Love in the Time of Tribulations

Chapter 4: A Horde

For the first time I realize I have nothing to say on this particular note...Um...enjoy? Anyway, time for Chapter 4!

Chapter 4

A Horde

Reeree enjoyed pictures.

To her, they represented a more beautiful time; a memory that could be captured and never let go of. It was a simple thing like that which so many people forgot. A picture, a painting, all of them could sear an indelible memory into one's soul. It was so different from fighting, where one moment you could feel a burning passion, and then the very next it was gone. There was nothing to hold on to. And all too often, Reeree felt there was something that desperately needed to be held on to.

"They're nice pictures, huh?" Mimi asked. She hadn't said anything for a long time, simply standing there with Reeree in the darkness. It was a comfortable friendship, one that Reeree wouldn't trade for anything in the world. It was one of the few things she had left after all. "Although, some are a little scary, huh?"

"Kalos is steeped in history, you know that," Reeree said quietly. However, her tone was laced with warning, as if reminding her to shut her mouth and move on. Mimi quirked an eyebrow, but didn't speak, heeding the warning. Reeree stepped along, her gaze briefly flitting upward to the moonlight filtering in through the high windows. Everyone else must have been asleep, but here she was losing herself in the pictures that lined the halls of the League Headquarters.

Feeling a sense of calm pervade her body, Reeree returned her focus to the pictures. Most of them were location paintings; beautiful landscapes that stretched as far as the imagination would let them. Then there were those that detailed history, bloody and violent. Not that anyone who looked at the pictures would be able to guess that was what they depicted unless they were a historian of some sort, but Reeree knew. More like she had to know.

"Once upon a time there was a noble and just king..." she spoke out, though it seemed to come more as singing, a haunting melody. Mimi closed her eyes at the sound of it, losing herself in the reveries of history. "That king loved all people, Pokémon and things. But the king could not stop the war to come, for people and Pokémon made the world undone."

"And then the flower went off to war," Mimi continued. Reeree stopped at her continuation of the lost poem of history. Her gaze lingered on the sight of a man, holding a single flower. To anyone else, it may have been a random picture, but it wasn't, and she knew that. "But what was it for? What was it for?"

"That flower came back in a little box, and the man, he could not deal with what was lost," Reeree proceeded, her haunting melody and song echoing off the hallway's stone walls. "And so he built it, terrible and great, that weapon that ruled over all the world and its fate. But when hatred sets in, it sets in deep, and this world for once, it knew its defeat."

"And the rest is lost to history..." Mimi concluded for her. Reeree stopped in front of one more picture. This one was a little blurrier than all the rest, but within the paint could be seen the shape of a blossoming flower of opalescent quality; the artist had truly captured its shimmer and the terrifying and palpable aura that surrounded it. "He'll be making his move soon, you know."

"I'm well aware of that," Reeree stated simply. She reached her hand out to allow her fingertips to brush against the oil painting softly. "You're the one who needs to be careful. Losing in the first round like that...and against Pancham, of all Pokémon."

"Hey, she was strong!" Mimi protested angrily. "I'd almost think she could give you a run for your money."

"I'd like to see that..." More silence in the empty moonlit halls. "Either way, just as our Father predicted, almost all of them made it through, and with little effort on their part. I'm hardly surprised."