PROLOGUE

They won't look at me.

I don't know when they stopped looking at me, when they stopped meeting my eyes when I walked into the kitchen every morning and greeted them. They would still say "good morning" back, but it didn't sound natural anymore, it was like they didn't meant it. Talking with them didn't feel real and I had the strange, unshakeable feeling that every word they said was a lie. Even when I asked simple, obvious questions like "what's for dinner?"

"Soup." My mother would say back. Only it didn't sound right.

I went into the kitchen that morning, it was bright outside, sunlight was peeking through the window curtains. It was quiet in the kitchen again, except for the clacking of Mother's knife on the cutting board. We had exchanged greetings but nothing more. Usually she would hand me a bucket and ask me to go out back and get milk, but a couple of days ago father had brought Bille, our only milktank, to the local market. He said he sold her there but he didn't bring home any money. Now that Bille was gone there was no milk. I missed her.

I think that was around the time they stopped looking at me.

Mother handed me slice of bread with some butter. I ate it, thanked her, and then put on my coat and boots before greeting Father on my way outside. I spent most of my time outside.

After folding the laundry that had been left out side to dry I went into the back yard and looked out into the nearby forest. It was all pine and oak and wild pokemon in there. My father had always told me not to wander too far into it when I went out to play, he said it was dangerous. There were always rumors of bandits and large man-eating pokemon that would bite off the heads of lost travelers. I never believed them. I didn't think pokemon could be so violent, but then again, I hadn't seen many, besides Bille of course, and the occasional small wild scatterbug or flecthling. Big pokemon would always stay away from civilization, I'd been told, and pokemon would rarely be seen in my town because it was always so cold. Except for in the summer, the snow would melt then. I looked forward to the summer, pokemon were alway good company. There weren't many children in my neighborhood, most of the houses were really far apart. There were a few kids I had met, but they had already formed their little cliques and made it clear I wasn't welcome

I walked a little ways into the forest and began picking some round, pink berries off a nearby tree, there were a few types of berries that stuck around during the winter. I had gotten really good at climbing. I was small and would often be made fun of, but my size made me really good at scaling trees. Every time I would bring back some berries and Mother would make them into jam. After I had filled my basket I climbed down the tree and made my way back inside.

Mother was at the kitchen table looking at some papers, Father was in the next room. Mother had taught me how to read but I didn't get the point of it seeing as she would never let me read her papers (though Father did buy me books). I plunked the basket of berries down on the table beside her and she said, without moving her head, without any emotion, "Thank you Nathaniel."

I would like to say I though nothing of this, but that would be lying. I shook a little, it was wrong. It was so wrong. She never called me Nathaniel, always Nathan. Why? Nathan was my name. She only called me Nathaniel when she was angry. Was she angry? What did I do? I though back on everything I had done that day. I woke up at dawn, ate breakfast, helped Mother with the laundry, said goodbye to Father when I went out. For the life of me I could not think of anything that I might have done or said wrong. So I just stood there for a minute, waiting for her to do or say something else. It was like any moment she would stand up and scold me for something I had forgotten or she would laugh, ruffle my hair and ask me if I wanted to practice writing again. She did none of that, she just sat there, and my stomach dropped.

"You're welcome." I mumbled out before like a kicked lillipup I curled in on myself and retreated to my room. I set my boots and coat aside then lied down on my bed, pulled the covers over my head, and tried to forget. The sheets were warm and dry and welcoming.

Sleep crept up on me slowly and then all at once.

In my dreams my parents still loved me.

I woke up a few hours later. It was dark out, very dark. The moon and stars were clear through my window, they sat hovering above the snow powdered forest and I heard low, soft hooting in the distance. I had slept through dinner. It stung me again to think that no one had tried to wake me up. What had I done wrong?

I kept on asking myself, but I never received any answers.

"I don't want to either!" I heard a sudden shout from the other room, it was my father. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry." His voice broke around his words and I was frozen.

"He's our son Allen! I just don't understand how you could even consider this, I-" My mother was cut off.

"It's either him or us." My father replied. "They will grab us in the night and drag us away. I will die in the mines and you in the fields. They will work us until we are bones and skin and rot. Then they will dump us in a ditch and forget we were ever alive. At least he has a chance! They always have the children do the easy work." They were talking about me. And work. What work?

I heard my mother crying. It had been a very long time since I last heard her cry. A few years ago I had gotten lost in the woods and she was so sick with worry that when I had finally been found by a search party of various neighbors and family friends she pulled me into her arms and wouldn't stop crying until we had all hiked out of the forest safely.

This time was different. She was crying for me again, but it was so different. They weren't tears of relief, but of dread, of sorrow for losses yet to come.

And I was terrified.

"I know. I know." I heard my mother choke. My father was embracing her now, I could tell by the muffled sound of her voice. He was whispering to her what I couldn't make out through the thin walls of our house, what I probably didn't want to hear.

I laid down again, but I only pretended to sleep this time. How could I, being jolted awake every five minutes, coming off the cusp of unconsciousness with a sudden, poignant fear and the buried knowledge that I would be leaving soon. I knew. I knew deep down.

I didn't move until I heard chirping.

