Another Day at Unity (29)

What was Coraline supposed to do when her whole world ended? There were never any instructions for something so horrible—nothing her father ever told her could prepare her for it, and she had no other family members to do that important work.

There was only her, a terrified Lamplight, and the overwhelmingly empty house.

So instead of doing anything sensible, Coraline went to the workshop. She brought clay and crafted a masterpiece as never she had crafted before. A lifetime of watching vibrava taught her exactly what the bug looked like, and how to manifest it from the lumps of uneven clay.

Thus was the truth of all daemons—they were made of something that wasn't quite flesh, and did not remain when their humans passed. So her father lay alone on his bed, peaceful, yet brutally disfigured. It simply could not be.

No twelve-year-old had ever created a sculpture as perfect as the one Coraline made that day. Each of its separated wings she made, every fin on its tail, and the segments of its eyes. She made each piece from clay, exactly as they had appeared on her father's daemon.

She settled her sculpture out to dry as she would've done with any other piece, transporting it carefully into the sun.

There was probably someone to tell when her father died—some process to begin so the mandibuzz could take her home from her.

But Coraline didn't do any of those things. She brought her work from the previous day to the shop, saying nothing at all as she made her trades. She brought fuel, and painted the daemon sculpture with the last of the fine glaze left from her mother's own supplies.

Then she lowered it into the kiln to bake, filling it all the way with fuel even though there was only a single piece inside. Lamplight took the form of a torchic, and lit the charcoal with a heat the little daemon had never manifested before. He could probably have burned the whole house down, but neither of them wanted that.

Night came, and still she hadn't returned to her father's room. She wandered out into the backyard, if only out of habit. Coraline had stepped out to watch the comet each of these seven nights, so shouldn't she do it again?

It was cold outside that night, so cold that even her thickest coat barely kept back the evening chill.

For hiding itself behind the clouds so many times, the final night brought a perfect view of the Millennium Comet, a bright blue object wreathed by two trails in different colors, brighter than any stars.

Coraline clambered up onto her fence and sat. The cold went so deep that she did not shiver. No heat would banish the chill that pierced her.

What are we supposed to wish for now? she thought, clutching the little trapinch against her chest. His familiar shape offered her some comfort, the only safety now left to her in her whole world. We made it all seven days. It wasn't fast enough.

Lamplight was normally so helpful, even if he rarely knew more than she did. A few words of advice would've gone a long way right then. But this time, even the daemon was silent.

His eyes stared up into the dark sky, tracing the comet's slow path through the night. Finally he answered, whispering into her mind. "Do you think things were better with House Millennium?"

She shrugged. Her time in school had not taught very much about the old rulers, nothing to suggest whether they had really been any better than the Eons. "Maybe they would've let the plague raze everything just the same. I dunno. But at least back then there was some way to get help. Even if they didn't stop the plague, they might've let us wish for Dad."

Tomorrow they would have his daemon out of the kiln, and they could go to the police for help. No matter what terrible thing happened next, he wouldn't be alone in death.

"Ask," something said. It was so quiet, so very far away, that Coraline missed it at first. Lamplight listened a little better, or maybe the words came through him to begin with. He changed, returning to the white and red hovering form of the chimecho. Less useful for keeping warm, but with better psychic senses than any other they had practiced.

"Ask what?" Lamplight thought. These thoughts were much louder than usual, loud enough to fill their minds and radiate through the darkness. Loud enough for others to hear.

"I feel... your pain," said the voice. Coraline still couldn't make it out, but Lamplight could. Through him, the thoughts rang in her ear—without age, without sex, without anything at all to identify what kind of person was asking. They felt only a direction: up. "Your song aches, child of Arceus. Ask your wish."

She hadn't even brought the wishmaker. It was still on her father's bedroom floor, along with all its empty promises.

"Can you give me my family back?" Coraline wasn't sure who had even asked that question—her, or Lamplight. It didn't really matter, they both felt it.

"No," came the reply, a mournful dirge on the chimes. "Do not ask this, child. Though they be returned to life, they would not be the ones you loved. Others have, and they knew horror before their end."

Maybe it was her imagination—but the comet did seem more colorful now. It almost felt as though it were flying to her, its little trails bending in green and red like her family's colors.

