Amidst the turbulence of these past several years, an insidious malady of thought had begun its gradual sweep across the Alolan archipelago: a rumor. From where exactly it had originated, it was impossible to say, but it was clear to those paying attention it had not been crafted in good faith.

  The rumor was the Tapu liked to toy with their prey. In a revolting manner.

  The children hummed haphazardly. They were the vectors from which the thought virus spread: the idea appealed to them most of all, shiny and gleaming blood-slick. It appealed to them for the same reason they had all gathered around Rian on the blacktop when he discovered he could use his thick-framed glasses to focus all the sun's wrath on a passing Caterpie. Even when the body began to emit a putrid malodor, no one had any interest in intervening.

  The rumor had reached Sun two years ago. He had been in math class, sitting with his table group of him and three cliquish girls, and their chatter had shifted from mixed fractions to something more weighty. At his side, Kimmi cupped her hand around her mouth and strained over the table to whisper to Nalani:

  "They say they eat people. They eat the bodies of the people who break the kapu."

  "That's a horrible thing to say," Sun said, although he had not been meant to hear. "Who's been going around spreading lies like that?"

  All this time later, he still recalled the slow creak of the chair as Kimmi sat back and turned to him, her eyes slits.

  "Wasn't talking to you. You'd probably cry about it, anyway." She pressed her fists to the corners of her eyes and mock-rubbed them. "You need your mama to come pick you up, crybaby?"

  "I wouldn't cry," Sun said, his bottom lip trembling. "I wouldn't cruh... I wouldn't..."

  (Sometimes, as he stood in the pasture of dreams, one of these sorts of memories would slither by and renew his shame once more. What a terror his mind could be.)

  He rushed to the restroom to wash his face, avoiding his own pink-tinged gaze in the mirror, and the restless hive of Cutiefly, yet to reach its full development at this point in time, nested itself in his brain again. None of his books, he considered, had ever given mention to what the Tapu sustained themselves on...

  No. No, the Tapu would never do anything of the sort. They would never sully themselves with the flesh of the damned. They were the Tapu, and you couldn't do anything like that to be a Tapu. So it must have been a lie.

  He steeled himself. Yeah, the Tapu were good. Kimmi and Nalani and all the others were being horrible just to be horrible, because they were horrible. And Kimmi and her family were Enraptoran anyway, so what would she know?

  It disturbed him to this day that he had not been able to come up with a more sound refutation. And maybe, just maybe, it was because he knew he could not discount their words.

  And, well, maybe it was hypocrisy, too: later, Sun would learn to play with his own shadows; to toy with the weak, tug at their marionette strings, trap stick figures in collapsing tunnels because... it was natural. There was nothing more natural. His hands moved without his notice.

  Although most of the ointment had since faded from Lillie's forehead, its intoxicating pungence still clung to her. How ironic it was, Mizuki thought, that the very treatment for temptation would become a temptation in itself.

  In his endless benevolence, Dad had granted her request for her and Lillie to be alone together in the recreation room, and the latter now lay atop one of the peeling couches, legs crossed, hands folded over her chest like a corpse's. She was tired, she claimed, and, no, she didn't want to play foosball with Mizuki. Not that they could have if they wanted to: when Mizuki skipped over to the table, she found all the balls gone from their holding slat. How vexing.

  But it didn't really matter: they wouldn't be together here for much longer. Lillie would soon go start her first lesson of Stage Zero, and Mizuki would languish on these couches and suffer in her absence. Maybe she'd go spar again with Frostfire, although she had little doubts as to his readiness. The fact he had managed to tie Harmony in spite of his Type disadvantage was evidence enough she didn't need to risk his claws grazing her skin again.

  But Mizuki did understand Lillie's fatigue, to an extent. Over the course of her stay here, she had watched the skin under Lillie’s eyes darken to a sickly mauve.

  She was not to let her out of her sight. Those undergoing the initial stages of learning the Truth could be volatile, and the same was true of someone recovering from the kōshin ritual. It would be quite dangerous - and unprecedented - to combine the two. But Lillie was a mature girl, wasn't she? Mature, clever girls didn't need to follow the same boilerplate rules as everyone else.

  Mizuki clenched her jaw.

