Shadow
The story of a timid Dratini, caught as a Game Corner prize, who finds the perfect human trainer and, to his great distress, falls in love with her.

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Thumbnail art by kenket, used with permission
My apologies for the large delay—a lot of unexpected real-life events have interposed themselves between my time and this. Possibly the next will be just as delayed or more, but I hope I'll find the chance.

—

Part II

Level 35

It was, as one said, a moral justice. For he wanted to be alone with Runa; and now she would leave him behind.

That or he was being quite conceited, unable even for an instant to think outside himself. But at night—this night in particular—lying out in the air on the shore after Runa went to bed without reading, only kissed him like the others without holding his tail beside her, having so much else on her mind, often it seemed if he did not keep watch all night she would get up and, as if to join her morning constitutional, only fly away on Gaia into the horizon—he waking up alone on an empty beach. Which was nonsense, of course, he knew—and it didn’t help Runa, his losing sleep—but there it was, every time she forgot to hold him, as she did tonight, worrying about her family.

—You’ll get a good rest in Saffron City. You’ll have a bed just for you and Gaia.

Things had been going well, insofar as he hadn’t yet destroyed himself. Taking the Golden Coast from Olivine to Goldenrod occupied him enough in training to keep a distance in the day from Runa for all of summer—enough training to distract. It was easier now that Tanwen evolved, now that she relaxed enormously. She still pressed about trying for the next year’s championship—Manda’s team would be defending their title in Silver Town in just a month, and yet they were taking time to meet them—about needing to win six badges in a year. Runa said they needn’t decide on the tournament yet, but that they would train continually to keep it open. Didn’t Manda spend six years in training before she entered the championship? Over a thousand battles without one loss, he thought, without either of her top two fainting, because Manda was calm and patient.

—They’re slacks. (Dyna said Tanwen’s ego evolved twice as a Typhlosion.) I’d have got it years ago. (She was only sore, Gaia said, that she had already fainted in battle, unlike a certain pair of Dragonair.)

He found by training speed—always moving about, always at a stretch to exercise (though still his thickness remained, still nothing affected that)—Runa wouldn’t mind his being apart. The trick was to put in enough time that when it came to camp, once they ate and Runa settled by her lamp to read for an hour, he was exhausted enough that he could lie near and his passions would not affect him—a balancing act which, he felt, was rather like navigating a tunnel in ice hardly wider than himself, having to match every turn for the whole length of his body lest he touch the sides. To succeed in the acrobatic feat of being as close to Runa as possible without actually prompting her to touch or, in that case, without slipping into agonies of heat, was so far as a psychic may see it his entire living dream. When the sun set late and the air was warm, she often slept outside the bag; sometimes she laid her hand by his nose—how he swam all night! barely got a wink, suffered a fatigue the next day that made Runa think he pressed himself too hard, that he ought to take a break; and then some nights, more so lately (she didn’t know it fed his sickness, his abuse of her company), as she stayed up to read, as she expected him to come over, he would come and, like that, she wrapped her arm around him, only held him as she read. (It was nothing like a Dratini.) And just last morning—this very day!—this morning he felt a strange pressure, the warmth of her hair, a single strand of which affected him now, a deep spreading heat as he saw and understood: Runa fell asleep with her whole head on his middle.

—Oh … I’m sorry, Shadow. (He couldn’t help it; she woke as he moved.) I fell asleep on you.

That was quite enough to set off wild fantasies of flying off with her, finding, of course, that she was quite as much in love with him and then more, humans being greater both in feeling and self-control. So they would find a hollow or cave, some place of warm shelter from storms of ice or water, where for her benefit (so his sickness always took time to present, not a monster of course, allow this flight) he would wrap as close as possible, press the ball of his neck to warm her and rest his head on her shoulder, and, breathing through her hair until his own breath, until every part of him felt saturated with Runa, kiss her from shoulder to neck to cheek, following her own direction. So he spent a whole day in the most wretched condition, racing in circles through the trees until Gaia came and asked what bothered him, and he said (the one excuse that always succeeded, presenting another neurosis) he only wanted to be fitter for Runa, that he was useless and fat. Yet didn’t this prove he was tolerable?—not, of course, to suggest he was harmless, Torus knowing after all what he imagined, but wasn’t it better, deliberately keeping away? Perhaps, he thought, looking across the sea (there was the light of a ship on the water), it only proved he was mad, had gone mad—what was it?—eight months ago in the Corner, and only didn’t know it because, when you were mad, they said, you thought you were the only sane one.

