Reign of Rain [Pokemon Watty Awards 2015]

Chapter 22

CAITLYN

 

            She sat silently on a wooden bench outside of her sister’s chambers. Absol laid its head silently in Caitlyn’s lap. She tapped her foot anxiously on the stone floor. The air was cold in Mt. Pyre, and it chilled Caitlyn and it made her wait all the more tense.

            Nurses and handmaidens rushed in and out of Susan’s room. At first, the young girl tried to force her way in to see her, but the nurses wouldn’t let her. Eventually, a couple of Chief Specter’s guards showed up to stop her from entering. 

            Finally, Caitlyn saw the head of Chief Specter’s nursemaids emerge from the chamber, her face solemn.

            Caitlyn stood up, jerking Absol to its feet. “What’s happening?” she asked.

            The nurse spoke in a stern voice. “The boy is small, but healthy. He’s resting now.”

            Caitlyn tried to meet the nurse’s gaze. “And Susan? What about my sister?”

            The nurse looked down and softly said, “She’s lost a lot of blood.”

            The young Princess of Foretree’s heart stopped for a split second. All the stories flooded back to her. Ever since Caitlyn was little, she wondered why she had no mother. Eventually, it had been Susan who had broken the news.

            “Our mother is in a better place,” Susan told her.

            Caitlyn couldn’t have been more than five or six at the time. “Where is she? Why did she go?” she remembered asking.

            “She cared so very much about you, that she sacrificed herself so that we would get to meet you.”

            For a while, Caitlyn puzzled at that. It wasn’t until she was older that she learned that there had been complications when she was being born. To hear Bessie, her father’s head nurse tell it, Lyanna Forrest had lost too much blood before a fever took hold of her and killed her within a matter of days.

            Caitlyn felt tears welling in her eyes. Somehow, this was her fault, just like Mother had been. I can’t let it happen again, she told herself. “Make her better,” she told the nurse.

            “I… We’re doing the best we can,” she said. “Chief Specter said we aren’t to sleep until his lady wife has come back to health.”

            Caitlyn ran up to the nurse. The older woman was still a good half of a foot taller than her. The young girl grabbed the nurse’s garments and began to shake the woman in rage. “It’s your job! Promise me you’ll make her better! Promise me!”

            She felt herself get pulled back and fell onto the stone floor. She looked up at Absol, who had torn her away from the nurse. The lady looked at her with revulsion in her eyes, turned, and entered the room again.

            “I’m in pain too, girl,” came a voice from behind her. Caitlyn turned her head, and there was Chief Specter, her sister’s husband. She almost didn’t see his Dusknoir levitating behind him in the shadows of the torchlight. His belly was big and round as ever, and in his arms, he carried a grey egg.

            For an instant, Caitlyn wanted to cry, to share her pain with somebody. Fury took hold of her instead, and she rushed at Chief Specter. This time, Absol bit into her sleeve just in time, as in an instant Dusknoir materialized in front of its Spirit Partner with a menacing look in its eye.