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When the first letter comes, Lillie's barely made it off the boat to Vermillion; she's still a little bit seasick from the voyage and barely able to take in Kanto's beauty over the strange feeling of being so far away from every single person she knows.
(Well, except Mother. But even though Mother is here in Vermillion, it feels as though there might as well be an ocean between them—she's gone away somewhere inside her head and nothing Lillie says or does can pull her any closer.
Bill, she reminds herself, Bill can help, and she tries not to dwell too much on it.)
There's a strange man standing at the end of the pier with an equally-strange raichu curled up at his feet, and Lillie tries to skirt around him until she realizes he's looking right at her. He's been waiting for her.
“Lillie?” he asks as she gets closer. Mother is following a few steps behind, holding onto her suitcase with one hand and staring out at the ocean. She doesn't react to hearing her daughter's name.
“Yes,” she says firmly, trying not to look nervous. She looks up and up and up until she can finally meet his eyes.
His face breaks into a warm smile as he holds out one calloused hand. “People call me Lieutenant Surge. I'm the gym leader of this city. A friend of yours sent me a letter, asked me to make sure you'd made it safe to Kanto.”
Lillie blushes bright red as she gives him her best handshake. A gym leader! A real gym leader! There's only eight of them in the whole of Kanto, and they're supposed to be so powerful—she can't believe she's met one already.
(Probably not as powerful as Moon, though. No one is.)
“If you don't mind me asking,” she says, “who..?”
That gets a boisterous laugh from Lieutenant Surge. He reaches into one of the massive pockets in his cargo pants and pulls out—
“Oh, wow,” Lillie says, feeling her face grow even redder.
It's not just a letter; it's a bundle of them, easily six or seven, some of them stuffed so tight they look like the envelopes might just burst right open. She can't believe all of those might really be on her behalf.
He flips through them with one hand. “Let's see… got a message from your region's professor, Kahuna Hapu, Trial Captains Olivia and Acerola—or are they your Elite Four? I swear I can never keep up with whatever your region's doing—some young man named Hau, and your Elite Four champion."
Moon, Lillie thinks. Moon and Hau and Hapu and all the rest of them… even though she's so far away now, they haven't forgotten about her at all. Not even for a moment.
Lillie sweeps into a clumsy little half-curtsy, embarrassed and overjoyed all at once. “I'm sorry, I hope it wasn't an inconvenience.”
Lieutenant Surge snorts and the raichu at his feet makes a little coughing noise to match. “It's never a hassle to see people looking out for each other. Needs to be more of that in the world. Anyway, here—I think most of this is actually for you. I already took the pieces addressed to me.”
Before Lillie can blink, he thrusts the letters into her arms. She wraps her hands tight around them as she takes in the comforting weight of the paper.
“Now!” He smiles, turning out to face the city in front of them. “If you don't already have a place set up, you should stay at my gym for the night. It's not fancy, but the hot water stays hot and we're real close to Cerulean.”
Lillie shoots a glance at her mother, trying to gouge her reaction, but her face is as blank and uninterested as ever.
“If it's not an imposition,” she says, finally, “I'd like that very much.”
–
Lillie waits until she's all settled into the room Lieutenant Surge has so kindly given to her before she even thinks of opening the letters up. Her mother's next door—they share a bathroom but nothing else, which is probably for the best. Spending so long cooped up a tiny little cabin with her was… difficult.
It's strange to think about. For so long after she left Aether Paradise, she dreamt of going back. That maze of artificial foliage and pure white rooms had always meant safety to her; even the little alcove in his house that Professor Kukui so kindly let her use felt paralyzingly huge in those first few months. Any noise could have been something coming to harm her or Nebby, any stranger could have been a spy hoping to steal her pokémon away. She wonders when wide-open spaces first started to make her feel excited rather than afraid.
Probably after she first met Moon, now that she thinks about it. It was just about impossible to not get caught up in Moon's obvious joy every time the two of them discovered something new. Even dangerous things started to feel more exciting than overwhelming when there was someone like her around to help Lillie through it all.
Down the hall, she can hear muffled laughter from a few of Lieutenant Surge's gym trainers as they wind down after a long day of battling. It's a fascinating life to imagine: staying in one spot but facing new opponents every day, making the gym itself your home. She wishes Moon were here to see it too—though, she's from Kanto, isn't she? This probably wouldn't be anything new to her. Moon's probably seen all sort of things that Lillie never even imagined might exist.
