A/N: Written for:

The Drabblechap Competition (4-9k)
Mega-Prompts Challenge, dialogue prompt #18 – "You make it sound like a bad thing."

dawns and skullbones
1.

The Distortion World tosses her into a graveyard. There's got to be something poetic about that.

It's not like the creepy Pokemon Tower in Kanto, at least. It's not a place where partner pokemon are buried but rather where the wild come to settle into their eternal tomb – or so the legends go. They're not even very well-known legends: not like the space-time legend, anyway.

Though, by this point, she probably knows the space-time legend better than anyone in the world… except Cynthia and Cyrus and who knows where they've gone. Giratina sits in a pokemon around her belt and only her Glaceon has any strength left to battle with. Infernape does, in theory, because one cannot activate Blaze without a sliver of strength, but it'll only take the ghostly winds to knock him down. And half his moves are ineffective against ghosts anyway.

They don't attack, though. Maybe they don't mind her accidental intrusion all that much. It's nice of them, if they don't, because she didn't choose the spot.

She's not a researcher either, like Lucas, so she doesn't plan to linger. But it's nice to know she hasn't been attacked before she could get her head on straight –

Her head spins. A head rush maybe; she's stood up too fast and she winds up falling back onto her knees in the soft grass and throwing up. Adjusting to gravity, maybe. Like divers coming out of those pressure chambers. It's an icky feeling, whatever it is. An icky look too, that puddle of brown and green on the grass.

The hum of ghosts around her don't change. She wonders if that means spirits don't have noses. Then she wonders why she cares whether they do or not. She's not flighty in nature, but her thought streams feel a little messy. Good thing she doesn't have a psychic pokemon, she thinks. They'd pick up on her scrambled thoughts all too easy.

As it is, Glaceon's ball rattles, and she's glad the ice fox doesn't just jump out. The spirits might be mere feelings now but she doubts they'll take kindly to a hostile pokemon, and she can just imagine Glaceon, hackles raised, searching for whatever made her trainer sick.

It's probably the distortion world – or rather, coming back from it. Her legs are a little shaky too, she realises. Maybe she shouldn't have tried to stand up right then. Maybe the graveyard distracted her: the invisible tombstones and the hum of spirits in the air and the jingle of wind-chimes –

She shakes her head. Wind chimes? But she still hears them, louder and louder.

Ah, a chimecho. She smiles as it circles above her head, and then leads her. She follows slowly, strength seeping into her bones. And then the grass is gone and there's the ground slipping down into a lake… or a spring.

Sendoff Springs. And there, on its shore at the mouth of a cave disappearing into the rock, is Cynthia.