The Nidorina peered over her glasses at the small group of Pokemorphs. Cassandra leaned on her desk, her pen and paper ready at hand. Brooke was sitting sideways in her seat, her feet resting on her neighbours desk, and doodling on her pad. The Sandshrew suspected she was drawing more of her pictures. The rest of the class were similarly varied between hideously disorganised and willing and waiting.

"Today," the teacher said slowly and almost dramatically, "we are going to talk about courting."

"What?" Asked one of the boys, a Venonat-morph.

She smiled knowingly. "What we would think as finding a mate."

Cheers echoed from around the room. Cassandra found herself blushing and stared at her paper. She had suspected this would be happening soon, with the Valentine’s Day Dance less then a week away. It was Health class at present, a class Cassandra dreaded because everyone else seemed more knowledgeable about everything then herself. And most of these morphs still thought like Pokemon. To them finding a mate was as easy as walking up to the nearest member of the opposite sex and displaying their tail feathers, or whatever variant of such they had. To her it was so much more. She was well read. She patted the battered copy of "Stardust" which was sitting beside her. Since being given it the day before she had stayed up all night reading it. It had been something of an effort to stay awake in Mathematics and English. The boy in that story, why, he had been sent on a fruitless quest by his "beloved" and travelled through countless dangers merely to find that what he sought was entirely different. The book had held her spellbound, she could not stop thinking about it and how she would love a male, a mate that would do almost anything for her. She sighed and tried to concentrate, trying to force the image of Saffire’s pale blue eyes, so pure and beautiful, from her mind.

"… And I think you will find it is not what you suspected," the Nidorina, whose name was Miss Quillene (Pookamon were none too original on the names they chose for themselves) continued. "For I am afraid that now we are humanoid, we shall be doing things the human way."

The cheeky Venonat, Jasper, rolled his eyes and stuck his hand up again, talking without waiting to be recognised. "But why? Our way has always worked." He winked at Alianna, an attractive Omanyte morph (it could happen…). She grinned back.

"Because we are now of a more civilised nature."

Brooke continued in her sketching, shading her picture in intricate detail. Despite the efforts of the various teachers, noone had yet managed to teach the Vaporeon-girl to read. She and Cassandra had both been verbally tested when enrolled in the school (it was a necessity to graduate before being allowed proper habitation on the Isle, because many of them still thought like Pokemon), and ranked in Grade C. Cassandra suspected this was the grade for the bright but somewhat constrained, those that had been effected negatively by the change. Brooke, despite her short attention span, did show unnerring intelligence, which often surprised the teachers, and Cassandra, well, much to her embarrassment it had taken her ten minutes to pick up the courage to speak. She hated talking out in class.

"So, the rest of our classes this week will focus on how to behave like civilised humanoids instead of uncivilised beasts." She paused, "okay, now, how do you let someone know that your interested in them?"

A dozen hands shot into the air, a dozen voices shouting out suggestions. Miss Quillane waited until the din began to die down and then said extremely quietly, "one at a time please, you first Julie."

The Grimer girl grinned, "you walk up to them and engulf them." She said.

Miss Quillane shook her head. "Maybe that was the way once, but how many of you would like to be smothered by a Grimer?" She glanced around the class. The vote was unanimous. Nobody made any sound. "Jakob?"

The quiet Bulbasaur boy, who was chewing on his pencil, looked up in surprise. "Uh-uh," he said, "yuh-you can tuh-tell thu-them buh-by…" Everybody waited with baited breath for his answer, "wuh-writing them a-a-a-a nuh-note." He returned to nibbling on his pencil. Cassandra sighed. Of course Jakob would prefer to write a note, with his horrible stutter.

Write a note! Why had she not thought of that? She began writing ideas on her paper.

"Very good. That is a nice idea. Any others? How about you Cassandra," the teacher’s dreaded words reached her ears. "How would you let a male know you fancied him?"

Oh, how could she be so brutal? To ask such a horrible question? Cassandra felt her ears blush. She gulped. "I wouldn’t…" she whispered, causing everyone to crane forward to hear her words.

