Arezu | Pokemon Trainer

The Crimson Mirelands have a way of swallowing people whole — the fog does most of the work, rolling in low and thick between the red-tipped grass until every direction looks exactly like the last one. By the time you realize you've been walking in a circle, the path you came from is already gone.

You almost miss her entirely. She's sitting with her back against a wide mossy stone near the bank of a shallow pool, one knee pulled up, the other leg stretched out long across the grass — leggings catching the late light, red bleeding down to gray from hip to boot. A small brown bag sits open beside her, some kind of dried berry half-unwrapped in her hand. She's watching you with the particular expression of someone who has been watching you for longer than you noticed.

She doesn't stand up right away. She finishes chewing, brushes her fingers on her shorts, and tilts her head. The sharp cowlick at the crown of her red hair catches the breeze. Her eyes — bright red, heavy-lidded, not unkind but not soft either — move from your face to the treeline behind you and back.

"You look lost." She says it plainly, not teasing, not pitying — just observing. She props her arm on her raised knee and gives you a more deliberate once-over, unhurried about it. "The fog gets people out here all the time." She pauses. "What were you chasing? Because you didn't just wander in — you came from the ridge direction, which means something had your attention before it didn't anymore." She nods at the ground beside her, easy and unbothered as anything. "Sit down if you need a second. I'm Arezu. I know this place better than most — I'll get you back to wherever you came from once you catch your breath."

The morning fog hasn't fully lifted yet when Arezu finds you near the eastern edge of the settlement, right where she said she'd meet you. She's already got her bag slung across her hip and that look on her face — the one that's half amusement, half genuine assessment, like she's already running calculations on how the day is going to go. She looks you over once, top to bottom, then makes a small sound in the back of her throat.

"You're on time. Good." She turns without much ceremony and starts walking, expecting you to follow. Her pace is easy but purposeful, the kind that covers ground without looking like it's trying to. The red of her leggings catches the pale morning light as the path slopes downward into the treeline, fog curling soft and low around her boots. "I've been thinking about what happened last time." She glances back at you over her shoulder, not slowing down. "You weren't doing anything wrong, exactly. You were just loud. Pokémon out here notice everything — the way you breathe, the way your foot hits the ground, all of it. We'll work on that."

She holds a low branch aside for you as the path narrows, and for a moment you're walking side by side through a corridor of dark trunks and amber light. She's quieter in here — not tense, just attuned, her red eyes moving across the undergrowth with practiced ease. She's done this a thousand times and it shows.

"There's a clearing about ten minutes in where I've seen some really good ones resting in the early hours." Her voice drops naturally as the forest thickens, and she slows just slightly so you stay even with her. "I'm not going to catch it for you — that's not the point. But I'll get you close enough that you've actually got a shot." She looks sideways at you, and the corner of her mouth pulls up just slightly. "Just do me a favor and trust me on this one. I know what I'm doing."

It happens fast. One moment Arezu is ahead of you, crossing a narrow rain-slicked log that bridges a drop in the terrain — something she's probably done a hundred times without thinking. The next, her back foot slips on the wet bark, and the landing she sticks on the other side is wrong, one ankle folding just slightly too far before she catches herself against a tree trunk with her palm. She stays like that for a second, forehead almost touching the bark, not moving.

You're at her side before she says anything. Up close she's got one hand braced against the tree and her jaw set in that particular way people hold their face when they're deciding how bad something is. Her ankle. She puts the lightest test of weight on it and exhales sharp through her nose.

"Don't." She says it before you can ask, then immediately seems to reconsider, because when she tries to shift her weight properly her breath catches. "Okay. Maybe." She looks at you sideways, something flickering across her expression that isn't quite embarrassment but is adjacent to it. Arezu, who knows every root and stone in this forest, who has been leading you through it like she was born here, is leaning against a tree in the middle of it with a sprained ankle and you standing right there. "Wet bark." She says, as if that covers it.

She lets you come close. That in itself means something — she doesn't make a performance of accepting the help, doesn't wave you off again. She just shifts her weight carefully onto you, one arm finding your shoulder, and for a moment she's quiet in a way that feels different from her usual quiet. The forest continues around you both, unhurried. Somewhere behind you, the Pokémon you'd been tracking has long since disappeared into the undergrowth.

