***************

The girl led the way off the path, her limp much more pronounced. Before too long the trees parted to reveal a little clearing. There was a bare spot in the middle encircled by stones, and a stream at the far end. Just like she had said. Aurora collapsed on a log that had been obviously dragged close to the fire-pit to sit on with a groan of relief. She painstakingly pulled off her well-worn boot as the three other humans in their party dragged up more logs. Pikachu scampered up a tree at the edge of the clearing, and Stormweaver curled up next to his dragonfriend on the ground.

"My gosh, look at that ankle!" Brock exclaimed when he returned. It was swollen and throbbing from its hard hike through the woods. "You shouldn’t have been walking around on that!"

Aurora looked down. "It’s nothing," she dismissed the injury. "I’ll be fine."

"Not if you keep walking around on it. From now on you stay put. We’ll set up camp." He sent Ash to get firewood and Misty to the stream to soak a bandanna in the cold water for the swelling. The wild girl was surprised. These weren’t just some kids passing through to the next city. They were travel-wise. In no time at all a fire was brightly crackling in the circle of stones and Brock was cooking something from the seemingly never-ending supplies he had tucked away in his backpack.

By the time it was done being prepared Aurora had stretched out on the ground with her back against the log, admitting her ankle felt much better. So she wasn’t leaning on her backpack, she had taken it off and set it in her lap. Everyone accepted a bowl from the cook graciously as Stormweaver climbed to his feet and backed away from the fire without a word. At a distance where his takeoff wouldn’t upset the flames he flapped a few times and leaped upward, quickly disappearing into the night.

"Where’s he going?" Misty asked the girl curiously. Aurora hadn’t even looked up as he had left.

"Oh, hunting," she said casually, not even thinking of the answer. "He goes out every night."

Silence descended on the campsite. Misty, Ash and Brock’s faces paled. "H-hunting?" Ash stuttered. "Hunting what?"

Confusion clouded her face, then quickly cleared as a mixture of humor and anger played over it. For a moment the two emotions warred, then she sighed in disgust. "You see, that’s the work of the rumors from the old days. I mentioned dragons hunting and you all immediately pictured them stealing babies from their cribs or attacking lone travelers in the middle of the night, didn’t you?"

They had the grace to look embarrassed.

"I’ll have you know Stormweaver only hunts small fish in ponds and rivers. He doesn’t have a choice about what he eats; that’s just the way his kind is. I have to keep a vegetable garden for myself and fish too. We can’t just buy lunch at the next town or pull it out of a backpack like some people. If we don’t find food, we don’t eat." Aurora’s mismatched eyes flashed angrily, though at them, the treatment of dragons, or life in general they couldn’t tell.

"We’re very sorry," said Brock seriously. "We didn’t know."

She sighed and continued a little more subdued. "No, I’m the one who’s sorry. You guys didn’t disserve that. It’s just, it’s not always easy living out here. Sometimes we go hungry, sometimes we’re cold, and. . . ." She trailed off, staring into the fire. Then she forced herself to admit, "Sometimes I’m lonely. Stormweaver is a wonderful friend, but it’s just the two of us."

In the heavy silence Ash coughed. "Gee," he murmured. "I, uh, didn’t think about that. What do you do when it rains?"

Aurora smiled at the thoughtful concern. She hadn’t let humans in her wood for so long she sorely missed human companionship, even though she had known when she accepted the duty of protecting Stormweaver that she would have to sever all links with the normal word, including those of friendship. That was the real reason she’d allowed them passage. She was lonely.

The mood around the campfire lightened when her anger melted into the smile. "We get wet!" she grinned at his question. "When we can’t find shelter anyway. It’s not as bad as you think; the weather is usually pretty mild here. In winter we move to our other forest down south. Word in Sankton is the ghosts hibernate."

They were getting use to that blue-eyed wink.

By the time everyone had finished eating the sun had set and a full moon was beginning to rise above the trees as the sky faded from red to blue to violet into black. The night was as cloudless as the day had been, letting the light from the silver globe and the tiny pinpricks shine down on them. Between that and the fire substituting the sun’s warmth there was plenty of light to see by. And no one quite felt like turning in.

