Ash Behr: The Fa'e
"Congratulations! It's a bouncing baby stick!"
On the outskirts of Barton Forest lived a humble lumberjack named Stanley. One early morning he saw a stump deep in the forest. Not remembering there ever being a tree there before, he examined it and found that it almost looked like the stump had a face. He quickly dug it up and took it to his house, preparing to make a beautiful doorstop out of it.
He never expected his doorstop to start crying.
***
"Well, since you found him as a stump, maybe you should name him after a tree?"
"All right... how about Buckeye?"
"You're naming a baby, not a dog!"
"Birch?"
"No."
"Castoraralia?"
"No."
"Bladdernut?"
"....."
"I am NOT naming the kid Ash, you'd keep on making those Pookman-thing jokes."
"But he could be the very best... like no one ever was..."
The only one that Stanley could go to for advice was his strange, strange sister Carrie. The very same strange sister that Stanley used to blame for his hermitude. You see, she considered herself a nerd, and poor Stanley didn't know the difference between Aquaman and Batman. Carrie never did forgive him for that one.
Under the guidance (ha) of Stanley and Carrie, Ash grew from the stump he began as. Roots sprouted for feet, and twigs and vines started to form a mess of hair. At Carrie's suggestion, Stanley tried to take scissors to the mass of growth.
Three pairs of broken scissors later, Stanley decided to let Ash's "hair" grow unbothered. (He would always get rid of birds that tried to nest in his hair, though.)
From the beginning, Ash's manners were impeccable. The first words out of his mouth were "excuse me" (Carrie was devastated. She was training him to say "PokeMon"). Stanley was a pretty rude man, so raising a boy who was oddly proper was difficult.
Politeness aside, though, Ash would never enter the forest with his father. He loved the forest, but something about it terrified him.