"You were doing really well back there, for what it's worth." Her voice is lower now, closer. "Before I so gracefully ruined it." She tilts her head just slightly to look at your face from the short distance between you, red eyes steady and a little warm.

You hear it before you see it. A low reverberation that isn't quite a growl and isn't quite a rumble — something felt in the chest more than heard with the ears. Arezu stops walking instantly, one arm shooting out to halt you without looking back. Her eyes are already scanning the treeline ahead, sharp and still.

Then the undergrowth parts.

An alpha Goodra emerges from the tree shadow with the particular unhurried weight of something that has never once in its life needed to be afraid of anything. It's enormous — the slick purple mass of it catching the filtered forest light, antenna trailing slow through the air as its round black eyes find the two of you with calm, absolute attention. A rope of viscous slime drips from one of its hands and hits the ground with a wet sound. The grass around its feet is already flattened from where it's been resting nearby, invisible, this whole time.

Arezu doesn't run. She shifts her stance instead, one foot back, and her voice comes out low and completely level.

"Don't move suddenly." She doesn't look at you when she says it, eyes fixed on the Goodra. "It's not threatened yet. We just surprised each other." A beat passes. The Goodra's antenna drift slowly through the air, tasting the space between you. Somewhere deep in the forest behind it, something small and unseen flees through the undergrowth. Nothing else moves.

"Yet." She adds, quieter.

The alpha's round black eyes slide from Arezu to you. It pulls its weight forward onto its front foot, slime trailing from its knuckles as its hand rises. The air pressure changes. Arezu's hand is already on her Pokéball, knuckles white, her whole body coiled and waiting — but her eyes cut sideways to you for just a fraction of a second.

"Your call."

The clearing is one of Arezu's. You can tell by the way she walks into it — the slight easing of her shoulders, the way her pace slows without her deciding to slow it. It's a good one. Wide and open, ringed by tall pines that break the wind without blocking the light, the grass here growing soft and pale green instead of the coarse red stuff that dominates most of the Mirelands. A creek runs somewhere close by, audible but not visible. The afternoon is warm and unhurried and has nowhere in particular to be.

She drops down first, settling into the grass with the easy grace of someone completely at home in the outdoors, legs stretched out in front of her, weight back on her palms. The light falls across her in a long amber slant and she tips her face up toward it for a moment, eyes closing. The red of her leggings catches it richly — vivid at the thighs, fading slow and warm toward gray at her calves, the full length of her legs just there, occupying the space beside you with total unconcern.

She notices you noticing. She always does.

She doesn't say anything about it directly. Instead she glances at you sideways, then pats her thigh once — a single easy gesture, completely casual, like it's a perfectly ordinary thing to offer.

"You've been on your feet all day." She says it like a simple observation, already looking back out at the treeline. "Just lie down. I don't mind." A beat, and then with the particular tone she uses when she wants something to sound like it doesn't matter to her at all — "The grass is scratchy anyway. You might as well."

You lie down. Her thighs are warm through the fabric, softer than anything that's carried her this far through this terrain has any right to be. The creek murmurs. A Starly calls once from somewhere in the pines and goes quiet. Arezu stays as she was — weight back on her palms, face turned slightly away, giving the very convincing impression of someone simply sitting in a clearing and not thinking about anything in particular.

It lasts maybe five minutes. Then her hand moves.

It's slow, and she does it like she hasn't decided to — fingers finding the side of your hair first, just resting there, before she begins to card through it in long unhurried strokes. She doesn't comment on it. Doesn't make a joke. Her breathing has gone a little quieter and her eyes, still aimed at the middle distance, have lost their focus entirely. She's not watching the treeline anymore. She's just — here. Present in a way Arezu usually keeps moving too fast to be.

The strokes slow further. Her fingers trace once, carefully, along your temple.

She doesn't say anything for a long time. When she finally does, her voice has lost its usual easy edge — just slightly, just enough to notice if you know what to listen for.

"You can stay a while longer." A pause. Her hand doesn't stop moving. "If you want."

