Gamma ran.
Branches slapped her face. Roots tried to trip her. She didn't care. She just ran, putting as much distance as possible between herself and the cabin, between herself and those glowing eyes, between herself and—
She tripped.
Again.
This time she didn't get up immediately. She lay face-down in the leaf litter, breathing hard, her heart hammering against her ribs. The forest was silent except for her gasping. No sounds of pursuit. No glowing eyes. No—
Wait.
She pushed herself up slowly, dread pooling in her stomach.
The yellow fox was sitting three feet away. Watching her.
Its eyes were open.
Gamma screamed.
The Abra blinked. Slowly. Deliberately. Then its eyes slid closed again, and it did absolutely nothing.
Gamma scrambled backward until her spine hit a tree. She pressed herself against the bark, heart pounding, waiting for it to attack or vanish or do something terrifying.
It did nothing.
Thirty seconds passed. A minute. Two minutes.
The Abra sat perfectly still, eyes closed, breathing so shallowly Gamma couldn't even see its chest move. It might have been sleeping. It might have been dead. It might have been meditating. Gamma had no idea, and that was somehow worse than if it had tried to eat her.
"O...kay," she whispered. "Okay. You're not moving. That's... that's good. I think."
The Abra's ear twitched.
Gamma flinched. Then felt stupid for flinching.
"You're just going to sit there?"
Nothing.
"Are you... waiting for something?"
Nothing.
"Do you want to eat me?"
Still nothing. The Abra didn't even dignify the question with an ear twitch.
Gamma's phone buzzed.
She nearly dropped it fumbling it out of her pocket. The purple Rotom inside was circling anxiously, and on the screen, text was appearing—not typed, but forming, as if the Rotom was learning to write.
ABRA. THE POKEMON.
Gamma stared at the screen. "You... you can do that?"
The Rotom circled again, and more text appeared.
LEARNING. NEW FORM. NEW ABILITY.
"Okay," Gamma breathed. "Okay, that's—that's actually really helpful. Thank you, uh—" She paused. "Do you have a name?"
The Rotom stopped circling. It tilted in a way that might have been confusion.
ROTOM IS ROTOM.
"Right. Of course. Sorry." Gamma shook her head. "Okay, so, Abra. What's an Abra?"
More text formed, slowly, as if the Rotom was reading from some internal database:
ABRA. PSYCHIC TYPE. SLEEPS 18 HOURS PER DAY. TELEPORTS WHEN DANGER IS DETECTED. CANNOT ATTACK WITHOUT TRAINING. PREFERS TO AVOID CONFLICT.
Gamma read the text twice. Then she looked at the Abra, still doing absolutely nothing three feet away.
"You sleep eighteen hours a day?" she asked incredulously.
The Abra's ear twitched. That was it.
"And you teleport away from danger? You're telling me this creature—" she pointed at the motionless fox, "—is a survival expert?"
ABRA SURVIVES BY AVOIDING. NOT FIGHTING.
Gamma stared at the Abra. The Abra continued to not stare at anything.
"You know what," Gamma said, slumping against the tree. "I respect that. I really do. Avoiding conflict sounds amazing right now."
She looked around at the dark forest, the unfamiliar trees, the complete absence of her friends.
"I just avoided my friends, apparently. They're gone. We got split up by—" she waved vaguely in the direction she'd come from, "—angry ghosts and giant lizards and—"
DRATINI. NOT LIZARD.
"Whatever!" Gamma threw her hands up. "The point is, I'm alone in a forest in another dimension with a sleeping fox and a ghost phone, and I have no idea where anyone else is or if they're alive or—"
She stopped.
Her voice had gotten loud. Shrill. The Abra's eyes were open again.
"Oh," Gamma whispered. "Sorry. Did I wake you?"
The Abra blinked slowly. Its eyes were dark and deep and utterly unreadable. Then, with what might have been the world's smallest sigh, it closed them again.
