Chapter 2: Awake

Sunlight peeked through the trees, casting patches of sunlight onto a tiny Sneasel in the woods. A light frost covered the ground. The texture of it felt strange under the Sneasel's feet as she stood up, but it also had a sort of satisfaction to it, as if she liked the feel of stiff grass bending under her feet and making those soft, frosty noises. She did like it, didn't she? She knew she did, although wasn't quite sure how, considering her memory was gone. Trying to remember anything only made her headache worse.

That's right, that was what she felt when she woke up. A headache. The word sounded so strange. It was like she was remembering the meaning of a word from a foreign language. Her thoughts were interrupted when a large growl came from inside of her. At first, she panicked, but then she remembered. That was her stomach growling. She was hungry.

The Sneasel wasn't exactly sure how to make the noises inside of her stop, but primal instincts told her to start walking, and look for something. She had been walking for a minute, maybe two, when she saw a creature that was plucking blue things from a plant. It was bipedal, and its fur was white with a few red streaks, and it had a fluffy tail that forked slightly at the tip.

Another loud growl from the Sneasel's stomach, this one louder than the first, alerted the creature to her presence. It turned its head and spotted the small Sneasel, whose first instinct was to run until the white creature called out, "Darling, it's okay! I won't harm you, I promise. You look half starved, come over here and eat." The voice was distinctly feminine and sounded mature, like that of an adult's.

Hesitantly, the Sneasel approached the creature, who spoke again now that it had her attention. "Here, have some of these," its, or rather, her clawed hand extended out, handing over some berries of a light blue color. The Sneasel scarfed them down at once. The flavor was so bitter, so revolting, but she couldn't stop eating them. When the berries in her hands ran out, she began frantically picking them off the bush and gobbling them down.

"Hungry, aren'tchya? I'm surprised you like them so much, since these berries are so bitter, most Pokémon don't like them. But with winter starting, there isn't much else around, yeah?" The white-furred Pokémon shrugged. Yes, that's the word for these creatures. Pokemon. Now that the other Pokémon had spoken, language was starting to come back to the Sneasel. She remembered how to talk. "Actually I find it quite disgusting, but I'm really hungry." With the back of her hand she wiped away the berry juice on her face from eating sloppily, and gave a sheepish grin.

"I s'pose you could eat anything if you were hungry enough, yeah? Anyways, I'm Zangoose Lumi. And you are?" The Pokemon now known as Lumi looked at the Sneasel expectantly. "Zangoose" struck her as the species name of the Pokémon. "Lumi" was probably their real name.

"I'm...Alice." She hesitated at first, not knowing what her name was, but it came to her lips naturally, as if many years of speaking the word made it habit enough that she was able to give it without thought. So that's my name. Alice.

Lumi raised an eyebrow at Alice the Sneasel, thinking it odd that Alice hadn't given her species name as her first name as was customary for Pokémon. "Is that foreign?"

"I'm...not really sure, honestly."

"You're not sure?"

"Well um, you see, I've lost my memory."

"Really! You're an amnesiac?!"

"Yeah! That's the word for it!" Longer and lesser used words like "amnesiac" seemed to be taking longer to come back to Alice. She couldn't remember them right off the bat, but once Lumi had said the word, she was able to recognize it immediately.

"That's pretty interesting, you're actually the second amnesiac I've met."

Alice was shocked. "Really?! There's someone else like me?"

"Well, it was a long time ago, and at the time it had been about a year since they'd lost their memory, so it's not like I met them as soon as they lost it. They were starting to get their memories back at that point, if only a little bit."

So there is hope for me getting my memory back, Alice thought. "Hm, I can't remember anything before waking up just a little while ago today." She scratched the back of her head, trying to recall something, anything, that might give her a clue as to who she was or how she developed amnesia. There was something, but Alice couldn't figure out what it was. It was like waking up and knowing that she had a dream, but being unable to remember anything about it.

"That recent, darling? You're lucky you found me to help you out. You know, there's a powerful Psychic type Pokémon named Alakazam that might be able to unlock your memories, or at least know what caused this to happen to you. He lives a bit farther south from here. The other guy who lost his memory was on his was to see him when we met. Oh, it's that way." Lumi pointed in a direction slightly to the left of the direction that Alice had been traveling earlier.

"You can't come with me to show me the way, can you?" Alice questioned.

"Afraid not," said Lumi. "I've got children to take care of. But it shouldn't be too hard to find him. Even if you get lost, he's rather well-known, so most Pokémon you come across will be able to tell you where he lives."

"I see. Well, thank you for telling me about him." With that, Alice waved farewell to Lumi and began to head in the direction Lumi had pointed her to.

"I hope you get your memory back!" Lumi called after the Sneasel.

I do too, thought Alice.