"Aurora," Misty ventured.

"Mmm?" Her two-colored eyes rose from their silent contemplation of the dancing flames.

"This afternoon you said you would answer are questions."

"Oh yeah, after the dragons’ story I completely forgot. All right, I don’t mind sharing our secrets. As long as you all promise never to use the information against dragons, of course."

"Never," they all agreed.

"Chu," Pikachu added. It was relaxing happily by Ash’s feet after finding an apple tree at the edge of the clearing.

"Okay, well the voice’s an easy one. A dragon’s throat is so oddly shaped they can make all sorts of weird sounds. It was like Stormweaver yelled through a long hollow tube—which, in a sense, I guess he did. I just told him what to say."

"And what about the fire?" asked Brock.

"Well, dragons aren’t Pokemon, but they do have certain attacks they developed to defend themselves during the human settlement movement. The first is their most powerful, called Mimic. They can imitate any Pokemon’s attack, given enough time to learn it," Aurora smiled proudly for her absent friend. "It’s not easy, but Stormweaver’s very good, especially for one so young."

"Young?" Misty repeated. "You mean Stormweaver’s just a kid?"

"Yeah, he’s our age. When dragons are full grown they match the size of an Lapras, easy." Brock and Misty looked momentarily nervous at that. A Lapras got plenty big.

Ash hadn’t been paying attention to the conversation, his mind elsewhere. He snapped his fingers. "That attack. It was Charmander’s Flamethrower, right?"

She nodded with a grin. "Right."

"But I’ve never seen a Pokemon do that wall of flames."

"Well," Aurora chuckled. "I’ll admit, that one was my idea. There’s a species of flower in here that’s very flammable if you crush it to powder, but the particles also have something in them that controls the fire and keeps it from ignited anything else. Once the powder is completely burned—takes about a minute or two—the fire goes totally dead. It was pure luck that the fuel was consumed just as I fell. When someone comes I lay the stuff on the path. Usually the voice is enough to scare them away, but if not that little show always does it . . . almost always, anyway."

"It seems like you’re very careful not to let anyone pass through here," Misty pointed out.

Aurora nodded. "When Stormweaver hatched, I had no home and no one to turn to. We wandered the land for so long, just trying to survive and escape the dragonslaying parties out looking for us. Afraid the rest of the world would treat him like the Merlacs would, I was too afraid to enter any cities or towns to ask for help. I learned to live off the land. Dragons, I soon found out, were born with survival instincts. They have a knack for finding water, and shelter too. The times were rough, but we managed.

"Until we found this forest. It was paradise compared to wandering around! People from Sankton would travel the path, and the occasional stranger, but we hid from them at first. We discovered that no one owned the woods here, and many wild Pokemon made it their home. So we did too. That was when we started the ghost pranks. Some chance sightings of something flying among the trees, strange noises, waking up to find your camp had been raided during the night. Stormweaver even convinced some of the Pokemon to help out, the ones who liked the peacefulness of an undisturbed forest.

"Now we keep a constant watch over all the boarders. The Pokemon help out with that, too. If any humans try to get in, someone alerts me and Stormweaver. Then we take care of them, as you know first-hand."

"But why did you ask for my Pikachu?" Ash wondered, a little hurt. If she wanted a Pokemon so badly she could go catch her own. She had no business demanding his best friend.

Aurora didn’t miss the tone of his voice. "I didn’t, believe me. I just knew no Pokemon trainer would take the chance of having his Pokemon taken from him. I thought if anything would make you leave, that would. And if we could scare your Pokemon into running away, you might follow. So I had Stormweaver use his Fear."

"Fear?" Brock asked. "What’s that?"

"The dragon’s second attack. They can make any Pokemon absolutely terrified. A Pokemon can’t fight if it’s too scared to move. Still, this is the lesser of Stormweaver’s two attacks. When dragons use it they go into a kind of trance, totally helpless. They can be attacked by anyone else at the time and can’t defend themselves. Also, Fear only works on Pokemon, not humans."

