Little Wonder (Comfey Tf)

The smash on the floor got everyone’s attention. Nurse Joy found the culprit very quickly.

“Nicole, please be more careful! We don’t have enough of that medicine to break every single one!”

“Sorry Nurse Joy…”

“Pass me another one quickly. Blissey could you clear the mess up?”

“Bliss Bliss!”

Nicole passed the medicine rather shakily but it reached Joy’s hands without falling to the floor this time. She then watched as Joy left to treat a patient and Blissey hummed a tune in her own language while clearing her mess. She should get back to her duties, currently making a note of all the medicines they had so they could order more in. No doubt she’d break some more though.

Nicole had always had a passion with healing. Even when very young she had pretended each of her Pokémon plushies were patients and fixed them up with just about anything (although the Pikipek cuddly toy hadn’t survived being fed honey, turning into a sticky mess). Everybody had supported her in getting to her dream job, but it had been a struggle. Her grades were average, and it had taken Nicole revising late into several nights to get the required level to have an apprenticeship. Then, despite her knowledge and great rapport with patients, she was constantly making mistakes. Nicole had always been a clumsy girl, but being 6ft didn’t make things easier. Sure she could reach the top shelves, but her head always banged into things, her feet had slammed into Blissey more times than she could count and her hands were so big, so unwieldy, that she was forever dropping stuff. This wasn’t the first time Nicole had thought of giving up, and it no doubt wouldn’t be the last.

With a quick word to Blissey about taking a break, Nicole made her way to the back of the PokeCentre in Paniola Town towards a small, fenced in park. This was Nicole’s getaway when she needed to relax, to remember why she was doing this. The gentle breeze rustling the flowers, no matter the weather, always soothed her.

It did so now as Nicole entered the park, smelling the flowers, closing her green eyes under her black-rimmed glasses. Her short, straight mousey blonde hair waved back, although some did fall over her nurse’s outfit: pink uniformed dress with a white apron on top and a simple nurse’s cap. As usual, Nicole plucked one of the flowers and made a wish. She wished to be a better nurse (not perfect, even Nicole realised how unrealistic that was), to be the healer she wanted to be. Of course, wishes were just that: wishes. You had to work hard towards them, which gave Nicole the motivation to keep trying.

Only today things were different. Nicole hadn’t absently picked a normal flower today: she’d picked a flower more commonly found on a certain Pokémon.

For as soon as Nicole made her wish, the red flower flew out of her hand and was joined by 5, differently coloured ones. They circled Nicole, mesmerising her as they blurred.
She didn’t notice it at first, being focused on the flowers so much, but then her cap fell across her eyes. It was always doing that, so it wasn’t odd. What was odd was what she was seeing beyond. In order to look into the distance, at the horizon, Nicole was having to squint. It almost felt like her eyes were not in proportion to her body…

Nothing was. Nicole wobbled as one of her legs shook and…shrank. It was a fairly big shrink, causing Nicole to hunch down a little. What was…the flowers! Nicole made to grab them, but not only did they move away from her but her arm wouldn’t reach even if they hadn’t of done so. Panicking now, Nicole hopped back towards the centre, her shoes and socks slipping off as she did so, causing her to trip.

“Ouch!”

Despite the changes in size, Nicole didn’t feel any pain in regards to her transformation. Awkwardly she picked herself up and gazed into a window. Sure enough, rather than having to bend down to look through it, she was just inside its square. Her eyes were tiny, and oval: a very light, pale green with a white pupil. Nicole watched as her nose and ears shrunk, her glasses falling off making her vision blurry before a couple of blinks set her right, along with…such a delicate aroma…No, she would not be calmed! Nicole continued to gasp at her reflection as her hair waved and grew back into her head till it was a small tuft that just about covered her forehead. It flowed a little behind her in a green waving arc, while two small additions of cream came around the sides. Ok, it did look pretty but…

“Hey!”

Her head dipped below the window ledge. She was still shrinking?! With the arm that hadn’t been shortened (the other arm was still going) Nicole attempted to hang onto the window ledge. It worked, for a little bit, before she literally felt the bones melt away, and the nerves curl into themselves to make her hand a nub. With that and her other leg shortening, Nicole fell to the ground, the flowers swirling above her, and she was lost inside of her outfit.

Nicole pushed, punched and wriggled, but with her legs unco-operative and hands feeling useless, there wasn’t much hope. Maybe she should…ok, she’d have to do that. Nicole waited, lying on her back, the clothes pressing down gradually more and more as she got smaller and smaller. The aroma was still present, and Nicole was beginning to succumb to it, meaning she didn’t notice her now orange head and the pale green, almost silky texture crossing her skin. Eventually she felt she was able to escape and rolled herself away: a task made easier by her almost non-existent legs.

