Chapter One - Fire in the Frost

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Where there is no trust, there is no love - Chinese proverb

Dying sun, dying world. That was all I ever knew. I never knew what it was like to run through grassy fields and enjoy a warm yellow sun on my fur or see a beautiful forest flourishing with life. All I ever knew was death, cold, and snow. The sun on my fur held no warmth and let out a ghostly red glow like embers. The forests I knew weren't full of life, but rather full of decay and rot. 

But the world around me didn't matter because I wasn't supposed to exist. That thought plagued me constantly, making every step I took through the frost-bitten long dead leaves painful and full of regret. After five years on this dying planet, I was done existing. The only ones who cared about me were my older brother and sister, and even they were hardly around as they were constantly hunting for food. I was useless at hunting, so I couldn't help them. My brother had tried to teach me... something, but even he, with his seemingly undying patience, soon gave up. My parents hardly cared if I existed at all. My three littermates had all died at birth, and only me, the smallest and weakest, managed to cling on to that sliver of life in a black ocean of death. 

My breath billowed around me in clouds of moisture and my paws soon began to ache from the cold. I shook myself off. You've only been out here for a few hours, I thought, spitting a ball of fire onto my paws to warm them up. Realization flooded my small undeveloped brain. If I stayed out here all alone, I'd freeze. I wouldn't even have to find some sort of danger to end me if the very air hovering around me was dangerous. 

With my new intentions solidified, I slumped down onto the cold dead leaves, not bothering to curl up so I'd freeze faster. A breeze shook my pelt, bringing small snowflakes down from the heavens to settle in my fur. I closed my eyes and waited. I knew that no one went to an afterlife anymore, but that didn't deter me. If I had to choose between this life and not existing at all, I would choose the later. My parents wouldn't care, and my siblings would be relieved; even if they did care about me, I was just another problem to take care of.

It felt like centuries before the cold in my paws hardened and began creeping up my legs. The brittle breeze seemed to slice right through my pelt and into my heart. Freezing was painful, but with that pain there was bliss. The jumbled thoughts in my head seemed to slow and taper away like rainfall, leaving nothing but a void of peacefulness in my head. 

I thought I was dead. I truly did. I could no longer feel the pain of the world or my thoughts. I felt like a cloud. Not the dark gray cumulonimbus that built up along the horizon before a storm, but rather the wispy pink cirrus that drifted in the stratosphere high above the ground. 

But I guess the universe really didn't want to let me make my own choices.

Something warm and fluffy pressed against my side, bringing me out of my state of bliss. The world came rushing back. My paws felt like rocks, my ears sheets of ice and my chest like a windy cave full of scathing crystals. Slowly, I opened my eyes, not believing that I had managed to live.

A female Litten, even smaller than myself, was lying next to me. Her fur was light gray and bright red, while her amber eyes were deep and saturated as honey. I curled up in embarrassment as I realized that she was wearing clothing, and I wasn't.

"Hallo!" she chirped. "Ich bin Holo. Wie wirst du genannt?"

"Uh, wot?" I asked, curling up farther. 

"Warum bist du hier?" she asked.

I shook my head and spat a fireball on the ground next to me. Carefully shifting over so I was sitting on it, I responded slowly with, "I only know English."

"Du sprichst Englisch?" the Litten asked, tilting her head.

"Yeah... Englis... ch..." I meowed, taking a wild guess that she had asked if I knew English. 

Her eyes lit up as if she seemed to understand. "Du sprichst Deutsch?" 

"Doo spinageast doetsatch?" I asked in response, trying to see if I could communicate better with her.

Apparently, my accent just screwed up the words I was trying to imitate because the Litten looked at me in confusion. "Was hast du gesagt?" 

More questions in which I couldn't respond to, let alone understand. "Um, sure?" I responded unsurely, beginning to piece together information. This Litten was obviously from that city that my brother had briefly mentioned a few weeks ago, where the Pokemon wore clothing learned to read and didn't only count on surviving the next twenty-four hours, but rather the next eighty or so years.

"Geht es dir gut?" the Litten asked yet another question.

I stood up suddenly, forgetting my previous fear. After all, I had fur for a reason. "Follow me!" I called, racing off into the direction I had come from.

"Wohin gehst du?" the Litten shrieked as she sprinted after me.

Not knowing how to respond, I just kept up my sprint, the freezing sensation I had felt melting away as my paws flew over the ground, hardly touching the frost-bitten leaves. 


((A/N: Sorry the chapter is so short and that I'm posting this out of schedule, I just wanted to get to the interesting part next week.))





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