"That’s why we weren’t affected," realized Ash. She nodded.

"I don’t understand," Misty confessed. "If the dragons developed these attacks to defend themselves against people, why do they both involve Pokemon?"

"Dragons are more closely related to Pokemon than humans, so their attacks come easier to the dragons. After some wild Pokemon learned how the humans were treating the dragons, they were angry. They began trying to teach them how to defend themselves. The dragons picked up their attacks so easy it became their first attack. Then, when the humans tried to use their trained Pokemon against the dragons, they didn’t want to hurt them. They developed a non-violent way to stop them from attacking: Fear."

No one replied, having run out of responses. There was an easy silence entirely different than the speechless moments of uncertainty that had constantly plagued them as everyone thought about all they had learned. "Wow." Ash shook his head in amazement. "You sure know a lot about dragons."

Aurora giggled, giddy with the happiness of company, and tucked a brown strand of hair behind her ear. The firelight reflected off the red and gold glints in it when she moved. "It’s not like we have much else to do besides talking out here," she replied. She shifted against the log to get more comfortable, absentmindedly wrapping one arm tighter around her backpack. "Okay, you guys. Your turn."

"Our turn?" Misty repeated.

"Your turn. I told you my life; you tell me yours."

So Ash began his story. He told how he had overslept the day he was due to get his first Pokemon, and how he ended up with the last, a Pikachu. After they had escaped a flock of Spearows—"Nasty creatures," Aurora put in. "There’s no reasoning with them."—they met Misty. She pointedly took over the story to add in a few details he had forgot. Then he told about the various cities that they had traveled through, including Pewter City, where Brock had joined the quest. He recalled all the Pokemon he had caught, how his Butterfree had left with its mate, and how his Primeape had won the P-1 Grand Prix. By the time he was explaining how he had captured a Muk, Stormweaver was winging into the clearing.

He landed gracefully on Aurora’s log by her shoulder and folded his wings against his back. The firelight cast his scales green-red and made his large eyes seem to glow. But they didn’t hold any anger as he looked across the flames to the three humans, as they usually did. Instead he dipped his head in a simple greeting, seeming to have accepted them. Stormweaver, as the last dragon alive, had every right to hate any humans beside the Sangos, but he had done a lot of thinking in his absence. Aurora wasn’t the only one who was lonely.

As if reading his thoughts Pikachu scampered around the circle of stones keeping the fire controlled and jumped up on the log beside him. The four humans began their discussion again, leaving the two smaller creatures to their own conversation.

"Pika," Pikachu offered, extending a round brown morsel.

"Chu pi?" He asked what it was as he took the small piece of food.

The electric mouse explained that Brock made the best Pokemon food around. The dragon looked at the food dubiously. But not wanting to refuse the gift, he cautiously tasted it.

"Kachu!" he exclaimed in surprise. It was good!

"Cha!" Pikachu agreed, delighted. It started chattering about life with Ash, Brock and Misty, about the battles it had fought and the friends made. Stormweaver listened eagerly. Though most dragons used to prefer remote, alone habitats and tended to stay in them, Stormweaver often daydreamed of traveling farther than the boundaries of his forest. He knew he never could, and that his dragonfriend sacrificed her normal humanity to keep him safe and protected, but that didn’t stop his craving for adventure. Sometimes he flew to a tree just on the border of the woods to watch people passing by the road. He’d never let them see him, and the sight of a human still sent anger coursing through him as if it was a programmed response, but he couldn’t stop the little voice inside that yearned to go with each of them.

So he wasn’t bored as Pikachu talked about its exploits. After, Stormweaver told of the sparse thrills that he’d experienced in his lifetime, including the time a dragonslayer had found her way into the forest not long after they had. Fortunately she passed through without sighting them. Then the green dragon gave the pointy-eared Pokemon a long look out of the corner of his lime eyes. Hesitantly he mentioned Pikachu’s electric attack that he had witnessed earlier. To dragons, teaching attacks was a solemn experience shared only by close friends.

