To raise a child

Drew clamped his hands over his ears as the baby began crying again, it's siren-like wail piercing through the green hard boy's eardrums.

"For heaven's sakes, Dratini," he yelled to be heard over the noisily sobbing dragon, "Flygon's just sitting there! All you have to do is use twister on him"

Dratini only cried louder.

Flygon, who'd agreed to literally stand there and let Dratini practice twister on him, returned to his Pokeball to escape the baby's shrieks. "Thanks anyway, Flygon," Drew muttered to the unmoving Pokeball.

He sighed. "What is it this time, Dratini?" The teary-eyed baby dragon only stared at him sadly. Sighing again, Drew buried his face in his hands.

It wasn't like Dratini didn't know how to use twister, no, she frequently used it on her meal if she wasn't satisfied with it. She only used the attack when she wanted to, and Drew just didn't get why she wouldn't use it in training when she literally had a sitting duck to practice on.

"Again," he ordered. "On that tree."

And as usual, the stubborn baby didn't comply.

The next morning, Drew awoke to the sounds of a baby yelling for food.

And when I say morning, I mean 12:00 A.M. As in midnight.

Fumbling around for a flashlight with a yawn, he slipped out of his sleeping bag. "Alright, alright. I'll feed you. Chill."

As if training the stubborn thing wasn't hard enough, Dratini refused to eat unless she was served at precisely at 12:00 A.M. And 12:00 P.M.

Then there was the process of making the food. First, Drew had to heat up the milk and put it in a bottle. Next, he would stir in some water, as he was trying to gradually move her appetite from milk to water and other hard foods. Then, he would hand feed her the bottle.

He had to get up and do this everyday at midnight. Every day since she'd hatched a month ago. He'd tried moving her to a more reasonable eating schedule, but she'd flat out refused to eat the food she'd been given in the morning, and started crying when she wasn't fed at noon until he eventually broke and made her food.

And all of this was without the last step of Dratini's eating process. She would then reject the water in the milk, use her long body to squeeze the rejected meal on Drew's face, then use twister on the soaked boy.

So then he'd have to repeat the whole process over once or twice more until he gave in and gave her pure milk.

And by that point, he'd lost at least two hours of sleep.

-------------------------------------------

"Roselia, I just don't feel like I'm taking care of her properly," Drew confided to his partner pokemon sometime after sunrise a few hours later.

"Rose," she said sadly, watching as Dratini climbed on and around Flygon as if he were a playground. Thankfully, the green dragon didn't seem to mind, or for that matter, notice the baby.

"I don't think I can take all of this much longer," he said softly with his eyes closed. "If today goes badly... I'm going to have to give her up."

"ROSELIA, ROSE!?!?!?!?!?!?!?" She gasped.

"Yeah," he said with a small frown across his lips. "I just don't think that I'm raising her the way I should. Every little thing I do makes her either cry or attack me. I just think that someone else could do it far better than I could. You know I have absolutely no experience with raising a baby pokemon. I don't want to let her go, either."