Lilly Fightem-Gould and I are sitting in the living room of her and her husband’s two-bedroom apartment in the nicer part of Coriander. The tea kettle shrieks. Lilly excuses herself and walks into the kitchen, leaving me alone with “Amber”, her twelve-year-old Sudowoodo.

Pokemon number 185 stares at the television with black, beady eyes. It’s firmly planted on the navy blue rug and looks like it hasn’t budged in days. There are the beginnings of a spider web dangling from its bulbous green fingers. It has a permanent smile on its face, but I can tell there’s no joy left inside that rock hard trunk. Only emptiness.

The fact that this Pokemon is here at all is remarkable. For seven years it was trapped inside a spherical chamber, trapped and forgotten between the couch cushions, alone with nothing to occupy it but its thoughts. Thoughts of the wild, of the life it once had and could never have again, and, possibly, thoughts of suicide.

“Would you like any sugar?” Lilly says and brings out two cups of steaming hot tea. “I think we’re out of honey.”

She sets the cups down on the coffee table and stands with her hands on her hips. I pull out my recorder and ask her to sit down. She doesn’t seem eager to tell her side of the story.

“Right,” she says in a downbeat way. She sits down on the far end of the couch and stares at the back of her Pokemon’s big brown trunk. A sadness sweeps over her.

On the television, a show about teenagers competing to become Gym Leaders under the watchful eye of world famous Pokemon master Lance plays. “It loves these shows…Thank God for channel P-24. I wouldn’t know what I’d do without it.”

Lilly finally smiles. “I used to want to be a Gym Leader when I was younger. Who didn’t, right?” She laughs. “That was a decade ago. It was a lot easier to do back then; a young girl could walk by herself from Saffron City to the Pokemon Stadium and only have to worry about a brusque trainer or a wild Pidgeon getting in her way…”

The Sudowoodo shifts its weight. There is a loud thump.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t remember when I caught Amber,” Lilly continues. “I was so obsessed with collecting as many as I could that I don’t even think I named it when it was caught. That’s horrible. But that’s the truth. That’s collecting.”

Lilly sighs. “I gave that all up after I moved in with Donald. What a rude awakening that was, realizing that I just didn’t have enough room in my life anymore for fifty-four Pokemon. That’s a lot of mouths to feed.”

“I traded most of them. The rest I sold to shops. I remember sorting through them all right here. Right where you’re sitting,” she says and points to my seat on the couch. “And that’s where we found it last month. The ball, I mean.”

Lilly takes a sip of her tea and takes a long, meaningful look out the window. An audience cheers on the television. Someone has won, at least for this episode. Outside, a little boy methodically waxes the family Shuckle.

“Seven years. Can you imagine? Like a genie in a lamp,” says Lilly . “I know it looks like it has the personality of a lamp, but there’s still something left in there. We know because on some nights, when Donald and I are being… intimate, we catch it standing at the foot out the bed. Trying to blend in with the coat rack. Watching us with those bird eyes.”

Lilly shakes her head and laughs. “Donald splashes it with some toilet water and it dawdles away. No one gets a free show in this house.”