Snowstorm’s Flame

A/N: I don't own anything. Just an idea. Slightly dark for me.

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There had been another avalanche.

Lidane felt it the moment she woke up. There was a difference in the world, a change in the sound of the soft wind on the snow. Without pausing to think, she ran out into the glittering whiteness of the world, her fire-coloured fur a smudge on the snowy landscape as she dashed towards the slope.

Her collar was around her neck as always, letting the handmade charm swing back and forth in time with Lidane's rapid, even pawsteps. It was a tiny silver snowflake, given to her by a Meowth she'd nursed long ago, and no-one could have guessed its significance.

For three years now, she had lived up here amongst the mountains. It seemed strange for a creature of the flames to want to surround herself with snow and ice, but it was her home and she loved it. Then there was the chance of helping stranded Pokémon, the lost travellers that there would always be. It was a difficult task, but Lidane was fond of it, cherishing the feeling of joy whenever she managed to rescue a wanderer.

The avalanche had been a heavy one. Rocks and ice lay in a steep, jagged wall where there had been a valley pathway the day before. With a deep sigh, Lidane began assessing the damage.

Suddenly she came upon something, and her heart stopped.

It was a Bellsprout. It had been a Bellsprout. “Guardian…” Lidane clasped her paws and murmured a few words into the silence, half-audible. Experienced as she was, she knew there was no help she could give. Looking at the Grass Pokémon's horrific injuries, she decided it was more important than ever to check no-one else had been caught in the disaster.

Carefully, cautiously, fearfully, she clambered up the solid wall of stone and ice. Each step was a trial, until the moment that she hoisted her small body over the top. Snow had packed hard on the other side, blown by the wind, and she half-walked, half-slid down into the valley, shut off now by the effects of the avalanche.

Someone was there.

*

"Come on," Lidane murmured to the human girl. "Wake up." It was impossible to tell how old the fallen figure was, though she appeared fairly young; probably a trainer for a few years. Her long hair was white-blonde, barely different from the snow where she lay. It seemed she was hurt, too, though Lidane couldn't tell by what.

By tugging and pulling, the small Pokémon managed to get the girl into a spot more sheltered from the wind, where the swirling snowflakes wouldn't blow into their faces. She decided to go back to the abandoned chalet where she lived, to bring food, or medicine. Water wouldn't be a problem; one blast of fire would turn the treacherous snow into life-giving liquid.

When Lidane returned, struggling to carry the bottle of medicine through the heavy snowdrifts, the girl seemed worse. In her semi-consciousness, she was murmuring deliriously. "I'm sorry... Leave me alone... Please... Don't..."

Lidane came closer. "Come on. Don't die on me," she whispered, uncorking the bottle of tonic to press it to the girl's lips. It never reached them, though, as she heard a voice behind her.

"Step away from the human, little girl."

Bristling at the insult, she looked up and saw the towering form of a Mightyena, snowflakes caught in his dark fur. His teeth and claws were bared, and as she tensed in panic she thought she saw a red glimmer on his paw.

"What?" she said, though she'd heard every word.

"Get away from her. Let me finish this once and for all."

"You can't mean..." Lidane stared at him, not understanding. "You wouldn't hurt a human. Why, they haven’t got any claws, or sharp teeth, or any elemental magic. Look at her! She can't even protect herself."

"Really? Well, guess what," snarled the Mightyena. "She's my human. And it's my turn."

His fur looked matted and tangled, and there was what appeared to be a burn mark on his back, Lidane noticed in concern. She could probably have fixed his injuries, back at the chalet. But she wasn't sure she wanted to, as he faced her down over the girl's unconscious figure. "I'm not moving," she whispered. "I live here. My job is to save whoever turns up. Pokémon… and people."

"Oh, really," he said again. "Let me tell you something, little girl. I've been planning this all along. Even down to the avalanche. And if Lizzy was your trainer, you would have too."

"You started the avalanche." Lidane fought the urge to be sick. "What kind of monster are you?"

"It was the means to an end..." the Mightyena growled softly, unconsciously stroking the scorched patch in his fur. The snowflakes caught in his mane, light on dark.

"A Bellsprout died in that disaster," Lidane snapped. She fired a jet of warning flame towards the wolf-Pokémon, but he appeared not even to feel it.

"Lizzy's Bellsprout. I'd say it was better off that way," he returned in a voice as cold as ice. "Little girl, not all humans are sweethearted Pokémon-lovers. Or didn't you know that?" He closed his eyes for a moment, shuddering, remembering.

Lidane felt canvas, the strap of a satchel, beneath her paws. It must have been hooked over the girl's arm. Reaching inside, she found something that had the shape of a weapon.

"Pokémon trainer! She never even knew what that was meant to be. Tamer, master, driver… that was always more like it. Now back off. It's time someone finished this."

"Guardian of the Mountains forgive me," Lidane murmured under her breath and picked up the device in her mouth, pointing it at him. A bolt of electricity leapt from it to the Mightyena, and he suddenly crouched, whimpering. He seemed to be doing it by instinct, as if he didn’t even need to think about it.