Lillie shakes her head and forces her mind back into the present. No time to be moping about now.
The first letter is from Professor Kukui. It's short but sweet, dashed off in that near-illegible scrawl of his—apparently he's been trying to convince Moon to let him test the move potential of the Ultra Beasts. (A much neater paragraph tucked in the bottom right corner, written by Professor Burnet, assures her that any testing done will not involve Kukui as a target, no matter how much he pleads. Lillie breathes a sigh of relief when she gets to that part.)
She can already tell before she even turns it over that the second is from Hau; it's a postcard for a malasada restaurant, covered in brightly-colored stickers showing off each of the island's Totem Pokémon. The letter starts out a complaint—How could you leave, Lillie, who am I going to go shopping with now?—but quickly turns into an update on all the adorable things his pokémon have done since she left. Just reading it makes Lillie smile; she always knew he wasn't the sort to stay angry for long, but knowing for sure that he isn't mad she left still makes her feel better.
Before Lille turns it over to go onto the next, she pauses. There's a few words scribbled in the bottom corner of the postcard, so tiny she almost didn't notice them at first.
Good luck, it says. There's no name attached, and there doesn't need to be. Lillie could never mistake that handwriting for anyone else's.
Thank you, Lillie thinks, blinking away the sudden moisture in her eyes. I'll try my best.
It feels almost as if everyone she ever met has sent something to her. There's a letter from Hapu talking about her new role as kahuna and all the interesting things she's seen on Poni Island recently, and one from Acerola boasting about becoming an Elite Four member and begging Lillie to come back soon. Olivia sent her a tiny little charm bracelet—for good luck, the card says—in a just-as-tiny envelope. Kiawe, Lana, and Mallow got together to send her a joint message: Lana's contribution is a map of the best fishing spots in Kanto, Mallow's is a handwritten collection of recipes that can be made on the road, and Kiawe's is a desperate note begging her to please bring him back one of the Kanto-forme marowak plushies that they apparently sell in this region.
The whole thing is enough that Lillie has to press her hands to her cheeks to keep from bursting into tears. She never really believed that crying out of happiness was something people did—growing up, tears always led to rage or stony silence—but she's about to prove herself wrong right now.
Even here, in this strange, faraway region, Lillie's not alone. Everyone's right here beside her.
The last one she opens is Moon's. The envelope is plain brown and stuffed full to bursting. It almost feels like it might pop if she squeezes it too tight. Lillie can't even imagine what might be inside—a whole entire novel?
Oh, Lillie realizes as she carefully pulls open the flap, of course. It's not even really a letter at all. It's something even better.
Moon sent her pictures.
The topmost photo shows off a great brown leg, the curve of a rounded torso, and the tapering stretch of a cylindrical neck. Lillie knows Moon's team well enough to recognize her exeggcutor—or, well, the bit of him she managed to get in frame, anyway. Seems even a sentient camera can't be of too much help in properly photographing a forty-foot-tall pokémon.
As she turns it over to go to the next, her eye catches on the photo's back. There's a message written there in Moon's careful hand: Palmer's getting even taller these days! Or, I think he is—it's so hard to measure him. A pair of pikipek started a nest in his fronds the other day. I almost wanted to let them stay, but the twigs they were gathering made one of his heads itch.
Lillie cups a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. Not just photos, then. There's a story here to go with each of them. She can't help but wonder just how long it took Moon to snap each one of these, to pick out the shots she wanted to send, to write message upon message to send off to sea.
Probably she should feel guilty for causing Moon such an inconvenience, but instead her heart just feels warm and light.
She's glad, she realizes. No, not just glad—she's overjoyed that Moon went to all this trouble for her. She'd do the same thing back in an instant.
The next photo is of Moon's muk, as eye-searing as ever and bearing an expression that looks equal parts smug and sleepy. Moon stands behind the oozing bulk, covered in multicolored sludge up to her elbows and beaming at the camera. Bath day for Toxie, the back reads. Not sure it makes much difference in her case, but I wouldn't want her to feel left out.
The rest continue on that way: there's one of Hau and his incineroar posing together, one of Professor Kukui bent down next to a flock of rowlet with berries held in his open palm, one of Moon's primarina stretched out across the sand. People and pokémon alike show up in equal measure—it seems like everyone Lillie's ever met might be here and a few strangers besides—but Moon herself is only in a scarce few shots. Lillie already knows she'll treasure those the most.
