ion-deluge

Characters: Luna Chatelain Word Count: 228

She is no stranger to blood. Staining her clothes, staining her skin, it’s all familiar; she’s walked away from more than a few scrapes that had left her bloodied and bruised. Still, she’s never known it like this—she understands blood spilled, a fight won or lost. For fun or simple self-defense.

This is something else entirely. This is death, and it’s entirely bloodless for all its violence, and she doesn’t know what to do with that.

There’s no mark on her clothes, on her skin, beyond the scratches and scrapes of her own recklessness. But when she catches her reflection in something that glitters, she can see it, soaking her through.

She is untouched, and yet she is drenched in that invisible blood, burdened so heavily by the weight of a death she blames herself for. 

Characters: Luna Chatelain, Sol Chatelain Word Count: 172 When they’ve searched every aisle of every shop twice, Sol finally speaks up. “What are you even looking for?”

“I was thinking,” Luna shrugs, “I might want a pair of gloves.” 

She doesn’t need to turn around to know the look he’s giving her (an even mix of annoyance and concern), and in that moment she wishes someone else—anyone else—was here with her. They wouldn’t see it as anything more than wanting to imitate one of her idols, but Sol—well, he’s always had a habit of reading too much into things.

(And, more often than not, being at least a little bit right. Not that she's going to tell him.)

“It’s not your fault,” he sighs, exasperated. “So why are you trying to hide?”

She turns around to meet his eyes. “I’m not.”

She isn’t, not really. She’s trying to cover the blood she sees when she looks at her own two hands, trying to make sure no one else ever will, but she’s not trying to hide.

Characters: Stella Gray, N Harmonia Word Count: 509 Prompt: First Date

He’s not sure what to make of her. Her companion seems to like her and it’s almost magnetic, the way she draws him in each time their paths cross. Something that feels strange is the way she looks at him: not up like his subjects, or down like his father. Well, she is looking up—she’s honestly rather short—but the point of it is that she doesn’t seem to expect anything of him.

She simply takes his hand and tugs him along with a laugh and a smile. They’re in Nimbasa, another chance encounter, and she leads him to the amusement park—in the distance, he catches sight of a ferris wheel.

There’s a wide range of attractions, though, and she stops at a row of game booths. There’s something in her smile, he thinks, that wasn’t there the last time they met—what it is, he isn’t sure. 

She winks, and he’s not sure what it’s supposed to mean. Before he can ask, she spins around to face one of the vendors, exchanging some money for a set of darts. “Hey, N! Watch this!”

He does, watching with interest as she shifts her stance, looking from the darts in her hand to her targets. After a moment's consideration she throws the first one and the sound of a pop can be heard, followed by another. Somehow she’s taken out two balloons with just the first dart.

Admittedly he doesn’t know much about these games; the rides and their mechanics have always been more a point of interest. But he keeps watching as she throws the second and the third, neither as impressive a shot as the first but still seemingly respectable.

With a proud smile, she selects her prize: a chain necklace with a silver triangle charm, which she carefully places around his neck. It's almost ceremonial, as if the object is meant to be treasured. 

After a moment’s thought, he follows in her steps; taking in his hand a set of darts. His throws are precise, practiced, but that’s not important. The attendant asks him what he would like for his prize.

He picks a shimmering hairpin in the shape of a star and hands it to her; which she puts on without hesitation.

Suddenly, she takes his hand again, tugging him toward the vendors selling food that’s more sugar than anything else. The cotton candy she hands him is far too sweet, but he’s smiling anyway as she takes her caramel apple; which seems like it’s been dipped in about twenty things that aren’t caramel, but she seems happy with it.

She looks to him, a serious expression he hasn’t seen before on her face. “Are you having fun?”

“This is nice.”

And her smile is back, as if it never left. “That’s good! Is there anything you want to do here? I guess this isn’t as much your thing as it is mine, huh…”

“Actually, there is one thing.”

“What is it?”

Characters: Stella Gray Word Count: 395

The night sky is a constant in her travels, a beautiful array of distant stars. The constellations change with the time and place, but the stars remain; not quite static, but echoes of what was once there.

(She is familiar with echoes. Her own voice sounding back to her in the caves, the distant memory of her hand in his and his lips on her skin.)

(In the end, it's all the same.)

(You see, not every ghost is dead; and she is well and truly haunted.)

