I know it's overdue, but I would like to thank everybody who has taken the time to review me. You guys are what make all this worthwhile, and I hope more people will consider sending one. I would also like to apologise again for those pictures, I obviously haven't yet learned that they don't work. I promise that they shall never be used again.

A week or so later we were well on our way to Olivine City. The last few days had been spent lazily walking through gorgeous fields and beautiful countryside, having the occasional chat. One particularly sunny morning we were strolling down a dirt path, watching the mountains on the horizon. Gary was straggling behind, lost in his own thoughts, and I was having a discussion with Meowth about pokémon.

‘So how does a pokémon fit into a pokéball?’

‘Ah, this one goes right back hundreds of years,’ Meowth was practically glowing with pride at being the centre of attention. ‘Ages ago, when pokémon battling became popular for the first time, people needed a way of keeping the pokémon who were with them safe and easily to take around with them. Somebody then discovered just how unstable a pokémon’s configuration actually was, and they developed a way to break the pokémon’s body down into pure energy. Then they just had to find a place to store the energy, and they used apricorns.’

‘So then scientists carried on developing mechanical pokéballs.’

‘Yep. They made stronger balls to try and stop the weakened energy forms of pokémon escaping from them, but most of the time the old balls made from apricorns would be most effective.’

I thought of my backpack full of the apricorn balls Kurt had made for me, and realised I hadn't yet used a single one. I hadn’t actually caught a pokémon for a long time, and I resolved to catch another one soon before even more of my team disappeared somehow.

‘They also added another feature to every pokéball ever made,’ Meowth continued. ‘Once a wild pokémon is inside a ball, it tries to free itself from a life of captivity with a person. But once it fails to release itself and the trainer captures the pokémon the ball that it was captured in forms a bond with the pokémon. I think they put this in for safety reasons.’

‘Why?’ I asked, still listening intently. ‘What sort of reasons?’

‘Well, for one thing, a pokémon can never go too far away from its ball. This was probably to stop them from getting lost. There’s nothing physical keeping them from going away, but I think the pokémon feels a strong urge to go back to wherever the ball is. And whenever a pokémon has this bond, no other pokéballs will work on it, to prevent the pokémon being stolen. The only way to get rid of this bond is to destroy the pokéball, and then the pokémon is free again.’

My thoughts immediately flew back to Metafang, my old Onix. Where was he now? What effect had it had when his ball was destroyed?

Trying to get off the subject I asked a different question. ‘Why can pokémon only say their names?’

‘Well, this is a problem which lies in many areas. You see, all pokémon are alike in many ways, and the reason they only say one word isn’t because of their brain, it’s because of their voice. One area where every human is more developed than a pokémon is the throat. A pokémon’s voice box and mouth are simple and they can’t produce many words, only a few sounds. But this isn’t the way pokémon communicate. They have a subtle language of facial expressions and the tone, pitch and formation of their voice is how they tell other pokémon whatever they want. Pokémon became so used to communicating by these ways that they never had to make many sounds with their mouth, and so evolved only being able to say a few things.

‘Pokémon also had names for each other. If they were translated, a Rapidash called Arsiqui might name her child Celerigni. But can you imagine a human asking a Squirtle what its name is? "Squirtle" it would reply, using its own language to tell the human exactly what it is called, but "Squirtle" is all he hears. What’s this other Squirtle’s name then? "Squirtle". So humans based everything on what they could hear, and named every pokémon of that species "Squirtle".’

‘So every pokémon has its own name?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘And it can be translated?’

‘Yeah, I can do that.’

‘So what’s your name then?’

That caught him off guard. He froze mid-step and formulated an answer.

‘It doesn’t matter now. No pokémon ever called me by my name, and I’ve been just called plain old Meowth for too long. Meowth is my name now.’

‘So what about my other pokémon? I nicknamed all of them.’

‘Once a pokémon is captured they adopt any name their trainer gives them, because it’s a sign of friendship, and it shows how the trainer feels about their pokémon. Mostly I think pokémon like their trainer more if they bother to give them their own name. Other times when a pokémon leaves its "wild" name behind and isn’t given a name they adopt the name that the human calls them, their species name, as their name. So that Squirtle would be called "Squirtle".’

There was silence as I let the information turn over in my mind.

‘Wait a minute… if pokémon are incapable of making sounds other than whatever name humans gave them, what about you?’

