"Girls...it's time to wake up~" I whisper-sang softly, cracking open the doorknob to their bedroom, which was formerly Marnie's. She'd moved out a few years after the girls had been born and now lived in an apartment with her long-term boyfriend, Hop, who happened to be Sonia's right-hand man and Leon's younger brother.

The three were curled up in their respective beds—Larkspur spread out like an octopus with an arm and leg thrown out from under her blankets and snoring, Wisteria curled into a ball like a Meowth and Iris flat on her back like a board. I'd seen the sight every day for the past ten years, but I doubted I'd ever get over the marvel of human beings that had once been part of me existing in reality. Motherhood really did change people, I had to begrudgingly admit.

"Rise and shine, ladies!!!!" Meowsie yelled from her perch on my shoulder, jumping and slamming the light on in midair, and all three groaned in unison. "Turn 'em off!" Larkspur wailed, cocooning herself in her blankets and shoving her pillow on her head. I laughed at her antics. "It's sooooo briiiiiight!"

"Five more minutes?" Iris mumbled, rolling over and squinting. "Pretty pretty please, wi' an Alcremie on top?"
"That's what you girls said last time, and you were late to school," I told her, before unrolling Larkspur from her blanket burrito. "The boss'll let you have it if she's late to work again."

"A'right, a'right, we're gettin' up," she groaned, trudging from her bedroom into the bathroom across the way. Slowly but surely, all three made their way from their room to get dressed, and I walked back up the stairs to help make breakfast, Meowsie jumping up to join me.

The apartment had changed significantly over the years I'd been here. Piers was working on a new song at the new dining room table, the couch had been replaced and currently housed a pile of Zigzagoons and Salazzle, and Toxie was snoozing next to Piers' Toxtricity and their little Toxel. With the renewed source of income in Spikemuth, people could afford better housing, which accounted for the new furniture and the separate space for the girls, not accounting for a certainly unplanned house-flipping.

Years ago, Meowsie accidentally found an abandoned, sealed-off apartment beneath the floor in Marnie's old room during a heated match of Who-Can-Jump-And-Touch-The-Ceiling with her (which Piers had explicitly forbidden doing ever again after the incident), and we now had a downstairs space. After repairing the extensive damage and adding a particularly spicy Linoone to the flock, Marnie had taken the space as a bigger room until she moved out, and now it was for the girls. Her old room was now Salamence's.

I smiled, watching my dearest compatriot (next to Meowsie) rumble in sleep, snores deep enough to make the room tremble. I walked out to see Piers, still bleary-eyed from pulling late nights but awake through sheer determination and a healthy dose of coffee. Meowsie hopped off my shoulder immediately to start grabbing lunches and packing notecards from last night's study session back into backpacks. He smiled as I walked in, only turning when I walked behind his seat at the table to get to the kitchen.

"Hey, love," he greeted me as I kissed him good morning. "Sleep well?"
"Well enough with Toxel crying at 2:15 in the morning," I smiled, and he chuckled.
"Definitely feels like deja-vu, don't it?" he asked.
"Absolutely," I smiled, kissing him one more time before walking into the kitchen to start breakfast.

Dragalge, evolved from Skrelp, poked his head out of the kiddie pool lying in the kitchen to see what I was doing. He was much bigger now; almost five times his former size with brown, kelp-like appendages and a purple underbelly. He was almost too big to keep inside the house, but he hated to be away from people for too long. As it was, I was considering asking Nessa about a housing tank the next time she battled Marnie.

"Hello, Dragalge," I smiled, and he nuzzled the hand I offered. "Did you sleep well?" His snout wrinkled; I laughed. Since he slept out here, he had a first-row seat for listening to the crying baby. "I guess not, then. Can you put out the stove when the eggs are done?" A small splash confirmed, and I walked out of the kitchen to the other mother in the house.

"Toxie, breakfast is almost ready," I whispered, gently stroking her forehead to wake her. Slowly, she stirred, exhausted from her late night and the aftermath of Leon's battle. "I'll go get your food, okay?" A contented gurgle and she was back asleep already. A minute later, I brought out bowls of Pokefood and set them in front of the Poison-Electric family. I walked around the house, handing out food to Pokemon and checking back in with Meowsie and Dragalge to make sure breakfast didn't burn. I trusted Meowsie with my life, but not with the kitchen stove after an incident involving Salazzle and a gas malfunction.

A few minutes after the Pokemon were fed, the girls trudged into the living room. "Well, whaddaya know?" Piers smiled around his coffee. "They're alive after all."
"Shove off, pop," Larkspur mumbled, slumping in the chair across from him and gratefully accepting her plate of toast, tomatoes and fried eggs. "Oi. I stayed up late t'make yer lunch," he grumbled, but smiled behind his mug as the girls released the Pokemon they'd chosen to care for in their most recent semester.

Wisteria picked at her bacon and nibbled on a piece of fried bread, a Shuppet dancing figure eights in the space above her head. Larkspur wolfed down a few sausages and an egg sunny-side up, and fed the Ekans wrapped around her shoulders some as well. I shuddered at the sight of the purple snake Pokemon; they'd always made me uneasy, even after almost a month of living with one.

