IMPORTANT UPDATE: So I finally got around to editing this story properly and fixing it up- some of the sentences were killing me. As a result, you've got a cleaner, slightly more detailed version of the story you might have read about a year ago! *sheepish grin* If you're rereading, nothing beyond basic syntax has changed before the sixth chapter; go there for an extension. If you're a new reader, welcome, and I hope you enjoy!

As a disclaimer; I am not Nintendo. Therefore, I do not own Pokemon. Also, I'm just doing this for fun when I should be writing more productive things, so don't expect consistent updates. Also also, I love critiques! So much! Seriously, I'm always looking to improve, so critiques are mega-helpful. Or, if you don't want to put the effort into thinking of rougher areas, a review might be nice.

In the forest, light falls through the trees in a peculiar way. It's warped by leaves and clouds, and it dances about the air and sparkles in your eyes. It makes you see things that aren't really there.

"Rebecca, Rebecca, Shannon's telling lies again!"

Rebecca looked up quickly from the book she had been reading, her glasses slipping partway down her nose. The children had run into her clearing, four of them chasing the fifth, who was wearing a perpetually stubborn expression. There was absolutely no chance that they would leave her alone if she politely asked them to leave, so she sighed and slipped her bookmark between the pages.

"It isn't a lie," Shannon, the red-headed seven-year-old, said angrily. She stopped in the middle of the clearing and, folding her arms over her chest, stated, "I saw her, I swear I did!"

Jack, who was nine and convinced that he knew everything there was to know, snorted. "What, are you kidding? You're not cool enough. Mew would never let you see him!"

"Anyway, you don't have proof," muttered Andrew, more bashfully than the other boy. He glanced at her awkwardly, then looked away.

Rebecca quietly cleared her throat, and the children stopped talking and looked over at her with the kind of speed that could only be gained by much repetition. "I suppose I'll have to remind you, again, that Mew is genderless," she said mildly.

Shannon pouted. "But- but it's not nice to call her an it!"

"That's not the point!" Jack interrupted. "I don't want her tellin' lies to Sammy." Sammy was Jack's little brother, the three-year-old who silently followed Jack everywhere. He was currently standing next to him, staring up at his brother with a wide grin.

Jessica, the only other girl and, consequently, Shannon's best friend, stepped up to stand next to Shannon supportively. "I think that Shan's telling the truth. I don't see why you should think she'd lie, when she's never lied before."

"What about the magical berry tree?" Andrew asked skeptically.

Jessica rolled her eyes. "That wasn't lying, it was exaggerating--"

Rebecca closed her eyes briefly, then clapped her hands once. "Children!"

The five fell silent once more, the boys on one side, girls on the other.

"Jessica," Rebecca said, "what is Mew's entry in the Pokedex?"

"Ah," Jessica said, blushing and shuffling her feet, "ah, it's, um, something to do with, uh, mirages, and--"

"You mean that, despite the fact that you are all having a quiz on the rarest Pokemon native to Kanto next week, you don't know Mew's Pokedex entry?"

Jessica looked at her feet. Glancing over the other children, Rebecca found that they were all very determinedly not looking directly at her.

Without a word, she unzipped the pouch tied around her waist, and fished out a small, boxlike item. It flipped open, and she spoke the Pokemon's name into it.

"Mew," the Pokedex said evenly, the sound reaching out to the children. "The 'New Species' Pokemon. So rare that it is still said to be a mirage by many experts. Only a few people have seen it worldwide."

"There!" Jack said triumphantly, "if only a few people have ever seen him, there's no way you did, Shannon!"

"However," Rebecca continued quietly, "there are different entries by different people." She clicked on the 'Johto' option in the screen.

"Mew, the 'New Species' Pokemon. Apparently, it appears only to those people who are pure of heart and have a strong desire to see it."

"There you go!" Jessica said smugly as Shannon grinned. "Shan's definitely a good person, and she's always wanted to find a special Pokemon, so that's proof enough!"

"It only proves two things," Rebecca murmured, half-smiling. "One- there is no definite evidence to prove or contradict Shannon's story, and two- none of you have started studying for your quiz yet." She quirked up her eyebrows knowingly. "I suggest you all start proving me wrong on number two right away, or I may be forced to test you on your knowledge much, much sooner."

That was enough of an incentive for them- the five children were very quick to run back out of the clearing, their talk turning to that of which game they should play next as soon as they thought they were out of earshot. Rebecca grinned knowingly, and settled back to continue reading.

And if she thought she saw a flash of pink through the trees- well, that was just a trick of her imagination.

-

Rebecca had realized what her mother was trying to do after the fifth trainer passing through was invited over to dinner. Mossgreen Village was very small, without so much as a Pokemon Center to its name, and the only reason trainers came to it in the first place was to browse among the many specialty potions sold by Cassandra in her ever-prospering shop. It was always considered polite to feed trainers when one happened across them, but the constant influx of male trainers in their late-teens that had started to grace the dinner table had made Rebecca more than a little suspicious.

Her mother was old-fashioned, and, consequently, absolutely shocked that Rebecca still had not found a nice boy to settle down with at the elderly age of 19. And, while she could not find a fault in Rebecca's decision to become the new teacher in the small community, she could still rag on her for never travelling and meeting other people. Rebecca suspected that her mother hoped that she would decide to run off with one of the trainers one night.

Still, the boys were usually nice, and it did her father good to reminisce on the days when he had travelled through Kanto. Rebecca was polite, if silent, when the discussion grew heated at the dinner table.

"Things have changed!" her father told the young man visiting tonight over his meatloaf, tapping his fork on the plate. "Why, when I was on my journey, Pokemon kept strictly to their territories. If you saw a Farfetch'd, you knew you were east of Fuschia! And there certainly weren't all sorts of Pokemon from other regions wandering around!"

"Yeah, but you have to take these reports with a grain of salt," the boy said mildly, buttering his fourth roll (trainers did eat such a lot). "I really doubt that people have been seeing wild Eevee in the Safari Zone. It's probably just an advertising technique- and it'll certainly work!"

"It's preposterous!" her father exclaimed, waving his fork violently and (to her mother's chagrin) sending a tiny clump of mashed potato flying into the wall. "Everyone knows that all the Eevee today are tamed. If those little beasts start popping up in the wild, it'd completely mess up the species balance!" He sighed heavily and dug his fork back into the mutilated food on his plate. "Things like that are why you can't find a good Pokemon these days."

"That's debatable," the trainer muttered, shaking his head. "Still, you've got a point- the rarer Pokemon are harder to find these days. Heck, it's been ages since I've heard of a legendary sighting, and there was a bunch of them way back, remember?"

"But that doesn't mean they don't happen," Rebecca said quietly, her first comment in the conversation. "Wasn't there a news report about some kind of water Pokemon and her egg recently? Oh, and one of my students insists that she saw a Mew in the forest the other day."

The trainer looked rather startled for a moment; then he shook his head. "Mew? Man, and I thought it was hard to find a Chansey. Seriously, I doubt it. Maybe the kid saw a Jigglypuff or something." He tapped his fork on the edge of his plate for a few seconds, still frowning; then, noticing that she was still looking at him, he smiled. "But yeah, I heard about that egg, too. Wonder if anything ever came of it?"

With that, the conversation turned to the rumors of wild breeding techniques that had been adapted recently, which were exagerrated and almost certainly false. But, as Rebecca kept an eye on the trainer for the rest of the meal, she noticed that he looked more thoughtful than amused.