-Afterward. Kobber season starting fairly soon. After What ward? Read On-
The last real test, as time started to creep back up on a new ‘season’, had taken nearly three weeks. Nothing like accomplishing something difficult to provide a sense of accomplishment.
And it hadn’t exactly been easy. Especially when they’d been asked to handicap themselves by avoiding flying as much as possible. It was still an option, and they’d been told if things somehow went bad to discard that instruction and make their way back ‘home’ via that method as fast as possible. Not to mention two emergency ‘ABORT MISSION’ options if even THAT wasn’t viable. And they’d been told to try and select every item they thought they might need for such a test, so it wasn’t like they’d been sent out with just the clothes on their back.
(And when asked, Christopher HAD grimly commented that yes, he’d done that before, and he really should have known better, even if nothing seriously wrong had happened, and hence he wouldn’t ever be doing THAT again)
And so they’d caught another airship after heading to the closest town to the Ravensky abode, and been deposited at a Hemel outpost named Nobelos, roughly 700 or so miles away from home. They’d been given maps (and shown how to use them beyond the basics) and been given simple instructions: make it home.
They had. And debriefing had begun once they had rested up from their arrival: it was nice to get familiar meals and beds after a few weeks of semi roughing it and unfamiliar locals.
“You stayed five days in Nobelos? The Hemel wanted to dissect you, didn’t they?” The Hemel, as the girls had learned over the last several months, were a demi-human species who were very thin and very intellectual, with many of their brains having a building or technological bent. Tech like the kind the Dragon Girls had was a gold mine, and they had indeed poked and prodded and probably tried to swipe a piece or two (which the girls had growled them off against doing) before the girls decided they had been gracious enough guests and given them enough notes and data to look over.
“Just about, really. They were pretty interested in our systems, but then we realized they were REALLY interested, sort of fascinated, and we gave them some of our specifications and stuff to tide them over. It wasn’t bad or anything, just a little weird.” Venny said, thinking over the experience.
“We figured, well, they probably hadn’t seen a whole lot just like us- what would the odds of that be?” Vimmy said, briefly smiling. She’d sort of liked the attention.
First day while travelling: 20 miles covered. Mostly dusty scrubland.
“Yeah, the Raze went through the Nobelos Plains. Consumed it down to the dirt. Still recovering. There’s also buried ‘weapons’ out there not yet found, so that’s why the path was so back and forth and all over the place. Has to weave around…sinkholes, more or less.”
What was the Raze?
“Long story. Another time. Don’t blame yourself for not finding water, there’s little to nothing there.”
Day 4: 12 miles. Five miles inside the ‘Dotegen Length’, a massive underground tunnel. Not massive enough, in terms of width though; most of their time had been jammed inside it with people, carts, and other methods of transport coming and going, the tunnel being narrower than it seemed like it should be.
“The Tegen Mountain Range that the Length travels under would have been worse for you to cross. Even for you two. Weather’s appalling, and Fiends have been spotted repeatedly. Wouldn’t surprise us if there was more than what was seen. If Fiends are living in such hostile terrain, they must know something we don’t. The tunnel’s narrow because the size it is is already tempting fate. You dig a bit more, you might find something that has decided it doesn’t want to tolerate your presence any more. Did you get any sense of claustrophobia?”
“Just a little, not a lot. Well, maybe more than a little. I thought having other people be around and moving through it too would keep that off of us, but a little before the middle it started feeling like the walls were closing in. I think it was just us being unfamiliar with underground places, I’ve never had a problem with it before.”
“I am glad we didn’t try to go over the mountains themselves, even with fiends for company. It looked rough from a distance and then rougher the closer we got.” Vimmy said. “I don’t think we’d be back by now if we’d tried, it would’ve taken a pretty long time just to pick our way up and then down.”
“You got that right. It was pretty quick, all things considered. Those carts they had, they helped speed through it a lot.” Venny added.
“Not going to try and be Hannibals any time soon then.” Christopher was also taking ‘notes’ from their recount.
“Who’s Hannibal?”
“Person from ancient history. Took an army with elephants over a mountain. Somehow made it over with something still approaching an army. Amazing military feat, if you ignore all the cost of such a venture.”
Day 6: The “Bayvista Bowels”. A swamp filled with excess humidity, lots of insects, and natural rock bridges that could be slippery, along with lots of red ‘scum algae’ on the excess amount of lakes, bogs, and so on. One experience with quicksand, easily escaped.