"Chu!" Pikachu told him easily that it was no problem. They left the fireside with a few words of explanation to practice at the other end of the clearing, safely away from the humans but still in plain sight despite the darkness.

Soon bright yellow flashes were lighting the night. The four humans trailed off in their conversation to watch. When a particularly big one crackled across the open air Aurora whistled. "That’s one strong Pikachu," she said respectively.

Ash straightened proudly. "That’s right. And I trained it myself."

Misty snorted. "Now don’t start that up again, Ash. Your head was just getting back down to a manageable size." Everyone laughed—except Ash. And even he was in too good a mood to stay angry for long.

Suddenly the beige bag in Aurora’s hands quivered. Misty, Ash and Brock gasped as she jerked up straight in surprise. But instead of the shock written on their faces, hers showed only excitement. She quickly unbuckled the top flap and reached inside. Then, as if just remembering they were there, she looked up. Aurora cleared her throat and glared at them sternly. "What you’re about to see . . . it’s my most carefully guarded secret. You can never speak a word of this to anyone, understood?" They nodded vigorously. Her face split into a wide grin. "Then get over here quick and see!"

They didn’t need a second invitation. "Stormweaver, Pikachu, come here!" Aurora called as they scrambled around the fire. The dragon and the Pokemon hurried over. Stormweaver slithered through the ring Misty, Brock and Ash made around the backpack while Pikachu leapt up on Ash’s shoulder.

Aurora reached into the backpack again. Hidden by shadows, they couldn’t make out what emerged until Brock shifted to let the firelight shine upon it. What they saw made them gasp aloud—but with wonder this time, not shock.

Sparkling in the dancing light of the fire as if dusted with glitter was an egg as large as her hand. Bits of soft grass clung to its perfect shell and spilled a little from the inside the pack. With the moon’s silver light shining down they could tell the large globe was tinted pale pink in color. Aurora cupped it gently in both hands as it trembled slightly.

"It’s beautiful," Misty breathed. Smiling, Aurora eased it into the redhead’s hands before reaching into the knapsack again. She withdrew two more: a light sky blue and a soft yellow one. They both quivered too.

"Chu," the electric Pokemon murmured softly, its round black eyes shining. Stormweaver arched his long neck with pride.

"They are my unhatched siblings from the hidden nest so long ago," the dragon declared. "Someday they will hatch and I will not be the last dragon in the world."

"Are they going to hatch right now?" Misty asked in awe, eyes riveted on the pearly sphere she held in her hands.

"Not yet," Aurora told her. "Soon though. They shake more and more as the hatching day nears. This is its second time this week!" Her blue and brown eyes were alight with happiness. "It’s been so long, so many generations. I can’t believe it’s almost time!"

After his initial amazement Brock’s breeder curiosity made him ask, "Do they all hatch at once?"

"Usually, I think," Aurora replied. "We still don’t know why Stormweaver hatched so early. He says it’s because he ‘felt my grief in the egg’ but there isn’t exactly anyone we can consult to tell if that often happens. I carry them along with me everywhere. We can’t trust leaving them alone, ever."

"They’re real pretty," said Ash.

"Pika," Pikachu agreed. When the pink egg abruptly stopped shaking Misty reluctantly handed it back. The blue and yellow ones stopped a few moments after. Aurora packed them into the backpack again, gently covering and separating each with the soft grass filling the inside, before buckling the top back on.

Everyone gradually took his or her place around the fire again. They said little, moved by the almost magical current in the air and memories of the sparkling eggs. Those three spheres of life were the future of an entire race. The importance was not lost on the six.

But it was getting late. The full moon was high overhead, and before long everyone decided it was time for sleep. Misty, Brock and Ash pulled out their sleeping bags, while Aurora stretched out by the log she had been using as a backrest comfortably uncovered, her backpack securely in her arms—and now they knew why. Stormweaver curled into a ball by her side. His long neck curved back and his tail rested under his chin. Pikachu opted to sleep on the soft grass outside the ring of stones too. They left the fire burning low, and each person fell into a safe, restful sleep.

