Author's Note - This doesn't seem like a Pokemon fic for a little bit, and then near the end, I'm afraid that the plot moved too quickly. Do they balance out, or am I just going crazy? (Feel free to answer both ways if you want. ^_^)
Disclaimer - I don't own any Pokemon mentioned in this story. Come to think of it, I don't own Pokemon at all! Pokemon belongs to Nintendo, Game Freak, and the wonder-man that is Satoshi Tajiri! ^_^ Anyone else in the story, however, I made myself. Any resemblance to others, living or dead, is purely coincidental, blah blah blah, yadda yadda. You know the drill.
Walks-the-Umbra
Chapter 1
"Hey! Hey there!"
Lilith stopped walking and turned around to see a girl with short dark hair running towards her, a huge grin on her face. Not an unfriendly grin, she noted. Not the "I know something about you don't know" grin that she was used to seeing on people as she passed.
The girl soon caught up to her and stopped. "Hi there!" she said cheerfully. "You're Lilith, right?" Lilith nodded simply, and the girl continued. "I'm Edith. Edith Johansen. You're new here, aren't you?"
Again, Lilith nodded. Ah, here it starts, she thought. The tricks. The initiations. The "do what I say and I'll make sure you fit in" suggestions. Just play along for a while, and she'll go away when she sees her plan won't work.
Edith stuck out her hand. "Welcome to Ebony Falls, and welcome to Ebony Falls High School." Lilith took the hand cautiously and shook it politely. Edith continued. "I've seen you aren't in the halls lately, and I hadn't seen you before. I figured I might as well introduce myself. I know what it's like to move here in the middle of a term. Not knowing anyone. Everyone has their own little cliques, and they're too busy to invite you in. Not to mention the load of schoolwork you have to catch up on!" she added with an even larger grin.
Despite the overly perky attitude, Lilith was starting to like this girl. She was friendly to her, actually speaking to her of her own free will, and didn't seem to have some sort of hidden agenda.
Yet.
Lilith nodded for the third time before speaking. "It's nice to meet you," she said, flipping a stray strand of her long black hair out of her eyes. "I think I've seen you in one of my classes. Literature, right? You sit three seats away?"
"Yeah, that's me!" Edith replied. "Glad you recognized me." She paused. "Anyone, class is going to begin any minute now, and I have to get my books from my locker." She turned around and started walking down the hall. "Bye, Lilith!" she called back over her shoulder.
Lilith watched her as she walked away. She certainly did seem nice enough, and if she was any judge of people, she didn't want anything in return for being so nice. The skirt of her navy blue uniform moved back and forth as she walked, and the school bag slung over her shoulder made her slump on one side just a little. Her short brown hair bobbed with each step she took. She really seemed like she belonged here at Ebony Falls High. Not at all like how Lilith felt.
Lilith sighed and stepped over to her locker, opening it and looking at the small mirror she'd put inside. She seemed almost the opposite of Edith. She had long, straight, very dark brown hair, almost black, and clear blue eyes to rival Edith's deep brown ones. Her skin was just a tad too pale, giving her a slightly ethereal appearance in the right lighting. She was tall, but not too tall, and the dark blue of the school uniform made her look almost as if she should be in an office building rather than being a student.
The bell began to chime softly in the background, and the sound of the students filing into classrooms reminded Lilith that she had no time to stand and contemplate her appearance. A quick glance at the schedule she'd pinned to the inside of her locker door told her she had Japanese as her next class (what a diverse school this was. For such a small town, the school system was terrific, and offered the widest variety of courses in the state.). She grabbed her text book, closed her locker, and ran off down the hallway to avoid being late.
The walk home at the end of the day was always enjoyable, even if it was a walk home to an empty house. Before she reached her destination, she could forget who she was, and just listen to the cries of the Spearow and Pidgey in the air, or watch a cat-fight between two Meowth over a pice of fish. Not that she lived in a bad area of town where strays were common. Far from it. Lilith's home was nothing short of a small mansion, located in the center of the town. Most of the rooms lay empty, of course. Only four were used: Lilith's bedroom, the living room, the kitchen, and the bathroom. All others were empty.
What a lot of wasted space.
She walked inside, slipping off her shoes as she did so, calling out "hello!" to the empty house more out of habit than to comfort herself. Her parents had died not a month before, and she'd had no living relatives to go to. As stated in the will her parents had conveniently made some time before the accident, she was to go and live in Ebony Falls, at the family summer home.
"Summer home, my ass," Lilith had said. "This isn't a summer home, this is a mansion! It could be put to better use than housing one girl."
But the courts wouldn't hear of it. She packed up her things and moved into the house two weeks after the death. Funny, she'd thought when she'd seen the building from the inside. Funny how my life could fit into one room. True, it was a very large room. Large enough for a computer, entertainment systems galore, a four-poster bed, her clothes, whatever else she'd managed to bring. She still felt guilty every night before she slept. Living alone in such a large house, living off the substantial amount of money her parents had left for her in the bank. She could live off that in splendor for over a decade, she deduced one day.
Her family had been painfully rich, but she had tried her whole life not to flaunt it. She knew that there were people starving on the streets every day. She knew that there were hundreds of people who would have killed for a chance to be in her place. There were times she would have gladly let them kill her to take her place. Not that she was bored of her life. It just seemed, at times, that living in luxury was so pointless. She'd had very few friends, even before moving to Ebony Falls, simply because she didn't want to upstage anybody.
Dropping her books off on the kitchen table, she strode over to the phone and checked for messages on the answering machine. The light flashed, and "1" showed on the LCD screen. Lilith's eyebrows rose. Who had called? Rewinding the tape, she began to listen.