“Because going around it would take a week or so, and you figured you’d endure it, I assume? How’d it go?”
“Well, better than we thought it would. It wasn’t all that pleasant or nice, but we’d planned for the worst and hoped for the best and that helped us to make it through. We sort of kept our eyes on the horizon and tromped our way in. Those bugs were the worst part, just when we’d think we were safe we’d start hearing them again.” Venny said, absently scratching her arm.
“I kind of liked it at first, but when we were out I was glad to leave. I couldn’t believe how hot it was! We were sweating before the sun had even risen.” Vimmy said, wide eyed.
“The scenery was pretty nice, but it was definitely a place to visit, not to live. Even when we realized we had to go through it instead of skirt the edges, we took a few hours to make sure everything we had was loaded down and prepared just in case we fell into the water or something like that.”
“Used to be worse. It was infested with Lithefiends and a unique kind of bipedal reptilian Inimical. A literal alligator man creature. The latter’s cleaned out the last few years though. The Lithefiends kind of got caught in the crossfire, so they’re mostly gone too, and they probably would have avoided you anyway. Too much trouble, not enough meat. I take it you were warned not to camp there overnight?”
Yeah, but they didn’t say WHY.
“If you don’t light a campfire? Probably nothing. If you DO? Well…there’s been reports of Splitter Wings. Not very nice insects. And they like the heat and warmth of a fire, and their eggs are…well, they lay them in a cloud of dust. If you get any of the dust in your nose or ears and don’t get it cleaned out, well…let’s just say a nasty headache is the least you can suffer. There’s a REASON they’re called Splitters.”
“Oh! Oh, my god, really? Blech, gross!” Venny shuddered. “That’s a pretty darn good reason, I’d say. It started to get dark, and we actually thought about settling down for the night- but we took the warnings seriously and just kept on going anyway. We were so close that we didn’t have to push too hard, but I mostly just didn’t want to spend the night there.”
“Yeah, me either. That’s horrible! I guess the bugs really were the worst part, hands down then. We didn’t, uh-”
“No, we’d know by now. Why, does your nose itch?”
“No!” Vimmy said, before scratching it anyway.
“It would have shown worse symptoms by now if you’d gotten anything of the sort up it. The Splitters mainly find prey in idiots who try and ignore pain because they’re tough.”
“Speaking of…”
Day 12: Cross’See.
“You two got invited to a Row. Oh dear.” Celeste looked incredibly bemused. “So, how badly did it go?” Ie, for THEM.
“NINETEEN!” Vimmy tossed her ‘attacker’ into a wall. “TWENTY!” A palm strike and a touch of gravity sending the next one flying. “TWENTY-TWO!” Her tail bonked one on the head.
“I saw that Vimmy, that was just one!”
“Dang it! Now I lost count! SEVENTY-SIX!”
“Stop that!”
“I doubt the Rowing groups will ever make THAT mistake again.” Christopher commented. “Did any of them manage to at least scratch you?”
“...It went pretty good for us. For everyone else, not so much.” Venny snickered. “That was one of the biggest scrabbles we’ve been in, everybody going all at once, but it, well, when we got down to business I think it was a pretty big surprise. I kind of think they were banking on us fighting one another, or something, but… it didn’t quite go down like that.”
“At first everybody was just to and fro, getting everyone they could within reach, but we thought that as long as we weren’t going full bore we might as well still have a little fun. I know I got hit once or twice, but I think some of those were either lucky shots or people not realizing who was on the other end of their fists or weapons. At least, until it was too late.” Vimmy considered.
“Did you see me pick that guy up?” Venny asked, grinning.
“And throw him into those other guys? I did! I couldn’t help but laugh, that was something.” Vimmy nodded. “At first we were all sorts of nervous, but we thought, if worse came to worse we could just escape really quick and get out of there, but we ended up being the tigers they had by the tails.”
“Neither of us expected to find ourselves in a big ol’ fight like that, but in hindsight it was a lot of fun. Well, fun for us. I’m pretty sure we’re not getting invited back any time soon!”
Day 16: Sudden terrible weather. Hail the size of baseballs. An abandoned barn for attempted shelter had proven too fragile, so they tried to judge the storm’s path and move away from it. Didn’t work. Ended up deep in a forest, per their maps, called the Munestead Glades…
Celeste’s face made them stop. She’d paled a bit.