  As soon as the ritual had ended and the audience members were permitted to drop their outer shells of concern, she had turned aside to Miki and complained:

  "You know, he's never said that to me before. He's never called me mature before."

  "Yeah," Miki had said in between giggles. "'Cause he doesn't tell lies."

  The nerve of that bitch.

  The incident had cut down Mizuki's constitution, and as she came by Lillie's side on the couch, she found she had little interest in rebuilding it. So, just this once, she would throw herself into temptation's open arms. Her mouth split into an audacious grin.

  "Let me sniff," she directed.

  Lillie's eyes snapped open. "Sniff? Sniff what?"

  "Your forehead. Let me sniff it."

  "I... what? Why?"

  "The ointment smells good, and we don't get to use it too often," Mizuki said.

  After a moment of consideration, Lillie let out a strained huff and closed her eyes again.

  "Okay," she said. "Be quick."

  "Thank you. You're a real one, Lillie."

  "Just get it over with," Lillie said.

  Cinnamon, cardamom, shea butter, aloe vera, oils, something else, and the most tantalizing hint of peppermint, all wrapped up in a beautiful medley to galvanize the mind. Those were the words on the bottle Mom kept in her medicine cabinet back home, and Mizuki had stolen it out enough times to have learned them by heart. But using it herself, or even pressing her nose to the cap, would be considered grounds for punishment in her parents' eyes; it was a sacred object, and difficult to import from overseas, as the Powers That Were didn't like it when ordinary people possessed extraordinary objects.

  "It's piquant," Mizuki said, and jerked back before Lillie could paw her away. She chuckled, tugged her fingers through her matted hair, and clung to the high the scent had granted her.

  But, wait, she’d been worrying about Lillie potentially being ill, hadn't she? She couldn't dare to risk her health now with Ilima's trial later in the week. In her head, she recited:

  May we receive all your prosperity;

  Guard us from the tyranny of nature.

  We venerate you, O matronly Blissey;

  Keep us in good health and good spirits.

  Now, these chants were not unfailing. While she may have recited the Togekiss chant before every single test she took, she did not always receive every point on the bonus questions. But faith was a powerful way-upon, an arrow in her quiver, and she notched it well.

  "You know," she mused, "you're really lucky. We let you stay here and join us, and you didn't even have to pay anything."

  Lillie stretched out her limbs, pushing herself upright. "Pay anything?"

  "Normally there's an entrance fee, but we waived it for you."

  "How kind of you," Lillie mumbled. "But... you mean, you have to pay to join your religion?"

  Mizuki rolled her eyes at the skepticism in her voice. "Uh, yeah. This isn't the sort of knowledge you can give out all willy-nilly. We've gotta weed out the ones who won't take it seriously and waste all our time, and all the ones who’ll use it for evil. Plus, there's so much we've got to fund! How do you think we can afford a whole farm and garden here? We've got tons of members to feed. You too, now."

  "How... how much is... how much is the fee?"

  "Not that much," Mizuki said. "Only like, a hundred thousand Pokedollars. It's entirely affordable." She thought further, looked back at Lillie, pursed her lips. "But that's only for Stage Zero. It's more than that if you want the whole package. Aue, quit giving me that look."

  Lillie's cheeks had turned an odd shade of magenta, and her lips pulled together as if she had sucked on a Nomel Berry. At Mizuki's last sentence she curled into herself and issued a quiet apology.

  Mizuki clicked her tongue: yet another display of Lillie's unfortunate lack of common sense. What else did she think the devotees would be using their money for? The Children certainly weren't going to enable whatever avaricious pursuits society had conditioned them for. The capital would be best spent facilitating the spread of Truth.

  "'Money is the root of all evil'," she said. "Besides the beast, of course. That's actually the root of all evil. You'll get to learn all about it soon. But money's one of its tentacles."

  It infuriated her she couldn't read Lillie's expression.

  "You don't know much about this sort of thing, do you, Lillie? I think you suffer from a lack of spiritual education."

  "You're right I don't know much about spirituality," Lillie admitted, "or religion. My family never practiced it. But, but..." again, she curtained her face with her hair. "We did have a lot of money."

  Before she knew what she was saying, Mizuki blurted, "you look like money."

  The reply ricocheted back: "What do you mean?"

