23. In Which Everything is Fine for Once

Twig woke up not to the local staravia performing their morning caroling, or to everyone else in the house snoring, but to the sounds of a meal being prepared. Disoriented, she tried to figure out how she’d slept only a few minutes and yet found herself feeling so groggy. It occurred to her that she slept through not only the night but also the following morning. That explained how out-of-sorts she felt. 

Hobbling out of the guest room, she found Grovyle insisting on taking over cooking lunch from Celebi. 

“It’s simple math, dear— if you triple the temperature of the oven, the food within it will cook three times as fast!”

“I can’t begin to tell you how wrong that is.”

“Well, I can’t begin to tell you how wrong you are, you silly thing— Oh! Twig, dear, good morning! Or afternoon, if we want to be more accurate. Ark is out to the market to pick up some ingredients we were needing. He said not to worry and that he would be swift about it.”

“Thanks,” Twig croaked, realizing how parched she felt in just that moment and poured herself a drink. Her throat was so dry it stung on the way down, and it tasted like liquid gold. 

She spat it all out in horror, of course, when Dusknoir threw open the front door and bellowed, out of breath and panicked, “I came as soon as I found the note! Is Twig alright?! Do I need to find a healer? Where is she?!” 

Twig awkwardly raised her hand in a wave where she sat at the table in the corner of the main room, leg in a splint and in no worrisome amount of pain at the present time. “‘Sup.”

Dusknoir’s look of terror gave way to one of concern, then confusion, and finally settled on annoyance. He turned to Celebi, who had zipped into the room at the sound of his arrival. “I thought you said she was likely to lose a limb,” he huffed.

“Ark was the one to make it sound that way, dear. I wasn’t able to revise my note from several miles away once I learned otherwise without leaving Grovyle and Ark to eat each other alive. Honest mistake, no harm done!” She struck an endearing pose, clearly hoping to soften the blow of her forgetfulness.

Dusknoir was unfazed. “All those two do when in the same room is stand in uncomfortable silence. You could have easily traveled over to revise your mistake anyhow— the distance would have been simple to traverse with your having gone the same path so many times before.”

“Aw, but Dusknoir, dearheart, you should have seen Ark when we arrived. He was in such a state I couldn’t bear to leave him.”

Twig squinted at her. “He was only in such a state because you were trying to add dirt to dinner.”

Celebi’s antennae twitched, and she sent her a stormy glare. “Aren’t dignified mortal ladies supposed to stick together, Twig?”

“Good thing I’m not dignified.” She got up from her seat and leaned against the wall to counterbalance against her bad leg. “Dusknoir, mind helping me over to the garden I’ve got in the back of the property? I need to check if any of the plants overwintered well enough or I’ll need to start over once the weather warms up more.”

Celebi sneered mischievously. “But Twig, you don’t have a garden, do you? It’s just a dreadful tangle of brambles back there!”

“I thought dignified mortal ladies were supposed to stick together,” Twig bit out with a dirty look sent Celebi’s way. 

“Good thing I’m not mortal!”

Grovyle poked his head into the room. “I’m neither a lady nor dignified, but as a mortal I think it’s my job to tell you two to stop fighting before Arceus smites us all for you two being so obnoxious to each other.”

Celebi put on an innocent expression as Dusknoir offered Twig his hand and helped her outside. She cast the Legend another dirty look and turned away with a huff. Dusknoir let out a snicker despite himself and tried to cover it up as him clearing his throat. The fact that he didn’t have a throat betrayed his misstep, yet Twig pointedly didn’t bring it up despite how ruffled and irritated she felt about it. 

Dusknoir paused as she released his hand once they reached the back of the property. “Alright, what was it that you wanted to talk about?”

“I didn’t want to talk about anything. I just wanted to find a stick that I could use to help me get around, and Grovyle would have been an awful nag if I let him know I wanted to look for one myself.” She hobbled around on one leg and began searching for a suitable walking aide, letting out a cry when Dusknoir caught her under the arms and set her on his shoulders. “Wh— Stop doing that!”

