Leo rubbed his eyes as he stared at the book, gingerly turning the pages so as not to break the yellowing paper.
When he first opened the book – a journal, he had come to realize – he had been more than a little disappointed.
Not only was the writing smudged, water having bled through the pack it had been in and ruining a few of the pages, but it had appeared to be in an entirely different language.
It wasn’t really unexpected, now that Leo thought about it, but it had been disappointing.
That is, until he began to recognize the alphabet.
It was almost funny, Leo thought to himself as he ran his finger along a passage, slowly deciphering it, that the pokémon world even used pokémon as their alphabet.
It wasn’t that it was a foreign language, rather, the pokémon world had adopted the Unown as a writing system.
He recognized most of the capital letters as typical Unown shapes, it was the lower-case letters which were giving him trouble.
He was getting it down, slowly but surely, but it was a process.
“…the monsters have…grown aggressive lately.
I will have…to…in-vestigate route four soon,” Leo parsed out, sounding out each word individually.
“Dang, Archibald, you really kept a detailed journal, didn’t you?” Leo asked, sticking a blade of grass in-between the pages so he didn’t lose his spot and flipping back to the front.
There, written on the inside of the front cover, was the author’s first name and a smudge that could have once been his last; Archibald.
Leo had only read a few pages, but already it seemed like Archibald had led an interesting life.
Seemed to be a fairly powerful trainer, too, though Leo couldn’t tell just from the writing.
He’d been asked to handle an issue on the routes, and though Archibald had mentioned a few of his pokémon they were nicknamed so he couldn’t tell what they were.
“Slooow?” a dopey voice called and Leo smiled, closing the book and setting it to the side as he looked up at the Slowpoke that had come to say goodnight.
The pink creature ambled up to Leo’s fire, carefully maneuvering around the small blaze to butt its head against Leo’s shoulder.
The gentle movement still threatened to knock Leo over though, hiding the dopey creature’s deceptive strength.
“Heya, King.
Coming to say goodnight?
Everyone’s falling asleep early tonight, must be tired,” Leo said, scratching the Slowpoke who Leo had dubbed King behind its round ears.
The Slowpoke’s skin was still wet from the lake, though Leo didn’t really mind much.
“You done doing your rounds, making sure everyone’s settled?” he continued absently, looking out over the lake.
The rest of the Slowpoke herd had already settled in for the night, the dying light of the sun slowly fading, having already hidden itself behind the mountains.
Leo probably wouldn’t even have enough light to read by soon.
“Slooow,” King called, cocking its head to the side and eyeing Leo’s fire.
“Don’t you dare.
You know I need that,” Leo chided, gently pushing the Slowpoke’s muzzle away from the fire.
King didn’t respond but also didn’t put out his fire again, something he had struggled to teach the Slowpoke about for weeks, so Leo figured he got the gist.
“I’ll be up for a bit longer, you don’t need to worry about me.
I’m going to work on my spear a bit then I’ll head to bed,” Leo told King.
The Slowpoke remained still for a few minutes, Leo content to stare at the brilliant orange coals of his fire with some company.
Then it turned and trundled off, sound a low call as it once again began to circle the Slowpoke herd.
“You’re not ready to sleep either, huh?” Leo asked with a chuckle, watching King as it ambled slowly along, nudging one of the Slowbro as it went.
He watched the Slowpoke for a minute before shaking his head and turning his attention to the palm-sized Skarmory feather shard he had found, and the long, straight-ish tree branch he was trying to attach it to, leaning up against the tree next to him.
For a little bit he had used the shard as a sort of hatchet, burying the shard in a thick branch and using it that way until he figured out the sword worked better for that purpose.
So he had spent the past few weeks trying to make a spear out of it, with little luck.
The primitive and still-not-perfect cordage he’d been making out of grass fibers wasn’t strong enough to handle rough impacts, and whenever he tried to fix the tip to the spear in other ways it would, for one reason or another, fail.
It wasn’t like he really needed a spear though, he was getting proficient with his atlatl even if he hadn’t killed anything with it yet, it would just be fun to have.
Maybe he was getting a little lax, now that he was figuring things out and getting comfortable in his survival.
Leo hummed to himself as he worked, trying to wedge the spear tip into a small groove he had carved into the makeshift haft.
He wrestled with it, and struggled a bit, trying not to press on the edges so he didn’t cut himself, and eventually gave up when the haft started to split.
Leo sighed, wresting the spearhead out of the shaft and tossing it to the side in annoyance.