Gamma laughed. Actually laughed—a short, slightly hysterical burst of sound.
"You're impossible. You know that? You're literally impossible."
The Abra offered no rebuttal.
Gamma pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. The night air was cool but not cold. The forest sounds—actual sounds now, not the dead silence from before—were beginning to return. Crickets, maybe. Or something like crickets. She didn't know what made noise in this world.
"Okay," she said quietly. "Okay. I need to think."
She pulled out her phone again. The Rotom was watching her, its tiny face patient.
"Can you... can you tell me more about Abra? Like, what do they eat? Where do they live? Why is this one following me?"
ABRA EATS NOTHING. DRAWS ENERGY FROM MOONLIGHT.
Gamma looked up at the sliver of moon visible through the canopy. Then back at the Abra.
"You're solar-powered? No, wait, moon-powered? That's—actually kind of cool."
ABRA LIVE ANYWHERE. FOLLOW YOU BECAUSE...
The text stopped. The Rotom circled uncertainly.
"Because why?"
UNKNOWN. ROTOM DOES NOT KNOW.
"Great," Gamma muttered. "Super helpful."
She studied the Abra more carefully now. It really wasn't doing anything. Its breathing was so shallow she had to watch for a full minute to confirm it was breathing at all. Its fur was yellow, almost golden in the moonlight, with dark brown stripes. Its tail was short and curled. Its ears were large and pointed, and they twitched occasionally at sounds Gamma couldn't hear.
It looked... peaceful. Completely unbothered by the chaos of the last hour. Completely unconcerned that a strange human was sitting three feet away talking to her phone.
"You know," Gamma said slowly, "I think I'm jealous of you."
The Abra's ear twitched.
"Seriously. You just... sit there. All day. Sleeping. Teleporting away from anything stressful. No responsibilities. No training. No missions. No gods giving you new bodies and dumping you in random forests."
She hugged her knees tighter.
"I've been trained my whole life to talk to people. To mediate. To be the friendly one. The bubbly one. The one who always has something to say." She laughed bitterly. "And here I am, talking to a sleeping fox in another dimension, because that's literally all I know how to do. Talk. Even when no one's listening."
The Abra's eyes opened.
Gamma froze.
They stared at each other. Gamma's eyes wide and wet. The Abra's dark and ancient and utterly calm.
Then, slowly, the Abra shifted. It didn't stand—just adjusted its sitting position, turning slightly so it faced Gamma more directly. Then it closed its eyes again.
But it had moved. It had chosen to face her.
Gamma's breath caught.
"Are you... listening?"
The Abra's ear twitched.
"I mean—you can't understand me, right? You're a Pokémon. I'm a human. We don't—"
ABRA UNDERSTANDS.
Gamma looked at her phone. The Rotom had typed it.
ABRA ARE HIGHLY INTELLIGENT. UNDERSTAND HUMAN SPEECH. CHOOSE NOT TO RESPOND.
"Choose not to—" Gamma sputtered. "You mean it's been ignoring me this whole time?"
ABRA IGNORES EVERYONE. IT IS RELAXING.
Gamma stared at the Abra with new eyes. The creature hadn't moved. It hadn't acknowledged anything she'd said. But according to her phone, it had understood everything.
"You heard me," she whispered. "You heard all of it. The scared stuff. The jealous stuff. The—" She stopped, mortified. "The stuff about being alone?"
The Abra's ear twitched.
"Oh my god." Gamma buried her face in her hands. "I just poured my heart out to a stranger who's been ignoring me, and you heard all of it, and you just—"
She looked up.
The Abra's eyes were open. And there was something in them—not pity, not sympathy, not anything so human. But recognition. Like it had seen something it understood.
"You know what it's like," Gamma breathed. "Being alone. Being surrounded by people but still... alone."
The Abra blinked. Once. Slowly.
Then it closed its eyes again.
