Rated PG-13 to be on the safe side. Occasional swearing, mild violence, some dark happenings towards the end. Nothing really serious, though. There are some days that seem so bright, so ripe with opportunity, that it’s hard to imagine anything could go wrong. The sun gleams in the sky, unchallenged by clouds, the air is dry and warm, and all the earth comes alive in rich green and brown. If opportunity hits one just right then, and one is the right sort of person, it’s almost impossible to say no. Grace’s birthday wasn’t one of those days. Of course, it wouldn’t have been very fair if the weather had tried to excite her, too. She, her parents, and most of her family had been working on that for a while, with a great deal of superficial success. The day, at least, was being honest. She pressed her hand to the window, the pane’s coldness seeping into her palm. It was late; the rain was barely visible through the curtain of night. Its soothing, plunking melody was unfettered by darkness, though, and Grace’s anxiety melted away as she listened. Or rather, it retreated for a time. Today, she told herself for the umpteenth time, was a grand day. Today she would get a lovely little rattata, and become a pokémon trainer like her father, and make everyone proud. It was silly to dread it. It was silly to stay up all night out of worry rather than excitement. It was silly to have to fake excitement, when the dreams of a thousand children were coming true for her. She pulled her hand away, leaving a small, wet silhouette in the window’s condensation. It was a good day, and she shouldn’t be afraid. She should be happy. She was happy. The only thing disturbing her happiness was a small tingling feeling of wrongness in the bottom of her stomach, whose origin she couldn’t understand. Still, the handprint on the window looked terribly childlike and lonesome. It was hard to believe its owner was very different. -- Grace woke up to a flood of light pouring through the curtains, last night’s drizzle burned away. She yawned, rubbed her eyes, and for a moment failed to recognize this day as unusual. Then, with a strange, unaccountable twist in her gut, she remembered. You’re a pokémon trainer today, she thought to herself, studying her hands as if she had expected them to change. You’re a grown-up. How does it feel? The door burst open in a flurry of activity before she could answer. A round, beaming, chaotic woman in her late thirties tramped through, her arms full of brightly papered gifts. Grace, still not entirely awake, squinted blearily at her. “Happy birthday, sweetheart!” she chirped, bustling to the bed and depositing her load at the foot of it. “This is wonderful! Twelve years old already, I can’t believe it. I always thought it was a bit young to leave, but oh! I’m so proud of you. So proud.” She kissed her squarely on the forehead, so spontaneously and quickly it almost seemed she hadn’t realized she’d done it. “Aren’t you excited, baby?” “Mm-hmm,” she said, waking up and smiling from the sheer force of her mother’s enthusiasm. “I’m excited.” “Of course you are. Of course you are, this is wonderful!” She brushed her daughter’s hair out of her face, a tender smile on her face despite her violently energetic speech. “C’mon, let’s open your presents! They’re good ones this year.” -- They were good presents. She’d received four new outfits for varying seasons, a broad, sequined belt, a compartmented bag, a pokétch, a puffy sleeping bag, a little jacket with two dangling pom-poms, and assorted traveling goods like sunscreen and canned food. Everything was colored a matching light pink and white. Grace liked yellow better, but her mother was under the impression that she favored pink and she’d never said otherwise. Pink was a nice color, though, and she was pleased. It was a disconnected sort of pleasure, though, and she spent most of her birthday in a daze. She understood, on some level, what she was receiving and what it meant, but she couldn’t help but feel that this was some sort of strange and irrelevant dream. The role of pokémon trainer was one she was so ill suited to that it was hard to believe she was now in it. The biggest and best present came later in the afternoon, after the cake was demolished and the glittering paper cleared away. Her father came up to her, tall and composed as ever – but he was smiling, and she felt her heart leap. He was a few years older than her mother, with gray striping his dark hair and a thin, solemn face. His job as one of the higher-ups at Silph Co. necessitated frequent travel, and Grace had always seen him from a distance. She admired him with a kind of anxious earnestness, savoring and hunting for gestures of affirmation. He loved her, but it was a stiff and silent love that only occasionally managed to work itself into warmth. “A very happy birthday,” he said, pressing a shrunken pokéball into her palm. It grew under the slight pressure, as it was designed to, and Grace gazed at it uncertainly. She ought to open it, but…on some level she didn’t want to, didn’t want to accept what she had. “Aren’t you going to open it, sweetheart? Oh, he’s an adorable pokémon, you’ll love him,” said her mother, sitting next to her and grinning broadly. Grace rubbed her thumb against the ball’s smooth plastic, and smiled - a nervous, faintly untruthful smile. “Yeah,” she said, more to herself than to her mother, and pressed the center button. A beam of bright red light shot out, formed itself into a uncertain shape, and then settled on the body of a small rodent. He was about half as long as her arm, with beady red eyes, a curly tail, and protruding, terribly sharp fangs. A disarmingly friendly smile was on his face, but Grace’s spine ran cold with prickles of fear all the same. “He’s s’posed to be a real angel,” her mother continued. “We got him from a good breeder, said his parents were the sweetest raticates you’d ever hope to meet, and he’s been socialized and trained in the basics. Perfect for a beginner, hm?” “Oh, um…yes! He’s perfect,” she agreed, unconsciously digging her nails into her palms. “He’s so perfect! Thank you, Mom; I love him! I can’t wait ‘til we go adventuring, it’ll be so— it’ll be so wonderful.” Both her mother and the rattata – her rattata – accepted her enthusiasm. Her new pokémon made a pleasant churring sound, apparently finding her acceptable, and scaled her leg to curl up on her lap. She flinched, hesitated, and patted him awkwardly. “I had a rattata, once. They’re good pokémon,” her dad