‘I just… well, it was hard. I had heard humans making other sounds practically from the day I was born, so I kept practising and eventually learned how to copy the noises. It must have taken me over a year to do, and I had to abandon all my instincts telling me to do it the pokémon way.’

‘Which is…?’

‘I’m not sure… you just think what you want to say, and it … sort of… aaagh, I can’t explain it!’

‘Well, whatever it is, I can do it too, right?’

He looked sceptical. ‘Yeah, I suppose… hey, why don’t I say something, and you can try to answer?’

‘I don’t know… I’ve never tried actually talking in pokémon before. And what should I reply in?’

‘Erm… try it in Pikachu, that’ll be easy.’

‘Okay, go on.’

Meowth looked up. ‘Meow meow meowth meow mow meow.’

I heard the meows and the meaning hit me as clear as day: he was asking if I had any berries because he was hungry. I tried not to think about what I was actually saying and thought about what I wanted it to mean, and the words tumbled out of me.

‘Pika chu pikachu pika.’

I stayed quiet and waited to see if that made sense.

‘Well, can I have one?’ Meowth asked eventually.

‘Oh... right!’ I laughed, reaching into by bag and bringing out 3 berries like I said. I passed Meowth one.

‘Hey Gary, want a berry?’ I turned around to offer him one. He seemed to have been listening and looked rather disappointed. He took a berry anyway.

‘So what you’re saying is,’ he interjected, ‘is that I can just say pika pika pikachu and you understand it?’

Meowth and I exchanged confused glances. I heard what he said and it didn’t seem to mean anything.

‘It doesn’t work like that,’ Meowth said exasperatedly. ‘You can’t do it if you don’t know what you’re saying, otherwise you don’t make sense to anybody.’

‘And that’s why pokémon can understand each other, isn’t it?’ I asked hopefully. ‘Because they don’t concentrate on the actual words different species of pokémon know what they’re saying, even though they say totally different things.’

Meowth nodded, but looked oddly at Gary too, because he seemed to be taking notes.

‘Gary, what are you doing?’

‘Err… well, Grandpa missed having the little furball to study, so he said I could earn some money from him if I took down some observations…’

Meowth and I just looked at each other.

‘Pika pika,’ I commented.

‘You said it,’ he replied.

* * *

A little later we were wandering lazily along and I was concentrating on my new goal, to capture another pokémon, and sometime soon. I started trying to work out a specific pokémon to search for. I knew that in this area there were wild Magnemite and Tauros, but a Magnemite didn’t seem cuddly enough, and Tauros could be unruly and were better off with more experienced trainers. I was about to ransack by bag looking for a guide of the area when Gary pointed something out.

‘Hey, look! What’s that over there?’

I scanned the landscape in the direction he was pointing, and saw some disturbance under a bush by the edge of a field. I watched for a while and a small Vulpix emerged. It started snuffling around and then trotted quickly away from us.

‘Oh no you don’t!’ I warned, whipping out a spare pokéball. ‘I’m going to catch you, Vulpix!’ I ran after it and threw my pokéball once I was close enough. It thumped the Vulpix on the head and bounced away. The small fox-like pokémon stared around anxiously, then fled.

‘Oh, no,’ I complained as the other two caught up to me. ‘That’s my second failed attempt to catch a Vulpix.’

‘Yeah, but your ball just bounced off. Doesn’t that mean that the Vulpix already has a trainer somewhere?’ That was true, but there were no other people anywhere.

‘And if you ask me, that pokémon looked rather thin and scrawny,’ Meowth concluded. I started feeling worried.

‘You guys stay here,’ I said quickly over my shoulder, before shooting as fast as I could away into a field.

Leaving Meowth and Gary behind to wonder about what I was doing, I ran after the tiny Vulpix, hoping it hadn’t gone too far. The field was full of short grass, and I son discovered a trail left by the pokémon, so I followed that. A few breathless seconds later the Vulpix was in view, and I could see that it was limping on a back leg.

All the running and worrying was getting exhausting, but I kept on going. Knowing that I couldn’t out-run a speedy pokémon like that I slowed a bit in the hope that it wouldn’t be scared and only run faster. While breathing heavily I stretched a hand down to the ground while deciding whether to try to entice it or catch it. Against the wishes of my legs, which were yelling at me to stop and rest, I went even faster and forced my hand forward, brushing one of Vulpix’s tails. It looked back at me and a hope appeared that it might see me as a friend and stop, but then the frightened pokémon bolted, hindered by the limp.