"We should trust it," Lamplight declared. "It shares its pain with us. It would show more, but it might hurt us. We are... too small. We should ask for something else."

She ran her fingers along her daemon's small body, holding him close to her chest. The one thing that mattered most was impossible to her. She didn't care about money, really. Coraline didn't even care about the house, except in honoring her father's wishes.

It didn't matter what happened to Coraline anymore. But if she couldn't save her family, and she couldn't save herself. "We wish that Hoenn could have House Millennium back."

The voice faded from their minds. For a long time it seemed like that might be it—she had asked for something beyond the powers of this being. Who was Coraline to try and change the world, anyway? An orphan, with her father's body still cooling upstairs and his daemon's sculpture baked in the warmth of the kiln.

"Why?" came the voice, demanding. "Why do you ask this? I could give you peace, but this is not what you request."

"That way... the next time there's a plague, someone will stop it," she said. "That way there's someone who will hear requests from kids with no one else to ask. Everyone says things were better while they were in charge."

"Even if it hurts?" asked the voice. "You don't know the price it costs, child. You may live to regret your desire."

She shrugged. But it was Lamplight who answered. "Nothing can hurt more than we hurt already. Our mother and brothers are ashes, now Father will be too. There's nothing else for us to ask."

"I cannot turn the minds of so many," said the voice. "But I can make it possible. Achieving it is up to you, Coraline."

It knows my name, she thought. But that soon drowned in Lamplight's agony.

The daemon shuddered and strained in her arms, sheltering himself from the light streaming down on them from overhead.

It did little good—bright blue turned his flesh transparent. Then Coraline tried to help, wrapping herself around the daemon and squeezing tight.

It didn't matter what was happening or why, only that she had to keep him safe!

Her own flesh turned transparent too, shining through cloak and bones and organs alike, through to the daemon. The two stumbled together, rolling backward off the fence.

Compared to the scorching light of the sky overhead, Coraline barely felt the fall. Next she was on her back, with poor Lamplight writhing before the comet's glow. Though her body was untouched, she felt the agony as though it were hers. Yet if it weren't for at least one of them not being burned, they might've fallen mercifully unconscious.

There was no relief today, scorching at Lamplight more than any pokémon attack ever could. In that light, his body was changing. Not the natural shifting from one form to another that any unsettled creature could perform—this was something much worse. Unseen fingers gripped him, forcing his body to expand and contract.

She didn't watch it happen, Coraline was in far too much pain for that. But she felt it through his body—his head expanding, pale flesh turning to steel, and a huge eye opening along his chest.

She didn't know how long the torture continued—long enough that she heard voices from her neighbors' houses, and people pointed into the backyard. Long enough that someone even banged on the front door of her house, though of course she was in no position to answer it.

Then it stopped. Lamplight dropped out of the air in front of her, gliding back into her arms as though lowered there by some unseen god. Coraline was now partly covered by mud, blood, and bits of torn flesh; hers?

Her whole body ached, all the way down to her bones. Had the comet reached through her and ripped them out one by one?

She collapsed back to the damp soil, clutching Lamplight against her chest as tight as she could. Not hard enough—she had already failed to keep him safe once. If the comet wanted to kill them, she couldn't stop it from finishing the job.

"That hurt," Lamplight thought, as much to her as the other nameless speaker. And many others, he wasn't sure. He was in too much pain to really know much of anything. "Maybe we would've picked something else if we knew."

"That wasn't the painful part, little Coraline and Lamplight. But I cannot help you. Only... tell the one who can. When I fly again, will... search for you. May you find what you were wishing for."

Coraline somehow knew to look up, past the beams of neighbors' flashlights, past the distant glow of amber streetlights, to where the Millennium Comet had been soaring across the sky in its usual path.

It faded before her eyes, as though somehow accelerating far beyond any rational speed. Either that, or whatever effect allowed her to see it so clearly in the first place was just gone, returning her to the empty blackness of night.

She was not alone for very long. Into the muttering neighbors and people banging around her front door, another voice spoke, much closer.

"You are Coraline?" she asked, from somewhere near the back door. "We don't have a lot of time. We need to get away from here, now."