Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Quenched Torch

Chapter 23: Alone Together

As the first light of morning brushed against his scaly hide, Rye stirred in bed, his body filling with ebbs of energy as his Grass-type nature began to photosynthesize the warm light. Despite the comforting feeling, he couldn't bring himself to fully enjoy it, as he was too occupied by one detail in particular.

He had been woken up a while ago by Beck, who had gotten up to shuffle to the door, sitting down to stare at the sky blankly. If Rye understood correctly, he had been like that ever since, his breath shaky and melancholy clear in his form.

If the week and a half of discrimination and stressful dungeon-diving he had seen was anything to go off of, Rye knew that Beck could take a good deal of punishment, both physical and mental, so he wasn't entirely sure what had driven him to this state. As such, the longer Beck watched the sky, the more unsettled Rye became.

'Maybe I should ask him?'

Rye winced at the thought. He knew trying to talk to him now probably wasn't the best idea, but Beck was his friend. If he had to know...

'This is home.'

I stared up at the sky, watching the endless expanse as the stars glided through the sky, slowly being drowned out by the first light of morning.

'Those damn stars...'

Averting my gaze from the sky, I instead pulled my scalchop off my chest and took a long, loath-tinted look at it. Just... here I was feeling normal about growing a damn melee weapon out of Mew-knows-where. What would human me have thought about all the shit that seemed normal now? What was what I had left even like?

'...it doesn't matter.'

When I had first gotten a good look at those stars and recognized that this world might not be so alien, there had been some room for denial. So what if the constellations were the same? It very well could have been a coincidence or some alternate universe thing. With what Arden had told us last night about this 'Unova' place, though, I couldn't deny it anymore.

'This is home. There's no 'real world' waiting for me. Just... the world that hates me for existing.'

Gritting my teeth, I slammed my scalchop into the ground, leaving a sizable dent in the dirt floor. I had woken up maybe an hour ago to that revelation, and finding myself unable to take my mind off it, I had sat down here to try to process it. I wasn't sad about this, surprisingly: why grieve for family I didn't know in the first place? What did irk me, though, was the thought that whoever that family might have been, any chance of returning to them had passed centuries ago.

'Humans have been gone for centuries, right? Unless I was some sort of thirtieth-generation survivalist living away from anyone's sight, would that mean I'd have to have lived before those centuries? If that's the case, then...'

"Beck? What's the matter?"

I jumped and quickly clutched my scalchop, turning to find Rye groggily standing behind me, clearly concerned. With a heavy sigh, I shook my head, sloppily setting my scalchop back onto my chest. This didn't quite satisfy the Treecko, who took a seat next to me.

"Come on, w-we're friends, right? You can talk to me. Uh, what's going on?" he asked. I hesitated for a bit, eventually just pointing back into our quarters towards our hastily closed bag and the map still hanging out. A minute passed before Rye nodded in understanding.

"What Mr. Arden was saying... it... I know what it's like to lose someone, trust me. But, um... S-Sinni talked to me about how it's never good to dwell on the past, and..."