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Atop Kanto’s Mt. Moon, there was a spot, once little known, that was well-known for Monday nights. Then, and at no other time, the moon shone its light directly down upon the pond—turning the stepped shore that barely qualified as a fishing pond into a veritable river of stars, its every ripple gleaming in the enchanted light. It spoke to Kanto’s push for modernity that only now, when tourism was at the forefront of everyone’s mind, that this tiny cover and its beauty finally became known to the public eye—
Including Perrin. Hot off her triple success in photographing Pokémon no one had ever seen before, her mind still raced with the thought of sights she yet hadn’t seen; nature’s hidden beauty that yet remained uncovered. Mt. Moon… wasn’t quite what came to her mind. Yet, it was certainly beauty that she hadn’t seen before, and besides…
“Ohhhhh! The water! Look at that, Perry! It’s sparkling!” This was the fifth time that Viola, Perrin’s date, had gushed over something relatively unremarkable.
Perrin didn’t feel the same. It was pretty, sure, but sights like this weren’t so uncommon in their field, were they? Especially not in a place as packed with tourists as this one was. “Shutterbug, I don’t wanna harsh your vibe, but—”
She was cut off by the click of a shutter. Viola adjusted her SLR camera’ heard it click and whir back into place before she took another snapshot. The pond was unchanging.
Perrin rolled her eyes. Had anyone else ignored her like Viola had, she’d have probably stormed off, muttering to herself about this or that other problem she had with them. When it came to her, though? Well, she couldn’t really help being taken with her craft, could she?
“So, how’d they turn out?”
“Hmm. Not bad, is what I wanna say.” As if she’d adjusted a dial on her brain’s camera, Viola’s attitude switched; her rabid appreciation for beauty, bordering on mania, switched to a careful critique of her own handling of it; the Scyther in her had become a Venomoth.
Perrin loved both sides of her. She wrapped an arm around her in show of it; brought her close. “Why don’t I take a look? Maybe this award-winning photographer here can give you some tips.” A cheeky grin adorned her face; pearly whites goofily stuck out.
Torn away from her self-critique by the only person who could, Viola had to crack a smile. “Well, that Ursaluna did look plenty mysterious in that prize-winning photo of yours.”
“That’d be the fog, dear,” Perrin chuckled wryly. “But thank you for the vote of confidence.”
As the SLR changed hands, Perrin noticed the tiniest moment of hesitation from Viola; the logical part of her knew it to be the hesitation she always had in handing over her beloved camera; the self-doubt in her thought it to be Viola protecting it against Perrin’s inexperience as a photographer.
She pushed those thoughts away as she looked over the photos of the pond: five, each one taken just moments after the last; all captured the strange nebula glimmer hanging over the pond. Glancing over them once, then back again, Perrin could almost see what Viola did in it; the colors popped in just the right way to bring out the pond’s own gentle ebb; the glimmer of the moonlight off its surface brought to mind the stars one could only see so clearly in this part of Kanto, untouched by human hands for so long—
“Compositionally, it’s great,” Perrin began to vocalize the thoughts she’d held to herself until now. “Though the subject—and this might just be my own bias speaking—I think could do with a little more spicing up.”
“Spice? What do you mean?”
“Like… there’s something missing here.” Perrin ran her finger over the surface of the camera. “I can’t put my finger on it, but it feels like something should be here that just isn’t.”
“Shouuuuld I ask how you know that something’s missing?” Viola tilted her head. “Without you knowing what it is exactly?”
The question was a logical one, Perrin knew in her head, but her body still tensed a flash, as if she hadn’t expected it. She glanced back at the photo on the screen now. The pond was unchanging. Nothing. Yet, the lack of something still jumped out at her.
Perrin could only think of one approach now. “Shutterbug?”
“Yes?”
“Do you happen to have any old photos of yours we could look over?”
“Oh, yes!” Viola slung her messenger bag in front of her and opened it. It took only a second for her to bring out a slim, but densely packed, hardcover book. “I always bring this little number with me! It has all my favorite shots! Every single one!”
