A New Dream

Conflicted Feelings: Paul's POV

 Dawn was taking a lot longer than normal to come back out of the prep tent and I felt an amused grin spread across my face as I recalled her spiky, glittering hair. As soon as I had gotten to her she'd already pulled it into a braid but seeing it up close in its glittering glory had been too much for me to handle. Her obvious misery made me want to mess with her a little bit, but in the back of my mind, I was really just relieved that she hadn't suffered any permanent damage from being on Arcanine when he used Wild Charge.

Traavi walked out of the prep tent and was immediately surrounded by a crowd of girls. I was about to look away when Traavi raised his head and glared over at me. Furrowing my brow I felt myself return his glare, wondering what had gotten into him. A brief feeling of jealousy gripped me as I realized that Traavi had probably been talking to Dawn inside the tent. He turned his back on me and walked away, trailing girls behind him like a Swanna with her Ducklett's and I shoved aside the ridiculous jealousy.

When Dawn finally came out her makeup was gone and she had tamed her hair, but it was still sparkling as if a star had exploded and gotten trapped in every strand. It's actually kind of pretty, I thought, and then immediately pinched myself. Those kinds of thoughts are not welcome, I told myself firmly as she scanned the crowd and smiled when she saw me. Most of the crowd had already left by now so she made her way over to me with relative ease.

"Lana is going to give us our petals at the PokeCenter in a little bit," Dawn said as a greeting.

I nodded, relieved that we wouldn't have to go back to Brooklet Hill to find the thieving midget. We walked to the Pokemon Center together and as we got close a familiar girl with blue hair burst out of the doors and waved exuberantly at us.

"Daaaawwnnnnn! Paaauuuullll! Over heeerrreee!" she called as if we were miles away and I felt my jaw tighten with annoyance. 

This girl is crazy, I thought as she rushed over to us and began to rock on her feet.

"Hey Lana. Thank you for getting the petals so quickly," Dawn said and Lana grinned in a self-satisfied way.

"You're welcome! Here they are." Lana held up two small glass vials with a long blue petal in the center. I took mine cautiously, watching her with narrowed eyes to make sure she didn't try to attach herself to my arm again.

"How has your island challenge been going?" she asked happily and Dawn explained some of the highlights. Before they could get too into it I nudged Dawn's arm with my elbow and she looked up at me with surprise.

"We need to get going now," I said and then frowned as Lana gave me a knowing smile.

"You two are a 'we' now? I thought you said you weren't dating?" she said teasingly and I glared down at the infuriating midget, wondering if I had ever disliked someone more.

"Paul is teaching me how to be a better trainer," Dawn explained and I told myself that there was no way I was feeling anything even close to disappointment as she said that.

"Well, then you two have fun being a we," Lana said with obvious pleasure and she skipped away before I could growl at her.

Dawn and I made good time to Lush Jungle, spending the whole day traveling and foregoing training and lessons so that we could get the petals and return to our island challenge as quickly as possible. Luckily when we visited Mallow in the Lush Jungle Kiawe was there too and we were able to get both of their petals. 

The trip to Melemele island was uneventful and we also found Ilima without any issue. It took some fast talking to convince Dawn that we should move on to Ula'ula without seeing Hau and Mrs. Jun, but she eventually agreed. We had been traveling between islands for nearly a week when we left the Hokulani Observatory with Sophocles's small yellow petal in our possession.