Espeon sat, straight backed, regal looking as always, staring into the fire. Her trainer Taylor had noted on several occasions how she seemed to love the fire, so much so he thought she might have been a flareon if given the choice. He smiled contently to himself and leaned closer to the fire to steal some of it's warmth. Each day as night crept up on them, he would make a small bonfire to keep warm and bring her out and they would sit together, curled up on the ground before falling asleep in the makeshift tent. Unlike other trainers, he detested the use of pokeballs. While the pokemon seemed happy enough to come in and out of them, no one was ever truly sure what happened to them while they were inside of it. He had heard some rumors only a year or so after his journey first began, about pokemon becoming stuck inside of the balls, having to be rushed to pokemon centers to see if the nurses could do anything. There was very little to be done since it was such an uncommon thing to happen, but the nurses would do their best. The rumors had stopped very quickly afterwards, but he had been hearing similar things on the wind yet again, a full 7 years afterwards.
Things- strange things- could happen to pokemon inside of their pokeballs. He'd heard twisted tales of more then one pokemon being forced into a single ball, combining them, turning them into unimaginably horrible looking monsters in constant pain. Some had no skin- he'd heard- and others where there should have been a mouth or eyes were only holes leading into nothing but the insides of their body. Their organs would spew out onto the ground, and the combined pokemon would fall over dead in nearly an instant.. Some had managed a few human words- 'love', 'friend', 'betrayal'.. Words that made a trainer weep when they heard them. They stung, deeply, leaving a mark on the trainer's heart so deep that they might never have battled again, and many did not.
Taylor had but one pokemon- his beloved Espeon. Once upon a time he had had many more, but those days of collecting were past. He had given many up to more attentive trainers who would love them just as dearly, and others had gone of their own free will, trying to find their place in the world. Some of them had gone for him to turn a profit, selling them off to various gym leaders, leaders of dark organizations, and rich brats whose parents could afford to buy the kind of pokemon Taylor had raised. Loving pokemon who never once questioned an order in battle, even if they knew it to be a mistake. They battled, not to win, but to be a slave of their owners, which was exactly what their owners had wanted.
On this night the moon was a mere sliver of what it could have been and the sky was a deep royal blue. Espeon looked up at the night sky through the bright orange autumn leaves, the firelight illuminating them, making them almost glow in the night time. She shifted to dislodge a rock that had been pressing into her backside, and quietly purred to herself. Taylor looked over at her; as Taylor looked at her he felt an immediate sting of regret. It seemed like each time he looked at her he felt worse and worse, remembering the things he did, the person he used to be. Selling pokemon was a trade he was long since out of, and had no intention of getting back into. Taylor curled his legs up to his chest and wrapped his arms around himself in an effort to keep warm. It seemed like no matter how hot the fire was, the ground was always frozen.
3