Instead of laying somewhere familiar, or, well, “familiar,” I was laying in a dense tangle of grass that went up over my head and bushes that pricked me with every step. Wasn’t helped by the fact I was wearing shorts. Through this entire ordeal (my legs still have not forgiven me…) So many questions were flying through my head a mile a minute.

  “Where am I?”

  “Is this the afterlife?”

  “What happened to me?”

  “Why am I here?”

  “Why are these bushes so FUCKING prickly?”

  None of these answers would come about yet. In fact, more would surface when I heard what sounded like quiet sobbing and sniffling coming from nearby, more exactly, directly to my left. I slowly made my way to a miniscule clearing, where I saw (quite possibly) the exact thing I wasn’t expecting to see.

  A Pokémon.

  Specifically, an Eevee.

  This Eevee, however, was different.

  It definitely wasn’t a shiny, but its fur was a lot darker than the typical Eevee you see in the games, almost like a plank of mahogany.

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  “Uhhh… Hey there little guy, you okay?” I hesitantly asked as I stepped right in front of the russet-colored Pokémon. They yelped in surprise as they spun around to face me, then immediately jumped and Tackled me, but it did little more than knock me back into the grass. That was all it needed, however, for it to run the opposite way, into the rest of the copse. And I, being the impulsive idiot that I am, gave chase after it.

  “Hey! Wait! Where are you going?” I desperately called out to the Eevee, who was too busy running away to respond. Suddenly, they almost ran right into a ledge, flipped clean around, and tried to Growl their most menacing Growl.

  Unfortunately for them, all it came out as was a low, quiet purr that reminded me of a cat.

  “Please, just listen to me, I need some help, and you’re the only… thing I’ve met here, so please, just tell me what happened to you, and I’ll tell you what happened to me. Okay?”

  They responded with a soft “yip!” and a quick trill. From what I’ve seen so far, Pokémon don’t do the trademark “human intonation” thing that you see them do in every Pokémon media, but I’ll need more exposure to them to confirm that.

  Speaking of Pokémon, I’m pretty clearly in a large grass patch, but I haven’t encountered any Pokémon, aside from this Eevee, which I’m pretty sure don’t occur naturally in… anywhere, at least not before Generation 3, so that’s still a mystery. But still, the absence of wild Pokémon is still… Strange.

  “So, uh, you can’t exactly talk to me the way I’m talking to you, so just nod or shake your head when I ask these questions, kay? Nod for yes, shake for no.” I stated while doing the motions, in case they didn’t know what nodding and shaking your head were. Luckily, they seemed to understand, because she nodded immediately after. Okay. This was definitely a humongous step forward from where we were just two minutes ago.

  “Are you a wild Pokémon?” No.

  “Do you belong to a trainer?” That was a yes, so this was a lost Pokémon

  “Or an abandoned one,” I suddenly thought, but I pushed that to the back of my mind. No trainer in their right mind would just abandon one of their Pokémon.

  “Oh. Well, do you want me to help you find them?” That one was a HARD yes.

  “If you want me to help you find your trainer, I’m going to need you to trust me. Okay?” That was a bit more hesitant, but still a yes.

  So I told them to follow me, and we headed off in the direction to who-knows-where, led by the Eevee. Little did I know that this was going to be the beginning of a very crazy few months…