At any rate returning with Gaia for the evening meal—it was a moral justice—they saw Runa speaking earnestly on her phone, and somehow he knew at once she wouldn’t see him that night. Their plans were changed, she told them: they were done with beaches. (Tanwen sat up.) Everything came in a rush: In the morning they would fly to Goldenrod; take the Magnet Train that same day and arrive in Saffron City before sunset; leave Torus with Bill, the legendary Pokémaniac; buy a Fire Stone; meet Manda. There was a great opportunity, Runa said, that she wouldn’t yet raise their hopes with by explaining but which required that she see her parents in Celadon City—leaving them all in Saffron for the day. He hardly saw her so excited, so anxious! And they would meet more of the family, she said, Manda’s Pokémon, and they would make good friends and be thought very well, and there was no need to feel intimidated, she said, or to worry, just because Manda’s Pokémon were the champions.

But why, he thought (placing himself above everyone, he knew), if things were well enough already and all was growing steadily, why was she happy just to fly off and meet them, those who dismissed her philosophy, who after all thought more of her sister? And why must they stay in Saffron City, as she went off at once to Celadon? She would be apart from them for a whole night and day, in another city without them.

—There’s no point in everyone coming. Saffron’s much more interesting! Torus will meet me there so everyone else can just relax at the hotel. You’ll have fun—I promise!

So it was rotten conceit, but he could not put down the thought that he was somehow responsible, that if not for his disquiet, his avoiding her in the day, she would think more of her success; and then she would not be so excited to go. That was proof, he thought, that he didn’t deserve to touch her hand. They would arrive in Saffron City around sunset; he would go right to bed and not leave until she returned.

—

Kanto looked not much different to Johto, he thought, by sight of the countryside, of the sea, high above in the Magnet Train. Perhaps his fixation on humans and their work only blinded him; as the others pressed against the glass, as they saw the forests and fields and mountains passing, he looked, and all he saw was land and sea. But the track, the train, products of human invention and engineering, moving, Runa said, almost as fast as a Dragonite in flight, yet so smooth they actually mixed poffins two cars down—that was a thing! Dyna understood: she was giddy the moment they entered the Golden Tower, the shining train terminal raised high above Goldenrod, the line curling away in both directions.

—It’s just, you know, I saw it whizzing by every day but I never thought I’d get to ride it! Look—it’s coming up!

She had pointed at everything as they passed Route 32: that river, that field where lived some tedious Ampharos who made living a chore, always going on about how the Flaaffy must be models for the Mareep, and so how she looked up at the track and imagined … Then it was gone, out of view. She went on a while longer, recounted how she used to spend the winter scrabbling about for weeds in the snow, nothing like the one on the cape before Runa reached Goldenrod, drinking hot chocolate every day. Then as the train passed into the tunnel that skirted all the way past Victory Road, she stopped; seemed to think it was a boring subject and, touching Runa’s leg, intimated that she wanted a juice.

—O, Rita said.

She said that several times on the way, he noticed. She had her Fire Stone at last: she had become a beautiful Ninetales. (She always said she wanted to evolve at some auspicious location, and seeing the grandeur of the Goldenrod Department Store, it happened she didn’t wait long.) All sense of what happened around her then seemed to vanish in transit; some swell of powers, he thought, reinforced her calm, and nothing whatever affected her now. Would she battle? Perhaps she would; for the moment she seemed content only to repose and forget mischief. She did not even flare up when Dyna touched her tail, only looked with her red eyes and put her head down again. Somehow that bothered Dyna; she wished they had brought Torus.

Runa had a book but didn’t read for most of the trip. As he came near she put the book away and stroked him. —I was just thinking, she said. Everyone’s evolving already. And when you— But she didn’t finish, only left for the shop. Gaia said not to dwell on it.

—She means when we’re both evolved and carrying the team. It just sounds bad to say.

The train stopped so that a bird tamer could clear a flock of Spearow from the track; after a few minutes Dyna rattled at the bars and Tanwen said to be less of a pest. Over the forest and sea, the white lanes of Cycling Road were just visible over the water. Let them flock, he thought—let it last a month! If the cars were stocked, if Runa had books to read, he wouldn’t mind any length waiting. The Pokémon carriage was nearly empty—hardly fit for seats when Gaia was thirteen feet long and he another nineteen inches (it accounted for half his extra weight, Runa said, scaling proportionally). He would lie out along the whole wall, lay his head on her leg, if she liked, for hours.

Or suppose there was an accident, he thought; suppose the train derailed, fell into the forest—the track ruined for miles around, all the others flung far from the wreck, only he and Runa, her only protector, all sorts of predatory Pokémon ready to grab her. Runa had a bump—no pain at all, but she was dizzy, and it wasn’t safe to fly her—and now a storm setting in, preventing any effort to search, they fled into a cave where there was no heat at all but their own. Runa wrapped him tightly. There was no one about, she would say—no one who’d know. There was no reason to hold back any longer: it would be Runa who started it. She would undress her shoulder and——The train started moving again. The driver apologised and said they would be in Saffron City before dark. No, he didn’t want any juice; he turned away, away from Runa.

[chapter continues in next part]