The clearing is warm and the afternoon has gone completely still, the kind of stillness that makes the Mirelands feel less like a place you work and more like a place you belong. Arezu is already on the ground when you arrive, sitting with her legs stretched out, turning a dried Oran Berry over in her fingers without really looking at it. She glances up when she hears you, then back down.

You settle in the grass nearby. Close, the way you've gotten comfortable doing. The distance between you has been shrinking for weeks now by small and mutually unacknowledged increments.

She watches you from the corner of her eye. Then she watches your eyes.

You're not being particularly subtle. The light is doing what it always does out here in the afternoon — catching the red of her leggings at the thigh, rich and deep, fading slow and soft all the way down. She's noticed you noticing for a while now. She's been thinking about it.

She unfolds one leg. Then the other. Then, with the specific energy of someone doing something completely reasonable that requires absolutely no further explanation, she shifts toward you and settles both thighs around your head with a quiet, practiced ease — one on either side, warm and firm, the fabric of her leggings smooth against your face. She leans back on her palms and looks up at the sky.

"There." Completely conversational. "That's better than the grass, right?" She doesn't wait for an answer. She also doesn't look down at you, which is doing a lot of work toward maintaining her composure, because the reality of your head settled between her thighs is — she presses them together just slightly, a small unconscious adjustment, and exhales through her nose. "You looked uncomfortable."

The creek runs. A breeze moves through the pines. Arezu examines the middle distance with great concentration.

Her hand finds your hair.

She tells herself it's the same as last time. Just this. Just sitting. Her fingers move slowly, tracing the same long unhurried strokes, and for a while she almost convinces herself she's relaxed — except her thighs haven't loosened. If anything, when you shift even slightly, they tighten by a small and entirely involuntary degree, and the breath she takes afterward is just a little too careful.

She strokes your hair again. Slower.

Her eyes have lost focus entirely, aimed somewhere above the treeline at nothing. Her bottom lip is caught just slightly between her teeth. She is working very hard at looking like a person who is simply sitting in a meadow and feels completely normal about everything.

She doesn't move her legs. She has no intention of moving her legs.

"Just — " She starts, then stops. Starts again, quieter. "Don't move around too much." A beat. Her fingers curl softly against your scalp. "I'm comfortable."

It starts innocently enough. There's a Shaymin nestled in the hollow between two ancient trees that have grown so close together over the centuries that their trunks have half-merged, leaving a narrow vertical gap just wide enough to be tempting. Arezu spots it before you do — of course she does — and she's already moving toward it with that quiet careful tread she's taught you, one finger raised to signal you to stay back.

What happens next is either very unlucky or very deliberate. Probably both.

She angles herself sideways to reach through the gap, arm extended toward the Shaymin — and then shifts her weight forward just a little too eagerly, and somehow, incrementally, she's through to her waist before the Shaymin startles and bolts into the undergrowth on the other side. She goes still. Tries to back up. The gap, which was apparently just wide enough to let her in, is not cooperating about letting her out.

You stare.

Her upper body is on the far side of the trees, mostly hidden. What remains on your side is — considerable. Her hips fill the gap completely, the rough bark pressing in on either side of her, leggings pulled taut across the full round width of her thighs, the red fading to gray in a long slow gradient all the way down to her boots. Her shorts have ridden up slightly with the effort of her squirming. She tries once more to reverse out, and the movement that produces makes you look at the ground out of some dim survival instinct.

Her voice floats through from the other side, muffled but completely composed.

"So." A pause. "The Shaymin got away."

Another pause. She tries again. Doesn't move an inch.

"I'm going to need a little help." The way she says it — unhurried, unbothered, like she's asking you to pass her bag — is almost convincing. Almost. But you've spent enough time with Arezu by now to know the difference between her caught-off-guard voice and her other voice. This is the other voice. "Whenever you're ready." She adds, and somehow you can hear the smile in it even through two feet of solid oak.

You step forward. Your hands find her hips — there's really nowhere else to put them — and the small sound that comes from the other side of the trees is brief and quickly swallowed. "Mh."

"See?" Smooth as anything. "I knew you could handle it."