[One-Shot] Paper Wish [Pokemon]
{ people don't start wise
we all start off equally stupid
equally without knowledge
but
our experiences give us this
"wisdom" }
☆*:・゚✧*: ☆
The gently falling stars
Throughout the town, as it blankets this cold empty ground
"Come on, let's go and find a melody!"
☆
section i: paper star
A constellation of stars, scattered about in the night and forming faraway patterns akin to that of a connect-the-dots puzzle. Serene glows that provides a million spots of golden radiance to their black landscape, as if they form an orchestra to provide the accompaniment to their conductor of a moon.
It is past the eight-year-old's bedtime, but she sits on the very edge of his bed, her eyes and mind both lost to the possession of the sky's beauty. She's simply content to stare, her brown irises soaking in every detail of the dazzling assemblage presented to her.
She doesn't know how much time passes. Perhaps she has stayed awake for too many hours, but that does not matter to her now. She just wants to look at the stars until the end of time.
A silhouette startles her—it blocks her view, but somehow, she isn't irked by the creature's appearance.
The Jirachi pays no mind to her surprise, telling her that she is just passing by on one of her many flights through Hoenn—and she takes out a strip of paper, her tiny hands swift and practiced and as light as a Taillow in flight.
In no time, the Legendary holds out a neatly-folded paper star to her, pressing yet another piece of the parchment into the young girl's hands and encouraging her to give the origami a try.
The child is by no means any expert. Her hands fumble as she tries to copy her tutor's movements, and the end result is far inferior to the example—but the wish-maker doesn't mind. She simply smiles; praises her student for a job well done, and tells her to make one every time she felt down.
"If you fold a thousand, your wish will come true," the Legendary informs, and that's the last she says before she's gone, streamer-like ribbons flowing out behind her like sails and small frame growing to a distant speck in the air.
The girl blinks, the two paper stars still cupped in the bowl she has formed with her hands, but a small smile is painted on her face.
(The next day, she questions her mother about her name. She is called Xin, and her surname is Yuan—at least, that is what she has been told.
Together, they form the Chinese phrase for "wish".)
☆*:・゚✧*: ☆
Unable to see the tears that you had shed
Silent, they run down your face... and fall unnoticed
☆
section ii: paper heart
The next time they meet is eight years later.
She doesn't know why the Legendary isn't asleep for a thousand years, but she doesn't care. Her mouth is set in a blank, unmoving line across her face, and the glimmer of recognition fades as quickly as it appears.
Jirachi is frowning. She floats across the vast fields of Forina, her pace jerky as if she was gliding amongst shards of fragmented, broken glass. Small hands reach out to cup her face, and the Pokemon asks if she remembers her.
"You didn't help me," comes the sharp reply, and a glass jar is thrown onto the field, the lid falling open and hundreds of little paper stars spilling out. "I couldn't fold a thousand in time. I called for you, and you never came. Mum and Dad died because of you."
Not even a second glance is spared. The teenager seems so small at this moment, and it seems like she is the one walking amongst broken pieces of her life instead. And, for a moment, a tinge of guilt strikes at the Legendary's heart. She hadn't helped.
The jar is picked up, levitating into the creature's arms as she stares at the tiny masterpieces scattered amidst the grass, as delicate and professional she how she had demonstrated the technique. But all of that has been reduced to nothing.
She doesn't care now. The hope inside her is like a star—her joyous night has ended, and now day had come and lay everything out in bare truth, sweeping the star with it.
One by one, the stars return back to their original home. The Legendary decides to wait. She cannot restore this night herself—this is something only time can do.
☆*:・゚✧*: ☆
Hey, I wish this rhythm that we play together
Can continue on forever
Never stop
☆
section iii: paper mask
She has spent too much time chasing after Xin. Day after meaningless day passes by without her even noticing. The seasons come and go in a flash—they all die one after another, just like the hope that slowly diminishes inside her.
And Arceus is displeased. She has not slept. Her power is slowly vanishing, as weak as a dying flower in a breeze, and repeated warnings have been issued. She does not pay attention, however—she wants to at least grant the girl's wish.
It has finally been enough. Arceus has put his foot down about the matter. She would sleep.