~

She wears her heart on her sleeve, as she always has; and each morning she ties her hair back and clips the little plastic star into its place.

She’s looking for someone, she tells those who are sympathetic to her plight; and her voice hesitates each time, before settling on the closest word she has: a friend. A rival in some ways, an enemy in others, but always a friend.

Some have seen him just days before; most have not. She thanks them for their time, offers up one of the thousand trinkets she’s found over her travels - little novelty things, mostly, plastic whistles and small glass marbles; a gift is only worth the thought behind it, after all, and she’s only ever wanted to brighten someone’s day - and then she moves on to the next.

(“We’re all looking for something, I think,” she says to one girl with a story to tell over a cup of coffee. She’s in no rush these days, happy to spend time making strangers into friends. “It’s really just about knowing what that something is.”)

She takes pictures and keepsakes, a physical representation of memories made in each new place; any time she sees something especially pretty, or that she wants to tell him about. She sends some of those pictures home too, promising a wealth of stories to tell.

~

If soulmates exist, she doesn’t know. What she does know is that they are halves of a whole, pieces of something greater than themselves. That the space between them feels almost magnetic, and she finds herself drawn to him time and again.

But she wonders, sometimes, if they are meant to be the sun and moon - chasing each other eternally, their paths only ever crossing for a fleeting moment.

I honestly forgot I made this blog; so I’ve built up kind of a backlog of stuff to post here. This blog is mostly just an archive for myself, but some of the pieces require further exposition (mostly in case I forget the context myself, which has happened before), so... The following takes place in an AU where the confrontation with Lusamine in Sun and Moon was more direct and the consequences more dire. Different series will have different tags from this point on so I can group them together more easily.

~

It’s four in the morning, the day after what’s been dubbed (at least within the Aether Foundation) the Ultra Space Incident. Luna is seated at the kitchen table with a bowl of cookie dough ice cream coated thoroughly in chocolate syrup, staring silently at the wall.

“Maybe you should eat something else…?” Sol ventures. He’s already searching the pantry when she glances at him.

“Maybe you should shut up and mind your own damn business,” she mutters, but the usual fight is gone from her voice tonight. She’s tired, more emotionally than physically, but she doesn’t want to be. “...You know I never wanted any of this, right?”

He manages a wry smile. “Yeah. You’ve made it kind of hard to miss.”

“I… I think I killed her.”

The metal pan in his hand drops to the floor. “I… What?”

“Lusamine. I think I killed her.”

A few moments later, the seat on the other side of the table isn’t empty; and she’s staring at her brother instead of the wall. He’s clearly concerned, because he’s the kind of person that worries. She looks away, unable to take it.

“What happened out there?”

Arceus above, he sounds so concerned and so calm at the same time. He knows when he needs to be nice, and she hates it.

(She hates it because she knows she needs it.)

“She was… She was trying to hurt us. I was defending myself, but nothing would stick… And I think that eventually it was too much. I went too far, I...”

She recounts her newfound darkest secret in all its gory detail, because even as she swears she’ll take it to her grave she can’t keep it completely to herself.

(He’s always been the more trustworthy one between the two of them, anyway.)

A plate slides in front of her, replacing the long-empty ice cream bowl, and she realizes he’s been cooking the whole time. She’s pretty sure she recognizes it. Kind of. “Curry?”

He grins, always happy to talk about his cooking. “A sort of spicy apple curry. Apparently it’s quite popular in Galar these days.”

“Sounds like a weird combination,” she muses, prodding at what she now knows to be an apple slice with her spoon. It can’t hurt to try it, anyway. “...Not bad.”

“It turned out alright,” he shrugs, but he’s smiling all the same.

Characters: N Harmonia, Stella Gray Word Count: 1,071 Themes Used: Starting Over; Ferris Wheel/Reunited

I wound up liking this entire piece more than I expected. I also forgot to use their names in the first draft, which wound up leading to the sort of... I guess it’s a bit of a different narration style than I usually use? But this is the first piece of writing I’ve published here, so there’s nothing to compare it to just yet.

~ She sits on her favorite bench and watches as the sun sets, lost in her own memories. She’s trying to move past it, really, but she just can’t seem to. Something started here, something special - because this is where it started, really, everything before that was nothing more than the prologue - and she doesn’t want to just forget.