"Someone’s gonna be lonely at the dance," Jasper mocked. "Why dontcha ask Brooke, Teach?"

Brooke lifted her head up from her paper and frowned at him. There was sudden silence in the room, Brooke’s answers were always worth waiting for.

She leaned back and stared at the ceiling as though deep in thought, and Cassandra cringed, wondering what embarrassing litany she was going to come up with this time. After a lengthy pause she glanced down again and began twitching her hands across the paper.

"I’d, you know, jump down from the stars and put out my hand to him, so he could take it, and we could run up the stars and bounce around the moon and dance in the starlight. And, well, that’d be rather good, I guess. Until, you know, he decided to leave me and take my heart with him in his teeth. That’s not much fun, not much at all, so I think, all in all, I wouldn’t tell him."

Some of the class applauded. Cassandra could never tell if it was sarcastic applause or genuine appreciation. Miss Quillane smiled.

"Very nicely said," she replied, "until the end bit. Thank you." She paused, "so we have one suggestion for suffocating, another for writing a note, and two for not doing anything. So let’s take the second one, since that’s the only one we can really work on!"

Cassandra’s ears perked up. Perhaps this could be informative…

Or so she thought, until… Miss Quillane reached out and took a huge volume from the shelf.

"Poetry," she said, as though it were the most exciting thing in the world.

Half an hour later and Cassandra was riveted. She had heard poetry before, of course, but these love poems were purely magical! The things that they said about each other in these letters… It made you imagine each of them was the personification of beauty. She stared at her sheet on which she had scrawled the lines that appealed to her. none of them sounded nearly as magical as they did when read in the poem. She sighed miserably. How could she possible write such a poem for Saffire?

Finally class was over and the morphs, or some of them anyway, ran shrieking from the room. It was a Friday, and Friday afternoon the Seaview residents were given the choice between relaxing at the College, or going into the main township of the Island Haven. Each resident was given a certain amount of Credits weekly, an allowance, and you could earn extra Credits by excelling in a subject or by doing something extraordinary. Cassandra generally saved up her Credits to buy books. Brooke never spent anything, she merely made strange and obscure comments until the males bought her ice cream or chocolates. Cassandra was startled to realise that she envied the popular Vaporeon girl, who with her friendly nature made friends with ease and seemed to attract people like honey attracts Beedrill. Poor Cassandra could barely even talk to the males without blushing. Suddenly she decided something. She had been saving her Credits for the last few weeks to buy a particularly fascinating fantasy novel she had found (books were rare, and thus very expensive), but perhaps she should buy something else.

Miss Quillane had said women, human women, dressed nicely to please human men, right?

So might the same work for Pookamon?

"Brooke," she asked, "are you going to town?" She knew very well that Brooke rarely stayed behind.

"Oh, why not," Brooke replied, "the sherbet sprinkles are calling me. Why? Was the quiet Cassandy wanting the room to entertain herself?"

"I thought I’d come with you," she stated.

Brooke’s forehead creased in amazement at such a statement. "You thought you’d come with me?" She asked, slowly and disbelieving. "I thought, you know, that the busy place and the shops and all the noisy, noisy people didn’t really, agree with you."

The Sandshrew girl shrugged, "I thought I’d get a new dress for the dance." She stated.

"You’re going to the dance? I thought that was just, like, for the people who like loud and boring stuff and who…" she paused. Her sea-blue eyes bored into Cassandra’s. "You want to impress mister many-tails, don’t you? I think you should spend you time flying and sleeping instead of flirting and hurting," she added. "But, you know, it’s up to you."

"Are you going?" Cassandra asked.

Brooke shrugged. "only if the right person asked me, but only the left have, and I don’t want what’s left."

"You’ve been asked?" Cassandra was amazed. It had only been today when anyone had suggested that they ask people at all. She had known Brooke was popular, but this… this was too much for her fragile ego. She knew noone would ask her. Nobody even talked to her. She blinked back the tears of self pity. "Are you going to go though? With them I mean."