As she gets closer and closer to the last photo, Lillie slows down. Looking at these is like being back in Alola once more and reading each of Moon's little messages makes it seem almost like she's in the room with Lillie now. She doesn't want to reach the end, doesn't want to have to face cold reality again.
There's no avoiding it, though—Moon's a photographer at heart, and her camera is quite possibly the cleverest Lillie's ever seen, but even together they can't manage to send an infinite number of pictures.
Lillie pauses for a moment when she's nearly to the bottom of the stack. Finally, with shaking hands, she turns over last picture. She takes a steadying breath, reminds herself that she's here for a reason, and lets herself have one more glimpse of home.
When she realizes what—who—is in the picture, it nearly slips from her grasp.
It's a close-up of Moon and Nebby together. Moon's smiling softly at the camera, her dark eyes crinkled with happiness, and Nebby stands over her like some sort of strange guardian. Its mane is shot with streaks of gold and orange so brilliant they almost seem to glow, and even the flatness of the two-dimensional picture can't hide the way its muzzle and eyes burn with the otherworldly light of miniature galaxies. The photo seems almost impossibly glamorous, for all that Moon's dressed in her dirt-stained clothes and her favorite raggedy hat—the warm brown of her skin and her pitch-black hair make a striking contrast against Nebby's glistening white fur.
It's the sort of picture she could easily imagine on the cover of popular pokémon magazine. She can practically see the cover line now: Alola's First Champion Tells All, perhaps, or Mythical Pokémon Spotted With Elite Four's Moon. The article itself is harder to imagine, though. She can't picture Moon ever sitting still long enough to get through an entire interview.
Even after all this time Lillie still can't shake the strangeness of looking at that powerful creature and knowing it's her Nebby, that the helpless little shaking thing she rescued from her mother's grasp has grown to become Alola's legendary protector.
There's something almost absurd about it. Solgaleo is larger than life, a creature of myth and legend. It's the sort of being that heroes and kings and powerful trainers get to meet, and Lillie… Lillie is none of those. She never meant to get herself involved in something so huge as the fate of Alola; she just couldn't stand to see an innocent being suffer.
Still. Lillie's glad she did. She got to watch Nebby grow up happy and free, see things she'd never dreamed of in a thousand years, and help give her mother a second chance.
(She got to meet Moon, thanks to what she did, and that's… that's enough. Even if nothing else good had ever happened to her after she left Aether Paradise, that would have been enough.)
Lillie turns the last picture over, smiling softly. It's the calmest she's felt since she boarded the ship to Kanto. Just seeing Nebby and Moon together grounds her. There's no one else she'd trust to take care of Nebby than Moon, and no one else she'd trust to guard Moon than Nebby.
Moon's last message is the shortest of them all, just two short sentences scribbled on the back. The writing isn't nearly as clear—Moon's penmanship gets awfully messy whenever she's in a hurry—but it's still unmistakeably her words.
It must be the last one she wrote. Lillie can't help but wonder how close she cut it, whether she was rushing to the post office to be able to send her letter off with the rest.
The words are simple enough: Nebby misses you, it says, and then under that, as if added hastily, So do I.
There's one more line added right at the bottom, not a word but a symbol—a tiny little heart, drawn in red ink. Lillie runs her thumb over it and feels as if her own heart might burst.
She stands up so abruptly she almost sends the stack of pictures flying across the room; it's only quick reflexes borne of constantly zipping a duffel bag shut that lets her catch them in time. She darts into the bathroom and peeks through the other door just long enough to catch her mother's attention.
“Mother,” she says, “stay here, okay? I'll be back soon.”
The look Mother gives her in response actually seems a bit puzzled—it's more emotion than she's gotten out of her in days—but Lillie can't dwell on that because she's already running back to her own room and slipping her shoes on.
Lieutenant Surge is a kind man. He'll surely answer a few questions about the city if she asks him. She needs to find somewhere to buy paper, and then she needs to find the post office.
She'll write back to all of them, of course. A message for every person who cared enough to send her one. It doesn't feel like nearly enough, but she supposes there's no way to properly thank someone for remembering that you exist. (For properly caring.)
Moon's letter, though… that one will have to be special. Perhaps she'll buy a disposable camera and take some shots of Kanto while she's here, give Moon a picture of her own home in return. Perhaps she'll have the courage to write what she feels on the back of one of those photos.
I miss you too, Lillie thinks, but I'll be home soon. I promise.