  Mizuki flushed. "You... you... uh, I mean, there's a lot about you that gives me the impression you used to be rich. You know, the way you look, the way you talk, the way you carry yourself..."

  "But you just said it was the root of all evil," Lillie said. "Do you think...?"

  Oh. Oh, no, no, no, no.

  "That's not what I meant at all," Mizuki said, cursing Lillie for being such an obtuse nincompoop, and the feelings, the stupid feelings, fizzled up and out of her. "In fact, I think you're really nice and you're kind and you're gracious and you're exquisite and precious and adorable and exceptional marvelous superb excellent extraordinary pure angelic seraphic perfect and lovely and you're beautiful is what I mean. I guess you're kind of mature, too."

  That word - beautiful - seemed to flip a switch in Lillie. She uncurled herself, returning to her peaceful pose from before, but her eyes went soft, then hard, then misty.

  "Beautiful," she said. "Beau-ti-ful?"

  Mizuki, perplexed and concerned, forced a smile. "Yeah, see? You get it. You get it, you're smart, you get it all - ?"

  And then, for no reason at all, Lillie was crying.

  "I don't know," she said through her sobs. "I don't know. Being here is so confusing - I feel like I'm being torn in two, there's so much..."

  "Hey, what - why?"

  Red alert. Red alert. The superlative bomb was meant to make her feel good - not whatever this was. Mizuki wasn't equipped to handle criers.

  "I don't understand why he seemed to want to hurt me with that paper," Lillie said. "I don't even know who Ishmael is. I only picked the first name that came to mind..."

  "Well, I mean, she's part of you," Mizuki said lamely. "So you should understand her most of all."

  She resisted the familiar itch to defend her father. Lillie didn't need that now.

  "Mizuki," Lillie said, pressing her face into one of the couch pillows, "Mizuki, Mizuki - " another sob " - did you hear about the man who died? Here?"

  She hadn't heard. She hadn't heard. Nothing escaped her and if she hadn't heard of it it hadn't happened.

  "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what's the matter with you."

  What, was she afraid? Afraid the big bad incinerator would come swallow her up in the night? The Lycanroc, its gnashing jaws?

  "I overheard someone talking about it, and it frightened me," Lillie said. "They said he had a heart attack, but he didn’t show any signs leading up to it - none at all. It makes me woozy thinking about things like that. Death coming when you least expect it..."

  "It doesn't matter," Mizuki said, putting a hand on her hip. "You know, a human dies every second. Two, actually. It's not a big deal." To prove how much of a big deal it wasn't, she flashed a grin.

  "A person," Lillie said. "A person dies."

  "Yeah. That's what I said."

  "No, you said 'a human'. It sounds so impersonal when you say it like that, 'humans'. We're people." Lillie turned her head to stare at the arc of light slotting through the side window. It glanced off the mirror on the opposite wall, tossing a triangle of light over to Mizuki's feet. "It's disrespectful to the man who died to call him a statistic."

  "Well, that's a very 'idea-listic' way of looking at it. Even if it seems insensitive, it is a statistic, and a true one. Besides, he's not exactly going to be able to get mad at me, is he?" When Lillie gave her a severe look, Mizuki added, "because he's dead."

  For a moment, it seemed all the air had been sucked from the room.

  "Mizuki," Lillie said, "you haven't ever had anyone important to you die, have you?"

  Some part of her bucked; rebooted. She stood there paralyzed, seeking her comfort in self-reassurance, zero one one two three five eight... until the humming below the earth purred as an engine purrs, and whispered to her:

  Tell the truth. Tell her all the truth.

  "Not physically," Mizuki said.

  She wasn’t certain it was satisfaction that crossed Lillie’s expression then, but the claw wounds in Mizuki's brain matter ceased to ache.

  "When I was young," Lillie said. "I don't even remember."

  In her lack of elaboration, another silence spread out between them. The air remained stagnant. Lillie lay back once more, her breathing stabilizing.

  The two lay on opposite sides of the couch, losing themselves in their thoughts. Lillie closed her eyes, but Dad had also instructed Mizuki not to let her sleep. It wasn't ideal for an initiate to sleep. Sleep could warp the brain and tie up dreams with waking; knot all their wires together like the black box behind the TV; and you could pull and pull and pull at them and they'd still never come apart again. The purer the mind, the less tangled the wires, the more receptive to the Truth.