But this time, Gamma didn't feel ignored. She felt... heard. Understood. Accepted, even, by a creature that asked nothing from her and offered nothing except its silent presence.
"I'm Gamma," she said softly. "I'm an Artist. I talk too much and make up stories and annoy everyone, but I'm also..." She trailed off. "I'm also really, really scared right now. And I don't know what to do."
The Abra said nothing. Did nothing. Just sat there, breathing its shallow breath, existing in perfect stillness.
And somehow, that was enough.
Gamma leaned her head back against the tree and looked up at the moon. The night was quiet now. Peaceful, even. The Rotom in her phone had stopped circling and was watching the Abra with quiet curiosity.
"I'm going to sit here for a while," Gamma told the Abra. "Is that okay?"
The Abra's ear twitched.
"I'll take that as a yes."
Minutes passed. Maybe hours. Gamma lost track. She watched the moonlight shift through the leaves. She listened to the night sounds of this strange world. She felt the rough bark against her back and the cool air on her skin.
And through it all, the Abra sat three feet away, doing absolutely nothing.
It was the most peaceful Gamma had felt in years.
At some point, her phone buzzed gently. She looked down.
ABRA LIKE YOU.
Gamma blinked. "How do you know?"
ABRA STAY. ABRA NOT STAY FOR HUMANS. ABRA TELEPORT AWAY. ABRA STAY FOR YOU.
Gamma looked at the yellow fox. Still sleeping. Still ignoring her. Still perfectly, blissfully unbothered.
"Why?" she whispered.
The Rotom had no answer. But the Abra's ear twitched, and Gamma could have sworn—could have absolutely sworn—that the corner of its mouth curved upward. Just slightly. Just for a moment.
Then it was gone, and the Abra was just a sleeping fox again, and Gamma was just a lost girl in an alien forest.
But she wasn't alone anymore.
"Hey," she said softly. "Can I tell you a story? I'm really good at making them up. And since you're not going anywhere..."
The Abra's ear twitched.
Gamma smiled.
"Okay. Once upon a time, in a world without Pokémon, there was a girl who talked too much. Everyone told her to be quiet. Everyone told her nobody wanted to hear what she had to say. But she kept talking anyway, because silence was scary and words were safe, and if she stopped talking, she might have to listen to the quiet inside her own head..."
She talked for a long time. The Abra slept. Or listened. Or both.
Either way, it stayed.
And when Gamma finally ran out of words and her eyes grew heavy and sleep pulled at her consciousness, she slid down the tree until she was lying on the soft leaf litter, curled on her side, facing the yellow fox.
"Goodnight, Abra," she whispered.
The Abra's ear twitched.
And Gamma slept.
---
She woke to sunlight on her face and something soft pressed against her back.
Gamma froze.
Slowly, carefully, she turned her head.
The Abra was curled against her spine. Sleeping. Its small body rose and fell with each shallow breath. Its fur was warm against her back. Its eyes were closed, its face peaceful.
It had moved closer in the night. It had chosen to be near her.
Gamma didn't move. Didn't breathe. Didn't dare do anything that might wake it or make it leave.
Tears pricked at her eyes—not sad tears, not happy tears, just something she couldn't name.
"Thank you," she whispered.
The Abra's ear twitched against her back.
And for the first time since arriving in this world, Gamma felt like maybe—just maybe—everything was going to be okay.
Her phone buzzed gently. She pulled it out carefully, not wanting to disturb her new friend.
The Rotom had typed a single line:
ABRA HAS CHOSEN. YOU ARE ITS HUMAN NOW.
Gamma stared at the words. Then at the sleeping fox against her back. Then at the sun filtering through the trees.
"Okay," she whispered. "Okay. I can work with that."
She settled back against the tree, closed her eyes, and let herself simply be—present, peaceful, and not alone.
The Abra slept on.
And somewhere in the forest, her friends were having much less relaxing mornings.
But that was their problem.
Gamma was busy learning the art of doing nothing.