Perrin flashed a grin. That’d be perfect. “See, I’m thinking: You showed me a bunch of photos before! Lots that I couldn’t help but be inspired by! So, maybe if I see more of ‘em—”
“You can figure out what’s missing here!” Viola slapped the cover of the book with a thump so loud, Perrin was surprised it didn’t echo. “That’s genius, you!”
“Well…” Perrin wanted to giggle, but she kept it to herself, only allowing a blushy grin to show the effects of Viola’s praise. “Don’t call me that until we actually get somewhere, ‘k?”
Viola rolled her eyes. “Sure, sure. Genius.”
Perrin sighed, rolling her eyes as she exchanged the camera in her hands for the album in Viola’s. Without even opening it up, she could already tell one thing; it’d be too dark to see the photos without any light.
“Argent, Flash please!” Perrin commanded her Noctowl as she sent her out. With a cry, she made herself glow—faintly, but brighter and closer than the moon above; bright enough for Perrin to see the writing on the book she held:
“Galerie de Viola!” The carefully etched title practically screamed at her, an introduction only further sold by the stickers that dotted its circumference; all of Viola’s favorite Bug-types, of course.
As much as she would have liked to linger on Viola’s handiwork, she had a duty to the girl herself. Tilting the pages towards Argent’s pale light, she pointed out the first photo that caught her eye—
“These mushrooms are super pretty…” Perrin muttered. “Their light… it’s almost like something out of a fairy tale…”
“Isn’t it just?” Viola whispered, having snuck beside her. “It’s called the Glimwood Tangle and it’s in the Galar region.”
“Galar? When did you go there?”
“It was… before we started dating?” Viola put a finger to her chin. “Few years back, at least.”
“Huh…” Perrin’s eyes turned back to the mushrooms; the prismatic halation they gave off drew her in, as if, with just a single step, she could be transported to their forest—or at least as Viola if they could one day go back there; together.
She shook off that desire when she remembered her duty. “Oh, so uh! I think it’s interesting how you chose to crouch behind the mushrooms here,” she spoke, as if analysis had been at the forefront of her mind this whole time. She traced her fingers around the edges of the photograph; of the forest’s fungi that, owing to how close they were to the lens, one could only make out the silhouettes of. “It kinda frames the whole image, you know? Gives it more of that fairy-tale effect.”
“Ah! That was entirely an accident, actually!”
“Huh?”
“I intended to capture more of the fungi right through the trees, see?” Viola traced her finger along the image as well; this time, right across the center. “I adjusted the light balance so I could capture all the different colors and really make them pop! Ah, but then…”
“But then?”
“Right before I took it, a bunch of Morelull made their way up the trunks!” Viola put her finger right beside Perrin’s now, firm and warm. “That’s what all those stalks are right over here.”
“Morelull? Really?” Perrin glanced at the girl beside her, a bit doubtful that she wasn’t pulling her leg. “Never heard of those lil’ buggers climbing up trees.”
“I can assure you. They do.” Viola looked at her, as head-on as she could standing at her side. “And ‘buggers’ is an awfully high honor to give them.”
“Seems to me they helped you out?” Perrin offered, jokingly. “Sounds like an honor well-deserved, I’d say.”
Viola giggled at the absurdity; of her own remark and at Perrin following along with it.
For Perrin herself, she had to admit: even if she hadn’t been able to offer up much analysis—and certainly nothing meaningful in itself—somehow, she didn’t feel too bad about it, a feeling that only grew deeper as she heard Viola’s voice; she recalled a Starly she had heard, one early morning, at the edge of her memory.
Alas, it was time to turn the page. “So, next up… Oh! The Skyarrow Bridge!” Perrin cheered at the sight of the suspension bridge. It was already well-known across the world for being an architectural marvel and, luckily for Perrin, there were details in Viola’s photography that made its beauty shine brighter. “Hey, you can even see the bay that runs below it.”
“The bay is actually what I was aiming for,” Viola said as she moved beside her. “I don’t really have an eye for architecture, myself.”
“You don’t?”