  Then, like a bolt of lightning out of a blue sky: Lillie spoke.

  "There's one question I need an answer for. About your beliefs."

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Mizuki scrambled to her feet, unprepared.

  "They'll give you any answer you could ever need - "

  "No. Not from them. From you."

  Oh. Mizuki collapsed back onto the sofa, wetting her newly parched lips. "What is it, then?"

  "I want to know," Lillie said, voice even, "where you believe people go when they die."

  She didn't want a rehearsed answer planted in her by Dad and the elders. She wanted her to pour her soul - her poor, exhausted soul - out. This was more than a question: it was a battle of wits.

  "When people die," Mizuki recited, as if giving the answer to a riddle, "they go to the real world."

  "The real world?"

  "To the beast living under the earth," Mizuki said. "They all fall into hIS jaws and get swallowed up. That's why volcanic eruptions happen, you know. That's why they happen so - " apropos of nothing, she slammed her fist into her open palm, and winced at her own violence "- hard. But it's not as bad as it could be, because you only have to spend a little time with hIM there before you get reincarnated. You get another chance to do better. But since people are people, most of us just end up there over and over again."

  Lillie mulled this answer over.

  "I see," she said. "So you must believe people are naturally evil."

  Mizuki prepared to say, well, obviously - but she understood this had not been what Lillie had wanted to hear. Was it disappointment she saw flicker in her gaze?

  "Well, not everyone is," she said, plastering on a brave face. "I don't think you are. But a lot of people are. Even those you'd least expect."

  "I don't know if that's the sort of principle you can start establishing exceptions for," Lillie contended.

  It sounded logical. But it was society's voice in her throat: society's sweet, seductive tones, meticulously designed to tempt the righteous. That evil, corruptive, corrupted society.

  Well, people were naturally evil, and society corrupted them... and people, in being evil, corrupted society...

  Shit, how could people be both? How was it possible for someone to be innocent and guilty all at once?

  >switch tracks | switch tracks | click click click click

  "I just remembered something," Mizuki blurted, her face contorting. "Something that'll help aid your learning. Stay right here, okay?"

  She didn't look back to check if Lillie had heard. She raced out down the hall into her room, snatched a plain pink accordion folder from beside her air mattress, and, with all the speed and eagerness of a Pachirisu scavenging for nuts, leafed through it for one document in particular. When her eyes caught "The Place Where" she shucked it up into her grip and sprinted back out. The Facility Purification Team had waxed the floors the previous night, and it was only by some machination of the Ariados spinning fate she didn't slip and crack her head wide open.

  "It's my essay," she informed Lillie when she burst back into the rec room, lifting the paper in triumph. "I wrote it last year for a contest. And I got first prize, of course."

  "Wow."

  "Wow indeed. But the reason I'm showing you this is to prepare you. The council has a certain way they prefer confessionals to be done, and you need to learn what that way is to please them. You need to learn what they want from you! Now, for this contest, the prompt was, uh, give me a sec - " she flipped the paper over in her hands - "the prompt was, 'write about a time you felt afraid'. I don't know if everyone would consider this a confession, but I don’t feel so comfortable talking about these kinds of subjects, so it’s one to me."

  Lillie scratched at her arm, seeming not to have heard. Despite this, Mizuki did not hesitate to read:

  The Place Where Wings Unfurl

  by Mizuki Kazakami, age 10

  I have something to confess. Last night, I had a dream that I was standing at the barrier between the sky and the ocean, the precipice, just shy of falling. My whole life I've always wanted to jump - for fun, of course. I've always wanted to know how it would feel to hit the water, provided it wasn't so cold, or maybe it would be cold and then I would get to know the happiness of ice giving to heat, and my cells would start to melt and then freeze again.

  I had the chance to know the feeling on a school trip this past year, when my class went to the cliffs on Route Three. We got to see little Bagon throw themselves off the edge, and our teacher told us they evolved harder shells and scales to prevent them from causing themselves serious harm. I thought at the time, why do they want to do it if it'll kill them? I still don't have an answer.

  Maybe it planted some seed in my mind, because when we put our swimsuits on to take our own chance to jump into the water, I raised my hand, asking to go first. And I stood there, looking into the void, my legs paralyzed, my cold feet betraying me. Behind me, I could hear the scattered jeers and pleas of my classmates, calling me a scaredy-Meowth, pleading with me to please just jump and stop wasting everyone's time.

