FLOOD [Pokémon]

Chapter 14: Storm and Silence

LIOR

The ocean was loud today.

Normally, that wasn't strange; the ocean was never quiet. The surge of the currents always thrummed in the background, pulsated beneath and between every other sound. The low rumble used to bother Lior a lot when he was a baby – Father had once told him the discomfort was normal because very young merboys were more sensitive to vibrations, to the constant push and pull of the waves. Lior remembered getting all the aches because of the sound: stomachaches, earaches, headaches, toothaches, even muscle aches from tossing and turning at night, unable to bury the noise. He had cried and complained to his parents, but they hadn't done much for him. Every merchild had to adjust to the sound, they said. You'll get used to it, they said.

And he had, he wasn't sure of when. One day, the sound of the water just didn't seem so loud. Maybe as his body had gotten longer, it had also gotten stronger, helping to insulate him from that that headache-inducing churning. Or maybe he just got distracted by other things — learning to use Pitch, to scavenge, to swim more efficiently.

No, it was the talking, he decided, and the sound of talking that had helped all the aches go away. The ocean was easier to ignore when other noises took its place. Talking, yes. Listening to his father tell stories, yes. Wrestling with Mother and trying to prove that he was as strong as father, yes. Overturning their home as they tried to find a place for the plundered goods they'd taken from scavenging sites, yes. That's why he sometimes talked to himself, too, to keep that deep groaning of the waves in the background, lest the aches reappear again.

But today, he could hear the ocean, and his head was beginning to hurt.

The sound had gotten stronger and stronger since his sibling had died. A sister, Father had told him; the stone-flipping had been wrong. And Lior's heart felt like a stone now, a cold, lifeless stone. Arceus had lied to him. He'd promised Lior a friend, a best friend, a companion that would play Sea Knights with him and listen to his stories, a doting little brother. A living brother.

Not a dead sister.

And because she — Lael — was dead, and the ocean was loud, creating noise where there was none. The only other sound to be heard was the scrape of the bottle caps in his hand; a red one and a blue one, plucked from a field of garbage while on a scavenging trip with Father a month ago. There were letters imprinted across their tops; once, Lior had thought about trying to figure out what they meant. Not today. Today, they were noisemakers, to dull the growing pain in his head. Two stones rubbing together had served the same purpose yesterday. And a pair of marbles the day before that. And—

Thrmm. The ocean swelled inside his head. I wish someone would say something.

But no one did — their home in the ravine was silent as a grave, even though both parents were home. Father was up in the icebreaker, presumably diverting himself with work. And Mother... Lior worked himself around, facing the shaft of the ravine. For the past hour, he had been staring at the back wall of his treasure chamber, making noise. Now he looked down from his high perch in the cleft, to his parents' bed. He tried not to look at the small crevasse where his sibling — Lael — would have slept. It was still made up with mounds of scavenged blankets and towels. No one had yet borne the burden of removing them.

His mother was curled up at the bottom of the ravine, swathed in blankets. Her eyes were closed, but Lior knew that she was probably not asleep. None of them had slept much since that horrific burial. Neither had they had the enthusiasm to eat. Or speak — Mother's words had been filled with sorrow and tears ever time she'd tried. And Lior... Every time he had tried to speak, he'd sobbed instead. And somehow, the weeping only made the pain worse.