Ignoring my common sense telling me that a pokémon feeling threatened could bite me, I decided to try a different approach. I ran off at an angle and ran so fast that my lungs screamed and my legs seemed to be filled with lead. Then I swerved in towards the pokémon sideways, enabling me to grab for it. My fingers hooked onto something and a rush of relief hit me as we slowed to a stop, the Vulpix held still in my hand.

Gasping for air, I tried to hide my exhaustion and stop the pokémon from trying to escape, and avoid getting my hand burned at all costs. Looking at it properly I saw what I had been able to catch hold of: a shiny collar around her neck. I edged closer and stroked her back. She seemed scared but also very docile, and then offered no resistance when I picked her up. Cradling the poor fox I turned around and headed back to the path. It took quite a while due to my lack of energy, but I eventually found my way back to my two astonished team-mates.

‘Oh, you caught it!’ Gary grinned. ‘In the non-pokéball sense of the word.’

‘How did you do that?! No Vulpix can be matched in speed by a human,’ Meowth exclaimed.

‘She’s limp and hasn’t got much energy,’ I explained breathlessly. ‘But she has a tag.’

Gary examined the collar around the confused Vulpix’s neck and then consulted his map.

‘We’re in luck – it looks like she comes from a house of the outskirts of a very small village, one which we’re passing through. It won’t take more than 10 minutes.’

I carried the disorientated pokémon all the way there. She didn’t do much one the way, just muttered various ‘Who’s, ‘What’s and ‘Where’s, and didn’t seem to be able to produce coherent sentences. When we arrived it was at a quaint house with what seemed to be an aircraft hanger in its garden. We ran up to the porch and Gary rang the doorbell.

‘Yes?’ asked the man who answered.

‘Umm…’ I started, presenting the Vulpix to him. ‘Does this belong to you?’

‘Ah! There’s my girl!’ he exclaimed happily, lifting the pokémon out of my arms. She trilled cheerfully and tried to nuzzle his hands. ‘Do come in,’ he welcomed us, so we walked in to a pretty living room.

We ended up all seated around a table while he explained to us what happened. Apparently she had gotten lost and he and his family were out looking for her, and he had come home for a break.

‘Yes, the thought of losing her gave us all a lot of grief,’ he said as the hungry pokémon ate from a bowl on the floor. ‘We’ve come close before, but not this close.’

I filled my hand with some of our own pokémon food specialised for fire types and held it down for her. She continued eating and didn’t notice.

‘Hold it closer so she can smell it,’ advised the man. ‘She won’t see you, she’s quite blind.’

‘Blind?!’ all three of us echoed. We said it at the same time so thankfully he didn’t notice when Meowth spoke. We had decided that he shouldn’t talk around strangers because then we’d have to spend a long time explaining.

‘Oh yes, she is completely blind,’ he seemed to sound quite affectionate. ‘That’s why we have trouble with her sometimes. Most of the time she can find her way home, but other times it’s not that easy.’

I noticed a pokéball resting on the table and remembered what Meowth had told us about a pokémon’s bond with a pokéball.

‘Well, you guys have done us a mighty big favour,’ he continued, ‘the others have all been told and they’re on their way home now, so if you would all follow me, I can thank you properly.’

We went with him out of the back door and across to the hanger next to his house. There was a huge lock to be opened, but after that we were inside the massive structure. I could only speculate on what he was going to do: an aeroplane ride? A personal air show?

He pulled a large switch and the lights came on. The building itself was filled with crates, boxes and unrecognisable pieces of metal, but our attention was supposed to be directed at a desk next to us. He pulled out a stack of photographs and handed them to me.

‘As you might be aware,’ he explained, ‘our town holds the great hot air balloon race, and the competition is going to take place tomorrow. If you kids are entering, it would be my pleasure to loan you one of my super-aerodynamic hyper-fast balloons for the duration of the race.’

We stared at the pictures in my hand, with Meowth peering over my shoulder. They showed various hot air balloons, all fully inflated and ready for travel, and they were all shaped like different pokémon. There were pink and puffy Hoppip balloons, huge Electrode balloons, Chansey and Diglett and on and on…

‘It’s very kind of you,’ I started, ‘but we haven’t signed up for the race. We didn’t even know about it. Is there still time?’

