My name is not Aurora.
My name is a long, deep howl, one that bounds across the hills and penetrates deep into the night sky, one that sends chills down the spine of all who hear it.
Aurora is the name they gave me, those idiotic humans, after they… They call it a rescue, but I needed no rescuing. No, they kidnapped me, took me from my rightful guardians, the ones who had been taking care of me ever since I can remember.
They butchered my true name, then claimed that their name was the only right one, that I was foolish for thinking I could be called anything else. Aurora. A stupid, silly name. Every time it's said, I'm reminded of my kidnapping, of being forced into this life.
The humans say that I'm the one who is stupid, but they know nothing. My guardians taught me many things in the pack, things that really matter, things that none of the humans in their tiny painted houses could ever understand. I know which berries are safe to eat and which would kill you horribly with a single bite. I can headbutt a tree hard enough to dislodge the Pokemon sleeping within it and can slaughter those that fall out before they hit the ground. I can track down prey by smell alone and judge the freshness of a footstep. I can tell the time by watching the moonlight and the place by gazing upon the stars. I know the meaning of every chirp, every roar, every howl.
But they wanted to take that all away. They judged me by their narrow-minded standards and found me wanting. To them, my knowledge meant nothing; my value as a person lay not in knowing how to survive, but in knowing when to say please and thank you. They even claimed that I was delusional, that my dear friends and companions were mere mindless beasts, that I had never been able to know the will of the pack from a single growl. To them, I was mad, uncivilized, ignorant. To them, I was nobody.
They gave me a caretaker and a house- they called it a home, but it was never any such thing. I have only one home, and it doesn't stay unnaturally lit up and warm throughout the night or have polished wood covering up the firm ground below.
And then they wondered why I resisted, why I so often tore off those ugly garments and ran back into the forest. They always managed to hunt me down again and take away whatever I had used to run away. But I always found a way to escape, no matter how much they took away from me, no matter how certain they were of my being trapped for good. No house, no lock, no prison could ever hold me, not when I knew the beauty of what was waiting outside.
They tried to make me follow their petty little rules, to make me like them, to make me what they considered normal. But I knew I would never be normal. I wouldn't let them destroy me like that. I'd sooner die than become another nameless cog in their system, forever separated from the wilderness that I so love.
And then the voices came.
I still don't know what they are, whether they're human or Pokemon or something else entirely. Their speech sounds human, but a rather odd sort of human… perhaps not unlike myself, or how I used to be before they started training me to fit in.
But I don't really care what they are. What matters is what the voices have done to me… what they have done for me.
Under their guidance, I have managed to escape from New Bark Town, to leave that prison that people insist on calling my home without anybody chasing after me to bring me back. For the first time in years, I walk beside a Pokemon once more. I spend my time as often as not walking through the tall grass where I used to hide and immersing myself in the chirps and growls that surround me. I don't need the map they put on that fancy electric device to tell me where I am as the voices lead me places I've always longed to explore, because I have the stars twinkling above me.
And when the voices call my name… sometimes they howl.