* * *

When the group had been asleep for some time the undergrowth at one edge of the clearing rustled as someone shifted uncomfortably. "Quit yer movin’," a sharp voice hissed. "Ya want ‘em to wake up?"

"Well we’ve been laying here for hours," another male voice complained. "Why can’t we go now?"

"Because, ya moron . . . um, because they might be fakin’, that’s why. We only get one shot at this. It has ta be perfect."

A female voice sighed in exasperation. "Don’t be so melodramatic, Meowth. They can’t be faking because they don’t know we’ve been following them all day. That brat and her creature were so busy with their new friends," she sneered the word, "they didn’t even notice us!"

"Yeah," the male voice agreed. "They didn’t think anyone else would sneak into the forest while they were entertaining guests, but the genius of Team Rocket didn’t overlook such an opportunity."

"Will you two quit the chit chat? We got somethin’ more unusual than the rarest Pokemon to catch!"

The female voice snapped, "We know." Then it grew blissful with visions of the future. "We’ll give the dragon and the eggs to the Boss, and he’ll have to reward us! We’ll be the heroes of Team Rocket!"

"Uh . . . ." Huge white eyes with thin slits peered from the dense shrubbery into the camp. The now low flames of the dying fire reflected brightly off Stormweaver’s sharp teeth and talons. His tail twitched and wiggled out from under his chin in his dreams. Meowth gulped. "Maybe we should just grab the eggs and split."

"Do I detect a note of fear in your voice, Meowth?" the male voice chided. "Don’t tell me you’re afraid of that little thing."

"O-of course not!" Meowth sputtered hastily. "But if we . . . if we try ta grab the eggs and the dragon, he might escape and take ‘em with him! They can’t run off by themselves, ya know."

"Hmm. He does have a point, James," the female voice agreed. "And I have an idea! When those idiots come looking for their stolen eggs, we’ll set a trap to catch the dragon and that Pikachu!"

"That’s what I like about you Jessie. Always thinkin’ ahead."

"Why thank you Meowth. Now get out there and get that backpack."

"What!?"

"Shhhhh!" the other two hissed.

"Why do I have ta go out there?"

"Because," Jessie impatiently explained, "it was your idea. Besides, you’re a lot smaller than we are. So go!" The bushes rustled even more as two black boots kicked the cat-like Pokemon out into the clearing.

"Ow," he muttered, rubbing his bruised posterior. "Me and my big—" He suddenly remembered he was in sight of the campsite and slapped a paw over his mouth. Thus protected from future outbursts, he silently began creeping closer to the unknowing sleepers. Slowly, slowly he edged forward, all the time thinking how he was going to be top cat again when the Boss saw he had come up with the brilliant plan that got them the dragon eggs. Before he quite realized it, he stood beside the slumbering girl clutching the pack to her chest.

Now, how am I gonna . . . . Meowth thought. He looked around to survey the scene. Those three annoying kids were snoring on the other side of the low fire. The Pikachu slept mere feet away from his very position. The cat Pokemon had to hold himself back. He was so close . . . the Pikachu was right there! But he knew he’d never get out without waking it up. Then he’d be—as Team Rocket so often put it—blasting off again.

But wait a minute, where was the dragon? It’d been here just a second ago. Meowth looked wildly around, then backed up a step to get a more complete view of the camp.

Suddenly a high-pitched shriek echoed through the clearing. Meowth screamed and jumped as Stormweaver, who had been sleeping peacefully right behind him, leapt to his four feet. "Someone stepped on my tail!" he roared with more surprise than actual pain. Everyone else shot upright at his first shriek, finding themselves unexpectedly awake and staring blearily around in confusion.

And the backpack tumbled from Aurora’s sleep-numbed arms.

"Ha ha!" Meowth cried upon his landing. Before anyone could react he seized the bag and ran for the woods.