It wasn’t long before his fire began to die out and, with a little bit of reluctance, Leo turned and crawled into his bed.
He had really lucked out with this find – a medium sized hole had been dug beneath the roots of a particularly tall pine and Leo had literally stumbled upon it.
All it took was a little bit of digging and Leo had a decent little hidey hole, and sure he had to curl up into a ball in order to fit, but there was very little chance he would be seen and he would be kept warm when he crawled into it.
It had been his bed for the past two days, in fact, and worked beautifully.
Leo shuddered a bit as the temperature continued to drop, sharper than he expected, and eyed the dull orange glow of the remains of his fire.
If it rained hard he could be in for a rough night, especially if his hole started to fill with water.
But sleepiness overtook his concern and, after crawling inside and pulling his backpack in front of the hole to add another layer of protection, he soon drifted off to sleep.
…
A chill ran down Leo’s spine, his eyes snapping wide open to stare at the dirt wall in front of him.
It was so dark he almost couldn’t see directly in front of him.
Yet, as he let out a short, silent breath, his breath came out in a white puff.
Adrenaline was already spiking through his system when he woke, the cold that embraced him largely ignored thanks to that, but now it quickly settled into an icy calm.
Something was wrong.
The forest was dead silent.
Not a sound could be heard, and when Leo slowly turned his head to peer out of his hole past his backpack, he could see the layer of white that covered his fire pit.
His eyes narrowed.
He dared not move, even the sound of his heart beating seemed too loud as he strained his senses, searching for anything that might give him a clue as to what was going on.
A dark shape skittered past the entrance, soft chitters reaching Leo’s ears in the near-silence.
He nearly flinched when something skittered over the top of his den, landing softly in front of the entrance.
A singular sleek, black leg was visible through Leo’s peep hole, red feathers stretching down to brush the ground behind it.
Leo tensed, pressing his feet against the dirt wall behind him and preparing to leap out if the pokémon noticed him.
For a moment, nothing happened, and it seemed like it would just move on.
The creature stood there, then slowly turned and began to shuffle around, messing around with Leo’s backpack.
It paused, and Leo held his breath one clawed hand reached around the edge of the pack, its head lowering to look in at Leo with piercing red eyes.
“HAAAAAH!” Leo roared, launching himself out of his hole and slamming into his backpack, which in turn hit the pokémon.
It yelped in surprise as it was tossed away, skittering off into the darkness as Leo scrambled to his feet, his head whipping back and forth wildly in search of the pokémon.
His mind quickly processed what he’d seen – black fur, red feathers, bipedal, ice on the firepit – a mild curse left his lips as he snatched up the spear haft.
He could only think of one pokémon that fit that description.
“Sneasel,” he ground out, taking a fighting stance and levelling his weapon at the dark forest.
He dared not risk crossing the firepit to reach the Skarmory sword – it was too unwieldy for him anyway – as he searched for the pokémon.
The trees and bushes that had made up this part of the forest were nothing more than dark blobs to his eyes, a white mist filling the air and making visibility even worse.
Every once in a while dark shapes flitted between trees and around bushes, chittering and hissing to each other ominously through the trees.
A sudden burst of freezing wind sent Leo to shivering, ice forming on his t-shirt and in his hair, his eyes narrowing as he sought out his aggressor.
Red eyes flashed at him, and claws scratched on trees as multiple Sneasel darted about through the trees.
Leo’s blood ran cold.
Sneasel were pack pokémon, and as a young, defenseless human without any pokémon to defend himself with, Leo was prime prey.
Perhaps even better than the Slowpoke herd behind him – at least they had methods to fight back with.
Another blast of icy cold wind was shot at him but this time Leo moved out of the way, only able to detect it from the sound of leaves rustling.
It left a fine sheen of white on the ground, and basked the trunk of a tree in a layer of white.
What could only be described as snickers echoed from all around – above, in front, behind – and Leo shuddered as terror began to grip him, his heart hammering and breathing coming in short, ragged bursts.
Then one Sneasel revealed itself, black fur blending in so well with the dark night that it was only ten feet away when Leo noticed it.
The bipedal ‘mon stared at him with piercing red eyes, the red feathers on top of its head twitching in anticipation as it rubbed its claws together menacingly.
The yellow dot on its forehead was almost bewitching as it slowly, methodically advanced.
Leo let out a long, slow breath, accepting what was about to happen.
…
A/ N: The Story Needs More Power Stones 😉