#// i’m not misgendering my OC i prommy

[trainerbymoonlight]

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//ooc: long post under cut! positive childhood memory

It���s a hot August day on Lilycove City’s beautiful beach- the outskirts, of course, where the amount of visitors is very few and far between. This afternoon, there are only three.

Flor- ten, bright-eyed, still-raw pink and healing Chosen scars in perfect circles and lines running down along her arms and her spine- is scooping through the wet sand on the shore with her small hands, picking up the colorful, translucent rocks she finds and dropping them in her bright pink plastic bucket by the handful as the water laps at her folded legs.

After as many as she deems enough, she tugs herself out of the warm, wet sand, squatting for a moment to pet the old Sharpedo nudging through the sand in an effort to assist just the way Archie taught her- head to fin, never fin to head- so she doesn’t cut her hand. “Don’t worry, I got ‘em!” She grins. “Thanks for your help, Sharpedo!”

With that, it withdraws and continues its ‘patrol’ along the shore, swimming back and forth with a watchful eye over the three on the beach.

She picks up the bucket, thin plastic handle nearly folding in half and snapping with the weight of the rocks in the bucket. She runs along the sand, lifting the bucket mid-stride to wrap both arms around the container for more support, still straining under the weight.

“Maxie!” She calls, clumsily rushing up to the three beach chairs set out a little further from the shore, nearly tripping on the way there, “Maxie, I got something for you!”

The man in question lifts his head from his book- one about geology, if Flor had to hazard a guess- to look up at her for a moment. “What is it?” He answers, almost sharply.

Flor doesn’t mind. By now, she’s figured out that’s kinda just how he is. “So- I didn’t want you to feel left out, ‘cause me and Archie were building that big sandcastle,” She jerks her head back at Archie, who’s hard at work on what essentially amounts to a complex sand sculpture at this point, “And we kept finding these pretty rocks while getting more sand, so I wanted to find more for you, because you like rocks ‘n all that kinda stuff.”

The former Team Magma leader raises a brow, intrigued. She picks one out of the bucket, a pretty red one, and offers it out to him to inspect. He takes it, holds it up to the light of the sun, and says, on impulse, just about to correct her, “This is-“

And then he stops himself. He looks up at her proud little face, beaming at him. He looks at the “rock”. And he seems to make a decision.

“This is beautiful,” Maxie settles on, nodding at the little girl in approval. “Thank you, Floris.”

She drops the bucket next to his chair, clapping. “Yay!” She cheers. “Do you like them?”

“I do,” he agrees. “You have done well.”

Maxie pauses, glancing at the bucket, then back to Archie. “With that said..” he trails off. “I do believe Archie is missing his assistant sculptor, little one. You might want to rejoin him.”

Flor gasps, having completely forgot about the sandcastle building she left halfway in-progress. She nods, quickly. “Thank you! Have fun looking at the rocks!” She yells back, racing back to the shore so quickly she nearly trips and falls flat on her face, with the reckless abandon kids her age often possess.

(Months later, Flor would figure out, to her own embarrassment, she gave him a bucket of sea glass, not rocks. Years later, they would discover an ornate box in one of the drawers in his office full of that very same sea glass, along with a secretly-taken candid photo taken of Flor and Archie on that day, mid-sculpture building.)