Virah closed her eyes and started meditating.

She has been making progress for the past week in her Aura training and her trauma was… manageable, much more better tolerated- just there.

It didn't scare her anymore, didn't make her panic, and nothing about it affected her in the slightest, she still saw and felt her past self heaving and crying yes, but now there was a sort of… disconnect to it all, and the only real thing that she feels from watching the memory play out is wondering if…

… her life could have gone better should this event never have happened- but that- that's rather obvious, isn't it? Of course her life would have gone better without it- that's obvious.

And the path forward is just as crystal clear; she needed to move on and get on with her life because regrets about the past meant nothing to the present other than to provide someone lessons but otherwise, it would only slow a person down.

Virah knew that she needed to be quick with her Aura training and finish anything she could with it, her progress was fantastic according to Grene but she didn't feel that way.

She sucked in a breath of air, it tasted like mercury; tangy, ugly, and it made her head feel disgusted, the type that sticks, gnaws, and aches away at the back and top of her mind, the kind of disgusting scent that gives you a headache from just a whiff because your body was trying to get you to move away from or to kill it on reflex.

Virah didn't do any of that.

No, she embraced the scent and the pain that came with it.

Her head started to hurt in more ways than one, and bile wanted to rise up her throat- was rising up her throat- Virah swallowed it with a gulp but it came back up much stronger than before and her gag reflex forced her out of her meditation-

She heaved- gagged- coughed- then heaved again- she gagged- something wanted to flow between her lips and down to the floor- Virah placed a hand underneath her chin and forcefully snapped her mouth shut and let the acidic taste wash over her tongue- she closed her eyes and tilted her head upward, then she took a deep breath using her nose.

She swallowed her own vomit and forced her head to look up, its angle unnatural.

Virah opened her eyes and grabbed the grocery bag on the foot of her bed, she took out a bottle of water as well as painkillers and gulped those down one after the next.

Her back found the wall as she slumped, her headache was… there, but it had always been there and it'll keep eating away at her senses with pain until the painkillers do their thing.

Virah stood up and rubbed her eyes, slowly, she went to the door of her apartment and opened it, she saw that the skies were still dark and that the only light outside was from the street lamps below.

Virah peeked at the clock her neighbor had installed on the outside of their door and nodded in satisfaction, “4 hours,”

That was progress. An entire hour more of meditation was good progress.

She went back inside her room and let the drowsiness from the pill take over her mind and after one last gulp of water, she lay on her bed and stared up at the ceiling until her eyes closed and sleep overtook her being.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

She dreamt of something that night, a gigantic white form; beautiful yet divine in its presence, it looked like an Oddish to her, or maybe not- the dream cleared and she saw that it was humanoid- with a long, slender neck and two arms, two orbs were on its shoulders and another one was embedded in its chest- whatever this was- it roared-

Virah woke up feeling refreshed and she got out of bed without a single sign of the headache assaulting her head the night prior. The dream that she had was nothing more than fuzzy memories now too, there but not at the same time, a paradoxical state that got Virah to ignore it as she started her morning.

“M-gwood morning Rataaaa-” Virah greeted the rodent with a wave and a yawn, “-ta, slept well?”

The rodent perked up and nodded, “Ratata!”

Virah smiled, “good,” she got up, grabbed her clothes as well as soap, and headed for the showers below.

She knew that the world wasn't going to wait for her and so she moved alongside it. That was something that Virah believed she should do- to keep up with everything around her and don't get left behind.

After taking her morning shower, she came back to her apartment fully clothed and with Ratata eating his bowl of Pokefeed alongside the immobile Nitro. Virah moved past the scene, well used to the fact that the rodent just decided to feed himself and her starter every morning.

“You know, Ratata,” Virah started, “Whitney is looking for you, she said that she'd take you in as her second Pokemon,”

“Ratata?” The rodent asked.

“Yeah, second,” Virah nodded, “or maybe third? The Milktank that she usually carries didn't belong to her and is just there for protection, but I think her Pidgey is, well, hers.”

“Ratata, Ratata,” the rodent said its name twice in a very lengthy sentence.

“I guess, so you'll be her third Pokemon, do you think you wanna go with her?” Virah grinned when the rodent snorted, “I know I said she usually wrestles her own Pokemon-” with the Milktank just going along with it, unaffected by the pinkette's advances, “- but I'm sure you'd like her and hey, that way I don't have to leave you here when I go on a journey,”

She knew that the rodent was content with just living out its days here but she wanted to get him to go along with her, as selfish as that sounds.

“Ratata,”

Virah sighed, “okay, fine, you can think about it for a little while longer but you better have made up your mind after I come back from the ranger's exams okay?”

She saw the rodent pumping its fist, “Ratata!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Virah shook her head, “I'm sure you're very responsible, enough to have come to a decision by then,”

She waited for her Pokemon to finish eating and after Nitro had his breakfast, she fed him his Protein, Carbos, and Iron as well as a sitrus berry before recalling him and going on their way, Virah waved to Ratata as she left, “see ya, don't eat too much of the Pokefeed okay?”

“Ratata!” The rodent replied excitedly.

Virah walked along the throng of civilians as she made her way toward her job, all the while she thought about the progress Nitro had been making with his Electro Web.

It wasn't something that she had done before- create an entirely new and original move that is, - so she thought that her Kakuna would have a hard time figuring out what she wanted it to do but as it turns out, her worries were completely unfounded.

Nitro had learned to “heat” his strands of string on just the third day of practicing and by the fifth, Virah felt a jolt every time she touched it.

That was last Wednesday, today was Friday and Virah thought that for now, she wanted to take a break from the battle plaza and head to her Beedrills on the breeding center after she finished her shift.

It's been a while since they last talked and every time she went there, all she saw were Weedles who, for some reason, were dwindling in numbers.

She knew what was happening, really, it was obvious; the Pokemon she had painstakingly taken care of for the past year were taking the initiative in moving away and Virah thought that what they were doing was a good idea.

If she… never saw them again- that was fine, really, she didn't mind- as long as her Beedrills survived somewhere, stayed happy, she's sure that they'd find a way to see her and Nitro become champion- “my thoughts are becoming quite chaotic huh?”

Virah rubbed Nitro's pokeball and sighed, “your family has been with me for a year now,” Virah said, “and they're leaving,”

Her voice didn't crack saying that last word.

“One week,” Virah said breathlessly.

There was only one week left before the ranger's exam started and after that, she would have to go to Ilex Forest alongside her schoolmates to start their exam.

If she passes- and failing is pretty hard to do, seriously, it takes effort to fail the exam, - she'd get her trainer's I.D and be allowed to go on a journey, and better yet, if she gets good scores or even passes with flying colors; there would be weeks before a ranger searches for her in the wilds.

And that might seem like a bad thing but it isn't, as that would mean that she would have more time to spend looking for Pokemon in routes between cities without the rangers breathing down on her neck.

If she had a Pokewatch- she's sure she'll buy one on her… second gym, or so, - then she could even register herself to the Wild Area Database to let the rangers be aware of her location every time she goes to the open parts of the wilderness. Caves and Forests were obviously an exception but that's what the extended time out in the wilds is for.

“One week,” Virah said to herself again as a reminder that she only had one week to learn Aura unimpeded, get Ratata to join Whitney's team, allow her Beedrills to find a new nest (they most likely already have,) and more importantly, find a second team member.