She managed to get out via the neck line and looked around her. The grass had always been long here, nobody came to cut it, and Nicole was at the same height. She reached out to touch the nearest stem, and found she could do so despite each arm ending with no fingers. Her nub then slid down the stem as she got shorter and shorter. Her legs had faded into her body, and as Nicole looked down, she noticed that her behind was a little more rounded. In fact, it was only then that Nicole realised she hadn’t noticed a lot of things: her change in organs, bone structure and greenness. It was the size of course: being 6ft was hard, but this was a step too far in the other direction!

Finally all the shrinking stopped. She came to rest at the same height as one of the weeds, just as a long tendril flowed from behind her tuft. Feeling herself rise up a little, it curled round and behind to make a circle. The flowers ceased spinning and came to rest in a pattern on the line: white, purple, yellow and red. The final red flower, that had begun it all, poked at Nicole until she grabbed it. Realisation came to her.
She had become a Comfey: renowned for its fragrance due to the oil it produced from its body to the flowers as a comfort to others. Fascinating, sure, but…this wasn’t her!

Sirens began wailing. Oh dear, that meant a Pokémon was seriously injured, perhaps mortally! Nicole instinctively floated and rushed to the door. If she could open it then…

BANG!

Nicole forgot how windy it could be and slammed straight into it. Shaking herself she rushed to the handle and pulled. Of course it wouldn’t budge. So…right, the window. It was luckily open, so Nicole floated her way to it, slipped through with ease, across the room and through the open door…

Right into Nurse Joy’s face.

“Huh?”

The two spluttered the same thing, although Nicole’s came out as a ‘Com?’ instead. Nicole pushed herself to one side. Joy kept on running, pushing the trolley that held the form of a Mudbray, gasping desperately for air. Nicole followed her, Joy giving her a confused look but shaking her head.

“I don’t know which trainer’s you are, but you better go back.”

Nicole was about to try and explain, but then the double doors leading to the operating table came. Joy pushed through them with ease, but Nicole, being slightly behind her, was hit by them, sending her spinning back.

She let go off her flowers, the line trailing down. All she wanted to do was help, nurse, and now she was even more useless.

“Excuse me, coming through!”

“Blissey!”

The Blissey stopped as she was about to pass Nicole. She turned to her. “Wait, that tone of voice…”

Finally someone who would listen. “It’s me, Nicole! I don’t know how, but I’m a Comfey.”

There was some merriment in Blissey’s voice. “Yes I can see that honey,” her look suddenly became grave, “We’ll work it out later. Right now we have a problem. That Mudbray in there…he needs anaesthetic. Problem is we’re all out of it! Unless we bang his head or something, we can’t get him unconscious and reduce the pain to remove the dust trapped in his lungs. Some Diglett used some sort of ground move and the Mudbray coughed a lot of dust up. It’s clogging his lungs and you know what happens.”

Yes, if left without being removed, it would lead to breathing difficulties for life at best and suffocation at worse. How to get the Mudbray unconscious…Wait…

“Blissey, get me in there. I’ll use…flower power or something!”

“I think you mean Floral Healing. Let’s try darling!”

Grabbing Nicole, Blissey ran straight through the double doors. There Nicole could see Nurse Joy preparing all the necessary equipment. She turned straight to her assistant.

“Blissey the anaes…what?”

Blissey shook her head and Joy got her meaning, her eyes dimming. Nicole didn’t hesitate. Wriggling out of Blissey’s arms, she grabbed her red flower and hovered over the Mudbray, whose eyes were wide with fear. She focused, closing her eyes. Her concentration and thoughts were entirely on giving the Mudbray a peaceful sleep, until the operation and a little time to rest were done, to help to heal.

Eventually she picked up the aroma, and it smelt like what she wished (she wasn’t quite sure how she knew that). Looking, Nicole smelt the aroma around her and the Mudbray. Its eyes were slowly closing, and the breathing, while still short and sharp, sounded at least a little gentler. Finally unconsciousness overcame the Pokémon and it slept.

Joy nodded and Nicole moved away, perching on an unused lamp. Both her and Blissey got to work, leaving Nicole to watch and feel, for the first time in a long time, that she had helped. That she hadn’t been clumsy or got in the way, she had been more like the nurse she wanted to be.

It was a short time after that the Mudbray was in the clear and removed from theatre to rest. Blissey, using actions, explained that the Comfey was indeed her and Nicole, using a tiny piece of charcoal, wrote rather messily and in small writing her account. Joy hadn’t heard anything like it, but Nicole stressed not to pry further, not to investigate. This way she could achieve her goal, in a more abstract way.

So Joy left the matter at that, accepting Nicole as her own and informing her rather startled parents what had happened. What they found when they came to see her was a happy daughter, helping all the Pokémon and being praised for her gentleness. Nicole was content, her dream having come true…and even if she still dropped the occasional medicine, they usually didn’t break. She was too small and light to cause too much damage now through clumsiness, although sometimes, back in the garden, she would float back to her original height and remember, before thanking the red flower she kept for giving her the realisation of a dream.