“You’re going to break more than your leg if you keep that up. Point me to what suits your purposes, and I’ll do the collecting for you.”

After a moment or two of huffing and puffing in anger about the situation, Twig indicated several sticks to him and cast them aside when they were too weak upon closer examination. “How can you even see anything from up here? Everything’s all tiny and blurry.”

“Considering the fact I’m not a head above my eye, I see perfectly fine,” he said almost boredly as he provided her several more sticks to examine. He then seemed almost startled as he echoed, “Blurry… Do you need spectacles?” 

A fuzzy memory of an eye exam in the bunker doctor’s office and an empty wallet bubbled up at the question. “Probably. I don’t have it in me to find out at this point, though. Besides, I’m getting by well enough.” 

“That’s a very typical answer for you.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She tested one stick to the best of her ability, and deemed it sufficient enough to try out on the ground. It even had a fork where she could rest her hand. “Hey, let me down, I think this one’s good.”

He did so, though he remained close enough nearby to catch her if she fell as she tested the walking stick. “I mean that you seem to think you’re getting by well enough to handle most anything almost completely on your own, without the help of others.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re a worse nag than Grovyle sometimes. I’m pretty sure even my aunt wasn’t as bad as you.”

“That wretch certainly wasn’t doing you any favors in where she was leading you in life, so I’d be willing to bet that’s a compliment.”

Twig fell silent.

“I’m sorry if I was too harsh for your tastes, Twig, but that woman was not a kind soul. I won’t mince words there. It’s a good thing she’s gone, and it’s a good thing you’re here. You…” He paused as she let out a weary laugh. “What is it?”

“I was wrong about you, you know,” Twig said, leaning heavily on her walking stick.

Dusknoir froze.

“I thought you were a scum-of-the-earth kind of person. I didn’t like you, and I thought you were going to hurt everyone I cared about.” She gnawed at the inside of her cheek, considering her next words. “I’ve always been a bad judge of character, though. Thought my aunt was a saint, and look where that got me. So, uh… Thanks. For being a jerk about her. It really helps. I appreciate it, even if you picking me up earlier ticked me off just as bad as the first time you did it.”

He cleared his throat once more— a pointless, nervous sound. “You’re welcome.”

Silence. 

“This stick’ll get the job done. We can head back now.”

They began the trek back in silence, but Dusknoir broke the silence just before they entered sight of the house. “You should speak to Grovyle about what you remembered.”

“Yeah.” She felt the inevitable conversation weighing down on her. “I should.”

“If you’d rather I be the one to reveal your memories’ beginning to return—”

“No. No, it’s something I should do myself. I don’t want to mess this up, and I think he’d probably have a heart attack if I didn’t tell him myself. You know him. He’s weird about that sort of thing.”

“He sees you as family, so no, I wouldn’t really consider that weird.”

Twig actually froze mid-step at that. “Huh?”

“He sees you as a younger sibling. He’s said to me that you are closer to him than his own blood kin ever were. He refers to you by name, surely you were not so thick as to not realize—?”

“No, Dusknoir, I don’t go around assuming people see me as more family-like than their actual family, so I did not realize that. It’s not like he ever said…” Her last conversation with him rang in her ears. How she had given him his name. How he had given her one as well. “I mean… A lot of stuff makes more sense now, but I’m still weirded out by you being the one to tell me it.”

“Take it as a sign that you should be the one to tell Grovyle of your memories, then. And please, do so sooner than later. You might seem better rested, but I can tell that you still bear in secret much more than you care to reveal.”

She frowned. 

“You can rely on us, you know.”

“I know. You don’t have to remind me.” With a scowl, she muttered, “I’m not having this conversation right now. I’m going inside.”

Dusknoir didn’t walk with her as she stormed into the house. She tried not to feel his absence like something stinging in the center of her ribcage as she entered.