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TBFSH - Chapter 1

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The Boy From Seiiku Homestead


Chapter 1

  My name is Arthur Russell, but I normally go by Art.  I was born in Goldenrod City, Johto and lived there for most of my life until I was forced to move to the Middle-of-Nowhere, Kiyana.  It really is the middle of nowhere because there isn’t a nearby town for at least six miles in any direction.

  I hate the Kiyana region: it’s so flat and boring and there’s really nothing to do.  Granted, I've never really been to anywhere else in Kiyana other than the Homestead except when my mom and I deliver milk to Seede Town twice a month, so I suppose I can’t have an opinion about how lame this region is.  It’s just that I miss Johto so much!

  Goldenrod City was so big, and there was so much to do there; so many places to visit.  Mostly every day after school my friends and I would ride over to the bike shop and hang out, and sometimes on the weekends we’d go underground to watch real trainers battle their pokémon.  I even miss the Radio Tower, which I had been to on so many school field trips that any excitement I once had for the place had been completely drained.

  I should probably quit thinking about Goldenrod; I'm beginning to feel homesick again.

  You see, we (my mom and I) left there when I was only a few months away from turning eleven – the age that most parents let their sons leave home to begin their pokémon journey across Johto.  Even my older brother, Bradley, left home on his eleventh birthday, and now he’s a gym leader and pokémon master, but I guess I just wasn’t lucky like he was.

  It was one of the saddest moments in my life, when he left.  I was only five but I knew that it would be a long time until I saw him again.  I liked him better than I liked any of my friends at the time and I admired him probably more than I admired our father.  Then again, in retrospect that’s not really saying much, because there had never been anything about my father that stood out to me as “role model material.”  He was just our dad (but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss him).

  Apparently our mother didn’t see things too differently, because about two years or so after Bradley left they separated.  I stayed with mom in Johto, and my father moved back to the farm he grew up on in Kiyana to help his brother, my uncle, take care of things there.  The Seiiku Homestead had been passed down through the men in my father’s family for generations.  Now that I think about it, it must have been very hard for him to raise a family in a big city like Goldenrod, especially with two boys who both wanted to grow up to be pokémon masters and not farmers like their pop.  I remember seeing him shed a tear or two the day after Bradley left home.  Funny how certain memories come back to you once you realize that they make sense on a larger scale.  But that’s just a part of growing up, I suppose.

  And so my parents stayed apart, though the divorce was never really made final.  I think maybe neither of them wanted to accept how things were.  There were some days when I could tell that my mom still missed him being there.  Those were the days that I thought about Bradley the most.  Of course, I thought about him every day, but sometimes it was more noticeable that our house only sheltered two people instead of four.

  I usually imagined him winning a tough battle or flying high above the trees with his bird pokémon.  Those were his favorite.  One year for his ninth or tenth birthday mom got him a t-shirt with Zapdos, Moltres, and Articuno on it that said “Legendary” in really cool letters.  It was a long time ago, but I still remember.  That was the shirt he was wearing the day he left.  I don’t remember much about the day my father left home; I may have been at school, anyway.

  And then one day we received a letter from Dad asking us to visit the farm, and also that he had something to tell us both.  I wondered if maybe he was going to give me a pokémon as an early birthday present so I could get used to it before I started my journey, but mom figured it was probably something about him remarrying.  Maybe.  I looked at her after she said that but I couldn’t tell how she felt about it.

  We made plans to go the following Friday.  My mom let me take off of school so we could pack in the morning, and we left that afternoon on a train to Saffron City.  Then we took a cab to Vermillion and boarded the S.S. Aqua, which took us mostly northeast all the way to Winroot City where my father was waiting for us.  He was standing by a Rapidash-drawn carriage on the street opposite the docks and came over to greet us as soon as we stepped foot onto Kiyana soil.
I realized right then when he hugged me how much I had actually missed him.  I think my mom did too, because the kiss she gave him would have made a stranger think they weren’t not together.

  “Glad you two could make it,” he said, taking a step back to look at us for the first time in almost three years.  I was happy to see him, too.  He smiled warmly and began helping us get our luggage onto the carriage.  “So how was the ride over?”

  “The boat got here sooner than I expected,” mom said.  “I barely had enough time get into my book.  Is it normally that fast?”

  “I think that’s why they call it the Fast Ship, Amy”  One of the great things about my dad is that you can tell when he’s joking or being sarcastic, unlike some people who can make you feel terribly uncomfortable and unsure of their seriousness until you hear those five pseudo-relieving words: “Relax, it was a joke.”  He had such a cordial tone, even possibly an aura, that you would never need to hear him say that.

  The carriage ride north along Route H5 was slow but scenic:  trees on either side of us, and it was such a beautiful day!  There were even a few wild pokémon in the tall grass; and some I'd never even seen before.  Dad said along the way that there were a few species that were indigenous only to the island of Kiyana.  I remember thinking how cool that was, back when I was ten.  Some things are just grown out of if given a long enough period of time.

  Seede Town was a little past the half-way mark from Winroot to the Homestead.  It was a very small town.

  “The smallest in Kiyana,” my dad informed us.  “Many trainers,” he added, “just breeze right through here because there isn’t a gym or any landmark.  Just a small little town.”  The farm did most of its business with Seede Town not only because it was small, but also because it was so close.  “Occasionally Littleaf, or even Nesteg Town, will trade with us every now and then, but they travel out here to see us.  Seede Town we visit ourselves.”

  Past the town, Routes H4 and H3 were nothing to brag about – just a straight stretch of empty fields.  If I had been any more tired than I was that day (and hadn’t taken that nap on the Aqua), I would have probably fallen asleep right then.

  By the time we reached Seiiku Homestead, the sun had only a few more millimeters to go before tagging the Western horizon.  For dinner, my Uncle Hardy made roast duck from a Farfetch’d he’d hunted that day.  Dad showed us to our rooms soon after, and somewhere around the time that my head hit the pillow, I conked out.

  The next morning would be the one that would change the direction of my life for the next four years: the revealing of Dad’s “something important.”  Up until that moment, I had never known just how good I’d had it living in Goldenrod with a perfect family, surrounded by friends and favorable opportunities.  Never in my life had I felt like I’d taken so much for granted.
chapter one of who knows how many?

i kind of know where it's going, but i know even less about how it will get there =P

i had fun writing this, so i hope you enjoyed reading it!

KAES
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