Precious Doll in This Ugly World [Pokemon Fanfic, 2015 PKMNWatties]

Little Girl Lost

Seven days ago, her father left them behind. He was leaving to go on a pokémon journey. He would call and check in with them all the time. He promised them.

Her mother screamed “Liar! Liar! Liar!” over and over when she was alone in her room late at night, and her little six year old self would listen in behind her mother’s closed and locked door.

This, Ashelia Ketchum realized, was the beginning of a different life for her.

In Pallet, it was a rather small population and everyone knew everyone and eventually “everything.” Her father’s abandonment (this was a word she’d learned from “Mrs. 1273” when she walking passed her one day, after school was over) was widely spread and gossiped about. She tended to listen closely and observe everyone, and notice little things that people liked to think she wouldn’t understand or catch in the first place, because of her age.

She didn’t have friends her age. There were a lack of girls around her age, and the few girls close enough didn’t like the same things she did. She loved pokémon, she played rougher and more actively, didn’t dress up, and tended to hang around boys more because of this. She was even more content to shorten her name to ‘Ash’, because it was shorter, catchier, and easier to say, despite how boyish it sounded.

Ash didn’t care.

But even if she played more and hung around the boys, she wasn’t really friends with them either. They didn’t want to be “friends” with a girl. Some of them were dumb enough to even think she had cooties. She always rolled her eyes at that –it was so stupid and immature.

And so, a lack of friends led a friendless her to be alone and compensate by paying attention to everyone and everything. She noticed a lot of things, saw stuff she was sure she wasn’t supposed to know. Listened and probably learned about things she was too young to know about. Watched and knew things that she was much more comfortable not knowing.

Sometimes she wished she had been born a male and could just play with Gary Oak and the other boys, and be dumb with the rest of them.

But she was a girl and she hated how lonely that made her.

~*~*~

Gary, the famous Professor Oak’s grandson, was technically her only real friend, despite how much he always said he wasn’t and called her “a stupid girl!” Whenever she became too bored or lonely, she would always walk the long way to his house and pester him until he agreed to hang out with her, and the two of them would secretly play together. She was doing that right then too. Only, Gary saw her coming while he was walking out of his house and his nose scrunched up.

“What are you doing here?” he asked snottily.

She visibly bristled. “Visiting you, duh!”

“Hmph! Well, I’m going to go to the park to play with my friends, so I don’t have time for you,” Gary folded his arms across his chest.

“Can I come?” Ash became excited.

“No way! Boys only!” he pulled down an eyelid and stuck out his tongue. After, he straightened and began walking away from her. “Anyway, maybe I’ll play with you some other time. Smell ya later!”

Ash pouted and wondered what she was going to do now. The door opening again caught her attention, and she saw Professor Oak getting ready to fetch the newspaper she just noticed was by her feet.

“Asheila! What are you doing here? Ah, if you’re looking for Gary, I believe he just left,” the professor told her apologetically.

Ash’s pout worsened. “It’s Ash, Professor. And I know. He just left.”