Leo crouched low in the bushes, eyes fixated on the truly magical sight before him.
Two Sunflora stood in a large, open meadow on the far end of the lake, surrounded by at least a half dozen Bellossom that danced and spun around them, their little flower-petal dresses spinning around as they danced to the mystical music.
An odd ringing sound rang through the meadow, accompanied by the soothing, almost flute-like sound of the grass whistles the Sunflora were blowing on.
The Bellossom laughed and twirled, jumping into the air as they danced about, the tinkling, ringing sounds only seeming to intensify as they did so.
Petals floated through the air gaily, spinning and swirling around the musicians and their dancers, intense rays of sunlight beating down on the meadow like a beacon.
They danced and swayed and even sang in small, lilting cries that somehow fit together perfectly with the tune, which in turn harmonized with the wind and the rustling of the grass and the groaning of trees.
Leo found himself humming along and did nothing to resist the urge, swaying to the tune and drumming the soil with his fingers.
The beat picked up, the whistling of the Sunflora sharpened, and the Bellossom leapt into the air.
Green light sprang forth on the ground, the grass growing visibly healthier and more wild beneath the Bellossoms’ feet.
Then the beat slowed, and the Bellossom ceased their erratic jumping, standing in place and swaying side-to-side, the petals that flew through the air slowing to a gentle drifting pattern, swirling around the meadow like a protective veil.
Leo doubted he’d ever forget this sight, and for the next hour that was all he did.
Sit in the shadows, and watch the flowers dance.
…
That night, Leo did something he hadn’t thought about doing since he landed here in this world.
With his filleted Magikarp dinner roasting on a flat rock over the fire, a ring of pine nuts and the potato-esque plants he had found around it as a garnish, Leo pulled out one of the many notebooks he had in his backpack and a mechanical pencil that had been in his pocket, and began to write a poem.
It wasn’t anything special really, he’d never gotten into poetry writing the way some of his fellow classmates had, mostly because he preferred to write stories over poetry, but he wasn’t in the mood to write a story and watching the Bellossom today had stirred something within him.
It was a strange, esoteric side of him that looked at the world in a lens of rose color and metaphor – the same one that had taken the Bellossom and Sunflora dance as a blessing and admired its beauty, but left whatever it might mean metaphorically alone because, quite frankly, to try and capture that sight into words was doing it an injustice.
So Leo wrote and rewrote and stared at the flames of his fire, at the dying light of the sun, and the Slowpoke as they settled in to bed – funnily enough, the herd had taken to rolling in the mud just like he had taught them when he tried to camouflage himself.
He watched, for a moment, one Slowpoke as it wandered through the herd, nudging a fellow herd member every once in a while.
Leo took inspiration from these sights and scratched away at the paper, putting his feelings to form.
After a few moments the smell of something burning reached his nose and Leo cursed, setting aside his pencil and scrambling to remove his dinner from the heat.
The cooking rock he had used was longer than it was wide and was fairly thin, allowing for it to heat up well.
That also meant he had “handles” to grab onto in the form of the excess rock that stuck out over the fire pit he had dug – propped up as it was on a “stand,” in the form of two smaller, albeit squarish, rocks.
That didn’t mean it wasn’t hot though, and Leo cursed as he grabbed the sides, the heat very uncomfortable.
The moment he set it down, away from the fire, Leo leapt to his feet and did a dance of pain, hopping about and waving his hands as if to cool them off.
“Ow, ow, ow that’s hot,” he hissed, clenching and unclenching his fists.
Smoke rose from the nuts and potato-things as they lay on the rock, and Leo cursed his short attention span.
Couldn’t writing have waited until he was done with dinner?
Of course not, he had to go and lose focus, and now his dinner was burned.
Gingerly, Leo poked at the fish fillet to ensure it was done and, satisfied that it was, he popped a chunk of white fish meat into his mouth.
Unfortunately, the bottom of the fillet was burned.
Fortunately, a little bit of burned food never hurt anyone, and though it wasn’t a good taste at least it was a different flavor than the rather bland, basic taste of a Magikarp fillet.
Muttering to himself Leo settled back down, peeling his food off of his impromptu plate and looking back out over at the Slowpoke herd.
The sun had set by now and the darkness of the night settled, and thanks to the light from the fire Leo’s night vision hadn’t adjusted yet.
But he could still see the lumps that formed the Slowpoke herd, and that same Slowpoke that had been wandering about earlier, finishing a complete circuit before settling in itself.
Leo hummed and polished off his meal, flipping his cooking rock upside down over the fire to clean off whatever had stuck to it and settling back contentedly against a tree.
The small grove he had settled his camp in was enough to keep the wind and rain off, but if the Slowpoke decided to stick around this lake for a while then he’d need to find something more permanent.
When his eyelids began to droop and the fire began to die, Leo stood and stretched, determined not to sleep yet.
If he fell asleep this early then he’d wake up well before dawn, so, to keep himself awake for a little longer yet Leo headed away from his fire and toward the lake.
Somewhere in the distance a Hoothoot hooted (and wasn’t that a funny phrase) as Leo came to stop next to the shoreline, hands in the pockets of his jeans, his eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness.
The moon was a half-crescent, and the myriad of stars above shone with such brilliance Leo’s breath was taken away even after having seen the same sight practically every night since he arrived here.
There were so many stars, it made even the mountains of his home seem polluted.
It wasn’t even hard to pick out the “milky way,” or whatever galaxy this was, that stretched as a band of densely gleaming stars in the sky.
The Hoothoot hooted again somewhere to Leo’s right, followed by a sharp flapping of wings that carried the round-ish bird from the tree it had been in into the sky, visible only as a black blob that quickly vanished.
After a few more minutes, life returned to the forest as the nocturnal creatures came fully to life – though it was still far calmer than any point during the day.
Leo yawned and shrugged off the melancholy he’d been feeling.
Maybe he would go to bed soon.
Staying awake wasn’t doing him any good, he was just thinking too much.
“Night, Slowpoke,” Leo murmured, turning his back to the lake.
A blinding white flash suddenly lit up the night sky, illuminating the forest for miles around.
Leo whirled back around as a thunderous roar buffeted him, his eyes catching the last fleeting glimpse of a beam of white light streaking off into the sky.
A metallic shriek rang through the air, stilling the forest and sending fearful chills down Leo’s spine.
He remained perfectly still as he stared in the direction of the flash, the only sound he heard being the hammering of his heart and the swiftness of his breath.
Around him the Slowpoke stirred, raising their heads to look at the direction of the disturbance.
Time stretched on, but no further noise was made, and after fifteen minutes of silence the forest began to move again.
Bugs buzzed about, and Leo even spotted a few Zubat flying about in the open air, hunting for food.
The Slowpoke grunted and laid back down, closing their eyes and falling into a slumber, which prompted Leo to move back over to the embers of his fire and sit down next to his “bed,” a pile of leaves and pine needles.
He sat there for a long time before he lay down, watching the direction the beam of light had come from.
Only one other creature seemed to care about it anymore; a Slowpoke, whose head remained raised and looking off into the distance even as its brethren slept.
“You too, huh, buddy?” Leo asked it in a whisper, more talking to himself than the Slowpoke.
“Looks like I won’t be getting much sleep tonight,” he murmured, rolling onto his back.
He wondered what caused that, and what the shriek was, as he lay there.
A small part of him wanted to go check out what it was, to find out what caused all that, while the rest of him screamed danger.
Leo sighed, already knowing which part of himself would win the contest of wills.
“Looks like I’m going tracking tomorrow,” he muttered, and closed his eyes.