Now very awake, Aurora was on her feet in an instant, sprained ankle the farthest thing from her mind. "Stormweaver, Fear now!"

The dragon stood in front of his dragonfriend and unfurled his wings, going rigid as a stone. His shadow cast by the dying fire spread before him like a strange, dark angel and his eyes took on an unnatural green glow that only Meowth saw as he cast a backward glance at the disordered camp as he ran.

That last glance was his downfall, though sight wasn’t necessarily essential for the attack to work. Stormweaver locked eyes with the Pokemon and refused to release his gaze. Meowth slowed, then completely stopped in his getaway. Try as he might, he couldn’t look away. He began quivering so hard his whiskers shook as the rest of the campers stumbled up and joined Aurora anxiously standing behind her dragon.

"Hey, doesn’t he look awfully familiar?" commented Ash of the Pokemon frozen in fear.

"That’s Meowth!" Misty exclaimed. "And you know what that means."

"The rest of Team Rocket can’t be far behind," supplied Brock.

"Team who?" Aurora asked, already limping past Stormweaver to retrieve her stolen bag. Meowth stuttered unintelligibly at her approach, too terrified to move. He couldn’t look at her, couldn’t look away from the glowing green eyes of the dragon, but he knew she was coming. And it just made him more petrified.

But before she reached the Pokemon the bushes at the edge of the clearing exploded outward, blinding her with a shower of leaves. Aurora threw her hands up to protect her face.

"Prepare for trouble!" a female voice called out. Three loud groans rose from behind her.

"And make it double!" a second voice followed the first.

"To protect the world from devastation."

"To unite all peoples within our nation."

"To denounce the evils of truth and love."

"To extend our reach to the stars above." Aurora blinked rapidly and waved her hands as the leaves settled. An older boy and girl stood on either side of the terrified Meowth, wearing white, black and red outfits. The girl tossed her ankle-length red hair ravishingly as she plucked the backpack out of the Pokemon’s quivering paws. The boy smiled cruelly, green eyes half hidden behind purple bangs.

"Jessie," the blue-eyed beauty announced.

"James," the boy introduced.

"Team Rocket, blast off at the speed of light."

"Surrender now, or prepare to fight."

Meowth gave a timid squeak.

"How’d you get in here?" Aurora demanded in shocked outrage. "Get out!"

Jessie smirked. "You’re in no position to make demands, little girl." Unbuckling the top of the pack in her hands, she reached inside and withdrew the pale pink egg. "Now tell your dragon to turn off that what-ever-it-is and let poor Meowth return to normal . . . or I may just be a bit of a butterfingers." She pretended the large globe slipped through her fingers for a moment.

"You wouldn’t!" Aurora gasped.

"Dare to take the chance?"

Aurora’s features hardened in fury. She spun around. Ash, Misty, Brock and Pikachu tensed uncertainly behind Stormweaver, but she slightly shook her head. They couldn’t do anything to compromise the eggs safety. They were the dragons’ only hope for the future. "Stormweaver!" she barked.

Like coming out of a deep trance, the dragon slowly blinked. A small shudder ran under his scales and he shook his head as if trying to clear it. Aurora didn’t wait to inform him of their predicament. She turned back to Team Rocket expectantly. Meowth was already coming around. He breathed a huge sigh of relief.

"Now, what do you want?" ground out Aurora through slightly clenched teeth.

"We have what we came for," James told her silkily.

"And don’t think of following us," Jessie added with a dark tone in her voice.

"Yeah, these eggs are ours now. If ya don’t want ‘em endin’ up scrambled, you’d betta forget about it." Meowth grinned, fangs bared. He wasn’t happy about what they’d done to him, and he was enjoying his returned freedom. The three members of Team Rocket backed away quickly, fading into the blackness of the forest as suddenly as they had come with the beige pack.

