author's note: this is my first ever fanfic. chapters will get longer, this was just a warm-up. chapters will also get more complex and more adult as well, and that's why the rating is what it is. i'm open to all comments, suggestions, and especially support. thanks. :)

It felt as if the sunset had darted across the sky in its daily route. The sun now sat in its final glory modestly on the horizon, its dying rays still brilliantly beaming spouts of molten ruby and tangerine across the landscape. The rays glimmered across the pond, glittering into a kaleidoscope when met with a wave or ripple emitted from the girl's kicking, little feet.

Unfortunately, the suns embers held no comparison to the girl's fiery hair, igniting even more vividly in the twilight coloring of the landscape. Even the sky had nothing on her sapphirine gaze, twinkles flitting vacantly in her eyes as she stared into the water's depths.

Misty hadn't been to her dock in years, it felt. The boards she and her sisters had used to build it had tragically lost their luster to the weather, the rain molding and weakening the once seemingly invincible wood. She remembered how difficult it was to attain that wood...every time a carpenter would go on their lunch break during the construction of the Cerulean Gym, she and Daisy, her eldest sister, would tip-toe on their tiny little feet and split the weight of the wood between them, both of them holding an end of a two by four and quickly escaping the scene of the crime as fast as their small legs could manage. Chests heaving from the effort they were exerting on their tiny, immature lungs, they had brought the wood in its final destination to the pond. Here they brought it, and here they built this miniature dock, and here she sat.

A faint, ghost of a smile sat teasingly at the edge of Misty's lips, threatening to break through at the memory. She sat back, her elbows supporting her, her feet still doing strange little dances in the water.

Thinking back, Misty knew she or her sisters wouldn't have gotten in trouble for taking the wood. The carpenters were friends of her mother and father's, doing the job on a discount. She remembered the particular face of the worker from whom she required the very plank she was sitting on. His face was wrinkled and humble, sporting a constant warm, gentle smile. He wouldn't harm a Caterpie, even if it was devouring his lunch. She supposed it was all in the fact that she was committing an act looked down upon in society–larceny–and though absolutely petty in its degree, that act got her adrenaline pumping through her five-year-old limbs. It was like an adventure to her and her siblings. And what child doesn't crave adventure?

Now, fourteen years later, Misty still couldn't answer the question. Children have a trait which acquires them to need adventure. She knew of one in particular, one who was born with adventure coursing through his veins, tainting his very destiny. One who she traveled with on and off since the age of twelve, embarking with him on his erratic and–in retrospect–almost lunatic journeys. One who replaced her throughout the years with younger and unbearably gorgeous girls. One who she was seeing in two days for the first time in a year.

Her eyes pricked with water. She bit her tongue down, hard, and stifled whatever sensation was rising like lava in her chest. Misty remembered the last time they had met. It was at the annual Cerulean carnival. He left that very night. Gone by morning. No goodbye, no phone call afterward, no note, no text messages, no letters. Nothing. Not even breakfast at the kitchen table the next morning, something Misty could never see that boy going without.

In fact, she wasn't even seeing him tomorrow on his accord. No, it was his mother who had insisted Misty stop by and at least make an appearance at his welcome home party.

"I'm positive he'll be delighted to see you, dear," she had said.

"But..." Misty interjected, only to be again shushed off by a delusional Delia Ketchum.

"No but's! Just come, I'll call you tomorrow to make sure you're safely on your way. Goodbye now!"

She had hung up before Misty could put up a better fight–before she had even had time to put one together in her hurricane of thoughts. Blood tainted her cheeks, drawn there from the anger she didn't have a chance to release on the telephone. She could now think of a million and a half arguments that she could have made, but there was no point; it was too late. Why did her wit lock up when most needed–in her bouts of wrath?

Not that she would have ever disrespected Mrs. Ketchum, even if she had mustered up some sort of argument to do so with.

Dumbfounded, Misty's delicate hand had supported the phone limply against her porcelain cheek, the Cerulean Gym's main hot line singing it's mocking dead-line tone into her ear.

Her pulse hammered away even recalling that conversation, her heart pumping and wheezing an unfamiliar rhythm.

Finally, Misty had exhaled a long-held in breath, a breath she was unaware that she had even been holding onto, and hung up the phone.

One word had sighed itself out of her pillowy lips, escaping against her will.

"Ash...."

Now, sitting on the dock, her thoughts swarmed and swirled madly again and again with that one word, Ash, Ash, Ash.

She pulled her knees up to her chest, her feet now out of the pond, the extra water sliding off her toes and sifting through the maze of splintered wood underneath her heels trying desperately to find the pond once more. Misty rubbed her face vigorously into her legs as if trying to smear that word off the slate board of her mind. Suddenly the dock was very uncomfortable, the stray, peeling wood prodding and needling at the bare of her exposed upper legs. Shifting, she took her face out of the crevasse of her meeting legs, resting it atop her knees. Something new was added to the portrait of her face, however: a glistening, solitaire tear sliding down her cheek. It left a trail of hot salt before it leapt off, combining into the ponds own water supply.

Misty lifted her petite hand to her face, wiping away the leftover saline trail vigorously with the heel of her palm. She stood, taking one last longing stare at the pond, before grabbing her backpack and throwing it over her shoulder. If she was going to Pallet Town, she had to start packing some decent clothes.

A Magikarp flippantly bound somewhere from the pond behind her, acrobatically twisting through the air, until gravity brought it back down where it dove gracefully back into the pond from whence it came, disappearing again into the soft, indigo blankets of water.

Misty didn't hear the splash, however, her mind was still too occupied with the crazed buzzing of that all too familiar name.

Ash.