  Everyone who knows me knows I'm brave. That's who I've always been. But those cries redefined me: I thought I was a waste, a burden, a miserable sodden blob who could never know falling or flight. I excused myself, and I went to sit in the grass off to the side, watching all of my classmates do with ease what I couldn't bear to.

  But in my dream last night, I stood at that precipice again, listening to the call of the sky echo in my mind. It chewed up all my fear and doubt and spat out excitement. And though I couldn't feel them, my wings were unfurling behind my back.

  And I jumped.

  The blue air and the blue sea were mine, all mine. Blue as far as the eye could see. I looked at my wings and my feathers were as dark as smoke, and similarly shimmering, like a mirage. But, unlike my legs and feet that day, they didn't betray me.

  I awakened before I had the chance to touch the water, but even in my bed, I was still there for a moment... until the colors rushed back in, and I realized. It hurt to realize. It hurt as if those other kids had returned, and were saying: you're still a burden after all.

  Mizuki let those last words hang in the air. She quivered: the essay was a little more personal, a little more revealing, than she had remembered. But after her win, they'd printed it in the school newspaper - not that anyone ever read that rag - so it was already out there for the whole world to see.

  "I'm not a water person," she explained, as if this would elucidate anything. "But I'd really like to be a water person someday."

  "I think it's a good essay," Lillie said. "You really wrote it all by yourself?"

  Lillie, Mizuki considered, had an odd little habit of phrasing innocent questions in the worst way possible.

  "I had a little help," she admitted.

  "From who? Your parents?"

  "No, no, from..." (she cursed Mizune under her breath - why, oh why, had she had to leave pieces of herself, little thorny poking reminders of her, everywhere? How inconsiderate.) "From someone else. No one important."

  Lillie put a finger to her lips. "A teacher, or a friend, or..."

  "No one you should care about," she said, louder. She shifted tracks, and her voice cracked and wavered: "Hey, Lillie, do you know who -" she spoke the name of a famous poet - "is?"

  Lillie mumbled a negative.

  "He's - he was - a poet, and he wrote poems that were like confessions. It was a whole movement of poetry, actually, where people wrote confessional poems. I've done it too." These, she did not offer to share.

  "How interesting," Lillie said. "I enjoy some poetry as well. It's not often I come across a poetry fan my own age..."

  "I don't know," Mizuki said, a little too quickly. "I don't know. I don't know. They don't like poetry here, so don't speak about it. It's not good for you, poetry. They don't - um, you shouldn't talk about therapy, either. Have you ever been to therapy?"

  "You mean to a psychologist? No, I've..."

  "Good. Good. You'll get in a lot of trouble if you talk about things like that here." By reflex, she curled her lip. "Psychologists."

  "Psychologists? Why?"

  "'Cause they're bad for you. They want to lead you on the wrong path away from Truth." For some reason, the masses were unable to grasp this simple tenet; a few months ago, when Sun had confessed to her he had started seeing a grief counselor and she presented him with this fact, he had rolled his eyes at her. It had hurt.

  It hurt to be a Child of Starlight.

  The sofa's ailing springs let out a miserable creak as Lillie sat up. "I'm starting to get the impression there are a great many things you don't want me to talk about here."

  "Well, we just need to keep the peace around here. And we can't really do that if you're running your mouth about everything." Mizuki considered something else, and angled her head sideways. She didn't have it in her to meet Lillie's gaze - not that Lillie was meeting hers. "But... we also aren't really supposed to keep secrets around here. We're meant to trust each other."

  >don't go this way, don't head in this direction

  "I'm not really sure how to reconcile it. I'm not really sure whether I should reconcile it."

  >TURN BACK TURN BACK RIGHT THIS SECOND

  Lillie bit her lip. "I feel like I know what kind of environment you're talking about... and I'm all too familiar with it."

  Her tone said what she didn't: familiar in the worst way.

  "No!" Mizuki clutched the sides of her head as if otherwise it would fall off her neck and roll away. "No, no! I'm wrong, I'm wrong! We don't have secrets here at all! You can talk about anything you like with us!"