“Nah. I mean, have I ever been one to stop at every pretty building and stress about it?”
“That’s true, yeah…” As Perrin listened to Viola speak her attention turned away from the bridge—hanging over the landscape as clouds do above the people. She noticed things: the graffiti scrawled across the nearest pillar, illegible to her by distance both linguistic and physical, leaving only the emotion she could gather from its hasty lines and bold splotches of color—its humanity; the life that dotted the pillars of the bridge and the shoreline it was built from, the Pokémon—Ducklett, Basculin, Tranquil, leaping and ducking between the gaps into the water that ran around the bridge’s foundation, seemingly unaware of the titan that loomed just behind the waters they called home, yet moving in ways that could have only come about through that knowledge; so deep-seated, it only appeared to not exist.
“There’s life here.”
“Mm-hmm.” Viola smiled. “That’s what I wanted to bring out.”
Perrin smiled. That was so much like her. The Glimwood Tangle and Skyarrow Bridge were worlds apart in every sense, but when viewed through the lens of Viola’s camera, both teemed with the lives that passed through that snapshot of time.
Perrin glanced across the pages; the thing that she had been searching for in her photos was on the tip of her tongue. It was only stymied by her catching a glimpse of a photo on the final page:
“Hey! It’s me!” Perrin’s ‘til then gentle fingers pressed the page excitedly, causing Viola to jump. She would have shouted too, had she not also caught sight of the photo.
On seeing its subject, her heart settled and she could only bring herself to chuckle.
“I was wondering when you were going to find that,” Viola’s voice had taken on a different light; gone was its firework exuberance, now exchanged for kindling, smoldering in the winter. “Our trip to the Sunyshore coastline.”
“I could never forget.” Perrin smiled back. “The first time we ever traveled together.”
She looked over the photo; there she was, dead center of the frame, the curve of the coastal sands passing softly under her feet from the right, into the waves that splashed haphazardly into her toes from the left. Above her, the sky was like a ripe Pecha—streaks of pink and gold woven together, dyeing the world and her in its vivid splendor.
Looking upon it all, Perrin was surprised. It sounded strange even to her, but when she looked at herself in the image, she found that she could only remember what she’d been doing—what she was doing in the moment Viola had captured.
That was, of course, taking a photo.
“Honestly, that’s probably my one question,” Perrin sighed. “Why am I in this photo?”
“Why?” Viola asked, as if the word itself was the problem. “Do I need a reason?”
“I mean, you wanted a photo of the coast, right? I get that. It’s a beautiful beach; Sinnoh’s pride and joy. Heck, it’s impressing me right now—as just a photo!”
“The coast, hmm?”
“Right! And then, right smack dab in the middle of it, you got… me. Just doing, you know… what I usually do.” Perrin hadn’t intended to say it so sadly. “Kinda ruins the beauty, dontcha think?”
“Ruins? You?”
“Yes! That’s what I— Huh?”
“Let me ask you, Perry: Do you know how many photos I took that day?”
Perrin looked down at the album again. She didn’t see another photo of the coast there, but— “You must have some on your camera still. Ones you didn’t print out or—”
“No.” Viola looked her right in the eyes. “That is the one and only photo I have of the Sunyshore coast.”
Despite how clearly she had given her answer, Perrin’s first thought was to ask her to repeat it. It was unfathomable; she had just implied that, of all the beauty was could have been immortalized in Viola’s viewfinder—the colors, the sand, the waves; Sinnoh’s crowning jewels on a mirrored plate—Perrin was the finest of them all; the One worthy of her attention.
She had to sit down. Viola followed suit.
“Ok, but there’s no way,” Perrin said, breaking her stunned silence. “Like, why me? Of everything on the coast?”
Viola hummed. “You might be surprised to hear this, Perry, but I think you’re beautiful.”
A quick blush flashed on Perrin’s cheeks. “But that can’t be the only reason why, right?”
“You… are right about that.”
Perrin looked up to see Viola with a look on her face that she was familiar with from her own reflection; that of being lost in thought. Pushing away her own insecurities, she placed a hand on hers. “You don’t gotta say it if it’s too much.”
