After a long walk through the streets, David could confidently state that Lavender had two kinds of restaurants. The solemn and the loud. These restaurants served different kinds of food. Some designed for takeout so you could eat with your Pokemon, others were modern enough to stand out in this traditional town, but all fit into one of those two categories. Anything with Pokemon involved leaned towards the second type. As David didn’t want to disturb mourners or eat with reminders of lost friends and family surrounding him, he chose a loud restaurant.

  Sleeping Stomach was in a small building, but it had an unusually large yard out back for dinners to eat with their Pokemon on site. It was this benefit, and the signs promising generous prices and meals ‘large enough to put your stomach to sleep’, that caught his eye.

  He ordered a seafood mix, which he presumed was so cheap because it didn’t list what seafood that was, and some kind of berry-seed-grain mix for Cloudburst. Again, Pidgeotto’s food didn’t list what was actually in it, but David figured one mystery meal wouldn’t hurt her. It couldn’t be worse than raw, recently deceased Pokemon after all.

  They found a spot in the yard between a group of men in dark robes who were well on their way through large bottles of alcohol of some kind, and a woman prodding a small pack of Meowth and Vulpix to eat. Cloudburst dug into her meal with a ferocity that worried David.

  Did I just buy her Pokemon fast food? The only other option he could think of was that she was underfed, and that didn’t make him any happier.

  His worries were eased when he took a bite of his own food. The large bowl of rice and fish he’d been handed didn’t look like much. It was clearly a serving of a “whatever’s in the pot” meal. It didn’t taste like it came out of a cafeteria though. The whiter chunks of fish were flaky and absorbed all the flavor from the thin sauce. Thicker Krabby meat was tender and mixed well. He couldn’t identify some of the other chunks, but his curiosity was never punished.

  “Good?” he asked Cloudburst, reaching over to brush some stray fluff from her feathers.

  She paused to let out a short, deep chirp before digging in again.

  “Maybe I should try to get a bag of this kind of seeds,” David mused, plucking a stray seed from the ground, and getting a warning glare from Pidgeotto in return. “It’d store better than the berries, anyway. Health experts always said they were packed full of nutrients back home too.”

  “Dav-?”

  The group of robed men beside him shouted a toast, and he nearly missed the call in the noise.

  Cloudburst's head spun away from her food, for the first time since she started digging in. That was enough for David to react too, following her gaze to the entrance of the restaurant.

  Sarah Belrose looked at them with her eyebrows matted together in hesitant puzzlement. Her half squint made it clear she wasn’t sure if it was them.

  To be fair, David barely recognized her, either. The friendly Rattata trainer from Celadon had undergone a reverse makeover. Her fashionable legging had been swapped for heavy stained overalls. Sarah’s black hair was still curly, but today it was curly like after a storm, not rollers. For all this, she stood more confidently. A Pokemon was prominently displayed at her belt, along with a series of tools that he didn’t recognise.

  “Sarah?”

  Cloudburst didn’t wait for confirmation. She hopped up into the air and unfolded her wings, gliding over the head of a man. The curses leveled at her didn’t slow her down a second, though they did David. By the time he got over there, Sarah had pulled one of those tools off her belt and was brushing Cloudburst’s feathers down.

  “You got so big, didn’t you Pidgey - Or should I say Pidgeotto!”

  Cloudburst chirped happily under the attention, fluffing her feathers. It was a fair point, too. She stood at Sarah’s elbow height, and the trainer didn’t need to crouch down to attend to her feathers.

  “Sarah? How are you? What happ- how come you’re in Lavender?” She didn’t look ready for a funeral anyway.

  “Eh... bit of a long story actually,” Sarah replied with a laugh. She tugged at her overalls. “I work here now. What about yourself? Last I heard, you were heading to Fuchsia with a much smaller feathery friend. Now you’ve two pokeballs at your belt.”

  Cloudburst butted at her side, prompting for the brushing to continue.

  David rolled his eyes at his Pokemon and lightly shook his head at Sarah, letting her know to ignore the large bird. “I guess that’s a long story too, but the jury’s still out on whether I traded up for the small feathery friend.”

  That earned him a glare from Cloudburst, the Pokemon sensing the intent if not the meaning of his words.

  Sarah snickered at the two of them. “Are you in town for long?”

  Before he could answer, a shout came from the restaurant counter.

  “Caring house? Order ready.” The bellow was accompanied by stacks of food containers a meter tall being placed on the counter.

  Sarah’s shoulders wilted at the sight, but rose again as she turned a conniving eye on David.

  “Actually, are you busy? I could use a hand with all this if you’re free...”

  David considered it for a moment before remembering he had nothing else planned. “Sure, let me grab Cloudburst’s food.”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Cloudburst,” Sarah said, rolling the word around her mouth as if it was the food waiting for her on the counter.

  “Pidge-otto!”

  If anyone in the restaurant hadn’t noticed them before, after Cloudburst’s cry they had now.

  David groaned. “Just give me a sec to pack up the meals.”

  Sarah didn’t reply, but her laughing eyes and grin were response enough.

  -.-

  “It’s Regal.”

  “Huh?” The cartons wavered in his hands as one second of inattention - a glance at Sarah - caused the balance to change.

  “Rattata. He chose Regal.”

  David fought another wobble in the stack as his surprise slowed his steps. The cobble streets didn’t help. Sarah was leading them out of town, back towards the Pokemon tower.

  “Huh. That’s a good name.” It was weird to think that the Pokemon didn’t have names the last time that they met. Cloudburst was Cloudburst to him these days. He couldn’t picture her as anything else, but she’d only had the name for those few months. Regal was also a lot better than some of the names Sarah had been suggesting back then. “I mean, it’s no Dentures, but I guess that doesn’t cause wild Pokemon to run in fear.”