  The attempt was brazen, and in Mizuki's opinion, not at all convincing - and despite it all, Lillie relaxed. Mizuki mirrored her, lowering her arms, clasping her hands together.

  "I mean," Mizuki said, "I know it's not right to use secrets as weapons against people. It all depends on the secret and it all depends on the subject. You should feel safe with us."

  Because you are.

  Lillie nodded, looking almost longingly back towards all the fixtures of the rec room, the sofa cushions beside Mizuki split with the makings of a gash, the mirror sullied with endless scratches and the little ones' fingerprints, the foosball table almost somber in the way it sulked in one corner. It might have been wrong to call it a nice room, or a happy room, but it was unpurified, and possessed a certain intimacy unknown to any other space in the compound.

  "I have a secret," she admitted. "A really big one, and I don't know how long I can stand hiding it from everyone. But if I tell you, you have to promise you can't tell another soul."

  Mizuki, still recovering from her outburst, raised one hand and pressed the other to her heart. "Of course I won't tell anyone. I'll take it to the grave. I promise."

  (This was a technical loophole Mizune had devised long ago: the reward for keeping a promise eclipsed the punishment for keeping a secret. Loopholes like these might not make Dad happy, but they did provide a modicum of plausible deniability.)

  "Come on, then," Lillie said, rising to her feet. "It's in my room. In my bag."

  Lillie's room was much the same as it had been when she had first moved in. The bed had been tightly, immaculately made. The Holy Testament still flat on the desk, unmolested. Somehow, it seemed her occupancy hadn't even generated any dust. Mizuki thought of her own room back home, with its poster-laden walls and piles of dirty laundry and discarded snack wrappers, and voiced surprise at this. But Lillie only shook her head.

  "None of this belongs to me. I'm only a temporary presence."

  As Lillie crawled over to the place under the bed, to her bag's hiding spot, Mizuki ruminated on this: the girl hadn't so much as seen the sun since coming here, and in response her skin had gone almost transparent and ghostly. She had confessed her trepidation regarding the communal shower, and thus her hair had come to hang in long, straggled, oily strands. When she reached in, her sleeve rode up slightly, revealing her unfortunate habit of picking at her own flesh.

  Then she reached the object of interest. Her breath tore its way out of her, and she slid back upright, bringing the barrel bag with her. When she turned back to the bemused Mizuki, her cheeks were flushed, as if the act had drained what little energy she still possessed.

  "I have a Pokémon," she said. "At least I think they're a Pokémon. I call them Nebby."

  She unzipped the bag, and Mizuki's heart stopped.

  Star clouds, in teal and magenta - a heaven's gift, a baby star -

  an aberration.

  "But, but, but - " she swallowed - "that isn't - where is that one from? Not here, can't be here… it doesn't exist."

  "I think they might be…" Lillie motioned for Mizuki to come in closer, cupping her hand around her mouth: "An Ultra Beast. From Ultra Space."

  "An..." Mizuki shook her head, her mouth drooping open. "A what? From where?"

  "A creature from beyond reality," Lillie said, without the gravitas such words deserved. "From another dimension."

  Oh, oh, it was all chūnibyō bullshit. Mizuki relaxed; stammered, oh, yanno, things like that all are fantasy -

  But still it gnawed at her she hadn't seen this Pokémon before. She knew them all by heart; every last one. Before her, the creature's lumpy form sparkled and swirled; clouds rippling, blue into purple into pink into blue...

  "Why isn't it moving?" Or, if she looked closer - was it shivering? "Is it even alive?"

  "They're alive," Lillie said. "Just..." she fidgeted - "they haven't been... they've been sick recently, I think, or weak... but they do still move once in a while, so I know they're alive."

  "Does it have a heartbeat?"

  When Lillie didn't respond, something called Mizuki to reach in, press her hand against what she could feel of its gaseous body -

  "Ach - ! Blood and damNATION!"

  She was almost terrified to look at her palm, at the scorched flesh she knew must lie there... could feel her epidermis, and below that the dermis, right down to the blood vessels, all of it: bubbling into char…

  But when she did turn it over, there was nothing of the sort. Not even the slightest mark.

  "Shit," she swore again. She saw Lillie's expression flutter with disapproval, and a rush of pleasure came to her. "SHI - IT, mother of..."