Iris was tossing bits of toast into the air for her Inkay to catch, the small squid Pokemon cooing delightedly until Piers gave her a look. She gave one right back and threw an entire slice of bread into the air, yelping when it fell back onto her hair (butter side up, thankfully).

Once again I found myself struck by how wonderful it felt, having someone to pass on a love and knowledge for Pokemon to. As much as I could, I tried to be involved with their school projects, but my unorthodox curriculum and childhood studies was a hindrance, to say the least. Piers was much more knowledgeable of the standard curriculum in the grand scheme of things.

However, the girls' enthusiastic response to my willingness to help them rear their chosen partners made me feel weightless with joy. We grew new connections over which Berries would encourage growth, how to tell which were each of their favorites and where to find them on trees, what vitamins and mints could hinder them and how Nature could determine when and how they evolved. It was something I could contribute wholeheartedly to, something I knew, and helped to make a decades-long transition even easier.

While the girls ate, Meowsie and I packed sandwiches and a small snack for them in brown paper sacks. When I peeked down to look at my watch, I rounded on the three struggling to brush crumbs out of Iris' silky locks. "It's 8:00!" I called, and immediately the triplets launched into crunch mode.

They quickly cleared off their plates and rushed to put them in the sink for later, grabbed their lunches and bags and ran out the door. "Be sure to give Maddie a hug from me!" I yelled as the front door slammed shut behind them. "They get th' mad dash from you, y'know."
"Oh shut up." 

Piers cackled and I sighed, walking back into the kitchen to wash the dishes. As the soapy water foamed and cleared off the food smears, I let my mind wander to my girls.

Three weeks into their second semester at Wyndon Academy for Young Trainers, and they hadn't run into too much trouble, academically speaking. All three had been making good grades so far, and Iris especially had been excelling in her battle simulations, going after them with a gumption I hadn't seen since I was her age. Yes, she and Larkspur had been doing just fine. It was Wisteria I really worried about.

She didn't speak at all; hadn't much, since an incident with a stray Pokémon move injuring her head and causing an onset of apraxia, one that refused to go away entirely despite years of speech therapy. She always preferred writing down her thoughts and feelings or signing them to me or typing out verbal messages on her Rotom Phone to be read aloud over speaking them outright. And although that method of communication worked perfectly fine in our household, I was concerned how it translated into school.

Most kids her age didn't know ASL, and I'd heard from Iris and Larkspur—and from Wisteria herself, after enough pushing—that the other kids teased her often for not speaking; I wasn't too surprised when I heard the biggest bully was the youngest daughter of the former Chairman Rose himself, named Thorne (as if his ego could have been any bigger). Even the teacher didn't call on her as much as other kids, and frequently referred to Wisteria's disability with disdain, like there was something inherently inferior about having one.

My grip tightened on the sponge as I thought about their teacher. She'd been more than civil to us in the beginning; charming, even, and I'd been relieved after doubting the Trainer school system since the girls were old enough to speak. Our conference with her about Iris and Larkspur were positive—little notes here and there about paying attention—but when she'd spoken about Wisteria, her tone had completely changed. Nothing but condescending remarks, a lengthy discussion about "effort", and how she felt Wisteria could "do more to bond with her fellow students if she only tried harder" that made me want to smack her in the face—

"Yer doin' that thing again," Piers muttered against my hair, arms looping around my waist. I glanced down, noticed I'd been scrubbing the dishes so hard the glaze was beginning to flake off, before slumping against him. "I just can't help but worry for her," I admitted, fiddling with the ring sitting daintily on my left hand. It had been Piers' high school ring; I preferred it to all other engagement rings that had mountains of diamonds set into them. It was much more practical for the busywork that Team Yell kept me in. Nothing too exotic, but I loved it.

"I know, love," he said, toying with my hair. "But she'll be alright. She's a tough li'l nipper, yeah?"
"I know," I exhaled. "Just..mother's instinct, you know?"
"'Fraid I don't," he smirked against my hair. "An' I hope I never do." I snorted, turning back to place them in the drying rack. Surprisingly, Piers still clung to me.

"You do know you have a song to work on right now, right?" I asked after a few minutes.
"Got stuck," he rested his head on top of mine. "Is takin' a break all that bad?"
"No, but you're not paid to laze around and coddle your wife," I said, flicking a wet towel at him. "Wish I was," he groaned, leaving me to sit back at the table. "Record company's givin' me crap again. I'm a person, mate, not a bloody supercomputer!"

I laughed, shutting off the water and walking around to sit by him. "I'm stuck on this one part in the second chorus," he explained, tapping a pencil against his forehead as he leaned over the paper. "It's a free verse song, so it don't hafta rhyme; I'm just stuck, is all." I examined his scribbled notes for a moment, before taking it and writing something down in neat penmanship.

Piers muttered my new piece under his breath before tapping out the melody he'd been working on for the past couple of weeks. "'I'm lookin' forward to the fu-two-three-four-ture...but my eye-sight is go-ing bad', bum bum," he said, tapping the pencil in time with the syllables. "Thanks, love."

"No problem," I smiled, gathering his mismatched papers in my arms to translate them into sheet music for guitar. "Thank you for getting my mind off the girls."