Chapter Eleven – The Field Trip

The Dazzling Dewgong – South Ophria’s Best Paper

New Emera Mine, Deceased Outlaw and Treasure, discovered in Central Firland

A new emera deposit has been discovered in the middle of Firland, South Ophria, the owning Kecleon Company recently reported. The estimated production capacity of the dungeon within could power fifty mid-sized towns for years.

“We’re excited to add yet another fully producing emera mine to our collection,” stated a higherup at the company, “and we’ll be investing more resources into dungeons in the area in the immediate future.”

The mining operation has unburied old concerns about extensive mining operations in Firland, which has long been regarded by the public as a haven of natural beauty. But those same sentiments have not been represented in the state – only certain areas of the marshlands are considered protected land.

The mine is also claimed to have been the final resting place of the infamous Longclaw Gabite the Outlaw, who robbed countless banks and households in his lifetime and whose treasure was never found. Longclaw’s bones will be carried off for a proper burial, while the treasure has been claimed as a bounty reward by the Kecleon Company. Hopes remain that with Longclaw’s bones removed from the dungeon, the rumoured apparition will also dissipate.

~\({O})/~

11.

The Field Trip

~\({O})/~

Time seemed to pass with the wind. School was breezy, the days were nice, and before Espurr knew it, months had gone by. Soon it wasn’t February or March, but halfway through April.

Not long after the mines escapade, the three of them decided to spend just a bit of their hard-earned treasure on some of the expensive-looking sweets Just one of the gold coins in Espurr’s bag was probably worth everything in Kecleon’s tent put together, given how he’d acted when they showed it to him. When he saw it, his eyes widened like a surprised wombat, and he looked both ways, then pulled them in towards the shade of his tent:

“Did you get that from the mines?” he hissed urgently.

“Woouuld it be a problem if we did?” asked Tricky innocently, with her best baby doll eyes.

Kecleon’s attitude seemed to change on a dime. All of the sudden he was all smiles again, though he did usher them quickly out of the daylight and into his tent.

“Oh no, not a problem at all!” he tittered, letting the emerald curtains dip behind them. “We just want to be careful. Wouldn’t want to attract too much attention. There might be… thieves around. Anyway, looking to buy? What can I interest you in?”

“We want sweets,” said Espurr. “How much can we get?”

“Hmm…” Kecleon frowned, slipping a pair of ornate spectacles on his face, and inspected the coin in his claws with the precision of a jeweller. He flipped it into the air and caught it tightly in his scaly palm.

“It’ll buy you a tray.”

“Wait, b-but isn’t it w-worth m-more than that?” stammered Goomy.

“Yeah!” said Tricky, her eyes narrowing. “You’re trying to swindle us!”

“Consider it repayment for all those stolen apples,” Kecleon said threateningly, fixing his steely gaze on Tricky.

Tricky shrank down and laughed nervously.

“Maaaybe I did that,” she admitted.

The coin, lightning fast, disappeared into a pocket on the lizard’s apron that he zipped up tightly. It jangled with spare change, much like every other pocket on the garment.

“Here you go!” he flashed them a shopkeeper’s smile as he pulled a large tray of sweets out from behind the glass and handed it to them. It was laced with everything from plum gummies to orange macaroons, and almost too big to carry! Tricky’s eyes were practically exploding.

“And worry not about the coin; it’ll be our little secret.”

Where had the treasure from the mines gone? Not to the drilbur, it turned out. Or the village. Espurr now knew where Pancham’s family had made their money – and why Pancham had been to the mines before. The moment it became known that there was gold in the old dungeon that had been boarded up, along with emerastones, it made the local news immediately. Just a day later, a carriage from the Kecleon Company had rolled in to collect. Pancham’s father owned the mine site, and Pancham didn’t hesitate a moment when telling everymon exactly what was going to happen to all that treasure from there on out.

“I think I’m going to use some for my drum kit,” he bragged at lunchtime in the school clinic. “And then I’ll buy a new chair.”

“Who says you’ll be getting any of it?” asked a pawmi irritably, on behalf of the entire classroom

“Well, I always do,” said Pancham smugly. “It’s just how things are.”