  “Shut up,” Sarah half moaned, half snickered. She smirked. “You know Regal was the second option I suggested when Rattata spoke? All those names I prepared, and he chose the second one.”

  He nodded sagely. “Rattata was clearly afraid of the other options. They chose the first one that sounded normal.”

  “Hey! don’t make me hit you this soon after meeting. I still haven’t heard about Fuchsia.”

  David grinned, but shut his mouth. Retribution was unlikely while they were carrying all the food, but he was really glad to see a familiar face. There was far more he wanted to know instead of laughing about Sarah’s poor naming sense. “I’ll stop if you tell me how you ended up here. What’s this job that requires all this food?”

  She raised her eyebrows at him. “I will get those details out of you. This isn’t one of those things you can hide. Danny doesn’t get to do that anymore, and neither do you.”

  “Oh?” Danny had told the group where she was from? That was a surprise. She’d seemed adamantly reluctant to spill anything while he was in Celadon. Something ill settled in his stomach, shoving some of his happiness out of the way. What else had he missed?

  “Anymore,” Sarah clarified with a grumble, relieving some of that ill. “I’ll find out more eventually. They’re all in Vermillion at the moment, training for the gym. As for me, well, that’s kind of your fault.”

  “My fault?” It was his turn to raise his eyebrows at her. The cartons wobbled a little, but he was growing used to the weight by now.

  “Yes. Yours.” She hesitated. “Celadon gym took me three attempts. I- My heart wasn’t in it. The fighting. Everyone stayed with me, but I- I knew I was holding them back, you know? I went with them to Vermillion, but I was thinking the whole time. I went, promising myself that I wouldn’t slow them down again. Then on the docks in Vermillion, I thought of a conversation I had with a certain someone. About other options. After asking around, it was clear the Kanto daycare wasn’t for me, but someone mentioned Lavender town. One letter later and I had a job.”

  “There’s a day care here?” David asked. It kind of made sense for there to be one for shorter periods, when trainers weren’t able to care for their Pokemon during mourning ceremonies.

  “Not quite.” She dipped her head forward. “Welcome to the Lavender Volunteer Pokemon house. Locals call it the caring house.”

  David follows the gesture to see a small building at the side of the road. It looked like a farm of some kind, with large barns behind. It was surprisingly noisy here. Lots of Pokemon were nearby, calling out and generally making sound with their scuffles. There was also a bit of a smell in the air, one he knew from cleaning up many campsites. The sight didn’t answer most of his questions. “The name doesn’t tell me much.”

  Sarah shrugged, which was much more impressive with all the cartons she was carrying. “Yeah, I get that. I’m not a volunteer first of all. The man who runs the place insisted on the name. Nice guy. The caring house is a place for the bereaved. We care for those left behind until they’re ready to try again, or go their own way in the world.”

  “Oh. I never really thought about that.” What happened to a trainer’s Pokemon when they died? Were they inherited? Six Pokemon you didn’t know dumped on your lap to feed and train was a lot. Ruinous in most cases if you couldn’t work with them. The idea of a team breaking from their Pokeballs and vanishing into the wilds was even less realistic.

  She hummed in agreement. “Neither did I, but I was looking for something and it kind of fit? I was hesitant when I first arrived, but now I can’t think of doing anything else.” Sarah turned to look him in the eyes. “Thank you for that.”

  He looked away, the gratitude a bit much for a conversation he could barely remember. “It was just a thought. You were the one that found about this place. That came here and risked it.”

  “Maybe.” Sarah hummed happily. “But I appreciate the seed anyway. What about you? What was Fuchsia like? We heard about the bridge closing. We thought you’d have to turn back… we were all pretty worried about it, but it looks like you managed to make it through. Did you run the whole way there or something?”

  “Fuchsia was… interesting. I didn’t really do anything there but train, yet I still feel like I know the place and its history. Like a lot. I don’t even know how.” A lot of that was Marie, and Louis playing tour guide, but then there was the whole mess of Finn’s family and the gym and Koga and… He’d been thrown in the deep end of what the city was like. He’d looked behind the curtains, met the actors and been shown where they bury the secrets. “Really interesting city and people, but better to visit than live in, I guess. You know what I mean?“

  He glanced over at Sarah to see if he’d rambled a bit too much. Her nose was scrunched, but she still looked interested. Something was getting through, but not everything, which wasn’t much of a surprise given how much he wasn’t saying.

  “The bridge was honestly one of the least difficult parts. A friend of a friend gave me a lift.“ David hummed, remembering the mad sprint across the bridge as the sea below became a battlefield. “For me anyway. I would not recommend passing that way anytime soon. Like at all. It’s closed for a reason.“

  “That’s an alright intro,“ Sarah said with a single raised eyebrow. “But I’ll be getting the full story out of you when we set this food down.“

  A loud clatter came from the small house ahead.

  “Sounds like he is here,” Sarah murmured, picking up her pace, showing that she was matching David’s rather than maintaining the balance of her stack. “Come on, I’ll introduce you.“

  “Mr. Fuji! Are you in? I brought the lunch order.”

  There was another loud clatter.

  Sarah stepped up to the door and waited. By the time David caught up to her, there had been no response.

  More noise came from inside the house, enough he was starting to get worried that the place was being robbed. He looked at Sarah, the question on his face, but she smiled and shook her head.

  The door swung open without a sound. In its place stood an old man with a bald head and eyebrows so bushy it was like they were trying to make up for the lack of hair elsewhere. He was skinny to the point of being sickly with very little fat on his face. It made his nose quite hawk-like.

  “Who’s this?” Mr. Fuji asked grumpily, suspicion in his eyes.