Won: Oh, I bet you're all tired of me making new stories like this...but it's been on my mind for a VERY long time, and I had to put it up...

It's dedicated to my good friend, AnimeDutchess. She's been a great friend, and a great rper, and this is souly for her enjoyment. Thanks, AD!

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Yeah, I know the prologue is UBER short, but it's to whet your appetites. I'll be putting up the real first chapter right after this. Pinky promise.

A Millennium In Your Arms

A Wonnykins Production

There's a boy here, and I keep seeing him in my dreams. When I look at him, he looks just like me, but he dresses like he's some kind of god. He smiles at me sadly and tells me he wants me to wake him up, and I don't know how, and the dream always ends with him crying for someone he says he loves, and the shadows that follow us both fade. And I can't help but realize that the shadow looks like someone I know, and that it's someone I want to be with...

The dark-haired boy sat straight up in bed. He didn't sweat, didn't gasp, didn't pant. Just sat there, stock still, listening.

The bedroom around him reflected his interests for the past few years; there were, of course, various Pokemon objects scattered here and there, though more recent additions were keepsakes and photos of his travels, mostly with friends.

The most evident of these new things was, of course, the furry, yellow pokemon sleeping at his feet. Pikachu's right ear twitched in its sleep, but it seemed not to notice that its master was awake.

Troubled, the fifteen-year old cast a wary glance at his clock. It read a little past two in the morning. Feeling as though sleep wouldn't come to him again that night, Ash Ketchem got out of bed and went to his window.

It wasn't that this dream scared him. No, that wasn't the case. It was just strange, how it kept popping up more and more frequently. Always that same face looking back at him, always ending with tears and the odd disappearance of two shadows that didn't look a thing like either of them. Frowning, he leaned against his bedroom window, willing himself to think of something other then the dream.

Ash finally settled on the Oaks. It was a rare subject for him to think about, really, now-a-days. Gary, of course, upon his return into everyone's lives, was acting funny, and Ash had tried figuring that out for a while out of boredom. The professor, of course, was still into his research, and that was normal, in a sense.

No, the Oak Ash was thinking about was the one who hadn't been present for a long while.

Mai was Gary's older sister. She'd been a lot older then Gary from what Ash could remember. She must have been, he figured, because when she had been around, she was always babysitting her brother and Ash, so there must have been a large difference in age.

Around the time Gary had been seven, (Making Ash six), she'd suddenly gone away, and they hadn't seen her since. This, of course, was devastating for her brother, since the two of them had lost their parents years before. Gary still liked to say he talked to her, but nobody was really sure if this was true or not.

But, she was back, just as Ash remembered her, if not a little more shapely and taller. She claimed that she had stopped by to stay for a while, because of working-locations being close-by. At first, no one had none what she meant when she said this until Mai had explained that she was an archaeologist.

"A local found a couple artifacts in the river we used to fish in when we were kids." Mai said, softly, though her eyes had shined with suppressed excitement. "They're very rare, and the time period they came from is over a thousand years ago, when this land was all overrun with forest. We're thinking that there might be ruins of a lost civilization around here, somewhere, so we're following the river farther then previous explorers have to see what we can find."

She had seemed ecstatic about the whole possibility that she hadn't seen the clearly disappointed look on Gary's face. Ash believed that, in the fuss, he was the only one who noticed. He was surprised, when he confronted the other boy about it, that Gary told him what was on his mind.

"I just thought, you know, maybe she came back to see us." He had said, rather frustratedly, "We are her family." After that, he insisted he had things to do, and that Ash was bothering him, and he shooed him away.

Ash couldn't help but really agree with him. She'd only paused once in her ramblings to actually tell everyone how nice it was to be back home, and never once did she say anything to Gary. The dark-haired boy could see why her brother would be feeling a little hurt.

But, even though he thought her ignorance of her family was uncalled for, she did come up with something good.

After all was said and done, Mai invited everyone to spend a few days with her while she and her crew tried to look for the lost city, as cliché as it sounded. Needless to say, everyone excepted the offer. It was strange, though, because this time on his journey back to Pallet, Ash had brought all his friends. He'd thought that Mai's team wouldn't want so many people around, but she'd been glad to have everyone along.

So it all came down to tomorrow. Everyone, including the professor and, strangely, Ash's mother, were going with Gary's older sister to a place Mai thought was over a thousand years old, even though there was no proof, yet, that the place even existed. Well, he guessed that he'd at least could say, later, that he'd been on the trip.

The boy yawned, and he finally crawled back into bed, covering his shoulders with the comforter that was still warm. Tomorrow could wait. There was sleep to catch, first.