A/N: The first chapter is the only one told from the trainer's point of view; the rest of the story is told from the Ralt's point of view, starting from when he was born to his meeting with his trainer and the events that followed afterwards.
There's this thing humans do: it's called 'naming.' And, well, humans enjoy naming things. As a Pokémon, it's not something I've really understood. Does everything in life really need an introduction? There always seems to be a "This Pokémon is called this" or "This building is named that." Of course, we Pokémon still call trees 'trees' and rocks 'rocks,' but if I live in Sinnoh I don't need to know that there's a Pokémon in Unova called Blitzle. It's just not useful information. In fact, in the wild, my parents never referred to any of our neighbors by a specific name, nor did they refer to us by a name. We remembered each other, and that was enough.
So when I first became a part of the world of humans, I was baffled at all these names. Every person, every building, every Pokémon had a name to go by. There was John, Mary, Steven, Devon Goods, the Pokémon Center, 14 Cradily Avenue, Princess, Spot, Wily…just an endless string of things to learn. Even at the age of 32, I'm still learning the names of everything.
For a Pokémon, it's a slow, ongoing process.
I was born a wild Pokémon. You would have called me a Ralts, my parents Gardevoirs, but we didn't refer to each other as such. To me, they were Mother and Father; to them, I was Child. Simple as that. It was the same for every other Pokémon family in the forest I had lived.
On the day I hatched, the first thing I saw was two white-and-green faces peering down at me. Mother and Father were kneeling in front of me, observing me and admiring me. The face on the left immediately began to make a fuss over me, some kind of noise spilling out of an unseen mouth. Just like you, I wasn't born with the ability to understand speech. I was, however, born with the ability to wail.
And wail I did.
Both faces were filled with surprise at the sound I made, and left-face (whom I soon came to know as Mother) picked me up and bounced me on her shoulder, speaking in a low, soothing voice. When I began to calm, right-face (my Father) took me from left-face and held me high in the air with pride. They said things to me, held me close, showed me off to the neighbors. I was their first child; I would be their only one, too.