Harmonia | Pokémon Fanfiction

12 | Come Sail Away

Music in media: Come Sail Away by Styx

12 January, Wednesday, 3:45 p.m. | Winter

Framed by a window's shadow, Rae awoke to sunshine in snow in a cabin. She felt the bed rock with the waves and got up with a bout of panic.

"You look pale," said a dulcet voice. It belonged to a woman with shoulder-length brown hair, almond-shaped eyes. She sat by the door on a wheelchair. Rae figured she must be another passenger aboard the ship bound for Castelia City, a fact the woman affirmed with a cruise ticket. "Come, let me help you." She reached out to Rae and helped her out of bed. "O heavens, you're shivering. Your clothes aren't built for this climate." She then wrapped her Bouffalant leather jacket over Rae who muttered a word of thanks.

"Are we safe here?" Rae asked.

The woman nodded, then turned her chin to the door. "It's locked."

Based on her accent, it seemed this woman wasn't a local either. She was Calliope, she said, a mother separated from her son, Linus, and her Deerling, Otis. Rae realised then that she didn't have her Pokémon with her as well. In that instance she recalled seeing the Shadow Triad on the ship a moment before surrendering to sleep. Raising her voice, she declared they were the ones behind this and hoped they didn't hurt any Pokémon they took. But what could be their motive? She put the question at the further end of her mind. She had to focus on getting out of this cabin first.

"How do we get out without a key? Or a Pokémon?" She voiced her concerns.

A Purrloin-like grin snuck onto Calliope's face. "Have you ever picked a lock?" When Rae shook her head, the woman added, "I understand. It's a nifty skill to have. Find me something long and thin, will you?"

Rae studied the lock. It was spherical with a hole in the middle. It was the kind of lock she never once came across. She supposed she had to stick something in to unlock it somehow. It couldn't be that simple, could it? Calliope told her it was a privacy lock. How very secure then.

Rae held the thought captive as she rummaged the cabin while feeling Calliope's eyes seared into her whenever she opened a drawer of the bedside dresser (there were four in total, all empty) or looked behind a poster (unfortunately these were blu-tacked to the wall and she could find no nail) or swept her hand underneath the bed only to collect dust. If Chilchil were here, it'd be great. His propensity for picking up shiny things would come in handy. Tabutabu's enhanced hearing would inform her of any item in the vicinity which would roll left and right in syncopation with the rocking ship. Noko-Noko was huggable fluff. Her presence would be comfort embodied.

Rae's most interesting find was a quote scribbled in the insides of the lampshade: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." She wondered if Calliope was familiar with it because she sure wasn't, and the woman told her it was the final line to a famous book published in Unova a century ago. Calliope interpreted it to mean it was futile to try to escape the past, because all our efforts in moving on, in forging ahead, would only take us back.

"It's a cycle, really," Calliope said with a tiny laugh. "The past and the future are bound to each other like this. We call this pitiable state of theirs the present."

Calliope was quick to recall her cynic mirth with a hand to her mouth. In doing so, she found a viable way out stuck on the ceiling.

"Do you think you could reach that?" She tilted her chin towards a thin red tube, quite like a portion of a blood vessel, above them and made a circular motion with a finger. "An unbroken glow stick. I wonder how it got there."

Rae hopped onto the bed, but she merely scraped air. She needed to be higher. She tried tiptoeing, but the constant lurching of the ship made maintaining equilibrium a tricky business. She switched to jumping, but the more she jumped, the further her hand was from the glow stick. It was as if the item was resisting chemiluminescence out of fear of being cracked, being broken. Then at last she snatched the lampshade and swatted it about till it slapped the glow stick off the ceiling, along with a short sticky tape.