In strife, fortune.

"My fingers are a little numb..." Citrine noticed as she brushed her hand through the sandy ground. "Is it because of the sand?"

She dismissed it.

"Ah, found it."

She picked up the hardened stone, and traced her finger over the fossilized structure on the top. It was vaguely shaped like a flower-- a tulip, with its stem running down the side.

"So it's the Claw Fossil, Lileep."

She wasn't looking too closely when she was prying it off just now. She could swipe around further, but she reckoned the other fossil had vanished under the sand.

She put it aside, and set a careful hand on Vibrava's head. The Pokemon was snoring on her lap now after eating a berry, and Citrine wondered if it would attack her when it woke up.

There's a chip in one of its wings. Citrine ran a hand over it with a sigh. That'll be a scar...

Loudred called out to her from a distance, having managed to uproot her wheelchair and the bike from under the rubble.

Citrine tucked the fossil into her bag, and picked up her Magnemite. It's still asleep, though the sandstorm's passed. She put it back inside.

Lombre helped her into her vest, and they settled back into her wheelchair. Vibrava in her arms, Zubat fluttering by, and Magnemite in her bag-- they set off.

-

It takes a while and a lot of landscape scouting on Lombre's part, but they make it out of the desert around nightfall.

Citrine hadn't been walking at all, but she was exhausted. If luck has it, she was on the wrong side of the desert now and there were no towns nearby. She would have to camp out for today and find a Center for Vibrava and Magney tomorrow...

"Hey, you there."

Oh, here comes the cliche.

There's a middle-aged lady standing there-- did she come from behind the trees? Yikes, it's so dark, Citrine didn't see her coming at all.

The lady is dressed warmly, with a cloth covering her head and her hands on her hips.

"A trainer?" she scrutinizes Citrine for a bit, "rare to see one on a wheelchair. Well then, come this way."

Citrine blinked confusedly as the lady walked through the trees with a flashlight. Citrine looked up-- oh, smoke from a chimney.

This sounded like a horror story scenario.

"Come on, we don't have all night for your dilly-dallying!"

Lombre pushed her forward, and they cut through the trees into a clearing facing the foot of a cliff.

There's a garden, and a little cottage.

Silver in the moonlight, the area was a secret illumination. Citrine couldn't help but gape.

"Aunt Chinatsu, what's wrong?"

"I found another kid, so open up a spot, fellas."

She turned toward the voices, to find a group inside the house, having a hearty dinner around the table.

-

Citrine's arrival turned the house quite literally upside down. Citrine squawked when everyone came running out. She squeezed the Vibrava in her arms and shrank away in surprise.

"You look awful!"

"She's in a wheelchair! You made it this far on a wheelchair??"

"Bath! Get the bath going!"

"Did you come from the desert? Your wounds are going to be infected!"

There are four, aside from the cranky old lady. It's obvious that none of them are related, they're all travellers, dressed like trainers or climbers of some sort.

"Do you have a Poke Ball for this fella?" one of the men-- he looked about her brother's age, so maybe his twenties-- crouched down to inspect the Vibrava in her lap.

Citrine shook her head, and the man hummed.

"Wild, huh. Well, I can lend you one for now so we can get 'im on the Recovery Machine."

Citrine noticed the machine at the side-- the Pokemon Center had something similar. So that's how you heal Pokemon in households...

"Ah," she remembered once she handed Vibrava off to the man, "uh, thank you."

The man smiled, and yeah, he really was like Quartz.

The four adults in the room were already pampering Loudred and Zubat (Lombre was hiding under her chair, shivering) and praising them for the good work. Then Citrine retrieved little Magnemite from her bag and asked if she could borrow another Poke Ball.

Soon enough, all her Pokemon (including Lombre, with some coaxing) were in borrowed Poke Balls, resting in the Recovery Machine.

"Not that one?" the other girl in the room, a dark-skinned tomboy only a few years older than Citrine, asked, gesturing at Leafeon's Poke Ball.

Citrine shook her head, "he's fine." He's uninjured, slightly grouchy, but Citrine just didn't feel right without him by her side.

None of her other Pokemon were kept in Poke Balls. Just Leafeon, and the ball he was given in. It wasn't some sort of ostracism or favouritism, Citrine just... never really considered the idea of keeping them in Poke Balls.

(She didn't catch any of them, just asked them to be her friend and they followed.)

"Bath's ready!"

"Alright, sweetie," the older girl said, "girl time!"

"Huh?"

Citrine was scooped into abnormally strong arms after that, and they sauntered for the bathroom upstairs.

-

-

"Call me CD," the girl grinned, then gestured at the chubby climber man, "he's Cookie."

Chubby Climber Cookie smiled sheepishly.

Citrine nodded at them. Fresh from a bath and tying her hair down into a single ponytail behind her, she sat on her wheelchair to join the crowd in their meal.

"I'm Rye," the red-haired man says, "I'm a trainer. So is Louis," he gestured to his shorter travelling companion.

"Hi there," Louis waved. He was the one that sort of reminded Citrine of her older brother.

"Nice to meet you," Citrine said, particularly to Aunt Chinatsu who owned the house, "thanks for your hospitality. It's a lifesaver, really." Then a beat. "I'm Citrine. I'm a researcher... I guess?"

So apparently Aunt Chinatsu is a nice old lady who opened a lodgehouse in the middle of nowhere so people can come by for a night's rest in case they got stuck a bit too far from the cities around.

Citrine vaguely remembered a house like that in the games. Right around the corner from the Desert and before Fallabor Town... a nameless nice granny that would heal your Pokemon if you stopped by.

That gave her a vague idea of where on the map she was.

"A researcher! So young?"

"Are you trying to be like famous Berry Researcher, Quartz Kernel?"

"Oh, actually... Quartz is my big brother."

"WHAT?!"

The night was pleasant and warm like that, especially after a huge scuffle in the sand. Getting to know the group of similarly-stranded strangers, they chatted through their dinner and left knowing much more about each other than they probably knew of themselves.

This little detour wasn't such a bad idea after all.