Jirachi is tired. She has spent too long waiting.
And, at the nine hundredth and ninety-ninth star, she lies in Forina, surrounded by a maze of the very stars she used to live amongst. A pattern similar to the way Xin's paper stars had been strewn about the meadows three years ago.
Her life passes by her eyes like water slipping through palms, the teenager's memories having merged into her own long ago. A final request is issued—one for Arceus to tell the girl that Jirachi was dead. She was not sleeping. To a human like her, Jirachi would be dead.
Arceus is knowing. All these times have not gone unnoticed—he knows just how much she cared.
Jirachi's hard work will not go to waste. A single wish can destroy even the physical makeup of the world; perhaps even Fate itself and the laws that he has set in place.
And maybe, just once—he glances back at the asleep Legendary behind him—the Lord would allow himself to bend his rules.
☆*:・゚✧*: ☆
The gently falling snow
As pure as white, it glows
Slowly it melts and fades into the sky up above
section iv: paper wish
Xin has folded it. The thousandth star.
"There is no use for it," she mutters, throwing the object into the jar. "She is dead. You say she agreed to her own death?"
"Would the Jirachi you know take her own life?"
She responds in an instant, her hands fidgeting with a stray piece of origami paper. "No."
A jar is pressed into her hands, one with a scar-like crack tainting the glass, five hundred stars safely packed inside as Arceus looks at her.
She has kept it all this time.
"Then maybe you didn't know her as well as you thought you did."
☆*:・゚✧*: ☆
comprehension passage: paper regrets
Staring into a broken mirror, dull eyes staring back at herself through the distortions caused by the little cracks. The tears are multiplied, her woebegone face reflecting more than once and she hates it.
Jirachi. Jirachi was still alive, she wants to tell herself, but that is nothing more than a piece of fiction crafted from the depths of her mind. She has caused Jirachi's death. She has caused the death of wishes for all eternity.
She has killed Jirachi. Her name now contains no meaning—there was no wish that would now come true, no matter how badly she wants it to.
"I do not have much time left," Jirachi had once said. "Every moment, I'm closer to sleep."
"Wishes don't exist," she'd spat back. "If they did, my parents wouldn't have died."
The Pokemon tried to help, but all she has done is push her away. When wishes died, so would hope. Had she truly tried to see her face?
Past the flowery smiles, someone who gave up everything for someone insignificant like her. But it is too late. Far too late.
The thoughts that run though her mind make up a comprehension passage, and she hates it—she has never been good at finding answers.
a) what can you liken this feeling to?
A broken bicycle tyre, leant against the walls of a run-down shed and never to be seen or used again. Broken, split down the ends with a crack piercing through the rubber's middle. Tired, slouched—it cannot move again. It cannot move by itself.
A sea, where one drowns in sadness and everlasting tears that carry no meaning; she weeps over someone that she has killed with her own two hands, the empty hole in her heart filling with a sort of poison that eats away at her mind.
The time when her parents died, where she had blamed the Pokemon for things that she should have done but didn't do—
The answer is left blank. Incomplete. She does not know, and she does not want to know.
☆*:・゚✧*: ☆
The gently falling stars
As pure as white, it glows
Slowly it melts and fades into the sky up above
☆
section v: paper wish
Her jar looks especially pretty tonight, and she hates it.
"Make a wish," Arceus has told her six months ago. "You have one thousand stars. I do not want my fallen comrade's work to go to waste."
But wishes are dead. They do not exist any more. So why do the thousand little pieces of origami glitter in the night, reflecting the beauty of the actual stars in the actual sky, gleaming with the warm radiance that she has only seen in one Pokemon?
She has killed that Pokemon.
She does not wish for her parents to come back. She does not wish for any frilly material goods, nor does she wish for a life where she is noticed more; is stronger at everything she does.
She wishes for meaning. She wishes for a dear friend to come back, so that she can apologise and give the both of them a chance for a real friendship.
☆*:・゚✧*: ☆
{ I do not find anything more important
than a friend
I do not need my problems to be fixed
or my life to be better
all I wanted
was a friend. }
"Hey, there's no way I would forget this melody
That we both played in harmony"
☆
"Your wish has been granted."
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