But the look on his face right now, as he watched them eat, couldn’t be any more delicious. He looked absolutely stunned. Espurr relished it. Revenge really did taste wonderfully sweet.

News spread about their adventure in the mines too. For the first few days, word didn’t seem to get around, which was surprising – Espurr would have figured Pancham would want to brag all about him pulling the wool over their eyes at the first opportunity he’d gotten. But clearly somemon had bragged, and Espurr wasn’t sure if it was Pancham or Tricky – somehow, they’d become famous. The first wind she’d caught of it had been when one of the other students approached her:

“What was it like down there?” the buneary asked.

“Huh?” asked Espurr, who had a pair of quite heavy books in her paws she was moving for Farfetch’d.

“In the mines,” said the buneary. “What was it like?”

With some straining to reach the top of the desk – Espurr could barely see over the top of it – she managed to get the books on top of the desk, and then neatly turned around to face the buneary.

“How do you know about that?” Espurr asked.

“Oh, it’s the talk of the town,” said the buneary. “You’re practically famous.”

The more and more Espurr was asked, the more normal it became. But the most unexpected interaction came from somemon she never thought she’d talk to.

“Espurr, right?”

The voice came from behind Espurr, during a quick break between Farfetch’d’s class and Audino’s. Tricky had gone off to get a drink, and Goomy was up the hill in the school clinic. That left Espurr alone at her desk, flopped over from a lack of sleep. Her head thrummed with a slight headache, her ears ached, and everything seemed a little bit fuzzy and tinged with pink. Oh, she couldn’t wait for school to be over, so she could take a nap…

She looked up, glancing back at where the voice had come from. Deerling, who sat behind her and Tricky, peered at her from over her desk.

Espurr, realising who she was talking to, looked back and straightened up.

“That’s right,” she said, shifting in her seat to look behind her.

“I’m Deerling,” said Deerling, introducing herself. “We met before, right? A few weeks ago, in the woods?”

Espurr nodded.

“Cool. It’s nice to meet you properly this time,” Deerling continued.

“You too,” said Espurr.

“Is it true?”

Espurr figured out what Deerling was referring to pretty quickly – it could only have been one thing.

“About the mines?” she asked.

“Is it?” asked Deerling. Espurr studied the grooves in the desk.

“It happened,” she said.

“Hmm,” said Deerling. She went silent for a second too. “I really hoped they were just rumours.”

“Did Pancham tell you?” asked Espurr.

“He told everymon,” said Deerling. “All proud-like. He said he’d tricked the newcomer and the village troublemaker into going into the mines, and it was his revenge for the Foreboding Forest.

“Listen… I don’t want to sound rude or anything,” Deerling continued, “but I know you’ve been hanging out with Tricky, and I wanted to warn you that…”

She stopped for a moment, taking a deep breath. Espurr could see many colours behind her words, blending into a soup of indistinguishable brown.

“We don’t talk about it,” Deerling continued. “I— I shouldn’t talk about it, but… well, everymon here knows what happens when Tricky takes pokemon into dungeons. It doesn’t turn out well, and we’ve all been there. I don’t want to watch somemon her hurt somemon else.”

Espurr took a moment to consider, weighing every word.

“Somemon… else got hurt?” she asked, still trying to piece everything together. The way Tricky had acted back in the mines…

“Tricky has hurt pokemon, yes,” Deerling replied. Her voice was serious, her brown eyes wide open and staring straight into Espurr’s. For that moment, the brown mix of colours seemed to grow in power. “Just… please take my warning to heart. Don’t go into dungeons. Okay?”

The interaction was well and truly strange. All Espurr could do was give a sharp nod and promise that she would. The whole time she was trying to process the incident and all the information she’d just been given. It didn’t seem like Deerling was lying – she was way too sincere for that, and unless she was the world’s best actress, it seemed like it was very hard to fake. And what did she stand to gain from telling a lie like that? All Espurr had to do was ask a teacher to disprove it. So Espurr figured there must have been some grain of truth in there somewhere, something that Tricky was responsible for to create that action. And just like that, the distrust that had fallen dormant within her began to flicker again.

She made her first attempt to ask Tricky about it during lunchtime.

