Single post in Ivy Chateau: Prelude

Citris stared at the letter on the corner of the desk. He had hardly looked at it since he had brought it into his office a week ago. He knew who it was from, he knew what it was about, and he knew he was too busy to deal with it now. But as the week progressed, the tiny nag of guilt at the back of his mind grew as he knew he was avoiding something he needed to follow up on. One of his biggest investments. He took another mouthful of coffee. It was far past sunset, well into the night, and most of the Pokemon living on the farm had settled down for the night; although a few stragglers had wandered through the flap installed at the bottom of the door, likely coming in for the warmth of the room. A couple of Rattata had made a small bedding of shredded papers in one of the corners a few days ago and were already lying in it asleep, an Umbreon with blue rings was being irritated by a young Rockruff batting at his ears with their paws in another corner, a Purrloin poked its head through the flap, then twitched one of its ears and withdrew back outside. At the moment, Citris hardly noticed the Pokemon around him. It wasn’t that he didn’t care for them; he wouldn’t have installed their office entrance if that was the case. He was just used to Pokemon being free to go wherever and do whatever they wanted, so he let them. And personally, he often became so focused on his work that would take something as drastic as the Pokemon fighting each other for them to disturb him. It was part of the reason why he preferred to keep more mellow-natured Pokemon on his farm; as long as they got along with each other and himself he could work more on maintaining the farm and less on individual social relationships. The computer in front of him chimed, a usual sound in the office that played every few minutes. Citris put his coffee down on the desk and took the mouse. Another entry from Wonder Trade to the farm. He specified an open spot in one of the inprocessing fields for the Pokemon to be released to and returned one of the farm’s outgoing Pokemon to the system. This was a large part of his job - accept incoming Pokemon from Wonder Trade, compare them to the ones present on the farm, and trade back the weaker of the two. The farm was designed with keeping a male and female pair of each Pokemon, as strong as they could get. Then, business would be made when whoever needed a Pokemon escort, or bodyguard, or whatever they wanted to pay him for to loan out a Pokemon, for however long they needed. Admittedly, there were finer details he would like to iron out before they officially started advertising, and the farm was pretty new so they didn’t have any Pokemon candidates to loan out yet, and funding was pretty low, so they were just barely making room for all the Pokemon they were taking in - A Poochyena suddenly made for his beverage, hitting the desk hard and causing everything to shake. The coffee jar wobbled violently, almost spilling over - Citris, recovering from the scare, grabbed it with one hand while he held the Poochyena’s head back with his other. “No! No, you! This is the third time now! That’s my drink, it’s not for Pokemon!” he said sternly, only taking his glare off of the Poochyena when it whined and dropped back down to the ground, out of Citris’ reach. He steadied the coffee and let out a breath. That was a sign, if any it was time to read the letter, before it was soaked completely by a spill. He took it from the desk, then after looking at the front briefly again, shook it and cleared his throat as if preparing to read the contents out loud. He tore open the envelope and removed the contents. Inside was a pamphlet with a sticky attached and a hand-written letter, although it wasn’t any handwriting he recognized. He took his time reading it, finding it hard to not notice how much it praised him within it and how it caused his guilt to rise up again. Although… finishing the letter, he was expecting something else. Some sort of… plead for more funding, or action on his part, or… something. To hear that the hotel was having success already was the best outcome, but he hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly given the situation the two were in when he had left. He picked up the pamphlet. It was definitely the same building he had seen before, accompanied with some flowery text that he only skimmed over; it was mostly filler text about the location and the services they offered that he heard Ketzal list numerous times in the planning. He instead read the stuck on note - “At least come out and see what we’ve made while you’ve been gone. And maybe we’ll take a trip out to your place in return. In fact, bring one of those guard dogs you were talking about - we probably still need one.” Guard Pokemon. He said he was going to have guard Pokemon to rent out, not just canines. Of course Ketzal would still mess with him, even if he wasn’t around. But regardless, there was the response he was expecting. They wanted him to come out and visit. Citris sighed, wondering if he should make the trip and how the farm could possibly manage with him gone. He reached for his coffee and his hand sunk into a pelt of fur instead, scaring him again at the unexpected feeling. He looked up to see the Poochyena standing on the desk, muzzle stuck into the glass jar, looking at him from the inside. The Poochyena was standing. On. The. Desk. Citris stared at him for a few seconds, processing the situation, then threw up his hands in defeat. “Alright. Just have it, I don’t want it anymore. I gave you fair warning though; you’ll be up all day now too,” he rolled his eyes, then pushed his chair back from the desk and stood up. Walking to the back of the room, he salvaged a full piece of paper that survived the Rattata and a pen, then returned to the desk and gently pushed the Poochyena to one side to give him room to write a response. The Poochyena continued to lap up the coffee loudly, quickly running out of liquid he could reach from the top of the standing jar. “Ketzal and Frappe,” “Thanks for the letter (and brochure, I suppose). I’m glad to hear that the hotel is already running; I don’t remember if that’s ahead of schedule or not, but good news regardless! Sounds like you two are getting your dream after all. I could probably find some way to get away from my own work for a week or two to visit and check it out. Ketz said to bring a guard dog Pokemon and I think I have one in mind. At least one that’s pretty persistent and curious. I guess we’ll see if that’s a good fit. We’ll both head out soon, probably within this month; I just have to figure out how to manage this place remotely. I don’t trust anything I code up to run automatically. Plus computers don’t really put out fires very well. Tell me if anything changes.” - Citris