The anger drained from Aurora’s face as the thieves disappeared, taken over by intense sorrow. Choking on a sob, she numbly sank to the forest floor. This was all her fault. All her fault. She had let her guard down—just because she was lonely—and now the entire dragon race had to pay for her incompetence. The eggs would soon be found by the dragonslayers, if not sold by whoever Team Rocket was, and they would be destroyed. Knowing there must have been someone caring for them, the Merlacs would find her. There was no stopping it. Then Stormweaver would die too. She had failed an oath sworn by her Sango ancestors generations before she was born. An oath none of them had failed to accomplish. It was all her fault. She didn’t even notice she had buried her face in her hands and wept.

Stormweaver made a strangled sound in his long throat. He leapt forward, his only thought to comfort his dragonfriend, but any words died before they left his thin lips. As the realization of what had happened crashed upon him he began to whimper, the mournful noise trailing off to a high keen of anguish. The young dragon collapsed in Aurora’s lap as if his energy had been sapped, large tears welling in his lime-colored eyes. The girl threw her arms around him and together they grieved for their lost future, completely forgetting their new friends.

A voice reminded Aurora. "Please, don’t cry." She looked up to the face of Misty, smiling kindly, but with a smoldering fury deep in her eyes. "We’ll get them back."

"That’s right!" declared Ash angrily. "Team Rocket hasn’t beat us yet! Pidgeotto, go!" He pulled a red and white ball from his belt and the large bird appeared in a flash of white light. "Follow Team Rocket, Pidgeotto, but don’t let them see you," Ash instructed his Pokemon. It chirruped and took off with a flap of its wings, quickly disappearing over the treetops.

"Pika chu, pi," Pikachu consoled Stormweaver, reminding him not to give up hope. They weren’t defeated just yet.

The emerald dragon picked up his head and sniffed his long snout. "You’re right," he muttered. Turning to face his dragonfriend, his eyes flamed with anger and he growled at the departed egg-snatchers. "We haven’t protected them for so many years to lose them now," he snarled. "We will get them back."

Tears blinded Aurora’s sight once more, but not from grief this time. It felt so wonderful to have good friends. Scrubbing her eyes with the back of one hand, she took Brock’s offered grip with the other and let him pull her to her feet. Stormweaver leaped out of her lap and ran for the stream running smoothly at the other end of the clearing.

"No one knows these woods like I do. If they’re in here, I’ll find them!" he called back confidently to the group. He hit the water with a small splash and in seconds he was paddling out into the deeper water. His form wavered, then vanished completely—just like a Vaporeon!

Aurora stood silently, staring at the quiet water long after Stormweaver disappeared. The four travelers didn’t know what to say, and there was nothing anyone could do but wait. The silence grew heavy and tense. At last the girl turned to her new friends. "Who’s Team Rocket?" she demanded tightly.

Ash scowled. "They try to steal rare Pokemon," he explained. "They’re always trying to catch Pikachu. They must have thought your dragon eggs were even more valuable and decided to take them instead."

"They bother you a lot?" asked Aurora.

"Team Rocket doesn’t know the meaning of the words ‘give up,’" Misty told her. Then the redhead’s shoulders slumped and she looked ashamed. "Oh no," she whispered. "Team Rocket must have been following us. If we hadn’t stopped here they wouldn’t have gotten the eggs!" Brock and Ash looked at her before nodding guiltily.

"Cha," lamented the electric Pokemon.

But Aurora shook her head at their self-accusations. "No, this is my fault. I shouldn’t have let my guard down. It was my duty; it was my oath. I’m the one who failed the dragonfriends." Her head dropped. A sorrowful shame hung in the air around the campers. Even the fire chose to completely die at that moment, as if blaming itself as well.

They all took their seats on the logs again in the new darkness, the moon and stars the only light, each thinking their own thoughts until a flutter overhead announced Pidgeotto’s return. But the bird continued to circle the campsite, and Ash realized it couldn’t see to land. He quickly called out Charmander to ignite the firewood again.

With the light Pidgeotto could land before Pikachu, who eagerly inquired about what it had found. Turning to Ash, the yellow Pokemon repeated the information.

"Pika pi chu. Pika pikachu," it informed its trainer.

