🌠DELTA – Chapter 1; Night

Read from the start

Characters: Zinnia, Shelly, Courtney

Warnings:

Suicide attempt and hospitalization. These are not vague or implied. Please skip this chapter if this could trigger you in any way.


That night, it seemed darker than usual. The air felt stagnant and the clock was looming louder, as if counting down to something.

The TV was still on in that old living room, looping the title screen sequence for whatever movie Courtney and Shelly had decided to play. They were both completely unconscious, having fallen asleep about three fourths through; and next to them, sat Zinnia.

Nothing had gone particularly well for her. Not for the past week. Not for the past year. Not for the past near decade, for that matter. And with the two roommates fast asleep on the couch next to her along with her companion Whismur, Zinnia was stuck alone with her thoughts.

She was thinking of a lot of things all at once, and slowly started to tap her pointer finger on the couch’s side table. She tapped faster and faster, until she stopped. And let out a deep, drawn out sigh. She made sure she was careful not to wake anyone when she got up from the couch and made sure to slowly creep up the stairs, lest the old house creak aggressively.

“This isn’t fair.”

Shelly only woke up to a noisy thump. Disoriented, she briefly looked around to see that Zinnia had vanished. The noise didn’t just wake her up, though – it managed to wake the other two resting on the couch up as well. Shelly got up and moved across the vermillion carpet to the foot of the stairs.

“Zinnia? You up there?” No response.

Shelly was uneased and proceeded to walk up the stairs to knock on Zinnia’s bedroom door. Zinnia’s Whismur, Aster, was quick to follow in suit despite it’s stumpy legs. They seemed to be distressed at missing their trainer. Begrudgingly, Courtney got up from the couch as well to chase the pokemon, only to stop in her tracks when she heard Shelly’s scream. There was a pause, and she wasn’t quite sure how to act, until Shelly called down to her.

“Courtney, call 911 right now!”

—

It was the old, moldy ceiling that saved Zinnia that night, whether she would’ve liked it or not. She offered no explanation, and refused to speak while in emergency – but given her history, it wasn’t much of a surprise. She just lost everything, Shelly would say to the nurses, if to even lightly explain her situation, unable to truly scratch the surface of what happened during the past 9 years.

Zinnia wasn’t completely silent though – nurses would occasionally catch her muttering to herself in a language nobody could understand, and when asked, Zinnia would actually respond.

“It’s Draconian” she’d say with a flat expression, before grabbing the notebook she’d requested to avoid further conversation.

Zinnia was the lorekeeper – an inherited position, and the acclaimed social leader and prophetic keeper of history of the Draconids, said to have regular contact with the gods themselves. But times have changed, and there’s not a lot of Draconids left, simply due to the passage of time. Neither Shelly nor Courtney knew much about Zinnia’s obligations, other than the fact that two had met her while she was younger and undergoing training of sorts for the role, under a mentor who had gone missing after the incident.

The nurses had asked the two what the incident was, and they could only give a vague recount of it – the two were in a very different stressful situation at the time, after all. They were only really able to say that Zinnia’s then-girlfriend had been killed and Zinnia was accused for her murder – it was only recently that she was freed from prison. Zinnia would mumble of it all being the fault of a ‘Joseph Stone’.

Time went on, and Zinnia seemed antsier, and was writing and drawing a lot more in her notebook. She had requested another one, having filled her previous one entirely. Her nurses had requested to see the contents, and while Zinnia denied, she didn’t really have any power in the situation. Though, it’s not like the nurses could even read anything – it was all in Draconian. They had asked questions about the floorplans Zinnia had drawn, and she responded;

“It’s a dream journal. I’ve been having vivid dreams lately”, keeping herself as straight to the point as possible.

“Right… if you need anything, don’t be afraid to call.”

The nurse left swiftly, and Zinnia left out a sigh and picked her notebook back up, flipping through the pages just to make sure it was the same. Calling it a dream journal was a bit of a white lie, but not entirely. Zinnia had been having vivid dreams, showing her things she should never have known – but she felt like it was a prophecy. She wasn’t just cataloging her dreams – she had a plan and knew she had to do something. And that something had to be soon. She was running out of time.

The doctors and nurses weren’t really seeing much progress in Zinnia at all, even after moving her from emergency. She still barely talked, and was absorbed in writing or drawing most of the time. While they weren’t confident in discharging her, especially in her current state, they also didn’t know what benefit it would be to keep her hospitalized much longer. So, they compromised – Zinnia would be discharged, and would have to be accompanied at all times; if not by a human, than by her pokemon. Shelly did point out that since Aster was a whismur, its cries were quite loud – and that it was because of Aster’s noise in the past that Zinnia had stopped doing things that would’ve landed her in this situation sooner.

Zinnia didn’t talk for the entire drive back home from the hospital, she just stared out the window, watching the world go by. It wasn’t until she got home that she showed any real semblance of emotion – when she saw Aster. The little pokemon was just about as excited to see Zinnia again as Zinnia was to see it – it leaped up into her arms and was excitedly murmuring. Zinnia let out a smile and made sure to scratch Aster’s head while holding it.

“They really missed you, ya’know?” Shelly said, breaking the moment that the two had together. Zinnia didn’t respond, but acknowledged what Shelly had said.

Everyone went to move inside, and Zinnia once again heard the familiar creaking of her home once again. She took a deep breath, finally smelling something that wasn’t sanitized floors and pillows for once. Then, in a complete change of attitude, Zinnia started to laugh.

“God! Damn it!” She mumbled in between her chuckling. “God damn it! Shit!”

“Zinnia…? What’s going on?” Shelly interjected. “Do you need to sit down?”

“What day is it, Shelly?”

“It’s March 28th, why? Zinnia, are you alright?”

Zinnia managed to compose herself, and took a long, deep breath, before running her hands through her hair.

“Yea, I’m… alright. I just forgot something that was coming up, was all.”

Shelly looked confused. “What was it? Do I need to help with anything?”

“Nah, I’m good, I’ll deal with it myself, it’s no big deal.”

“Alright, but remember to take care of yourself?”

Zinnia gave Shelly a snide look, as if to mock her comment. Shelly just sighed, and watched as Zinnia went upstairs to her room, followed by Aster.

She laid there for a while, staring at the patch in the ceiling. She found it hard to look at directly without getting dizzy, so she just moved to laying on her stomach.

Holding Aster’s paw, Zinnia started rambling to the pokemon;

“We’ve got a lot in store for us, huh? We got one week, Aster. We’ve got our work cut out for us but… I think she’s helping me. I think I can do this.”

Zinnia started a new notebook.

—

March 28th, 2005

10:57pm

7 days

I’ve been thinking about her a lot. I try not to, like I always say I will, but I do anyways. But I think… maybe I have a legitimate reason to now, at least. There’s no other explanation. 

Her spirit must be following me somehow, from beyond. Now that I’m home I can finally look things up – it’s not like I don’t trust the cryptic dream blueprints I’ve been getting, but it seems all too implausible… but again… maybe it’s her? She mentioned her mom was like a weirdo Cresselia zealot, so if they’ve reunited in another plane she got her to send me things? Do I sound crazy? Yeah.

I haven’t got to see Courtney yet, I hope at least she’ll be more open to helping me – if not, shit’s gonna hit the fan real quick.

Next Chapter

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