said suddenly. Grace squinted critically at the little creature. Well. Maybe he isn’t so bad, then. He churred again, wriggling his curly tail, and she noticed how very long his teeth were. -- Soon – ridiculously soon – she was in bed again, staring up at the ceiling. Strangely, she could only remember the barest details of her birthday. It had passed in a blur, the exhilarating adventures of a girl who couldn’t be her. She remembered a kaleidoscope of festive colors, a small, terrifying creature, the affirmation she had longed for, and something within her pulling away from it all. Grace bundled herself up under the warm, protective linen of her blankets, clutching her knees tightly to her chest as if she were holding herself together. Even in the dark stillness of the room, her heart beat out a frantic, desperate rhythm, and a strange terror clawed at her. She didn’t – she couldn’t – understand the fear. She was happy, and yet everything inside her was in chaos. A simple wooden pan flute rested on her bedside table, engraved with a few meaningless symbols and little else. It was old and worn, and carried with it a sense of amicable venerability. It was held together by a faded red cloth bearing many of the same symbols the wood did, and the rest of it was an unremarkable sort of brown. Grace loved it more than anything in the world. She picked it up, holding it close to her like a cherished stuffed animal. Her fingers followed the smooth curves of the instrument, the patterns of its engravings, the dozen little pipes that molded sound. She wasn’t much good at playing it – her skills stopped at a choppy version of Rock-a-bye Baby – but that wasn’t the point. She loved it for its humble, unassuming nature, for the sweet notes it sang even under her clumsy guidance, and for its quiet constancy. It was beautiful in its simplicity, and she couldn’t remember a time when she had been without it. Her grandmother had given it to her a very long time ago, in the nebulous early era of her life. The process of giving carried no special significance (she knew her grandma only as a nice, vaguely senile lady who appeared every other year around Christmas), but the pan flute did. It was her companion, it was part of her, and tonight it comforted her. She stayed up for a time, holding her flute and watching the stars. For a little while she had wanted to cry, but it didn’t make any sense to cry and so she hadn’t. Eventually she slipped into a fitful and reluctant sleep, the pan flute still pressed closely to her. -- Grace woke to the gray light of early morning with the vague impression that she had had a nightmare, but couldn’t remember it. Watery sunlight tricked through her window; a few pale stars still lay in the sky and the first pink fingers of sunrise stretched up behind the horizon. She was tired, but it came more from a leaden, weary dread that had settled in the base of her stomach than from anything sleep could cure. All the same, she was reluctant to leave her bed and lingered there for a while longer, listlessly watching the sun pull itself up into the sky. Although she wouldn’t have minded spending the rest of the morning in bed, she wanted to say goodbye to her home before her mother awoke in a flurry of affectionate enthusiasm and set her off with a merry, noisy, regretless departure. Grace pulled on some worn sweats – the morning air was bitingly cold – tiptoed down the hallway, and slipped outside. The town, the dear little town that held her childhood, was bathed in a thin, bluish morning light; the stumpy, rounded houses that lined the street had never seemed so small, so lonely as they did that morning. Duntry had always been a sleepy, quiet place. Everyone knew everyone, and nothing ever really changed. The town’s history flowed in a still, syrupy river, content with its own inertia. Grace got along well with it. It was safe and warm, protecting her from a harsher outer world unsuited to a child. She caught her reflection in a darkened window – all five feet of her, freckled and wide-eyed. It was hard to say, in any honesty, that she wasn’t a child. It was hard to say that she wanted to leave, that she wanted to wrench herself away from her foundation, that she was ready and willing to face the world. Grace trailed aimlessly through the streets, unsure of what she meant to do. It was a confused and uncertain goodbye, but it was a quiet one. She ran her fingers along the sun-bleached bricks of Ms. Brown’s house, a bittersweet nostalgia coloring them. Too soon a senseless cacophony of color rose over the horizon, chasing away the last bleary traces of night. She would have liked to stay, to admire and memorize every cobblestone and alley, but her parents would worry if they woke before she returned. Besides, she couldn’t help but think it would ruin something if she packaged and contained every aspect of her town within her. It was better as it was – a simple, inexact pocket of calmness. Hey! There’s the first chapter, hope you enjoyed it. :3 I know I’m not the most experienced writer in the world, but I’m trying to improve. I hope you can help me with that. Just a few things to say. First, as of now I don’t have a beta reader. I very much want and need one, though, so if anyone would like to help me out I’d be awfully grateful. This also means that this chapter is terribly unpolished as I only had myself to edit it, and any advice would be very much appreciated. Second, I love honest, specific critiques! They’re what makes a story, and anyone who takes the time to really tell me what they think is loved to pieces. I don’t particularly mind flames and gushing, but neither is very helpful. Third, this isn’t a journey fic. Well, Grace thinks it is for most of the story, but…she’s not the best informed. Of course, it mimics a journey fic for long enough that you might still like it if you like them. Fourth, rattata will get more screen time later. He’s awesome, Grace’s just projecting her insecurities on him. Lame. But yeah, he’s not a two-bit background character. Just looks that way now. Fifth, I know Grace is really dreary. We’ll be getting a sunnier character soon, and Grace cheers up a bit, too. Sixth, I can’t title stories at all. This is a temporary title, which refers to the relationship of two of the main characters and is vaguely ironic. It’s not very good, makes no sense in this chapter, and will probably change. Cool suggestions are welcome. So! Please critique, I’d love to hear from every one of you. Have a great day~