“What?” Venny said.
“...continue.”
The weather got worse. Like it was following them. They attempted to reach a mountain range, and find a cave for cover as taught. Only to discover what appeared to be a giant sphere built into the base of the mountain, a part of which seemed to have been peeled off like the skin on a fruit…
“What did you do?” Christopher had abruptly pulled up next to his wife. Both their faces indicated that this was not considered by them to be a ‘good detour’.
“Well, it was basically that or the forest, and the wind was so high, trees were falling down. We thought, it didn’t look natural so maybe something was there but we didn’t see any guards or…”
“You went into the Porcine?!” Christopher said.
“Dear. Drain the tone. Though the question stands. You went in through the gap?” Celeste said.
“Well, just a bit…”
“You didn’t have any sort of bad feeling?” Christopher said.
“Well, a little-”
“JUST a little?” Christopher said.
“...yes?” Venny looked nervous.
“...just a little. Did you feel any sort of compulsion? Like, come on in here, it’s safe, and interesting, anything like that?” Celeste said.
“No. We just wanted out of the weather. We didn’t go in far.”
The two Weav residents looked at each other.
“What’d you find?” Celeste said.
“...a city, but…the place was abandoned. No people. No nothing. Animals, birds…nothing. I mean, the weather was bad, but once we got past where the ‘split’ in the ‘orb’ happened the insulation was amazing. But…it was just a dark city full of dust and silence. Maybe there were some paths in the dust? We didn’t really pay that much attention, because we didn’t like it.”
“We got as close to the edge as we could…wasn’t all that much better than being right out in the storm, but we figured, this ain’t right. We slept in shifts. When the sun started coming up the next day we cleared out. We didn’t know what it was, but we didn’t want to find out. Which I kind of guessed when I tried to find it on our maps two days later and couldn’t. We did get a bit lost, but…”
“No, you’re right in that regard. The Porcine has been removed from maps. As many maps as possible. We assumed that you either wouldn’t end up near it, or in the off chance you did, well, the fact that ‘nothing happened’ is a damn happening. People who go near the Porcine if they have ANY sense get screaming, primal ‘NOT GOOD’ hollering if they get within five miles of the place. The ones who don’t, or ignore it, well…” Christopher said.
“It’s a bad place. Not as bad as Megan’s Woe, but…nothing happened? Nothing bothered you, you didn’t feel mortal terror or a desire to go into the city, that…I think that’s a first.” Celeste said.
“Like the Glorious ignoring. Their bodies…maybe it couldn’t make a connection. Or sense them at all. Maybe it read them as a bunch of stones moving in the wind, instead of…victims.”
Vimmy and Venny looked at each other before turning back, Venny slowly shaking her head. “No, that- It was creepy, and I think we both felt like it didn’t belong, but it was more like seeing an abandoned building where there aren’t any other buildings, like an old house in deep woods. Just sorta, trepidation, I guess. We weren’t going to poke around any deeper or go exploring because we just didn’t know what we’d found ourselves in.”
“There weren’t any animals or anything, it was dead quiet and totally empty. That’s what I kept going back to. I think we both thought whatever the reason for that was, it was a reason that could’ve gotten us too. Like radiation or sickness, or something like that.” Vimmy said, her eyes wide.
“...What happened there to make it like that? Was it ruined somehow? From the sound of things we’re awfully lucky, because we were right there at the entrance. Whatever passed us over, it seems like a spider in a web.” Venny swallowed. At the time she’d had some thoughts and speculation over the city in a sphere, but now she felt a little like she’d passed by a ledge in darkness and come a few inches from falling off it.
“...What normally happens to people who go in?” Vimmy asked slowly, not sure she actually wanted to know.
“..we’ll tell you in a bit. We should wrap up this debriefing.”
Day 20: Town of Atelp’et. They were having a festival based around their town culture of painting and design. The dragon girls helped crush a lot of nuts for various dyes and had the town’s children paint their wings various colors. Then when they were off the next day it rained and the designs washed off.
“Sorry. It makes sense that they’d have the children use the water soluble materials.” Christopher said. He did not comment on the fact that ‘pictures’ as Kobbers might know them were considerably harder to do in Weav, and hence there were no phones or cameras to at least snap more permanent memories of the designs.
“It’s just one of those things, I suppose. We were happy enough to let them paint us up, and it looked pretty impressive when they were done, but we should’ve guessed it wouldn’t last all that long.” Venny said wistfully. “Besides, at least they let us be part of the fun.”
