Bay
Concerning the plot holes you mentioned, I didn't describe what her family and friends were going through since I was really trying to sever all of Elizabeth's connections to the outside world, and I felt that showing scenes like that would make the situations seem more hopeful. With no present-time mention of her own "world" it seemed (to me) that she was truly lost forever, not just searching for a way back. And as for her thinking about her family... I'll be honest with you, that's just a part I didn't ever seriously consider. Looking back, I think it could've improved the story a lot, so I'm sorry I didn't.
About her finding her way out of the forest with Chip, I think it said (I can't remember for sure, though) that he could only understand simple commands, and something like "show me the way out of the forest" would be way too complicated. And I don't think a creature that had lived his whole life in the forest would leave naturally.
I was going off that Celebi movie (what was the name...? Pokemon Forever?) where Celebi is found beaten up by the main characters. I don't remember what caused it, but it seemed logical that as a small Pokemon, Celebi would have natural enemies just like anything else. The fact that it was injured was just bad luck for Elizabeth, who happened to scare it at a bad time.
Breezy
Lol keep in mind that it was supposed to be narrated by a teenage girl. I can't speak from personal experience, but they're usually not the most eloquent. XD No offense to your teenage past.
Anyway, what I was trying to in the beginning was to let the reader know Elizabeth a little more personally. Looking back, it does seem like a little much. When I post it, I'll probably cut out a few sentences and just leave a few of the basics about her life.
I tried to keep everything as ambiguous as possible, as far as time goes. My actual intention was for her to be in a past-era Ilex Forest, but I tried to make it possible for it to be set in the present or even a decayed future (actually, if you want to know the truth, what I was really trying to show was that she was never in the forest at all, and the entire time was just narrating a fictional life to herself, never clearly defining what was actually her life or just a made-up story she thinks happened, but once again, I tried to keep it vague enough for the reader to decide). But ANYWAY, the past or future setting would explain why she found no humans. Oh, and the Celebi statue was just the final straw of her sanity, because that statue had existed in her life, but it was now in the middle of the overgrown forest, not on a path, and nearly destroyed, unlike the way it would've been if humans were taking care of it.
The first person-third person thing was really just a safety net. I've been told that I use too much dialogue, so writing a story like this with minimum speaking was really difficult for me, so I put her narrative in there to kinda move the story along. It was me being lazy, yes. ^^;
Negrek
Like I told Breezy (I don't feel like retyping it, and copy+paste would just seem cheap XP), that was my own limits and insecurities about my writing.
Also like I told Breezy (again, laziness ._. ), I tried to purposefully put her in the grey area, leaving the reader to decide exactly what's real and what's her imagination.
