A/N: Written for the

Short Oneshot Competition
Diversity Writing Challenge, c19 - write about finding something

And not quite canon because of the cameo appearance of a certain someone at the end. Dunno why she showed up but the muse spoke and so here we are. Enjoy!

To the Spirit World

I didn't plan on becoming a wanderer, but that's what happens to those without homes. I just walk and chase baseless shadows and this is all: walk from town to town, city to city, forest to forest – and none of it stays in my mind. None of it makes enough of an impression to matter. I am just walking somewhere: drifting, waiting… searching for some meaning.

And I don't even have a companion to share this lonely journey with. My presence is too cold, too frightening. Other pokemon flee at the sight of me. And so I walk alone. Float alone. I wear the cloak of night where only the zubat and the ghosts creep out from the grass but even they flee at the sight of me. Even ghosts like me. Even ghosts who may one day become me, if they battle and grow in strength and evolve and, eventually, find that item that resonates with their souls.

A rarity, and in this solitude I curse my luck in finding it. It has given be something I cannot give back: strength perhaps – or perhaps not – but something that nonetheless has set me apart from other pokemon. I am not legendary: not a revered god but I've stumbled out of the common mass as well. The grass cannot cloak me. The caves cannot conceal me. The clouds cannot hold me. If there is another world that will grant me a more permanent home, it is not beyond those clouds, with their thin air that will scatter a ghost's corporeal form if allowed. And the ozone is Rayquaza's territory. Few dare to venture there.

But the thought of pitting myself against a legendary isn't too far away, when all else flees at the sight of me.

I fail to understand. I have seen myself: on lake surfaces, on ice and glass and mirrors that humans erect in their cities and towns. But I don't see what it is that makes others flee at the sight of me. I am no frosslass freezing the moist air with every breath, or muk spreading slime wheresoever I crawl. I'm not a jigglypuff that has everyone who hears my song in slumber, or the oddish or butterfree that leave a trial of treacherous powder in their wake. I am not the ghastly that dive out of grass and leave screams echoing behind, or the zubat who screech and claw and bite with their little poisonous teeth. I see naught about my physical appearance nor my traits that should cause such reactions, except that I am a ghost and this – this ostracisation – goes beyond a simple bias for ghosts.

There is something else. Baseless fears, perhaps, like the absol race suffers: the harbringers of doom who really only seek to warn. And I wonder, then, what tale shrouds myself, my kind… But where can I search for such answers when humans and pokemon alike flee at my approach?

The answer, in retrospect, is plain. Inanimate objects have not the luxury to flee – or perhaps not the cause. And humans and pokemon alike mark the land, and the land bears those memories. Caves with carvings. Fossils once slumbering beneath soil. Books with neat lines of print I only have the barest understanding of… But I have the luxury of time and humans have books for many purposes, including teaching their hatchlings how to read. And so I learn, and read, and learn what I originally sought to learn.

I learn the cloth I touched before I evolved is call a reaper cloth, and it is shrouded in mystery except for its role in assisting evolution of my mind. Some hunt it; most fear it and most never see one in their lifetimes. The sketches are poor renderings, I find, compared to the truth that shines in my memories. And the pages are too smooth to replicate the rough stitches of cloth I felt between my fingers – even if for only a moment – before it unravelled and resew itself into my soul.

It answers questions, and yet it doesn't. These words I've painstakingly come to learn only scratch the surface of the mystery that is my existence. "The spirit world" oft repeats. The "soul carrier" as well, and I wonder how the cavity in my chest has led to such tales. I cannot carry souls, and the only world I know of is this one. And yet those words repeat wherever I go and people and pokemon alike slink away from me in fear.

I will find nothing more like this, I think, once I've exhausted all the books I can find. Perhaps there are more, but I tire of the monotonous repetition of them, much like how I've tired from chasing those figures who seek night and shelter at my approach.

Two options left, then. To employ more extreme manners to catch those who run in fear or to drop the matter entirely – but I cannot do that. My soul aches more than ever in loneliness, now that I know there is a base, however, baseless, for it.

Still, this is my last-ditch effort but it is a poor and flimsy one. Pokemon have keen senses and I am strong but too slow. Humans I can sneak up on but can't touch, and even my punches pass through, till I summon the ice of the mountain instead of the loneliness of my soul. Then I leave a trail of statues in my wake and leave with no answers to sate.

And I go deeper and deeper into the world, till I reach that mountain that stands in the centre of the world. The humans grow thin here, until they vanish entirely in the mountains and I float up and up and up because maybe there'll be something there, at the top of the world.

There is not, but when I finally turn, there is a woman: black and gold.

A woman has dared to approach and I, so ill-prepared, can only stare at her. She calls out companions without a word as well: a garchomp with sharp and shining blades, and a lucario whose ears prickle, sensing the tides of battle.

Are these two to be my long-last opponents? Very well, I think, and I throw punches of shadow and ice – but they are caught, in the lucario's psychic grip.

I am soon soundly defeated, and the woman comes near. 'You have wandered a long time,' she says, 'but it must have been a very lonely journey.'

Yes, I think, very lonely. Though I wonder what she's guessed; what she knows, and why she hasn't fled like all the rest.

'Dusknoir do have a bad reputation,' she continues, in part to herself and her companions it seems, 'but I don't think…' She laughs. 'Or perhaps I am simply curious.' And then she's taking my hand. I feel the warmth of human skin through my gloves and she must be carrying something in that little pouch of hers to make such contact possible. A woman of remarkable gifts, perhaps, or remarkable talents. 'I am curious about the spirit world,' she says, this time to me, and I nod because I am curious about that too: this place I'm accused to leading lost souls to. 'Ice easily melts in the face of flame, and all those people you froze are fine: frozen and fine. You took none of them and I don't know if it is because cannot, will not or simply have not gained that instinct, but I want to know…'

She falls quiet, but her eyes speak a novel and I read it all.

'Come with me?' she asks, finally.

I nod again, and then the world vanishes and shrinks but the void in my heart is just a little bit full, because I may wander blindly, still, but here is someone who's asked for my companionship instead of running away from me. Here is someone, who at least until it has served her purpose, will stay with me.

For at least a little while, that void – that cavity in my chest – will fill.

I chase shadows still but shadows with a little more substance and together with that woman and her companions.