A New Dream

You're It!: Dawn's POV

By the time we found our way out of the desert both our Mudsdale were nowhere to be found. It took almost an entire day of traveling to get out of the mountain pass and we decided to make camp for a few days outside of Tapu Village. Paul and I fell back into our normal routine and all of our pokemon had been excited to see Mirageon in her new form. 

Now that she was evolved, Mirageon had no fear of Metang and actually found great delight in sneaking off from our practices and pouncing on top of his head while he was training with Paul. To my surprise, Paul actually seemed to like the surprise attacks and would use them to help train Metang in his focus and reaction time.

On Paul's suggestion, I had started teaching Mirageon Shadow Ball while he was teaching Metang Meteor Mash. Every evening when Paul would stop his training to teach me something from his miniature library that he had I would try hard to pay attention and not think of how much I wanted to tell him how I felt. During the battle portion of our training though usually my feelings would cool and I would be contemplating how many ways I could punch his smug face after he beat me in a battle.

"Tomorrow we should head to Tapu Village and look for the trial captain," Paul announced after dinner and I shrugged, since I was still chewing my bite of spicy potato casserole I had made for dinner.

"I'm running a little low on some supplies, so going into town would be nice," I replied after swallowing and he nodded. 

His brow furrowed suddenly and he reached for his backpack, pulling out the wrapped box I shoved at him before running away a few days ago.

"What is this, by the way?" he asked, looking at it suspiciously and I felt my cheeks begin to heat up.

"What does it look like? It's a present," I mumbled while looking over at where all of our pokemon were eating together peacefully.

"Why?" Paul asked, his eyes widening with disbelief. The look was so innocent and cute that I had to bite down on my tongue to keep myself from laughing.

"You helped me choose an outfit, so I thought I'd get you a super belated birthday present," I said with a shrug and Paul frowned.

"I didn't even buy you anything. I just sat there," he argued and I rolled my eyes.

"Yes, but you didn't really want to be there did you?" I pointed out and he opened then closed his mouth, obviously not able to argue against that. "You did something nice for me so I wanted to do something for you. But you never ask me to do anything, so I figured I would buy you something." 

Paul looked at the gift in his hands and turned it end over end.

"You know you don't owe me anything, Dawn," Paul said firmly and I rolled my eyes, setting my bowl of food to the side and stretching out my legs.

"I didn't get you a present because I felt like I owed you. Although I do feel that way," I said, narrowing my eyes at him and making his scoff. "I bought that for you because I wanted to. And I already removed the tag so it can't be returned." 

Paul glared at me for a few seconds before a breathy laugh escaped him and he smiled, looking down at the box with amusement. The unguarded expression made my heartbeat quicken slightly and I quickly looked down at my knees.

"Fine. Should I open it then?" he asked and I shrugged.

"That's usually the point of wrapping something," I said sarcastically and ducked as Paul tossed a piece of potato at me. "Hey! Don't waste food!" I chided with a laugh and he chuckled a little under his breath.

As Paul unwrapped and opened the box I suddenly felt nervous, wondering if he would actually like what I chose for him. After opening the box he reached in and lifted the thin, somewhat slippery blue and black shirt out of the box. The sleeves of the shirt were black and long enough to reach the middle of his upper arm and it had a thin black hood with short drawstrings to tighten it if desired. The front of the shirt was mainly blue but as the blue color spread from the middle of the shirt splatters of black mixed in until it was completely black on the side and back of the shirt. The material was airy and light and as Paul held it up there were no wrinkles in the material, even though I had folded it fairly small to fit in the box