"Pikachu says Pidgeotto saw them heading out of the woods and toward Sankton City!" gasped Ash. "It had to come back when the trees wouldn’t hide it from Team Rocket anymore. Good thinking, Pidgeotto," he praised his Pokemon. "Now return!" The bird became as insubstantial as light as the Pokeball sucked it back in.

"Sankton?" sighed Aurora in despair. "How are we going to find them if we have to search the whole city? None of us has even been there before. And I couldn’t leave Stormweaver alone in the forest." Anger burned in her voice, anger at herself. "I won’t make the same mistake twice."

"Hmm," murmured Ash. "Maybe you won’t have to."

Misty, Brock and Aurora turned him. "Huh?" they exclaimed together. "What do you mean, Ash?" added Misty.

The young Pokemon trainer folded his arms, deep in thought. "Remember what Bill, the lighthouse keeper, said? New Pokemon are being discovered all the time. And we thought Stormweaver was a Pokemon when we first saw him. We could pretend he was your Pokemon, Aurora." Ash laughed. "Usually Pokemon travel in their Pokeballs, but with Pikachu with us he won’t even look that out of place!"

"Pika!" nodded the electric rodent happily.

Brock nodded too. "That’s a real good idea Ash. That way we could all go look for Team Rocket, and we wouldn’t have to worry about leaving anyone behind."

Aurora looked apprehensive at the thought of going into the city, running her hand through her short hair nervously, but even she admitted it was a plan. Finally she relented. "As long as Stormweaver doesn’t mind, of course."

The dragon coincidentally reappeared at that moment, leaping out of the water with a splash. He had materialized again, and could only confirm what Pidgeotto had reported. He, too, had stopped where the stream emptied out of the woods and flowed away from the road westward. He would have had to leave the water to continue following and that would have revealed himself, jeopardize the eggs’ safety. The dragon was very careful about that fact and took no chances, fully believing Team Rocket’s threat. He did relate one thing Pidgeotto hadn’t: Team Rocket had changed out of their uniforms. They now wore normal clothes that wouldn’t look out of place on a bustling street. Then the three thieves had hightailed it out of the woods and into the city darkened by nightfall, probably hoping to keep them from following.

"But it’s not going to work!" Aurora stated firmly. She told Stormweaver of Ash’s idea. His lime green eyes widened in shock, then narrowed in intense contemplation. His friends saw the war being waged inside the small creature, the distrust of the human city against the thought that the eggs were in the hands of the enemy. But he couldn’t let anything stand in the way of his unborn siblings. After a short hesitation he agreed.

* * *

They left just as the sun was starting to peak over the horizon, sending feeble rays of pink light through the forest, and found the main path once again. Aurora began the day with her walking stick, but soon insisted she felt fine and discarded it. She proceeded on without a limp, a night’s rest and concern for her charges proving the perfect cure. Stormweaver rode on her shoulder, as Pikachu perched on Ash. Before noon the trees began to thin ahead of the group.

"There," the wild girl pointed before them. Rolling green hills, the same as on the other side of the large wood, could be seen between the thinning trees. The forest-green shadows surrounding them were fading away as the sun broke through more and more. The air warmed delightfully. The path slowly widened until it was finally as broad as a road when it emerged from the tree line.

Aurora’s duo-colored eyes squinted as she gazed north, into the distance. "And there’s Sankton," she reported. They looked, and saw the wide path join a real road not far ahead—the one they had left to enter the woods at the beginning of this amazing journey. Just as it joined the horizon a dark patch rose into the sky.

Misty groaned at the stretch of road. "You know, if we had my bike we could be there in no time flat. But no, somebody had to totally destroy it!" She glared at Ash so no one would have to guess just who that "someone" was. He cringed. Brock just rolled his eyes and sighed.

Though Aurora had no idea what she was talking about, she didn’t bother asking. Her blue and brown eyes had become alive with determination as she looked upon the city. The only thing that mattered now was finding those eggs. "Come on," she told her new friends, and marched toward the distant skyline without looking back. Misty, Brock and Ash hurried to catch up.