Part 2

He was asleep when two small children burst into the room. The rain hadn’t woken him up, and the sound of all the windchimes going off only helped him to fall into a deeper sleep. It took four small hands shaking him aggressively to get him to wake up in a panic, sitting up to hard as to bonk his head against the small boy’s head.

“Sh—Brat! Are you okay?” Icarus asked, grabbing him by the arm before he could fall off the bed. He pulled the boy and the panicked girl both up into his lap, where they were surrounded by pile of blankets, boxes, and the bed all pushed up against the wall, like a soft nest. The window was open, bringing in sheets of rain and cold breezes of air, but none of them minded, because that was their favorite weather. The windchimes were loud, however, and try as he might, the boy couldn’t speak over them well enough.

So Icarus reached over and scooped them all in one hand, holding them steady. It made a sudden silence that sounded like ringing to his ears, but the children immediately burst out in chatter.

“Daddy! We-we couldn’t s-sleep–”

“So we went out to the beach!” the girl cried, smacking her hands against Icarus’ thigh. She leaned real close to his face, her golden eyes huge. “And there’s a tall man out there!”

Icarus tensed. The chastisement he was about to give them for being out on the beach so late at night disappeared as he ripped the blankets off of him and turned to stare out the window. Like the children had said, there was a man, and he wasn’t sure what was worse: that he had presumed man to be a dangerous person there to hunt his children, or that there was a man passed out on the beach at what was approximately four AM at night.

Like he’d been shocked, Icarus jumped out of bed, not bothering to put on his shoes, his shirt, or his scarf. He ditched his sunglasses on the table, running both of his hands through his white hair. “Ilay, Bratumil, you must stay here,” he said, giving them a stern, but worried look. Bratumil, with wide eyes, nodded and huddled against the corner. Ilay scowled, but she did as she was told, and wrapped both herself and her brother in one of the still warm blankets around them.

With the two safe in his room, Icarus sprinted out, through his hallway, and into the living room. If one was facing it from the front door, he came from the left. A counter on the right extended from the end of the hall, and on the right of that counter was the kitchen. Directly across the entrance was a couch, and piled in the corners were boxes upon boxes. Rugs overlaid each other on the ground, some corners curled up from old age, some held down by a worn coffee table. Between boxes and on the counter were trinkets, old windchimes, bracelets, bands, and papers stuffed wherever they could fit.

Icarus paused by the couch, looking out the window behind it to see that the man was still there. Any birds that would have approached were nowhere in sight. He had not moved, and so without wasting another minute Icarus launched himself out the door, sprinting down the flight of stairs that connected the house over the ocean to the sandy beach below.

“Sir!” Icarus cried out against the wind and churning sea, knowing that it was in vain. The man was out cold, it was dark, and much too loud outside the house for anyone to hear anything. He could barely hear himself over the wind and rain.

He gritted his teeth and pushed on, stumbling slightly in the sand as it shifted. He realized too late he’d forgotten his first-aide kit, but the aura around the man was powerful and distracting. It could be felt from meters away, growing only stronger as Icarus approached. He felt uneasy.

“Sir…” He reached the man and dropped to his knees. The ocean crashed over them and pulled away.

In the light of a strike of lightning, Icarus saw that this man was rather dark-skinned, with deep blue hair, and torn and tattered clothes. Strikes across his back had crusted over, but his whole body appeared to be battered and bruised. And like all Pokemon he’d found washed up on the shore, this man was covered in sand from head to toe.

He had never seen any Pokemon like this before, but there wasn’t time to think about this. His breathing was shallow and weak.

Icarus was a bit smaller than this mysterious man, but with the help of his psychic abilities he managed to get him into his arms. He smelled like the ocean, naturally, but also something more. Something he couldn’t pinpoint, that smelled both sweet and musty.

The rain was unnaturally strong. In these situations Icarus would diffuse it, send it across different parts of the world. But he let it pour down over him, wading through the rising sea level as he dragged this man up toward his home. He fought against sharp seashell shards and shifting sand. This wind was nothing to him.

He thought briefly, this is why I have a house so high up over the sea!, before trotting up the stairs and locking the door tight. Inside was somewhat wet, with rain drifting in from the open window. As Icarus placed this man on the couch, he shut the window, and turned to both children sprinting out of his room with blankets, towels, and his first aide kit. Like they’d been taught to.

“I told you guys to say in the room,” Icarus began, but the children were already covering the blue man with towels. He helped them wipe down all the excess water, throwing as many blankets onto the man as he could—even though he was still quite damp.

To keep the kids occupied, Icarus drifted into the kitchen, putting together sandwiches and making sure the crusts were cut off. Though it was much too early in the morning to be eating, Ilay and Bratumil enjoyed it. Probably because it wasn’t pasta. And because it distracted them from this weird man. Icarus could handle the powerful aura he gave off, but he could see his children twitching, antsy. They couldn’t focus. Bartumil happily ate a few bites but barely touched his food after that, and Ilay, who ate so little, finished off everything between her and her brother.

Icarus took a deep breath. While they were doing that, and eventually staring at him, he pushed everything off his coffee table and turned on a lamp. It took him a bit, but he flipped the mysterious man around onto his back, sat down on the table, and began to work at the scrapes and gouges along his back. They looked like they’d been ripped open—by either a defensive Pokemon, or the rocks along the ocean floor. Between the archipelagos around the peninsula and Shamouti where Icarus lived, there were plenty of coral reefs. Some of the biggest ones, in fact, and he could see bits of coral clinging to this man’s body.

“D-daddy. Is he gonna be okay?”

“Ah-!! Brat! Brat, hun, you really gotta stop doing that.” Icarus clutched his chest, took a deep breath, and gave his son a worried look. The man wasn’t any better or worse than before. “I can’t say, though. You and Ilay don’t worry, though, okay?”

Biting his lip, Bratumil looked at the man. He heaved a sigh that a child year old should not have, his cheeks puffed out and red. “He doesn’t feel good,” he said. “Why do no other Pokemon feel like this?”

“I don’t know that either, son. It is…strange, isn’t it?”

Icarus frowned and stood back up, scooping Bratumil into his arms and then Ilay. He walked with them down the hall, placing them in his bed and pulling the blankets up over them. “Please stay here until the sun comes up, okay?” he asked them.

Ilay frowned and looked away. After a moment she nodded. “Fine.”

“Thank you.”