He went into a thinking pose. ‘I should think they’re still taking entrants now, but it won’t be for long. Head down to the pokémon centre and you can’t miss the booths. Hurry though!’

‘Okay, thanks!’ I said while we backed out of the door. ‘If we manage to sign up we’ll come back tomorrow!’

Meowth practically dragged us there at lightning speed. He had wanted to talk to us for a long time.

‘We are gonna enter this competition and we are going to win!’ he yelled as he pulled me towards the pokémon centre.

‘Okay, hold on one second,’ I tried to sound calm and stood still once I had broken his grip. ‘How do we win exactly? I know nothing about hot air ballooning, and I’m willing to bet Gary doesn’t either. We’d probably just be putting ourselves in danger.’

‘We’re going to win,’ Meowth spoke just as calmly, ‘because I’m going to drive.’

* * *

The next morning found us walking back to the small house with the giant hanger to get the balloons ready. We had spent the night in the pokémon centre after Meowth had done some rather powerful negotiating with the guy we tried to sign up with.

‘We’ll have to be quick,’ Gary commented, looking at his watch. ‘They’ll be starting in a couple of hours, and everyone’s already started inflating the balloons.’

It was oddly idyllic, walking along a dirt path with wild flowers and small houses, watching huge balloons bounce into life on every side. There were all sorts of colours and shapes, and most of them were shaped like the pokémon that was being used to help fly it.

When we reached the house the blind Vulpix was trying to comfort her owner, who seemed quite upset.

‘I’m sorry, they’ve all gone!’ he said. ‘This morning half the town turned up, wanting new balloons! The only ones I have left don’t even fly, and I’m sure some of the ones I loaned the other people are broken, too.’

‘What do you mean "don’t even fly"?’ I asked.

‘It’s odd that I didn’t notice before, but all of my balloons aren’t fit to fly. The fabric is torn, the baskets are flimsy, some of the support beams are completely gone… how could I not have noticed before?’

Once we were outside the house I stopped my companions to think about this.

‘What’s the matter, Holly?’ Gary asked. Meowth seemed too upset to say anything.

‘He should have noticed if those balloons had something wrong with them before now…what if they had only had something wrong with them since this morning?’

‘What are you getting at?’

‘I think something fishy is going on here.’ Just as I said that I saw a glimpse of something curved and red sticking out from behind a bush somewhere in a field. ‘And I’m going to find out what it is.’

‘James?! What are you doing? You can’t stick things in the burner! And that goes in this corner…’

‘I’m sorry Jessie… all this balloon business is a lot harder without Meowth around…’

The two young Rockets were frantically trying to get their balloon ready in time while it was inflating. The Meowth shaped balloon was nearly fully done now, but they were having trouble with… just about everything else.

‘Jessie, I don’t think we’re going to have this ready in time… they’re going to start without us…’ James whined.

‘James, stop worrying so much. Even if they do go, we made sure that most of the balloons won’t even make it off the ground…’

They continued to argue, unaware that Meowth and I were stationed in the bushes next to them, out of sight but hearing every word. Gary had gone to warn as many people as possible about the danger of their balloons being sabotaged.

‘Those lying scumbags!’ I whispered. ‘They’re cheating! They were the ones who broke all the balloons… oh, I forgot, they used to be your team-mates…’

‘Well they ain’t any more. I agree, this time they’ve gone way too far…’

I realised that Meowth was way to angry to stay put for much longer. Any moment he would burst out to yell at them. Suddenly an idea popped into my head… the balloon was ready to fly…the Rockets were too busy bickering to notice… the only thing keeping the balloon on the ground was a short rope…

‘Meowth,’ I whispered quickly, ‘please don’t ask why. When I say so, I want you to run out there as fast as you can and cut that rope holding the balloon to the ground. Got it?’

He didn’t know what I was planning, but knew that he’d find out soon enough. ‘Got it.’

Jessie was still yelling… ‘Once we win and get that engine our balloon will go so fast we can make up what we owe to the boss in only a matter of days… plus we can steal Pikachu once we’re up there…’

I focused until she was only concentrating on the argument… and… ‘Now!’