The sun is slowly sinking below the skyline. She’s so distracted by her thoughts that it’s a distant sort of realization, but it’s still pretty. There’s a pencil in her hand and a blank page in her lap, absently sketching out the world as she sees it. With her attention split two ways - well, mostly one - she almost doesn’t register the voice asking, “Are you waiting for someone?”

Is she? It’s been a long time, and even as she’s trying to move on from it all - to move on from the memories of someone in particular - she’s not quite sure. “Yes - or, no? Or… I was, anyway.”

“I see,” says the stranger, and suddenly the other half of the bench is no longer unoccupied. She looks up, just a little bit curious about the first person to approach her that day, and there’s a split second where her heart just stops.

Because he’s here, when she was starting to believe he never would be again, and he’s looking at her with that quiet curiosity he’s had since the day they first met. Like she’s an anomaly of some kind - and maybe she is, but it’s not any less strange for being true.

He nods slowly, thinking quietly for a few short moments - though they feel like an eternity from her perspective, every second of silence drawing itself out - before he speaks again. “You were, then… But you couldn’t keep waiting.”

Now that she knows who she’s talking to, his voice is familiar. It’s changed a little - she’s sure that hers has, too - but it’s still recognizable. She doesn’t stop to dwell on his tone, to consider any deeper meaning; she’s lost in the fact that he’s here at all.

After a moment, she realizes that his words are a statement, rather than a question. More pressing, though, is that they’re wrong. “I thought you were supposed to be smart,” she tells him, pocketing her sketchbook and pencil before crossing her arms.

There’s a silence, and then: “I’m not sure I follow.”

In her mind, it’s all very poetic; together they make up a beautiful romantic tragedy. But even as well as she knows their story, she’s not yet sure how to do it justice. She’s found that castles and kings and the fairy tale she lived through are beyond her reach, even still.

“I can’t stop waiting for you,” she says, because she can’t put the rest into words just yet. For now, it’s simple and honest, and it feels right. “Trust me, I’ve tried. I could… I could wait forever, if I was waiting for you.” It’s a romantic sort of declaration - the very thought she was struggling to voice moments earlier - but there’s nothing romantic and everything tragic about the way she says it. Her voice sounds so soft and fragile, even to herself. As if she’s something made of glass, dropped and shattered and glued haphazardly back together. “Please don’t make me wait forever...”

She wonders if he knows the weight of her words, the weight of this moment. Wonders if he knows that he holds her broken-glass heart in his hands, the very same that she spent so long trying to repair when he left.

“I’m sorry.” He’s always talked fast, for as long as she’s known him (which isn’t all that long in the grand scheme of things, but certainly long enough to learn), but she’s found that his movements tend to be slow and cautious - the same is true as his hand settles over hers. “I’m not sure if it’s any consolation to you... I plan to stay, this time.”

She doesn’t say anything at first, instead moving so that her arms are wound tightly around him. “I missed you,” she whispers after a moment.

When he speaks again, there’s a hint of amusement to his tone. “...It seems we have an audience.”

“Oh. Sorry,” she mumbles, letting go and turning to look. It’s a small group of people, but a pointed enough reminder that she’d forgotten where they were. Neither are strangers to being the center of attention, but this is something she thinks they’d like to keep to themselves. She catches a hint of his smile, though, and decides that maybe it’s not such a bad thing after all.

He stands and takes her hand without another word, leading her toward the ferris wheel. She thinks that maybe it’s a parallel, or coming full circle, or something poetic like that. Once they’re seated across from each other, she looks out the window. She half-expects a speech of some kind, but tonight he keeps his silence.

(Well, it’s not like the speech had gone over all that well the first time. The thing about mistakes is that we learn from them, isn’t it?)

They rise higher and higher, and she catches sight of the sea of red-orange trees that lie outside the city. “It was spring, the first time we were here,” she muses, barely aware that she’s speaking out loud. “Spring is a beginning. The start of something. Autumn is change. I understand spring, but...” She looks away from the window to meet his gaze. “I’m still trying to understand autumn. I’m still trying to understand this. You understand that, don’t you?”

The words come out messier than she ever intended. Still, there’s a faint but present smile on his face when he answers. “I believe I do, yes. You could say the same for me, in that case - that I’m still trying to understand a lot of things.”

She hesitates, and she almost doesn’t say anything at all - but she already knows that to change things you have to take chances. “Then… Let’s try to understand, together.”