“We weren’t quite dragons afterward, more like very pretty birds. I wish you both could’ve seen us, all the description in the world doesn’t do it justice.” Vimmy said, her turn to shrug. “I like our flat, sort of metal and white coloring, but… Well, it was a nice change of pace.”
“We do still have our stealth modes.” Venny pointed out, Vimmy shaking her head. “Yeah, but that’s just, like, black and grey. It’s more of a palette swap than anything.”
Day 23: Last day before familiar terrain and home two days later. The Vinwin Fields. The two girls had been told that they should stay on the path. The fields were mainly a circular ecosystem between the large burrowing worm-snake creatures called Biques and giant, very nasty pig beasts called Goars. The two species’ primarily fed on each other, resulting in exceptional growth for both: Goars and Biques lived elsewhere, but rarely were any samples found that were larger than the ones that populated those fields. Biques were generally harmless unless provoked with very loud noise, but Goars were nasty, aggressive animals that could pack several tons of mass and a series of razor sharp tusks that could tear normal people in half, pierce armor, and rend metal if it got it at the right angle with enough force. Like pigs, though, they were made of all sorts of delicious meat, so hunting them could be a beneficial process, for either food or making money.
“So, see any Goars?”
“Yeah, one.” Venny said. A shockingly pale pink with white bristle hair stained with who knew what. It had popped out from behind a hill and made for the two girls. The two thought Leowolves seemed supersized; Goars took it a step further, being sized the same as rhinoceri, hippopotamuses, and in this case, a decent sized elephant, to compare it to Earth species.
Until they’d used a little gravity to pick it up and toss it some distance. It didn’t seem harmed by the landing, and it seemed to conclude that they were far more trouble than they were worth. Though it had actually followed them for several miles afterward: Venny swore it was glowering at them and wanted them to know how cross it was.
“It probably thought you’d throw food at it to make it leave. That’s generally what a charge means. Either panic the small things into giving them free food, or, well, maybe the small things can BE the food. Especially if they’re injured, the Goar, that is. But that one following you was probably just an alpha boar who was indeed mad you tossed him away like a ball. If you ever go back there and see a Goar with a black tusk, try and immobilize it and remove it. Some Goars can do some…INTERESTING things with unconventional stuff they have eaten and it gets laced into the tusks, and those tusks can be used as the base for some very useful materials.”
“Even with its size, we figured, well, animals don’t really know what a throw is, you know? They normally don’t have a concept of that motion. We thought that would scare it off even with it being humongous, but then we turned around after a minute or two and see it walking along after us, and it put our hackles up a little. I’m pretty sure it wanted us to see that it didn’t care all that much.” Venny explained, demonstrating with her hands being followed menacingly.
“Yeah, at first I thought the Goars were gonna be cute, from the picture in my head- Not that I was gonna do something stupid and get close, or anything, but sort of like how hippos and big animals have that sort of energy. Only, if we hadn’t been who and what we are, it could’ve gone sideways pretty quick.” Vimmy added, eyebrows up. “What’s a black tusk mean, metal?”
“Better. You’d need to know your magic crafting to really understand, though. Ask Hope, she could explain it.”
“Funny thing is, we’d probably have thrown it some food afterward if it hadn’t started barreling at us. But once it was coming, all that mass and size, we weren’t going to sit around and wait to find out what it wanted one way or the other.”
“Such is life. Not every giant sized animal gets a bigger brain to go with it.”
The Leowolf South, lying nearby on her stomach, looked offended at the concept. How dare any other embiggened animal be smart.
That had been it, in terms of unusual events. From there, they’d entered the outskirts of Ravensky territory, and after another day of woods trekking, had recognized just where they were and how to get home. Though at the time, neither Christopher or Celeste were home themselves: Patty was, and so she and the girls had gorged on junk food for two days until her parents returned, which was a nice coda. Though, alas, no peanut brittle. The girls knew how darn rare it was, though, so they weren’t disappointed.
And now, the debriefing of their trip. With that done…time to fill in the gaps of their knowledge about the wrong turn they’d taken.