  "That's odd," Lillie said, voice frilly with concern. "They've never done that to me before…"

  "Not a friendly Pokémon, huh?"

  "Huh? No, I just said they're perfectly amicable..."

  Perfectly, perfectly amicable indeed, never had a problem. Or maybe it was that Lillie had never dared feel its blaze on her skin. A smarter girl than Mizuki, if that were the case.

  But, Mizuki thought, she really did ought to show some gratitude towards Lillie. She'd trusted her with a secret! And one she, by all accounts, didn't really need to know. The extra mile!

  So, then, it was time to corrupt the kindness with a transaction.

  Mizuki sighed.

  "I have a secret, too."

  She looked at her palm again, and for a moment, remembered the finger paint drying and cracking on her skin; remembered spit bubbling down her chin and her wrist.

  "I'm left-handed."

  "That isn't a secret at all," Lillie protested. "That's like if I said I had blonde hair as my secret. It's just something inherent to you. It's not in any way comparable to mine."

  As always, Lillie missed the forest for the trees.

  "Like blonde hair." Mizuki flinched. "Is... is it that obvious?"

  Lillie shook her head. "No. I wouldn't have known if you hadn't told me. But it isn't anything to be ashamed of. It isn't a secret."

  "It is a secret," insisted Mizuki. "You wouldn't understand a thing about it, Lillie. Don't try to tell me what is or isn't my secret, because it's my secret. And besides, it's not like anyone's ever tried to make you dye your hair to hide its natural color." She stole yet another glance at her palm, thinking of the sting of the rope; her hand frozen, locked behind her back, until the blood ran still and rendered it nothing more than a nerve-dead impediment. You're going to give yourself a blood clot, her mother said, as if it were Mizuki's choice -

  Lillie didn't reply, and Mizuki was more than happy to leave the subject in the dust, but she fidgeted with a lock of her obviously blonde hair, visibly unsatisfied. Ooh, wasn’t she a glutton for secrets? Gossip was frowned upon among the Children, but Mizuki did find herself indulging in it on occasion as well. Not often - even she could understand its power, how it could distort one's perspective of their loved ones. The things people said about her family…

  The things she could say about her family.

  How painful it was to hold secrets - the grip around your neck, squeezing the life out of you. After you passed into the other realm and the world-dreamer placed your heart onto his scale of judgement, the secrets would turn to lead and you'd fall into the under, into the open jaws of the beast. The primordial jury would look over their noses at you as you joined with the magma bubbling in hIS belly. And it wouldn't matter how many promises you kept: Mizuki, despite knowing better, had discarded so many over the years.

  The words welled up in her throat, ready to dissolve whatever they came into contact with. It wasn't anything Lillie needed to know. She'd be happier if she didn't know.

  >go right ahead, then, and weigh her down with you

  "Well, I..." Mizuki grimaced. "I do have another secret. It's not really my secret to tell, though. Not even Sun and Hau know about it. But -" she pressed her finger into Lillie’s forehead until her nail formed an indent - "if you ever - ever - tell another soul about this, no matter who it is, I swear I'll kill you. I'll kill you dead. You - get - it?"

  Lillie correctly interpreted this as an exaggeration, but held a grave demeanor as she nodded.

  "Swear it. I want to hear you swear it."

  "I swear," Lillie said.

  The words burned on Mizuki's tongue, tasting of ashes and sulfur, as she whispered them into Lillie's ear. Her throat ached for water to cleanse her disgust. When she came back up to face Lillie, the other girl's eyes were as wide as a Slowpoke’s.

  "That... that isn't... you should TELL someone -"

  "No," Mizuki said. "No. No one else will ever find out from me. I'd rather cut out my tongue."

  (How she had come across such forbidden information... a burning night, a hole in her brain. Overlapping voices, scattered cries, deadened eyes. The memory seared with the touch of a flame-tipped poker, a brand on her psyche. Stupid mind, stupid brain, stupid neuron-split psyche!)

  "But, I..." Lillie's brow furrowed. "I don't know how I'm supposed to look at anyone here the same, knowing that. I’m sure you all have your reasons, but…"

  There it was. Lillie was going to make her feel like a wretched fool for divulging her biggest secret, and she'd act all weird about it, and everyone would know, and their eyes would pick them both apart, and so you did live up to your nature after all. We all knew you would.