Going into the kitchen for breakfast that morning made the tensity of all those previous, awkward, half silent meals seem like nothing. I was quiet, I didn't even have the energy to pretend like I hadn't heard them, but my parents- they wore false smiles and greeted me like they used to before father sold Bille, and it felt like they biggest and most obvious lie I had ever been told.

I nodded a quick, conditioned thank you before I sat down to eat my food. I ate slowly, the food tasted drier than I knew it was. I finished about half of it, then I got up, put my bowl in the sink, and went outside.

It was snowing again, it snowed almost everyday now, and the flakes had built up almost a foot high on the ground. It was freezing out and my breath clouded in the air. The past few hours had been so unreal, a lot like a dream. Only I knew it wasn't, because in my dreams my parents loved me. It was in reality that they didn't.

I sat out there in the cold until I was called in for lunch.

The rest of my meals that day were like the first. As dusk drew nearer my parents would get more and more talkative, they would tell me they loved me over and over again for the first time in a long time, and it made me feel sick. At night my mother bent down and kissed me on the head. She hugged me a lot longer than she normally did, but my father, well, it seemed that he was once again refusing to look at me.

As I crossed into the hall towards my bedroom I looked him dead in the eyes, and he flinched.

"Good night Father." I said flatly.

"Good night Nathan." He said replied in the same dead tone, and it didn't feel like a lie.

Two hours later and I was done with the silence. My mother and father were awake in the living room, I hadn't heard them move since I went to bed. They weren't saying anything to each other. The Silence had become tangible. It said more things than I dare even attempt to grasp. The Silence was a monster, a beast, and I knew that it would eat me, like all those pokemon in the woods my father used to tell me about. Because all those those days of content wishfulness were over, and the Silence was their killer. The Silence had stood at the edge of happiness and ushered Tragedy towards its center. The Silence was cold, unfeeling, and it knew no names. To the Silence Nathaniel was the same as Nathan.

Except maybe me.

There was a knock at the front door. I was putting on my coat and boots. I heard men walk in.

"Where's the kid?" One of them asked.

"Down the hall, second door on the right." My father spoke slowly, like a child reading off unfamiliar words.

I opened my window. I heard heavy footsteps coming down the hall. Clunk-clunk-clunk. Tragedy broke Silence.

I heaved myself out the window and fell four feet onto cold, hard, snow covered ground. I heard yelling from inside.

"Hey! Kid's not here! What the hell did you do?!" They were yelling at my parents. And I didn't care. I pushed myself up off the ground as quickly as I could, then I ran.

By my front porch, in the moment it was still in view before I circled around my house and dashed into the woods, I saw a wagon. On the back of the wagon was a cage made of thick iron bars and sealed with a crude metal lock. Inside the cage were about half a dozen people, men, women, and children. All of them slaves.

My parents had tried to sell me.

That thought rung through my head as I ran and ran and ran, deeper and deeper into the forest. It got darker and darker, the trees became the arms of the faceless men who had knocked on my door that night. They were trying to grab me, to pull me away, to take me back to that cage filled with the abandoned, the hopeless.

My parents had tried to sell me.

I dashed, mad and wild over logs and stones, through bracken and low hanging tree branches.

I was crying now, my tears burned and my legs ached. How long had I been running? I didn't recognize the area, but I didn't really care now, I had nothing to get lost from anymore, no home, no parents.

I ran farther, and farther, and farther.

I stopped, dead, in the middle of the forest. The trees weren't scary anymore, they were just sad. I stood there and felt for the first time in my life what it was like to be completely, inescapably, alone, unwanted, abandoned.

My feet were numb, I couldn't force them to move anymore. I was breathing heavily, trying and failing to catch my breath. I fell. Exhausted and lying there in the snow I could feel myself slipping into sleep. Sleep meant death in the bitter winter nights. I thought that maybe dying wouldn't be so bad after all, it would be peaceful.

Spread out on the forest floor I watched the snow fall and felt the cold seep in through my thin, damp coat. Looking up it seemed like I was falling through the sky, the stars rushing up to meet me in my descent. I was reminded of that feeling I would sometimes get just as I closed my eyes in bed, like I was plummeting.

It was quiet again, but it wasn't the unnerving kind of silence from before, because now it was welcomed.

I closed my eyes.

"Huuuu..." Whimpering.

"Huuuuu-huu..." It was a pokemon. I shifted a little.

"Huuuuuuuuu..." It was crying out, painfully. It was dying and it didn't want to. I suddenly felt very dirty.

I sat up. The sound was coming from a nearby hollow. Getting up reluctantly I walked over to the hollow and saw curled up at its base a few feet down a small brown pokemon. Deerling. I had read about various types of pokemon in books my father used to buy me. I knew them all by heart. Usually deerling would travel in small herds but this one was alone, cold and bleeding in the forest. The small creature had fallen in, broken its leg, and was then left to rot by its family.

The pokemon and I locked eyes. An understanding passed between us and I knew that we were the same. Abandoned, unwanted, but now, we weren't alone.

I picked the small, shaking creature up and pulled it into my arms, careful not to disturb its injury.

I sat down once more under a tree, only I wasn't cold this time, because we kept each other warm that night.

AN: How do write?

I need advice.

If you see any grammar issues please point them out. I proofread but often miss things.

Not sure if I'll continue this story, or decided I hate it soon after posting this then drop off the face of the earth.