---
“The Porcine…well, it was once called Ioscince. Their ‘history’...well, they were a mining town that, over the generations, grew into a giant trading city that literally became part of the mountain that initially made it possible. But…it was insular. I guess you could say, paranoid. Not exactly welcoming to outsiders: it did trade and it liked just doing that, thank you very much. When Xaxargas woke up, per their assessment, Ioscince took it…badly.” Ie, before the dark god woke up, Ioscince didn’t exist. It and its history had been created out of full cloth, and all the people put there had had the fake memories imprinted as their history, culture, and all that, so thoroughly it might as well have been real. After all, it wasn’t like one could travel back in time to check one’s past. “The ruling class built that giant dome around the city so that if the Raze came by, they could just seal up and maybe pay them some danegeld to go away…which, ironically, never happened. But the Twilight did-” That being the period where Xaxargas had said he was tired of playing with the world so he was going to give them some more time and then he was going to destroy it, which ended in the final attack where he was based, the Blacklands, and Ash killing him. “And well, the movers and shakers went insane with fear, and basically put another layer on their protective dome and then literally sealed themselves in. Like they could survive the world being destroyed as long as they stayed inside their perfect little shield…
“...well, they weren’t so insane that they all devolved into sticking fingers in their ears and making noise while pretending nothing was happening. Unfortunately, I think they were a different kind of insane. If you’re locked up behind thick walls and have all you need to survive, like some kind of city-sized safehouse, and yet you STILL feel like you have to run and hide, where do you go? That’s what the theory is. That the magicians and those who wielded the power inside Ioscince wanted to find a way to hide even better. So they looked. And they, capital L, Looked. And whatever they found…
“Well, when the Twilight was over, people eventually went and tried to get in contact with the people of Ioscince behind their dome. No answer. So eventually enough people managed to carve open part of the dome, peel it back like a flower petal. After all, if it was a city of the dead, there was stuff that could be stolen. And if not, well…I’ll admit, the idea was probably a tomb robbery. They were half right, it seemed. Because the city was empty. No people, no living beings at all. But no destruction, no sign of mass death like disease, no blood, nothing at all. It was like every living thing vanished into the proverbial ether. And those that went in to look…
“They vanished too. Some of them. No trace. Over the years, others have tried to claim the city’s treasures, or find out what happened. Some of the 44 included. Some of those who did, disappeared as well. Some came out half-insane rambling nonsense, about ‘the other city’, but we never were able to figure out what it meant, and those that recovered mentally ended up with blank memories, like nightmares that faded away. And yes, Celeste and I went inside it. Twice. We never found anything, and the whole time there there was this awful sense of danger, that there was going to be something JUST AROUND THE CORNER…so, in the end, the world basically went “Seal it off, anyone who goes looking is on their own, remove it from maps so it can’t easily be found, and stay away. That way is shut.” At least, unlike Megan’s Woe, the area isn’t so warped that it can literally poison things with ‘wrongness’ like that video I showed you…”
“Or the Kobber’s encounter with that echo of Agony that spawned completely out of the Woe and infected Samuel, leading the Kobbers to have to get rid of it, thank them all, especially when they did it AGAIN years later.”
“But the area’s still wrong. Anyone who has basic caution gets more and more paranoid and aware of SOME kind of danger the closer they get, but there have been stories of the less cautious and more…flawed, instead feeling COMPELLED to find and enter what was Ioscnine. Those are the ones who vanished just like the original occupants. The bad weather around the area? It’s not normal. Whether it’s just an area of distorted space or…some kind of literal herding mechanism by SOMETHING to try and make them head towards the Porcine…
“...well. Those Goars on Vinwin? They used to be more in the area around Ioscine. But when it got cracked open, every animal eventually moved elsewhere. Goars are VERY hard to dislodge from what they consider good territory, and that was ‘good territory’ in their eyes. Yet they fled. But the fact that giant pig beasts used to be around there, and that so many people vanished, someone stuck the two together. See, wild pigs and such animals, the suidae family, in many cases they will eat anything. Literally anything, if they can and it can’t get away. Even if it’s just a little at a time. Until there’s nothing left. Gone completely, not even bones left. Victims of a relentless appetite. Hence, its new name. The Porcine.”
“We assumed that while yes, it was sort of in the direction home you’d be going, you two would get the terrible bad feeling and even if you ended up close to it, you’d give it a wide berth. But instead…it just barely seemed to register to you. And you to it. Very strange. Maybe something to explore, in the future. Not that we mean you should go back. No. The way is SHUT.”
