It appeared, the trundling figure from my thoughts. Now staggering up and over a clearing, trying to take hold of a branch. The snow warping my senses, blinding me with a shade of greenish white. It was chalky and too course to describe, the sky above me becoming a painted black, pulsating with the occasional prism of color, then -

Shwik!

It tumbled backward, collapsing to the ground.

From the birch’s view, I see it sway, making me feel sick. The bough shaking the leftovers off to the poor thing.

But what was it really?

“Carla”, it would groan, its aura coltish and a fading blue, black. Something I’d recognize. The shadow of it, an aura of it. Hours upon hours ago.

It knew my name.

I tried say something to it’s form, assuming its plight. I wanted to ask these questions that I held to myself, but my mouth wouldn’t open. I couldn’t change these actions, decisions, questions.

“Your brain still in there?” I jest in Asana.

Something was gnawing inside me, and it wasn’t from how I felt, but how he did. That pitted feeling you’d get in your stomach, or this indescribable feeling of hopelessness. I felt it eat a peice my mind and it was somewhat anew. It’s something that I’ve felt a thousand times before. But why? What was this thing to me?

Now staring into my soul.

"Carla?"

My eyes never flinched with neither my body nor self. Instead, I began to concentrate again. Just concentrate, you daft Lucario.

Concentrate.

"Carla?"

It was piercing. Pestering. Its breathing, its aura, that of an all-encompassing black, still remaining by my side. Still determined to break my focus.

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"Appalachia wears me solemnly." I would repeat to myself, in an attempt to inure anything else but he was persistent. Becoming more and more until it’s fragile demeanor slipped, turned impatient.

Wait, he?

"Carla! It's freezing out here, what're you thinking?"

It was beginning to fumble with its words, the cold sewing its jaw stiff. Gripped by the wind which, I assume, bombarded its face like a whip. I swear I felt something, the same feeling that was gnawing inside me earlier. The petulant nagging, the worry. It was growing into something. Something out of my control, and I couldn’t stop it. I am one with nature. I kept thinking to myself, in mantra.

I am one with nature. I am one -

“Carla...look at you. You're covered in snow - come on! Get up! You're gonna freeze!"

And as sudden and sharp, it touch my shoulder. Almost like an urge from my subconscious to -

Get the hell up!

And I did, the stoicism and grace I once displayed turning into a frantic stumble. Frost still amassing in fusillade. My hind legs tripping on something I couldn’t recognize, and onto the birch. He was driving me down wasn’t he? My heart, my haste. The thought of the night, of it killing me. Eating me alive with a primal, desperate, and all encompassing wear.

"Appalachia wears me solemnly.” I kept repeating to myself, my voice shaking. “Appalachia wears me solemnly."

But it was useless, I couldn’t even bring myself to stand if I tried. I could feel the caked patches of snow rubbing against my clothes, each nub flaking off amongst the setting sun. I looked up to the sky, just as Justin did when he was just as vulnerable. The clouds turned from a gray to an orange, then a purplish black when it fully started to set. The minutes dragged on for centuries, as I felt it again, of how the trees seethed into it's deep, deep sleep, and how their branches forked the clouds and held it up. Each tangling over one other like power lines in the wind. It was a sharp but orderly mess. The moon becoming an unrecognizable haze as it pulsated. All going into the same place.

“Carla!” it rang out amongst the chaos ensuing in my brain, the voice snapping me back into place with a magnetic click. Even if it was just for a moment.

Wait, it?

He skipped through the dark. Once again wet, damp, and with a sense of urgency. He could barely see the world, with only the light from his flashlight guiding him, shimmering the newly covered or dented whites. Glittering, flailing with a hurried kick that parted snow.

My name kept passing through me dully, the light obscuring his movements and figure. The smaller, thinner trees strobing an outline of blue from Justin’s fading aura. It’s his light blinding me, it’s those scavengers again by Arceus!

“Fucking hell…” he grunted as he approached closer. His hands dragging across the ground, the light obscuring his clumsiness, trying to grab the bough again.

He kept repeating himself, “Come on - come on…” through gritted teeth, grabbing my arm insistently. I could barely stand. I couldn’t feel my legs shaking, it’s stinging and stiffening. My senses, try as they may, struggle to come back to me, as I sunk oddly warm in a suddenness. What have I done?

“J-Justin…” I whispered, my voice husked, scrapped, racing itself out of my own body, tumbling myself over and onto my trainer violently into the snow.

I can’t think. Everything has turned itself into a molecular haze, the silhouette of Justin’s leering head had begun to distort the sky. His body becoming the stump I’ve been meditating on. It’s a charred figure that had become obscure by a brightening glow and I don’t know why. Yes, he’s probably trying to break me from my concentration. He couldn’t, he mustn't. I know I’m one with nature, I am one.

I am one.

“I am - -”

"No." he cuts off, "I already know - I don't want to come back here again."

“That’s not what I’m trying to say.” I retorted.

“Then what?”

I could see it in his face, the way it mangles into an uncomfortable squint, showing his checkered, repulsive smile. What had he become?

For a moment, I just sat there. My stare turning that into an indifference until I spoke. If not before, now I had suddenly set it straight, as all I could think of now is how he couldn’t have taken the hint.

“Just leave me alone, Justin.”

And just like that, I close my eyes. Feeling the wind brush up against my ears, the figure once again standing to the right of me, as he sighs.

“Please, Carla. I don’t want you to die out here.”