Viola shook her head. “No. I want you to know.”
That was all Perrin needed to hear. She tightened her grip just a touch, hoping that would be enough to keep Viola’s steady.
“You remember when we took that trip, right?” Viola started. “A couple years back, taking any free time we could.”
Perrin slowly nodded. “It was a rough time for both of us, yeah… I was in the middle of that big artistic slump for me and you—” Perrin stroked the back of her hand, as if to ease them both through. “You’d just got back from a really rough assignment, yeah?”
Viola chuckled wryly. “I’m surprised you remembered that much.”
“Photographic memory, right?”
“I appreciate that,” Viola’s chuckle turned genuine, just for a moment. “But that assignment, right? It… it was rougher than I was letting on.”
Perrin said nothing—shock mixed in with her silent strength.
“I told you that I was investigating reports of abuse in some of Galar’s major companies—big ones, remember? Though, they’re not still operating now, thank life itself…”
Perrin remembered; in the days following their vacation, she had looked up some of the names Viola had mentioned—and the horrid stories that ended their business: Steelix Heavy Industries working Pokémon to death; Armadrill Mining sending workers into toxic job sites without any sort of protection or support; Solasey Foods keeping its Pokémon in conditions unfit for waste sites, let alone living beings…
And on each story, underneath the few pictures that were provided, was Viola’s name; her credit as a photographer; as an investigative journalist.
Perrin remembered; in particular, the mix of emotions she’d felt.
“I was horrified when I’d read the stories,” Perrin spoke; quietly, slowly. “The whole public was, I know. But, I was also… proud of you too.”
“I remember that,” Viola smiled. “You congratulated me, telling me how good a job I’d done taking down the bad guys.”
“You were like a superhero, I remember saying.”
“You did. Though… I certainly didn’t feel it.”
“...You didn’t, huh?”
“Could you tell?” Viola shifted uncomfortably; she had to place one hand down to support herself.
“No. At best, I thought about asking.” Perrin looked down as she spoke; she wondered, had they sat a little closer to the moonlit pond, if she and Viola would be reflected in its light. “The things I read about, they made me sick to my stomach. And you had to see them? But then, I thought back to when we vacationed together. The look on your face, it was…”
“I was smiling, right?”
Perrin felt a tiny chill run through her. She had been smiling. Just as she was now, in fact.
“I’ll be honest, Perry. It wasn’t easy,” Viola spoke wistfully; she leaned back on herself now, head cocked moonwards. “The public didn’t even see the images that ruined those companies. The photos I worked the hardest to sneak away with.”
Perrin felt a jolt of curiosity in her; the urge to ask just of the horrors she witnessed, to let her imagination be bridged with cold reality.
One look at her face—the glassy flash of terror in her eyes—disabused her of that notion. It would be cruel to have her relive those moments again for her own curiosity.
Instead, she asked about her. “But you looked so happy.”
“I told you, it wasn’t easy,” Viola turned her palm around, lacing her fingers with Perrin’s. “At first, I was faking it. I knew you were in a mood too and we both needed that vacation, so…”
“I see.” Perrin’s mouth was dry; Viola had suffered that much and yet she still carried on going like nothing was wrong— “I’m sorry, shutterbug. I failed you. I-I should’ve been there for you.” She hung her head low, hoping to the moon gazing down that she could ever be forgiven.
Thus, she found the next sensation very strange: a warm weight atop her hand.
“But you were.”
Perrin looked up; at the expression on Viola’s face now. The haunted look on her face hadn’t disappeared. Through it though, a new expression broke through.
A smile, novel in the tender warmth it showed.
“The proof is right here.” Viola gently lifted her hand away and tapped her finger on the photo of the Sunyshore coast. “When I caught a glimpse of you that day, just doing what you loved; the pure joy when you lifted that camera and set about your craft, it… reminded me.”
“Reminded?” Perrin leaned closer. “Of what, exactly?”
