May sighed as she leaned back on her palms, a frown appearing on her features. The remains of the small campfire smoldered in front of her, but she stared blankly at it, hardly seeing it, her mind miles away.

She had spent the past six months wandering through Hoenn with Ash and Brock, two trainers she had randomly met up with on her way to meet Professor Birch. The day was seared into the brunette's mind, completely unforgettable.

"I wonder if he remembers?" she mumbled, her voice loud in the silent night.

She cast a quick glance at her three companions, nodding to herself as they made no movements. May stretched her legs out before her as she leaned back on her palms, staring at the starry night – the pieces she could see through the dense overhang anyway.

A smile appeared on her lips as she heard someone shuffle around in their sleeping bag, a mumble escaping someone's lips. "It would be so different without everyone by my side," she whispered to herself, closing her eyes momentarily. "I don't think I could have done this without them . . ."

When she first met Ash, she was trying to avoid that Duskell that drifted into her path, how she disliked Pokemon so much back then . . . it felt like another lifetime. She hadn't wanted to be a Pokemon Trainer – she was just going along with it to avoid her parents.

It was with the help of Ash that she had decided to become a Coordinator. She knew seeing her friends [and, maybe, her brother] sitting in the stands, cheering for her, had lifted her spirits when the stress got too much.

If it wasn't for him, she wouldn't have thought to have become a Coordinator.

If it wasn't for him, she might have wound up going right back to Petalburg City . . .

May grinned; she wouldn't trade in the multiple run-ins with Team Rocket, the superior attitude of Drew and Harley, or the hard forest ground they had to sleep on nightly for anything.

May cast her blue eyes around the small area, a smile slowly appearing on her lips as she located Ash through the dim light the moon overhead was giving off. "I wouldn't trade it for anything," she whispered, then shook her head, running a hand through her hair. "I wonder what he thinks about, no, I'm not ready to . . ." May sighed, flopping down on her sleeping bag.

"I'm just a chicken," she mumbled, pulling the cover up. "Maybe another day I can . . ." she trailed off, staring at the stars overhead, unaware that someone might have heard what she had said . . .

# # #

A/N: Yes, I know it's a super short story. Much like "Not That Girl", this was written back in 2010 and was part of a prompt that a friend challenged me too - "To write a short story based on the next song on my IPod". Found this on my hard drive over the weekend and decided to post it as-is (with some minor sentence edits)