to leave that world outside unchanged.
It was better he learn here, prepare for who he needed to be. For the Pokémon that once protected him, he would now repay the favour. Embrace his real life, the hero of truths and ideals. The King of Team Plasma. Even if sometimes just the noises of small Pokémon cries or silent winds bristling leaves would turn his head the easiest.
He’d listen to the sounds, try to ingrain them into his memory and hold them like tiny, precious gemstones that could slip through his fingers. Soft rain, the rustling of leaves, the tweeting of songbirds when he’d stayed up too long. Sometimes he would admire the sights, but when certain others came, he would close his eyes and breathe. And listen.
Sometimes he could tell it was spring from how the air tasted breathing in. Others, he would reach out his hand and feel spitting rain, cool specks on his skin, grounding him. Whatever state his room was in, whatever had happened that day fell quietly behind him. It no longer mattered.
Though his bedroom lights glowed in the corners of his eyes, he could always turn them off. And that way he could see the fantastic performance of the sky, the shimmering Milky Way. When he was on the cusp of the castle and the world, when he was that close to entering what felt like another realm. He was limitless.
He’d try to imagine he was out there, blending with it, merging his spirit to the earth. Escaping these man-made stone walls and bounding back into the forest with Pokémon again. That was what he wanted. That was what he dreamed of. A forbidden fantasy.
Among all of the ink blotted shapes and lights and sounds the world had to offer, from his view up in the castle, up near Victory Road, the dark was what fascinated him.
N craved to emerge from these pillars of light that’d bound him and fuse with the dark, wanted to know what secrets this negative space between civilisations had in store. These cosmic voids that separated pieces of humanity, that separated these planets he could not reach. He wanted for them as much as he wanted for everything.
Those planets. Colours he could not fathom, dreams he couldn’t place, those little pockets of light amongst the treetops, spreading out infrequently across Unova seemed to beckon him each night he opened his window. He was taller, older, but the routine was still the same. Each time he pushed the pane of glass out as far as it would go, sat on his window sill and wished guiltily that the wind would pluck him off of his perch and bring him somewhere new.
These planets orbited him each day, glistened the same for every sunset and rise, and glowed in the night like blooming, golden phosphorescence. Spheres of potential, of curiosity, different worlds calling N, N, N…
He cradled these moments, these precious silences, these parts of himself he could still reach. N kept them drawn close, kept them sacred, tried to hold them like a key to a lock he couldn’t open. They felt like the answer to questions Anthea and Concordia could not give him solutions to. They felt like he was reaching back inside of himself to draw forth some sort of innocence, something he’d lost. Something that had been stolen from him.
The moments, the land, the sky, the sea. They felt just as he did. And they felt right. It was an understanding he shared with the world, one that it would acknowledge each night. They’d beckon, they’d call and tempt him. They would whisper.
But he could not listen.
As it went every time, the predictable conclusion played out identical to the last. He always had to go. He always, in the end, remembered his destiny. He always knew that Pokémon needed him. And this was the way. They needed him to save them from this land. This beautiful land.
Ultimately, despite himself, N always closed the window.