An Absol's Life 2

Inside The Forest

As I continued to walk through that forest, with however much courage I could muster, things only became stranger. Flowers I have never seen anywhere else seemed to pop out of the most random places, some hidden with the branches and bark of the trees, others for unknown reason almost hovering above ground, to the point were I wasn't sure how they managed to survive above the soil. Some, I swore could move, whenever I looked back they seemed completely still, but in a different location. Or maybe I was just hallucinating. I mean, that happens to the best of us, right?

The whole forest was darker than any I had been in, much denser, much quieter - too quiet almost. I heard nothing. Almost nothing, that was. I swear, I had heard a branch move on its own, a leaf whisper. I could almost feel the flowers watching me. Yet there was nothing else there. No wind to move the leaves, the branches, or even whole trees. No sound other than that of the leaves... and my of feet gently hitting the ground as I walked on. As for the flowers, they seemed to face me, not the sun as a flower usually does. They just looked off. Beautiful... but very suspicious. Like if they were part of one massive, gorgeous and deadly carnivorous plant, waiting to eat me. Waiting for me to stop looking and then... SNAP! It would trap me and eat me for lunch.

"Eh... Aki... did that weird flower over there just move?" Snow asked, shuddering as he looked at the pink and purple plant that looked vaguely like a tulip. I looked at it too, before hearing a hissing sound. As though we had just offended the plant. It even seemed to come from the plant itself. But how? Plants did not have feelings... or did they?

"Snow, be quiet! Something might hear us!" I snapped back. Snow flinched, taking a step back.

"All right, boss," he retorted, trying to joke. Only, I didn't feel like joking around. I could see the tulip thing move slightly, its stem moving from side to side in an almost hypnotic, snake-like motion.

At that moment, I wondered if maybe it was just some strange type of pokemon, but then again, didn't most pokemon have faces, or at least something that distinguished them from plants? The only thing that made it seem like an animal and not a plant was the fact that it could move, by itself. Oh, and it could hiss, apparently.

Snow hissed at the plant, the plant hissed at him. I almost laughed - the whole thing resembled a rather intense staring contest, but if so... get me out of here! I do not want to be in a forest full of staring plants! And yet... I could not afford to go home just yet. I need to find the creature responsible for changing my fate. For all I knew, it could be one of these hissing, snake-tulips. Though that was a very disturbing thought.

He was about to attack the plant, when I finally decided to do something about the situation. "No, Snow," I ordered, stepping in between him and the plant. The plant's stem, as though the plant itself was take aback, straightened and tilted slightly backwards. It stopped hissing too, which was a relief. "We've come here to find someone, not to attack plants." Even if those plants were plain weird.

The tulip-snake-plant let out another sound, one I cannot hope to describe. It sounded a lot more cheerful, but nothing like a sound I've heard before. Something between a purr, a meow, a tweet and a whisper. As it did, several other plants did the same and soon we found ourselves in a forest full of chirping, meowing, purring, whispering, singing and even barking plants. There was something adorable about it and at the same time, I felt as though there was something wrong about their cheerfulness.

The trees started to make sounds too, creating drumming sounds and the sound of maracas using their leaves, though none of the leaves moved in the same direction, so the wind could not have been responsible for this.

The forest seemed to literally lighten up, only the slightest bit, but still.

The stranger part came when the bark of the trees started to separate, and out of the trunks of the trees, pokemon started to appear. They hopped out, looking around as though shocked by our visit, but at the same time excited. As though they were accepting us... or expecting us? They looked quite different too. Even pokemon I knew looked different, different colours, sizes and even their shape and how they moved was different.

I even saw Bellsprouts that looked rather unusual. And here I thought Bellsprouts looked strange enough. They had much darker leaves and stems, had bigger eyes, and their heads were all yellow, rather than yellow and pink. They also had petals protruding from the backs of their heads. But the most different part of them, were those strange, black-blue orbs that seemed to adorn their stems and the veins of their leaves. They also spoke in this strange, mixed laguage, completely different to how I was used to hearing pokemon speak.

Their evolved forms seemed to carry some of these unusual traits too, only their language seemed more sophisticated, the more older the pokemon were, it seemed, the more varied and strange their language was. They also had those orbs and the lack of pink around their mouths, as well as the overall darker colours. Though, Victreebel was by far the most distinct of the three. Each Victreebel's head was different in colour and pattern, as well as the leaf shape.

I saw a few Exeggcutes and Exeggutors. A few plant-like pokemon, but frankly, nothing else. Only those that closely resembled plants, even Oddishes' which weren't native to the region, where here. They all had darker colours, some looked a lot small or bigger than usual and the colour was usually different as well as how they moved and communicated. They all were rather timid, none of them seemed to be looking for a fight. Each got on with their own job and none of them seemed to stray too close to us. As though they had never seen a human, nor a trainer's pokemon. Though one of them, an rather large Victreebel, came to us, creating a few sounds that sounded almost like: "you loo' fo' som'in'".

I tilted my head to the side, not understanding.

"You loo' fo' po... po... po'emon? No 'appin', 'us' fin'in'?"

I tried to decifer, it but it was Snow who first figured it out. He looked at me and said, "she asked: "Are you looking for something? Are you looking for pokemon. No trapping, just finding?""

I thought about it and nodded. "Just looking... miss. There is a pokemon, that we thought should be here, that has the ability to turn people into pokemon."

The Victreebel shook her head. "No... no po'emon li' 'at. No' many po'emon li' 'e. 'On forest. Ne' fores'."

I turned to Snowball. "Apparently, the pokemon we are looking for is in another forest, they don't have many pokemon, let alone one that can turn humans into pokemon. There should be one near by. Am I right?"

The Victreebel nodded and pointed its stem in the right direction, saying, "the' 'e a' in's."

"There be strange things... so you're saying there is something stranger than hissing plants?" Snowball teased.

The Victreebel let out a huff. "A' may'ee, u' 'ees is 'ome."

I glared at Snow. "You should be ashamed... offending someone else's home."

Snow sighed. "Alright, I'm sorry for offending your home miss," he apologised, before turning to me. "Happy?"

"Yes, let's move on, just in case the pokemon we're looking for disappears before we get there. Turns out, forests can run away from you, so we do need to hurry," I replied, waving the Victreebel goodbye. Carefully treading through the sea of strange plants, I set off to the next forest.