“Hope.” Viola now gently squeezed Perrin’s hand. “And of why I got into photography to begin with.” She moved closer to Perrin now, to lay her head atop her shoulder. “For moments just like this.”
Perrin kept her chin up. Viola’s head was directly below, her loose, antenna-like locks tickling her face, as if to reflect what Viola’s words did to her heart. As she felt the heat inch its way up her cheeks and kiss her nose, she set the photo album down and closed the page.
With her now free hand, gently stroked the top of Viola’s head.
“I love you, shutterbug.” Perrin whispered; a sliver of a smile wormed its way into her words. “I just hope it won’t ruin the mood to tell you what I was taking that day.”
“Well—” Viola chuckled as she buried her head into Perrin’s neck. “You never did mention it before.”
“I suppose, huh?” Perrin said through a chuckle that vacillated between mirthful and nervous in real time. “Well, I was looking out at the bay and, sitting on a rock, I saw it! A shiny Octillery!”
“Really now? …What’s so bad about that?”
“Well… you remember when you took your photo, right?”
Sunset. “Oh lands, no.”
“Oh yes…” Perrin slowed down, stalling her way through the embarrassment. “Turns out red can look really, really yellow in the evening light!”
Viola kept her head buried, trying (unsuccessfully) to stifle her chuckle, which then quickly grew into full-blown laughter.
“H-hey! Shutterbug!” Perrin shouted in between fitful laughter. “That tickles, you know?”
Their duet of mirth grew ever louder; the crowd, having grown in size since the pair had started reminiscing, began to stare at the clearly lunacy-stricken couple.
Viola and Perrin were none the wiser. How could they be when they were with the one they cared about above all else?
As their laughter settled back into comfortable giggles, they looked into each other’s eyes. There, they saw a light; one that outshone the aethereal radiance that blessed the evening air.
“I love you too. Perry…”
Their lips moved towards the other’s, as if guided by gravity, until they became one. Perrin closed her eyes; basked in the light of the girl she loved. Silver spotlight on her heart or not, she wouldn’t fumble about any longer; not with her.
For Viola, the magic couldn’t be stronger. The crisp breeze of the mountain held less power over her than a single taste of Perrin. She wanted more—knew she had to have it and reveled in the thought that she was the one to enjoy such long-awaited pleasures.
They would have stayed like that for the night; the spell was only broken by the distinct rising wave of awe that spread amongst those gathered around.
Viola was the first to break away; her voice quickly joined the starstruck sightseers. “Perry, look…”
Perrin did as she said and she was thankful for it. Out of tunnels that seemed even too small for them crawled Clefairy—a whole herd, clearly of the same colony; all, as soon as they were in the full light of the moon, looked up at it as if falling under its trance.
Finally, a larger, more regal looking Pokèmon joined their brethren: A Clefable who stepped out to the center, just before the water’s edge; one finger raised as if conducting an orchestra.
At their cue, the Clefairy around them swayed—one step left and two steps right, in perfect coordination; if not planned, then certainly practiced through weekly, time-worn ritual. As they did, the mist from the pond wispily weaved its way throughout the rocky ledges, a mirror image of the milky way that so decorated the night sky.
“Wow…!” As Viola cooed at the ceremony before her, she rummaged about in her camera bag. This was the moment she had been waiting for.
Seeing that, Perrin cracked a smirk. For the first time that night, she too grabbed her camera bag—only, her hands were quicker than Viola’s at producing the device. Quickly setting the dials to the perfect settings, she raised the viewfinder up to her eye and pointed it—
at Viola, now with her own camera at the ready. A click of the shutter preserved this moment in time.
At that exact moment, Viola pressed her own shutter. That alone was the reason why it took her a moment to react to what Perrin had done—with a blush and a smile.
“Ah, hey! What was that for?”
Perrin took the viewfinder away from her face, revealing the grin that was now plastered on it. “Now I’ve got my own little memento of you. Wherever we go.”
Mt. Moon Square bustled that night: The Clefairy danced, the crowd partied, and our two girls made merry—all under the auspices of the magnanimous moonlight.