Author's Note: This is a short story I wrote for the Comment Fic community on LiveJournal. The prompt was "collecting sea shells." It is one-shot featuring Ash sometime after Misty leaves for home. I left the details vague so it could be set pretty much in any season after that. This is the first Pokemon fic I've written since completing "Crossing the River" last December. I hope you enjoy.
As always, they could smell the sea before they could see it. Ash was in the lead, eager to be the first to reach the new town.
The others lagged behind a few steps, willing to let the cool sea breeze wash against them as they entered the town proper, buildings sprouting up on either side of the road they were following.
Ahead, they could see the distinctive architecture of the pokemon center, which would be their temporary home for as long as it took Ash to successfully challenge the local gym leader for a badge.
They had been walking for much of the day, so they were more than ready to get a room and settle in for the evening.
When they reached the entrance, however, Ash waved them off, saying he had a quick errand to run, assuring them he wouldn't challenge any passing trainers and he would be back in time for dinner in the center's cafeteria.
Their concerns allayed, they let the young trainer go. He wasn't quite as young as he once was when he first started this journey. Back then he had had different friends traveling with him. And it was because of one of those friends that he now walked away from the pokemon center and toward the sea.
He passed shops and restaurants, all of which had the bright colors one typically found in towns on the shore. It didn't take long until the buildings fell away to give him an unbroken view of the beach and water and the slightly curved horizon beyond.
The beach was pristine, the sand nearly white. It was the middle of the week, and those who didn't spend their days traveling the countryside were either at work or home from school, so the beach was relatively empty.
Ash noticed one man holding a metal detector about a hundred yards down the beach, and a mother with two small children too young yet for school slightly closer, but otherwise he was alone.
He left the boardwalk and felt his shoes sink into the sand. Soon, however, he reached the firmer damp sand, and it was here that he began his search.
It took awhile, but he found at last what he was looking for. Reaching down, he grasped the shell, turning it this way and that, confirming it was both intact and empty.
He was sure he did not have another one like it. One benefit of traveling from land to land in search of new pokemon to capture and train was it gave him ample opportunity to find new shells to add to his collection.
It was quite large, as he had been collecting the shells for almost three years now. Ever since she left.
He hadn't known at the time just how much he would miss her when she was gone. He didn't hold it against her. The Cerulean City gym needed her stewardship and he also knew that its reputation had only grown since she took it over from her sisters.
But he still missed her. It had taken him quite awhile to understand just why he missed her so much, but he knew now. So since she couldn't come with him on his journey, he made sure she would have a piece of the places he visited in the form of unusual shells, different from the ones she could find at home.
For just as he knew one day he would be a Pokemon Master, he knew there would also be a day he went back to her. And on that day, he would give her the collection of shells to show he never forgot about her, regardless of the foreign lands he traveled and new friends he met. She was the one he always planned to go back to.
Because just like she couldn't leave her gym, he couldn't yet leave his journey. And deep down, he thought-or at least hoped-she understood that.
He looked one more time at the shell and then placed it carefully in his backpack. He took a moment to glance at the sun and its reflection on the water before him, their hues reminding him of the girl called Misty.
"I'll be back one day," he said softly, to himself and perhaps to the sea she loved, thinking that the waters here must surely connect to those of Cerulean City.
Then he turned and began the walk back to the pokemon center and the friends who were waiting for him.