She gets her first clue that her destiny does not lie with battling after she wins the Stone Badge from Roxanne.
It's an easy enough battle - her beloved treecko, already teetering on the cusp of evolution, is just too quick for the brunette's disadvantaged pokemon, while her ralts swiftly cleaned up the final battle with a few powerful confusion attacks and multiple teleports when her starter finally fell. The badge itself is cool and heavy, the red and gold faded enough to give it an authentically natural appearance along with the light roughness of the surface. Yet, when Roxanne crosses over the battlefield and her ralts teleports onto her shoulder, tired and worn but conscious, she paints a fake smile onto her face, returns her pokemon and rushes to the pokemon centre as quickly as she can, wind hitting her face with a refreshing kind of cold as her brown hair flies out behind her and she tries to think her doubts away.
It had been her first gym battle, her first major victory, her first defeat of a relatively skilled opponent - and she hadn't felt a thing.
No great big whoosh of victory that all the books had talked about. No simple flair of success when the final psychic attack hit it's rock-type opponent. Not even one pinprick of happiness in her brain when Roxanne's nosepass collapsed and her ralts remained standing. Nothing.
It scares her more than she likes to admit.
Lily Walsh grew up knowing that she would be a great trainer one day, ascending the ranks of the Hoenn League, maybe even defeating the champion and getting sworn in as the next one, the next pinnacle of power for the young, impressionable children to look up to and aspire to be like. She knew this, and she was fine with it.
Or at least, that's what she told herself.
There had always been this tiny bit of doubt in her head that she just wasn't cut out to be a trainer. It manifested to her in many different ways. The way she was naturally drawn to the elegant, beautiful pokemon in the books her parents would give her instead of the tough, battle-ready ones; admiring the way the gardevoir held itself with a kind of graceful superiority or how the milotic seemed to look so devastatingly beautiful in a book alone, all pristine blue and pink scales and shining crimson-pink eyes. The strange type of fear that would make her heart leap into her throat and her body involuntarily wince as she watched the destructive clash of two powerhouse pokemon on the television, attacks flaring up with a kind of lethal brightness as their trainers shouted out commands over the roar of the excited crowd. The constant, lingering doubt in her mind that refused to be content with battles and training and living like she was.
She takes a contest pass and a ribbon case from the next pokemon centre she encounters and prays that this will satisfy the lurking sense of uncertainty in her brain.
It doesn't. It only makes it stronger.
The ribbon looks magnificent in her ribbon case, all silky purple cloth dotted and medium-sized blue dots, with a baby pink outline frilled with white and secured in the centre by three circles stacked on top of each other - bronze to silver to gold - with a gleaming golden crown on top. Lily looks at this and remembers the contest with fondness - kirlia's hauntingly gorgeous use of confusion and disarming voice in the appeal rounds that made her heart pang in joy and fulfillment when her pokemon teleported into her waiting arms after the judges gave their scores, and mightyena's impeccable takedown of her opponents in the battle rounds, always with the elegance and beauty that the dark-type had always possessed.
When she sets this one ribbon next to the Stone and Knuckle badges, it still far outshines them. Lily swallows the lump in her throat and picks up her PokeNav, fingers quickly finding her parents' number.
She refuses to live like this anymore.
The ribbon case is now set proudly on her shelf, five ribbons neatly placed inside, the Grand Festival cup set carefully next to them, polished gold surface reflecting the light that came pouring in from the open window.
The badge case sits at the bottom of her wardrobe, gathering dust from disuse, the two accomplishments inside all but forgotten.
Lily Walsh is finally happy.