This was by far the strangest experience of Sam's young life so far, the life that he was able to remember. Probably the strangest part wasn't that he was supposed to be older, but that he suddenly had freedoms and friends that he couldn't ever remember having before. That part of his life must have gotten a little better as he'd grown up, even if he was still hunting. But if he had more freedom to choose when he was older, why had he chosen hunting?
He both did and didn't want to know the answer to that question; instead of pursuing it, he'd taken off into the woods with his new (old) friends and his dog and made a treehouse. It was nice, living on his own with people he'd chosen to stay with, and even though his family knew where he was, he wasn't getting into trouble for it. His dad was even being extra nice and attentive to him, which was... weird. Sam had wondered more than once whether the magic had done something to him, too, but he hadn't wanted to ruin it, so he hadn't asked. Because if he pointed it out, then his dad or Dean would do something to fix it, and then his fun would be over.
He'd had a bit of a scare earlier, though, when he'd been running with Bolt in the forest on his own, and suddenly run into the much larger fox-shaped animal. Bolt had taken the opportunity to disappear, barking his head off, probably because he'd sensed-- as Sam had-- that there was something different about this fox, that he was in fact not a fox at all. Bolt, he figured, would find his way back to the treehouse-- he had frequently gone off wandering in the forest even in the few days they'd been staying out there, and always found his way back-- so Sam had helped the fox find his owner instead, and when they'd found her, offered to help with the others as well. This was a much more interesting use of his skills than hunting, and besides, he'd taken a liking to the blue fox Pokemon, too.
"He's cool," he said, looking at the animal beside him. "I like him." Lucario definitely stood out as different and probably made Sam look strange by extension for walking next to him, but then, Sam had been the freakishly weird one all his life. Much as he'd wanted to be normal, something in him also resonated with the lost, solitary, and outcast, and he usually ended up hanging out with them anyway. But in his attempts to bond with the animal, he hadn't meant to be rude to the human being on his other side, so he looked up at her a little apologetically and said, "I'm Sam."