  Why did Mizuki ever bother trusting anyone at all?

  Lillie must have seen the dark glare in her eyes, because she softened. "I mean, I won't tell anyone," she reassured her. "I think that should be your job. Not mine."

  "I'm not going to. I've already said that." Mizuki brought her knees to her chest, sighing. "I.... I want to be your friend, Lillie, I really do. You're already Sun's friend, so there's no barrier to that. If you have a Pokémon, you could join us on our journey - well, if Dad lets you. Can't promise he will. But I'll put in a good word for you if you want me to."

  "Nebby isn't that kind of Pokémon. And I don't want to be a Trainer."

  Mizuki had a feeling she might say that, for Sun had reported Lillie's unwillingness to her beforehand, and the two had shared a good laugh about it. Nobody ever didn't want to be a Trainer. Even Mom had let her Azurill spar with Harmony when Mizuki asked her.

  But what did she mean, 'not that kind of Pokémon'? She knew what Pokémon were for, right?

  "But, um." With the both of them having calmed down, Lillie cleared her throat. "How come you never told me you had an older sister?"

  "Half-sister," Mizuki corrected. "And, as you can probably guess... we don't like talking about her."

  It came out too barbed. Again the air went stale.

  "So, then, where does she live now, if not with you? Does she still live in Alola?"

  "She doesn't live here," Mizuki said. "Don't ask me where she does live. I just know it's not here."

  Lillie rubbed her wrist, poking at her bag with the toes of her shoes. "Well, don't you think someone ought to return - "

  "No," Mizuki said flatly. "I don't. I don't want to think about it at all."

  Suddenly she ached for touch, and not Lillie's; without another thought she brought up her Poké Ball and summoned Frostfire; let him strut his Litten strut all around the place; felt her lungs loosen.

  "To be honest," she said, "I think she had her own Ishmael with her. Not in the same way as you, with the blackouts. But near the end, she kept getting sick - I hardly saw her in those days, they hardly let us see her..."

  Lillie blinked. "Isn't that usual?" she asked, referring to the sickness.

  Mizuki shifted in place. "I don't know. Could be. I don't really know too much about it."

  Frostfire pushed his head into her lap, his eyes closed in pure satisfaction. She pressed her knuckles into the spot between his ears, kneading his skin.

  "I wish I knew why bad things have to happen. I've never really gotten a good answer about it."

  Because - this half-mumbled to a skeptical Sun - material things, sufferings, evil people, tyrannical nature. Evil was a certainty - certainly more interesting than Good. Good never carried that transgressive radiance of evil...

  And how radiant it was, the transgression she'd commit this very moment: letting Lillie lay her head on her shoulder and give in to the demon called sleep, up to the moment Dad came to take her away.

  "Sun," Professor Burnet called. "Sun."

  They were sitting at the dining table, and he was staring at his hands knotted together, his jittery hands, his mind clicking and buzzing like a hive of Cutiefly.

  "I don't want to die," he pleaded. "It knows, it knows, it knows WHERE I LIVE."

  "Sun, the Tapu isn't going to hurt you... you're being hysterical, now, please..."

  I see. But you're not normally so superstitious - you're hysterical.

  "I am hysterical," Sun agreed, rocking back and forth in his seat, his eyes a madman's, wide and demented. "Hysterical FOR A REASON!"

  And her face falling, revealing the true reason: she couldn't stand the nerves, couldn't stand the numbers on the blood pressure monitor going up, didn't want her little tranquil life to be disturbed… the fabric of reality was peeling apart, you know, and Kukui seemed to be perfectly content to abandon that poor girl to the Lycanroc in the Children of Starlight's compound, and Munchie, the eternal glutton, had suddenly found himself without his ravenous appetite, which the nurse at the Pokémon Center had informed her was a sign of severe illness in Munchlaxes. So couldn't Sun show some goddamned courtesy and -

  Ah, well, the girl would be saved, she'd make sure of that; and Munchie might feel better tomorrow, next week, next month or so, surely; and the fabric of reality would sew itself back together somehow, even if it took many months (even if the downslide had been going on since before Sun had even been born - )

  Right. Burnet smiled and reached across the table to pat Sun’s clasped hands. Everything would turn out okay.

  It always did.