Meowth shot from the bush at the same time as me, we ran together, but when we reached Jessie and James we split up and ran left and right. They saw us but were too surprised to act yet. Meowth reached the rope and lifted a paw, quickly extended his claws and swung his paw down. In a flash the rope was severed.

Meanwhile I had grabbed the basket and I pushed it so the momentum made it fly off at an angle. The Rockets couldn’t catch it that way. Completing the plan was harder, because the balloon was already lifting into the air. I grabbed the side and swung myself over and into the basket as it flew off, then reached over as far as I could without falling out of the basket. Meowth jumped and I caught his paw, then he was in too. As the balloon flew away into the sky I heard the distant sound of a gong, signalling the start of the race. Far away a voice sounded over the loudspeakers: ‘And they’re off!’

As the balloon rose through the air, so did my spirits. Jessie and James were stuck on the ground, waving and shouting at us. We did it.

I looked out over the landscape. I could already see for miles, and we were still rising. As I watched I saw various balloons burst and break, flinging the people and pokémon inside them down to earth. I felt a bit sad because of this; it hadn’t been a complete victory.

Meowth was darting all over the basket, checking that everything was working okay.

‘Are you absolutely sure you can fly this?’

‘I was flying this baby for years!’ he sounded triumphant as he tested the burner.

As we got higher I started feeling less confidant. I sat down in the middle of the balloon, wrapping my arms around my legs.

‘Hey, are you okay?’ Meowth asked, concerned.

‘Yeah, I’m fine… there’s just so little basket, and so much space below…’

This didn’t last for long, as my head adjusted to the altitude I had to get up and take a look at the breathtaking world around. I watched as Meowth navigated around a mountain peak by putting on the burner, which lifted us gracefully over the top. After that I felt completely safe.

We followed the other balloons and even started to overtake some of them. Then Meowth announced:

‘There’s a great air current just above us. That would probably get us all the way past the others, but I can’t get into it with just the burner.’

‘Allow me,’ I grinned, unclipping a pokéball from my belt. ‘Go, Spike! Help us heat up the balloon!’

My faithful Quilava formed from the white light and let loose a flamethrower to lift us right into the current. Luckily I registered him as well when we signed up. Suddenly the balloon jerked forward and we were whisked away towards the finish line.

When we finally started to slow down there were only two balloons between us and the end of the race, which took the form of a big cross on the ground. I could see the ‘X’ now, and took a sphere from my pocket. It had streamers attached to one end, and I was supposed to throw this at the cross. I didn’t want to let Meowth down after all the great flying he did, and my thoughts went back to the sports I played at school. Shooting at a hoop was one thing, shooting from high above was completely different.

I took a look at the two remaining balloons we had to pass. One of them was shaped like a Pikachu. It looked like they had just got out of a storm, which was heading the other way. The storm wouldn’t hit us, fortunately.

‘You could really do it, Meowth! There are only two balloons left!’ He didn’t look too happy.

‘Yeah, but the twerps are in dat Pikachu one.’

‘Twerps?’ I tried to remember some names. ‘Ash? The ones Gary told me about?’ He just nodded.

We were speeding up behind them now, but they had a good lead. The Pikachu balloon and the other one were slower than we were, and they were tied. I could see Ash clearly now, and he seemed to be using a walkie-talkie to speak to a boy on the other balloon.

‘Do you read me?’ said Ash. ‘Back there is Team Rocket’s balloon. They’re a bunch of no-good crooks. I bet it was them who made all those balloons crash at the beginning of the race. You’d better watch out, they’ll probably try something to stop us.’

‘Okay, Ash,’ said the boy on the other end of the walkie-talkie.

‘Wait a minute, Ash,’ said Misty. ‘Look at the balloon. I can see Meowth in the basket… but who’s that with him? It’s not Jessie or James.’

Brock was looking with a pair of binoculars and saying something along the lines of: ‘Oh-yes-she’s-very-pretty-very-much-yes-date-yum’.

I saw that the occupants of the Pikachu balloon were looking at me. When one of them grabbed some binoculars I took the opportunity to wave at them. They waved back, looking confused.

We were fast approaching the cross. Meowth took the streamer ball from me and jumped onto the side on the basket, ready to throw.

‘Er, Meowth? Don’t you think I should throw that?’

‘Why?’

‘Well, I’ve got longer arms…’

He reluctantly gave up the ball and went back to steering us into an air current which took us right up to the others. We were quite far apart, but neck-and-neck. It was the final stretch now. We were closing in, and the cross got bigger… when was the right time to throw?

