Hi there. Call me Starry's Light, or, if you prefer not to type so many letters, Starry is cool too. Fun fact- I went by StarryNight173 when I first posted this oldie. I like my new name much more. It's... I dunno. Starry-ish? Fulfilling for me. Almost alliteration.

Anyways, this story has a good amount of romance in it, crazy ehm.. bloody.. battles, yeah.. some death, adventuring, and most important of all: friendship! But this is no happy story. Just meet the main character, Llana.

Llana: -shyly waves-

So... without further ado, I present you a really old story of mine, wowzers!

Disclaimer: I do not own the great Nintendo or their franchise Pokemon. If you thought I did, question your... something. I don't know. Oh, nevermind, my brother says you should question your doctor. Or therapists.

Chapter 1: Stellar Intrusions

Darkness. Pain. It crawls up my skin and through my mouth and my eyes and crawls into every last scale it can reach like some filthy entity. The harder I struggle, the harder I breathe and rasp and plead, the tighter it goes, underwhelming me and myself and I and taking out my senses until only one last ideal matters:

the scream.

"HELP, PLEASE! SOMEONE SAVE ME!" Maybe... maybe I'd save the screaming voice if I wasn't so blotted and choked. Or if I wasn't so useless... I'm just a scrawny little snivy. Useless, useless, useless. My lungs collapse between me, seemingly shelling through the scales and ripping out the suffocating mix within for that screaming entity to catch whiff of. But all I can feel above my own personal suffering is the scream.

It does not blot itself in any matter. "I'M INNOCENT, I SWEAR! I NEED YOUR HELP!" No you don't. Liar. Filthy liar. Her tone, too high and squeaky for a male's, seems to point at me, but no, no it wouldn't. I doubt it. "LLANA, PLEASE!"

The blank stillness of my interior pains is sliced open with a purple-clawed paw, liberally stuffed with white fur. "Llana!" The voice noticeably lowers when the cottony paw comes my way. I wish it would silence itself. "Llana... llllaaa-" Too quiet for me, it disperses.

Though I have to admit, the paw in front of me holds an odd similarity to Stella's...

With a start, my scrawny tail sends itself over my pale underside as it smacks against another area of the dirt ground and I realize that once again, my caretaker has attempted to disappear in the meager hopes that I won't manage to find him. Eyes peeling, heart thudding into pale skin and paler bones, I eventually decide that the nightmare wasn't real, but my uncle truly had abandoned me- again. I'm even used to the fact by now. His new sense of needing to rid himself of me, another snivy, his own niece, has begun to tire me, nevertheless. Even for faster pokemon. I can't much stand chasing the elder like an abandoned little girl -even if I am- for much longer. It would be that much easier to stop already. Maybe I will. Maybe I'll stop pestering him with my life...

He means a lot to me though. I don't want to leave him... and I don't see how he'd want to leave me... But he is.

Brown eyes traverse this small, broken village we resided in just last night. Pokemon used to live here. Real characters that laughed and sang and danced as they pleased. Although there may have been few characters here that were like me, and preferred to quietly spend their lives in silence. While I watch the homes in stony silence, an odd pang batters my heart, crawling into me not unlike the monster in that nightmare. This must be why I always follow Gerald so much. He's my only relative left, and I love him. The last one out there to stick with me, willingly or not. There is not a single soul occupying the space beside me.

It's just... I don't have any friends. Nor do I know why. This world is filled with hate, Gerald would tell me. But I don't know. It's not like I would know, or my uncle, or anyone. It's too quiet out in the barren land, too empty. My chilled thoughts rattle against me like the wind outdoors.

If Stella was here, I wouldn't feel so lonely. But she's gone and disappeared, just like my parents did, and not unlike how Gerald keeps trying to ditch me himself. She means enough to me that the swelling in my throat is an obvious asset to her not being beside me. I've known her much longer than my dead parental relations. Can she not vanish out of thin air like this? Can she not leave me this lonely? I'm filled with this sickening sense of... of this thick, soupy sorrow rising within me. It's like a stain, and it won't come out, not any more than the dirt scuffs loitering among my patchy snivy scales. They only seem to stretch along my scrawny figure. Come back, Stella. Come back. If I didn't digress along speaking as much as I do, no other doubt goes against that I would scream out for her. She said she'd come back. So where is she now..? Stella... I'm alone again, Stella...

My feet sore and feeling bruised from the amount of walking we have done on hard stone, I wearily stumble more than step closer to the jagged, rocky ending of this town, not even knowing its name. Maybe it never had one. I wouldn't know, again. Gerald had the map, and it was quite the beauty at such: elaborate sketches trailing across parchment, sketching into our meager minds of the paths lying ahead and beyond for as long as this forsaken realm goes. If there was any piece I want to take from this caretaker, it should be his map, though I'd rather just have him. I don't like this.
Company is hard to come by, at that. Besides Stella, the older, thicker, green-scaled bipedal, though a giant in comparison to me, was the only contact I had. It appears this is about to change me, then, now that I've agreed with myself to let the man go.

No, no, no, no, no. I do not care about him. Not the scowling uncle of an elder snivy with the fluffy white mustache matching Stella's fur.

But I do.

Surely I'd be better on my own in either situation anyways. Surely I'll make friends. Surely someone will want the scrawny snivy. Someone has to. There cannot be no one out there.

With this off and grimy note, something inside me cracks further from where it already was. I use the only ability of mine with actual use and leave my uncle, and all thoughts of the loveless man, behind. He may have loved his sister, but not his sister's daughter. There must be something wrong with me.

My trust taps into my speed. My speed ultimately plows me through the deep pine trees which scratch at my scaled face. Away from my past. Away from whatever is behind me. Today has arrived, I guess. As long as today is not as grimy as the rest of my life, even a little less murky and disturbed, then I'll reach out both of my scrawny, leaf-green hands and scoop out as many handfuls of today as I can. Already this loneliness sounds better than Gerald.

...

Her soft, silky fur brushed past tall grass and large stones. She was growing closer to her destination. She only wished Llana could have been here. But that small, scrawny snivy would have to be alone for the time being. She would find someone soon, if the Fates had spoken correctly to her.

The fur on her body stiffened. She detected something in the undergrowth. Growing near. And darkness. Tainting the creature.

Yaaaayy, I managed to finish the first chapter~

Zoey: The funniest part is that you wrote those first three chapters like in that same first day~

Me: Zoey. Please. Shut up. No one is supposed to know who you are.

Zoey: Yeah, cuz Llana's a sociopath!

Me: -closes eyes- ...I can't. I just... nope. Nope nope nope. Shut up Zoey.

Zoey: :D Read on!

Me: Stop inflating your oversized ego.