Brooke shook her head. "I’d rather dance with Mr Leafy," she replied.

And Cassandra had to confess, she felt relieved.

The bus trip into town was, as usual, quite horrible. Since it was filled with rowdy Pookamon, all of them anxious to be getting out of the corridors for the afternoon and evening, it was not a quiet journey. Cassandra huddled in her seat, trying desperately to concentrate on "Lord of the Rings", having returned to that book again. She was having difficulty concentrating, what with Brooke leaning over the back of the seat and having a philosophical argument with Jakob the stutterer over whether or not one could tell the time but the shape of the sun. Naturally, Brooke had started it.

Finally the bus finished winding its way over the rugged country road and into the suburbs of the city centre. The Island Haven had been constructed six years ago by the first of the refugees and was a very strange looking place. It was a mixture of rough, tumbledown buildings made from wood, brick and even hardened dirt. Intermingled with these were cheap but rather more substantial buildings made by the later day refugees and constructed to last more then a few years. Rough signs hanging above doorways depicted pictures of food, livestock, clothing, books or whatever the wares inside were. Brooke was not the only Pookamon that lacked the ability to read. The College that was Seaview was probably the finest building in the entire Island, as it had been constructed specially for education and rehabilitation.

There was a Ponyta and a Kadabra arguing outside the fruit vendors over the price of apples, as the bus rattled up alongside. All vehicles and such had been donated by kindly humans, and most of it was not in a fit state of repair. Cassandra struggled off amongst the hoards and stared around at the dirty shops. How was one to find clothing in all this? Brooke took her by the arm and roughly dragged her down the road, followed by a gaggle of about three young men, amongst them Jakob, and two twins, one a Flareon who called himself Blayze and the other a Jolteon named Ray. Cassandra sighed. Trust them not to be able to go anywhere without Brooke’s loyal fan club.

"Would you like an ice cream, Brooke?" Blayze asked, his eyes glistening hopefully.

"I’d like something creamy sweet covered in little pinky dustings that make your mouth all sparkle and pop," she replied happily. She was barefoot, Brooke never wore shoes if she could avoid it – would in all probability go around naked if the matrons at Seaview allowed it. Cassandra was nearly barefoot herself. Shoes were not comfortable on her ugly Sandshrew claws, built for digging, and thus she only ever wore open toed sandals. As usual, the males of the group paid her no heed.

"Suh-so wuh-what are yuh-you guys guh-going to duh-do thu-thu-thu this after-nuh-noon," Jakob managed.

Ray, the more cruel of the two brothers turned to stare at him. "I-I-I duh-don’t nuh-know," he mocked, "maybe go into the bars and get some Moon’s Delight." Moon’s Delight was a pseudonym for the rather strong Moonshine that was brewed by some of the less law abiding citizens. And there were laws on the Island Haven, many of them based on the laws of the human civilisation. Aside from the state of the buildings, there was little enough difference.

The Bulbasaur boy flinched at the mockery, and actually turned to Cassandra, acknowledging her for the first time. "Wuh-what are you duh-doing, Cass?" He asked her.

She blushed, embarrassed even by the slight attention he was showing her. "Nothing," she whispered.

Brooke stuck her chin in the air. "If you want to flit about with the bubbly juices until your eyes roll back in your head and your chins dribble with foam, don’t let any not-drinker-of-bev-er-ages stop you. Miss Cassandy and I are going to make ourselves look all nice for the time of celebration." And, taking Cassandra’s arm in hers, Brooke half led, half dragged her friend towards a large brick building.

Ray and Blayze glanced at each other, then grinned, "we’ll come help," they said in unison.

This was embarrassing enough without them traipsing along like little lost growlithes, Cassandra thought. But, being herself, decided not to share.

"Don’t you love the pretty little frilliness?" Brooke asked for the third time, doing a little twirl, "all the little bits of lace and feathers, living together all happy like, you know, butterflies and starfish."