With one single movement Lidane drew the fallen girl's belt from her body and pulled the few Pokéballs away from it. Two were light, obviously empty. She remembered the Bellsprout on the slope, although it seemed a world away now.

Holding both empty Pokéballs-- and the spark-gun-- high, she hurled them into the mounting snowstorm. "There!" she screamed. "You're free. Free. That's what you wanted, isn't it? But she's mine."

"Fine." The Mightyena looked up into the blizzard, and his suddenly unconcerned expression spoke volumes. "It's nothing to do with me if you want to risk your life for a pathetic waste of space like that... Little girl, even if you get out of the snow, you haven’t heard the last of this. There’s going to be a rebellion, mark my words. And you’ll just have to see how long you’ll last then, protecting someone who doesn’t deserve it." He stared at her a moment longer, caught between a careless sniff of contempt and a snarl of anger. Then, a moment later, he was no more than a dark shadow in the swirling snow. A shadow fading into nothingness.

Lidane was alone, standing over the unconscious girl.

She sent a torch of flame into the air, where it flickered for seconds before dying, hardly warming the nothingness around it. "Lizzy..." She knew the human's name, now, and she used it. "If you don't wake up... I don't think I'll be able to get you back to the chalet. I can't pull you through a blizzard."

The figure was unmoving, her hand reaching out into the snow, her hair sticking to her skin. Her face seemed fixed in an expression of terror.

Looking into the satchel again, Lidane saw Pokéballs, vitamin bottles, fishing rods, power-ups, useless gold coins. No potions or even Rare Candy, nothing that could be used to give her charge some needed energy.

She touched the Focus Band that she wore around her own head. It would keep her from passing out in the sharp, stinging blizzard, where fainting could mean your loss forever. But it was no use to a human. Curse that Mightyena, she thought, and gripped Lizzy's cold hand tight.

There was nothing but whiteness in the world now, whiteness that the light of a flame could not dispel. Lidane tried, knowing it would be useless, to drag the human a short distance. The cold numbed her body with a howling wind that sounded almost like a wolf itself.

Taking a deep breath of the air, she looked up into the sky and clutched her silver charm.

"Guardian of the Mountains, come to my aid."

It was an ancient prayer among Pokémon in these parts, an appeal to something higher. Lidane, a wild Pokémon born and bred, had never been inside a human church or temple. But the arched peaks of the mountains around her climbed to the sky, touching the horizon on all sides. This was Lidane’s holy place, and she prayed.

"Guardian of the Mountains, come to my aid."

Lidane felt weak as she looked into the heart of the swirling storm. The heartbeat beneath her paws was barely there.

"I know that Mightyena might have been right. Maybe the spark of light isn’t strong in her. She is who she is, Guardian. But I'm me. I'm not like her. And that’s why I can’t leave her!" She almost sobbed the words as the winds ached against her fur.

"You must know what to do. Guardian of the Mountains, come to--"

There was a light, growing brighter and brighter, and a sensation of almost deafening sound; Lidane fancied for a moment that she could hear wingbeats far above. In her stunned shock she tried to hide her face with her paws, unable to bear the dazzling brightness, and gripped Lizzy's flimsy shirt in her teeth, holding on for dear life.

"You're here..." she whispered...

*

The nurse working at the Pokémon centre had had a long night. That girl and the Vulpix had taken up a lot of it. Injured, fatigued and oh, so cold-- they had seemed almost frozen through. Really, she knew better than to ask about an obviously mistreated Pokémon-- after that incident last month when the biker had smashed the window-- but the Vulpix's horrific damage, and the terrified expression on its little face, had attracted her curiosity and concern.

"Oh, baby," she murmured softly, cradling its small form in her arms, "what happened to you?"

"It was an avalanche." She hadn't been aware of the girl standing behind her. The trainer walked awkwardly-- perhaps she herself had been hurt-- but almost silently, as if she were wearing velvet slippers rather than damp boots. "I swear, that's what it was."

"If I see her back here with similar injuries," Nurse Joy managed defiantly, "I shall have your trainer's license revoked. What did you say your name was? Tell the truth."

"Li-- Lizzy," the girl told her softly, fingering the Pokédex in her pocket. The nurse watched as she caressed the Vulpix's cheek with genuine love, genuine care, and just a little sadness. No, she had been wrong. This trainer could never have done such a thing. Perhaps it had been a fight with the wrong kind of wild Pokémon, or maybe the avalanche story was true. Things like that happened out here.

Nurse Joy brought a mug of hot cocoa to the trainer. Working in a Pokémon centre at the foot of the mountains, she was used to cold weather. "Here," she whispered, pushing it towards the girl, who sat by the window now with the Pokémon hugged tightly against her checkered shirt, her silver necklace, against the red-gold braids of her hair. Her eyes were fixed on the winter sky, a vast dark expanse dotted with sparkling stars.

"Look..." the nurse told her. "Forget what I said about revoking your license. I don't know what happened to your Vulpix... but maybe it's a night for second chances."

One hand still on the Pokémon's curiously light-hued fur, the girl looked away from the frost-patterned window, where a lone Mightyena could be seen, howling into the rising gale.

"Yes," she said quietly. "It is."

From the mountain peak, the Pokémon centre’s light shone like a candle in the dark.