There was a Fearow steering the other, Fearow shaped balloon, and the Pikachu one was pulled by a Noctowl. I realised that this was the oddly coloured Noctowl that Gary had told me about, like my Growlithe. It seemed to leave a trail of sparkles behind as it flew.

I shook myself out of it and focused on the throw. The boy in the Fearow balloon was with his father, who was the man with the Vulpix who we had helped. They must want to win for the prize, a fast balloon engine. I saw Ash, who wanted to win because Ash likes winning things. Why did I want to win? I looked at Meowth. He was the best balloon flyer here, and he really deserved it…

The boy, Ash, and I raised our arms. Our balloon was still behind, so we had more distance between us and the cross. I waited until the last moment when their arms moved, locked my eyes on the target, and threw the ball down with all my strength.

The three differently coloured balls flew silently at exactly the same time. I saw mine, coloured yellow, lagging behind… no…

The other two balls hit the bulls-eye a bit to the side, but at exactly the same time. Mine hit a split-second later, but it was a perfect bulls-eye. It struck the other two balls and bounced off, away from the target. I saw and sat down in the corner of the basket while we descended.

It turned out to be a tie between Ash and the other boy. Since Ash had no need for the engine, he gave it to the other boy, and I was happy because I knew he and his Dad would get the best from it.

Afterwards Meowth and I packed the deflated balloon into the basket and I pushed it to the side for Team Rocket to find later. While I was sorting it out, Ash came over.

‘Erm, hi there.’

I spun around, still working on packing the balloon away. ‘Oh, hi. You’re Ash, right?’

‘How did you know?’

‘Gary told me. I know you as a boy with a pokémon league hat and a Pikachu on his shoulder.’ Pikachu chirped happily. Ash’s two companions came along then to see him. One was a girl with red hair in a side Ponyta-tail, the other was an older boy with very spiky short hair.

‘Gary?! As in, Gary Oak? How do you know him?’

‘I’m journeying with him. I’m sorta like… his apprentice.’

‘Wow, great!’ said the girl. ‘Hi, I’m Misty.’

‘And I’m Brock,’ said the other boy. ‘You did a good job flying that balloon, but… uh, why were you in Team Rocket’s balloon? And why was Meowth with you?’

I picked up Meowth, who had been hiding behind the basket, and put him on my head. ‘Meowth is my pokémon. He was the first one I ever had. And we…err, borrowed Team Rocket’s balloon for the race.

‘Heh heh…’ Meowth seemed embarrassed. ‘Hi guys…’

‘Really?!’ asked Misty, who was surprised. ‘Are you sure Meowth’s okay to have around? He isn’t going to steal your pokémon or anything? And why wasn’t he in a pokéball when you were in the balloon?’

‘Meowth isn’t like that!’ I defended him. ‘He isn’t even with Team Rocket any more, and they’ve stolen enough of my pokémon to get to him anyway.’ Misty looked embarrassed that she had brought it up. ‘Look, it’s okay, really. Meowth is registered to me, but he doesn’t have a pokéball. And he was the one flying the balloon, anyway.’

‘Is it really okay, travelling with Gary?’ Ash asked.

‘Yeah, it’s great!’ I trailed off as I saw Gary approaching us from down the road. ‘Here he comes now.’

‘Oh, well, we’d better go then,’ said Brock. The three of them turned and walked away.

‘Hey, wait,’ said Ash. ‘Hey, what’s your name?’ he called back.

‘It’s Holly,’ I said, and left the balloon before it was found. I ran down the path to meet Gary on the way.

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘What were you doing?’ We started to walk in the direction of the pokémon centre.

‘I put the balloon away and then had a chat with Ash, Misty and Brock.’ Gary snorted at this. ‘Well, were you watching the race?’

‘Yeah. Most of the people I talked to didn’t believe me or just wanted to try anyway. But you guys did really well, you were faster than everyone else.’

‘It’s a shame we didn’t get to use one of those super-fast balloons that the man was trying to give us,’ I said to Meowth, who was in his favourite place on my shoulder. We walked through the pokémon centre’s familiar sliding glass doors. ‘You could have won if we’d had one of those.’

‘I couldn’t have asked for a better balloon,’ he said simply, as we went to Nurse Joy to ask for a room.