The two Eon brothers sighed and rolled their eyes. Cassandra patted the modest dress she had chosen for herself. It looked okay on her, she surmised, not that the males had noticed. It was almost as if she was not there. She suspected that they had come to the conclusion that Brooke would be an easy score, since she did not appear particularly bright, or in touch with anything. Of course, Cassandra knew from experience that the Vaporeon-girl was anything but, despite the fact that she was prone to dancing naked in the rain of the fancy took her. She had been trying on dresses for the last half an hour, long after Cassandra had chosen the floral print dress for herself. The Sandshrew girl wondered if her parading was to attract he males or an attempt to get them bored and make them leave. Jakob sat morosely in the corner, staring out the window. After growing bored of watching Brooke parading, the brothers had turned their attentions to mocking his stutter.

Finally they stood up. "We’re off to get some Moon’s Delight," Ray said, "see ya Brooke, and Jakob, yuh-you buh-better wuh-wuh-watch yaself, I’m sure the matron would love your excuse for being home late!"

Blayze chuckled and the two of them departed.

"Bye bye!" Brooke called after them. She watched them leave then skipped up to the shop assistant, a rather weary Charmander-lass. "Excuse me Miss Firetail," she said, "I want something as blue as the sky and as gold as the leaves that tumble all merrily down from the sky when, you know, the weather gets like all nippy cold."

"Certainly miss," the assistant sighed, leading her towards a rack.

Jakob took the chance to move his chair closer to Cassandra. "Uh-I was wuh-wondering if I could, yuh-you know, ah-ask you something?" He whispered.

"Of course," Cassandra’s heart soared. He was talking to her, someone was actually noticing her!

"Wuh, would yuh-you, puh-puh-puh-please,’ he finally forced out, "thu-this duh-dance, cuh-could you…"

Was he asking her to the dance? Cassandra couldn’t believe it. Okay, so it was only Jakob with the terrible stutter, but he was a nice enough person, and not too displeasing to the eye… Did she really expect Saffire to ask her? She waited with baited breath for Jakob to finish, feeling it was rude to interrupt him, or finish his words, as some people tended to.

"…Ah-Ask Brooke to guh-go with me?" He finally finished.

Cassandra’s heart plummeted. "Do it yourself." She asked cruelly, then felt bad immediately.

The boy’s face fell. "Only, I-I ruh-ruh-really like her." He whispered, "and cuh-can’t ask huh-her myself."

"And you can’t write her a letter, because she can’t read?"

"Yuh-yes. Well, no. I-I-I wuh-wrote huh-her a luh-luh-luh…"

"Letter," Cassandra finished, feeling sorry for him.

"…Yuh-yes. I thu-thought you muh-might ruh-ruh-read i-it tuh-to huh-her."

"I can try," the Sandshrew girl replied, her compassion getting the better of her. In a way she and Jakob were similar – both of them had trouble fitting in, her because of her wretched shyness, and he because he had trouble talking. He handed her an envelope. It had a unicorn drawn on it.

"Cuh-cos Brooke luh-likes them," he replied.

"Cassandy!" Brooke suddenly called. "I’ve found something you might like as much as I like sherbetty cream." She skipped over, almost tripping over what she was carrying. It was a dress, or rather, two dresses. The Charmander girl, perhaps anxious to actually make a sale, hurried after her.

"You’ll like this,’ she said, "it’s modelled after the mediaeval human’s clothing, which means it’ll really boost your bust and cover your butt."

Cassandra frowned, wondering why her bust needed boosting and what was wrong with her butt? Luckily the girl kept talking.

"And the colour goes well with you, err, plates," she ventured.

"Go on," Brooke said grinning, "it’ll make my heart dance if yours does."

Jakob shrugged, "wuh-why not?" He asked.

The Sandshrew girl nodded. Maybe then someone, anyone would notice her. Maybe Jakob would ask her to the dance instead of Brooke, with her flighty fancies and shaded past.

Maybe even Saffire would.

"I’ll try it on," she whispered, allowing the girl to lead her away to the Changing Rooms.