Sunset Valley the dog days are over

Reminder to self: set before he meets Articuno (no... that's not right...) ARTURO thats the one.

It had been many days since he'd seen the faces of his beloved family. He could remember small details of each of them though, which warmed his heart as the season began to turn towards winter. Nassim plodded along without a care, weaving a path through the valley with his mind set all the way back in the far north where his family remained. He thought of Hakon's stern-but-kind face, of how jealous Sushila had been when she'd learned of his desire to travel; even the shy Angam, his darling baby sister, had seemed adamant that he not leave so suddenly. It had been sudden — but he'd needed to go.

The south did not seem so bad. It was bright, even when night began to fall. Nothing seemed entirely dark, and Nassim had survived a few dozen nights on his own by now. Each one seemed brighter than the last. Evening was beginning to fall now and the sky was streaked with familiar tones. He watched it, going a steady but lethargic pace, and sighed. The colors spanned the entirety of what he could see, reaching through the clouds and into the horizon; but he saw something in his periphery which caught the colors too, a girl.

She was circling carefully upon a raised section of the earth - no, on a stump - my, what finesse! He watched her dance like a real creeper, shifting slowly closer, until realizing how bizarre and awful this would look from an outsider's perspective. When she plopped down, he picked up his pace and made sure to make some noise; while Nassim did not want to bother her, he didn't want to scare her either. As he popped his ruddy face out from behind a stand of young elm trees he smiled, gave a little nod, and held his ground just in case she wanted to be left alone.