"Hi there!" came the fuzzy voice of none other than Edith. "Just thought I'd give you a call. You remember me, right? Edith? We met in the hall today? Anyway, I work on the student council, so I figured I'd look up your number, and give you a ca-- Wow, you live there?! In that huge house? Man, your parents must be loaded! Look, I have to go do some work now, but I just wanted to call and say that if you ever needed anything, like help with schoolwork, or just to talk or whatever, then give me a call. My number's 555-8259. Okay, gotta go now! Bye!" There was a click and a whir as the message ended and the tape automatically rewound.
Lilith sat back on the couch. Well, there goes my cover, she thought. So much for hiding the fact that I have some good money in my pocket. She sighed. She had hoped to make a clean break from her past, but there was no real chance of that happening now.
Oh well, she thought. No getting past that now. What's done is done. Maybe I can just trust that Edith girl to keep her mouth shut for now.
Thinking perhaps a walk might clear her head, she got up and walked out, locking the door behind her. Though she didn't really care if anyone stole anything from her, it was more out of habit than anything else. Her parents had drilled a high sense of 'security-is-important' into her since she could remember.
The neighborhood was pretty nice, she found as she walked through it. Decent houses, although few of them looked lived-in. She supposed that most of them were just there and taken care of simply for show, to make it look like the 'rich part of town'. She shook her head. So much emphasis on appearances that nobody should even care about.
As she turned the corner, she caught a glimpse of red eyes in the shadows, and she froze. Unsure of what it was that was watching her, it was all she could think of to do. Within second, the eyes blinked, and a black paw came out of the shadows, a black paw with some sort of gold-ring pattern on the fur further up the leg. Pokemon, she thought. Definitely a Pokemon.
She heard a footstep behind her, and the paw and eyes simply vanished back into the shadows as if they'd never been there. She spun around to see what had startled it away, and saw a simply dressed old man, a watering can in his hand, and a few grass stains on the knees of his overalls. "Damned things," he muttered as he cast a dirty look into the shadows. "Wish they'd stop coming 'round here."
"What was it?" Lilith asked him.
"Umbreon," he answered as if she should know, then squinted at her. He pulled away, laughing. "Ha! Ye're that new one here, aren't ye?" Lilith nodded. He grew serious. "Yeah, those things're Umbreon. Live in packs in the woods outside town. Don't see 'em much in the city, but when we do, we all drive 'em out. S'bad luck to have those damned things anywhere near ye."
"Why?" asked Lilith, now suddenly curious.
The man narrowed his eyes. "Well, they're Dark Pokemon, ain't they? Dark bein' evil. Least, that's how folks 'round here see 'em. They bring bad luck to whoever sees 'em, so we try an' keep 'em away whenever we can. Best you throw rocks at the little buggers if they come near ye. Unless," he added with an odd look on his face, "Unless ye're a bit fond of them types."
Lilith shook her head. "I don't know much about them at all. But I think I'll stay away from them from now on."
The man laughed and clapped her on the back in a friendly manner. "That's the way! Ye'll fit in just fine 'round here! Now, ye go on home, will ye? It'll be getting dark soon, and no one likes to be out after dark. Too many shadows, if ye get my meaning."
Lilith nodded, and began to walk back the way she came, back towards her house. A quick glance at the sky told her the man was right; it was starting to get a bit dark. Well, not so dark as faintly pink and orange as the sun began to set. Either way, it wouldn't be long until dark.
Despite what the man on the street had said, she didn't go straight home. Lilith had always been a night person by nature, and loved being outdoors on clear nights when the stars could be seen. She used to lie outside for hours and watch the starts overhead, sometimes falling asleep on her lawn and having to be carried back inside. Other times, she'd go for a midnight walk in the park by her old house. Her parents never really minded. They thought her to be a very responsible young girl who knew how to take care of herself.
Her eyes turned to the trees at the top of the street, and the trail that was just barely visible. So, the Umbreon lived in the woods, did they? Lilith smiled. Maybe I'll see if I can find them. She'd never had any sort of huge attachment to Pokemon, but adventure and mystery has always managed to catch her interest. This was no exception. Making sure that no one had followed her, she started to run up the street towards the thick trees.
From the top of a building nearby, a pair of red eyes watched her run.
The woods were thicker than Lilith had thought from the outside, but that didn't stop her from pressing onward, even when the trail became almost indistinguishable from the plants and bushes on the ground. The sun had completely set, and she was relying only on her vision to get by. Fortunately for her, she'd always had decent night vision, or she'd have been in serious trouble. Still, she moved slowly and carefully, and kept her eyes and ears open for anything interesting.
It wasn't long before she came upon a clearing in the trees, wide enough for her to see the sky perfectly. It was a perfectly clear night, as it had been a perfectly clear day, and the full moon was shining brightly now that there were no treetops to hinder the light. In the center of the clearing stood a large rock with a flat top, making the area seem like some sort of ancient site of worship. Maybe I've found something interesting, she thought as she approached the rock.
Climbing on top of it, she stood tall and looked around. A few times she could have sworn she saw flashes of red from the shrubs surrounding the clearing, but they always disappeared faster than she could focus on them. It was a truly beautiful place.
A beam of moonlight shone straight on her, and she was blinded by the sudden light. Her stomach began to cramp, and she dropped to her knees in pain, unable to see or move. What's happening? she thought frantically, trying to cry out, but finding she was inable to. What's going on?! Pains, like tiny needles were piercing her skin, began to course over her body, and opened her mouth in a silent scream.
Around her, pairs or red eyes opened and began to watch.
So, what do you think? Good? Bad? Want to find out what's happening to Lilith? The second part should be out soon. For once, I kno exactly where I'm going with a fic, and this is one I've been dying to write for a while. ^_^