“...Good lord. We, we just literally stumbled across it out of sheer dumb luck. Either good luck or bad luck, but if we’d been a half mile in either direction instead we probably would’ve missed the rent where we went in. But that’s the thing I keep sticking to, for us, it was just creepy and felt sort of lost. Our nerves were pretty jumpy, and I don’t know about Vimmy but I kept imaging we weren’t alone-”
“No, I did too. I knew we were, we’ve got scans and all sorts of detection that we could do, and I ran through all of mine. Nothing showed up, not even a ghost.” Vimmy said quietly.
“-Exactly. It was just our imaginations playing tricks on us. The whole place was dead as could be, just frozen without any life at all. We weren’t even tempted to explore or poke around, mostly because we could just imagine how you both would react if we fell and twisted an ankle or something, being dumb in a place we should have known better at.” Venny admitted, folding her hands. “That, and we thought maybe whatever had cleared it out was still there, like a gas leak or something from deep in the earth.”
“No wonder it’s been taken off maps and scrubbed off. It sounds horrible! I’m just glad nothing really happened to us. I wish I knew why, we’re not- Well, I guess we are kind of special, what with all our cybernetics, but we’re not special-special, if that makes sense. Under all the metal and horns and tails we’re just baseline humans.” Vimmy said, a little mystified.
“...Someone is going to have to reseal the city. If we could get in, other people are going to be able to. Plus, I hate to say it, but I’m sure there’s still a few people that would want to, and damn the consequences. It’s just not safe enough yet.”
“We’re never going back if we have a choice. Especially not now, when we know better.” Venny promised, Vimmy enthusiastically nodding in agreement. She still felt a little like they’d escaped disaster without knowing the disaster was there, and didn’t like relying on what amounted to maybe just being lucky enough.
“You’re not the first to suggest that. It’s stalled out repeatedly. Based on the effort needed to get that degree of effort to the area when it’s not actively emitting ‘bad’ that spreads. And a deep unspoken fear that maybe that will seal it back up…or it will stop it up. And it will result in some kind of pressure build and, well…you can see why a lot of people just went “Erase the paths, anyone who goes there is taking their chances, we wash our hands.” Celeste said.
“When some place baffles even us, and it stays in one small area that’s out of the way, well…let sleeping dogs lie. Things that spread, they DO get dealt with. The Vinwin Fields are generally peaceful, but elsewhere on this world there’s the Mulcahy Barrens. Goars also live there. And one REAL big one once caused some big trouble. But that’s a story for another time.”
That story, when they learned it, involved a Goar the size of a train engine, an appetite for human flesh, someone building a processing ‘factory’ in the heart of its territory, which made it range further afield, and a fight with Weav heroes that were not in the Ravensky circle that only ended when the Goar, known as the Deathless in local slang (“Rezara Zaspara”), was lured into a giant ‘fan’.
“So named because it ignored most anything else that tried to make it dead. Some studies of the meat mess that was left suggested the animal had an extremely undeveloped nerve system so that it really didn’t register pain. Some stories said the animal had NO nervous system, but that’s impossible. Or at least, incredibly unlikely.”
“...That’s true. I guess the only thing worse than leaving a slit open would be letting all that wrongness build up. I think we’re just still not used to the idea of something like that being open and there, worse than any haunted house or spooky graveyard. At least we made it out alive and not marked by it.” Venny had nodded thoughtfully. It made sense to her… It was better to remove the location from maps than post warnings that weren’t necessary anyway, especially since those warnings would’ve been signs for the people who were crazy enough to explore the Porcine to follow.
“I’m a little glad to have seen the Goars in the first place, even if that one was trouble for us. Back on Earth they’d have probably already hunted them to extinction. Besides-”
“Don’t say it was kind of cute.” Venny interrupted, Vimmy shaking her head. “Yeah, right! Most things with mouths that can eat me whole aren’t all that cute. It was just, cool to see. I know what we were doing and why we were doing it, it was important, but it was a nice trip too. They were just a part of the highlights, is all.”
“...It was a lot of fun, honestly. We took it seriously, we really did, and we didn’t have to fly or skip a single step, but we didn’t want to. Those guidebooks you had made for us, they let us get kind of a picture of Weav- so did this!” Venny said happily, briefly reminiscing. It hadn’t felt like they’d gone a long way until it was all lain out….
“Still. Good for you to be back home. Place was feeling empty again.” Christopher said, though he was also writing in a journal as he spoke.
Home.
No comments:
Post a Comment