Chapter 29: Three Days
The next morning I exchanged polite conversation with Dawn- trying to erase my mistake and theatrical performance from the prior night. It was no easy feat and kept returning to the forefront of my mind. Dawn pretended like it had never happened, which eased my slight anxiousness.
"Is anyone I know competing?" I asked, picking at the fruit Dawn had handed me.
"Zoey is." Dawn paused. "And Kenny."
So Kenny had moped into town like the stray puppy he was. I frowned. "Why is he here?"
"He's trying to collect five ribbons from Hoenn, Paul. It's just a coincidence." Dawn shrugged, looking at her collection of Contest Seals.
"I think he smelled you out somehow. You need to stop wearing perfume." I wrinkled my nose and one side of my mouth quirked up.
Dawn grinned back. "You talk about him like he's an animal."
"Aren't all men?" I questioned politely.
"No, you're..." Dawn trailed off and blushed.
I let the moment pass without teasing, yet again being nicer than normal, until she said, "And I don't wear perfume."
"You don't?" I leaned toward her. "You smell like you do."
She gave me a curious, disbelieving look. "Think I smell eye-watering horrible?"
"Actually, you smell very nice." I stared at her. "Like berries."
Her cheeks that had been fading of color bloomed again. I silently wondered how many times I could get her to blush in a single day. It seemed a simple enough challenge... though why did it intrigue me?
"I have to go train and make sure we have all our Contest moves down," Dawn said quickly. "I'll be back at lunch."
She hurried through the trees, leaving me to my silence. I decided to use the time to train Bagon, though I was distracted. The minutes crawled by and Bagon and I ended up walking through the forest, enjoying the scenery for once instead of training.
Bagon took a couple steps for every stride of my own, looking happy. I commented, "The trees here are decades old and yet they still have such a long life ahead of them to grow. Do you feel like a sapling still, Bagon?"
He shook his head.
"Hmph. I suppose no one ever does."
It was the first time Bagon and I had shared simple time together like this where we weren't training. I learned that he respected nature, never treading on flowers or other small plants as we passed. Every time we passed small cliffs, he would jump on top of them to walk on the ledge, looking at the sky with longing.
"You'll get there."
He nodded to me before we started walking back to camp, a small smile on his face.
Dawn was already there. "Hi, guys. I'm bushed. I actually dozed off when I got back here. Didn't get lunch ready."
"That's fine. I'll get it."
"You can cook?" Dawn's eyes widened.
I rolled mine. "I can make sandwiches."
"Oh... ok."
I prepared the meats and cheese on the bread Dawn had bought, handing her one. She bit into it, looking like her mouth was stuffed full to the brim.
"You look a lot like your Pachirisu when you do that," I commented.
She chewed quickly and swallowed, glancing at her Pachirisu whose cheeks were full of food. She gave a shaky laugh, sounding embarrassed.
We continued eating mostly in silence. Dawn seemed to be concentrating fiercely on her training as she ate. Within a couple minutes, she'd finished two sandwiches and sat looking at the sky, whispering to herself at times about strategy.
As soon as her Pokemon were finished eating, she herded them into the forest.
"Do I always act like that, Bagon?" I asked, disbelieving.
He snorted and nodded.
"That's wonderful to know." I sighed. My Pokemon laughed.
Bagon and I continued training, but I didn't go far from camp when we decided to even leave at all. Dawn would always burst into our training sessions, yelling questions like, "What kind of energy is Shadow Ball made up of, anyway!?", "Would you take an offensive or defensive position after Drill Peck?", or "How did you teach your Pokemon that counter shield that Ash invented? I want to make sure I've got it down perfectly!"
I'd answer her questions, but mostly because she was really scaring me. Every time she came to see me, she seemed wild eyed and capable of murdering me if she wanted to... At least in my sleep.
I decided to answer her questions, no matter how silly or random they seemed, hoping that her sanity wasn't about to take a dive off the deep end.
"Blue or purple?" she blurted out the second night.
"Uh, blue?" I put down my container of pasta and looked her in the eyes. One twitched. "What do you need to know that for?"
"I'm picking out Seals." She rushed to her backpack and pulling out a small pack of sticker-like things. "You put them on your Poke Ball and different effects are added as my Pokemon pop out."
I decided to not comment.
"What about my hair? Do you think I should put it up or leave it down?"
I almost said "down" without thinking before stopping myself and screaming an arsenal of colorful swear words in my head for even almost answering her question before replying, "Dawn, I think you have to calm down."
Her head turned slowly toward me and I felt my spine shiver and all my muscles tense as I took in her look of horror. "What did you just say?"
Swallowing the instinct to set Bagon on her or just right out run away (which I simply refused to do) I scooted closer to her and laid one of my hands over hers. The touch was supposed to at least comfort her, but it took every ounce of my self control not to grimace at the contact. Especially when she looked at me as if I'd threaten to kill every person she knew. "Dawn, you've been training really hard. Stop worrying about the Contest or else you'll drive the both of us crazy."
I smiled a bit at the end, hoping that my small attempt at humor (but really, I could see us both needing therapy by Saturday if this continued) would somehow placate her hyper state of stress.
She flinched from my contact at first and then death gripped my hand, surprising me yet again with her strength. "Thanks, Paul. I needed to hear that. I'm really nervous."
"Why?" I asked. It's not like this was her first Contest, or even her first Contest in Hoenn. She'd told me, in excruciating detail, about the one her and Kenny had competed at in Rustburo City.
"I just want to prove to everyone that I'm better than I used to be and that I'm ready to win."
I stared at our camp fire, watching the flames dance as she talked.
"I haven't really been this sure of myself in a long time," she whispered. "And I want people to see that. Even if I don't win."
"Don't even doubt yourself for a second or you will lose. And I'm sure people will see exactly what you want them to."
Dawn smiled. I remembered that she was still holding my hand and shook her loose, moving a couple feet away from her. She didn't seem to mind and I put my hands in my jacket pockets and stared straight ahead, unnerved at how I'd reacted to comfort her.