“Hey, Tricky?” she said, almost about to take a bite of her apple. Tricky, who had been stuffing her face with another peach, lifted her head out of it and looked at Espurr.

“Yeah?” she said, her face absolutely slathered with peach juice. Espurr shuddered a bit at the untidiness.

“I was wondering,” said Espurr, playing around with her apple . “Deerling said something to me, and…”

“And what?” Tricky interrupted, seeming mostly clueless. Espurr figured it was best to just cut through the awkwardness and be out with it—

“Deerling said there was an incident, with you, and a dungeon,”

Tricky seemed to freeze up. Espurr froze too, realising she’d crossed some kind of line. It was like the entire room had gone cold. Slowly, she felt the colour blue beginning to tug heavily at the corners of her vision, suddenly so strong that she physically had to move back a little in order to escape it. It was coming from Tricky.

Tricky suddenly let out a heave, then Espurr noticed she was breathing heavily. She meant to ask if Tricky was alright, but Tricky made a sudden, very clear and very hard attempt to swallow it, and then she was back to normal.

“It’s not important,” she choked out, then moved her peach somewhere else. A shaken Espurr didn’t try to follow her. She just took a sorry nibble of her sandwich, almost curling in on herself. Had she caused that?

~\({O})/~

Nuzleaf was still practising with Espurr every other day now, in the mornings before school started.

“Alright,” said Nuzleaf, walking around Espurr as she practised the pose Nuzleaf had outlined for her. “keep tha’ posture, back straight, tail out…” Espurr adjusted herself as he pointed things out, keeping her paws together and held out right in front of her. Her target: a discarded container laying on the desk before her.

“Alright,” said Nuzleaf. “Now ya just have ta direct it. Imagine all tha’ power flowing inta your paws, and then slammin’ into that can!”

Espurr shut her eyes, and imagined power flowing out from her, funnelling into her paws, then, arching out—

Something arched out. What it was, Espurr didn’t see. What she did see, when she opened her eyes, was that it wasn’t nearly enough to topple the can – it had only moved a little. Honestly, the wind could have blown it further…

She sighed and slumped back down into the seat behind her. Everymon else in the school had this down by now! And it wasn’t like they were more experienced—half the school couldn’t have done anything like this a week ago. But there they were, shooting off sparks and making plants bloom and blowing fire and ice, and she was still trying to figure out how to make her power work in the first place. How was she ever going to catch up?

“There there,” said Nuzleaf, sitting next to her on the school bench. He patted her back. “You’re gettin’ better.”

“I barely made anything appear,” protested Espurr in a defeated voice. “How can I be getting better?”

“Well, could you have done tha’ a week ago?” Nuzleaf asked.

Espurr shrugged.

“Maybe?”

“Maybe isn’t a yes,” said Nuzleaf. He winked, then began to rise from the seat.

“Wait,” said Espurr. Something had been gnawing away at the back of her mind, and she figured it was best to just say it. “What if it’s just my arm?”

“What do you mean?” Nuzleaf sat back down on the bench, folding his own.

“What if the only reason I’m getting better is because my arm healed?” asked Espurr. “We’ve been doing it for a week since then, and it’s only improved once, so…”

“Ahh, nonsense,” said Nuzleaf, waving it off. “That ain’t how it works.”

He pointed to her arms. “It’s not about what’s in there—” then he tapped his head. “It’s about what’s in here. And how you use it.”

He adjusted his position and leaned forward a bit, facing her completely. “But hey. I used to be just like you. Third year at the school; everymon else was doing great, but there I was, unable to create a single spark. Worried my parents so much, they thought I was going to grow up and never use a single move! But do you know how I changed that?”

Espurr shook her head. “How?”

Nuzleaf took a deep breath. “I realised where the real power comes from. It’s not about muscles, or wands, or brute force, or any of those doodads. It’s about what’s in your head, and how you use it.

“Now see, I wasn’ your brightest or most popular studen’ an’ all. I was somethin’ of a shut-in, actually. Got bullied a lot for it. But then I realised: it was that very spite, that very anger, that allowed me to plough through and break down the barriers that were holdin’ me back. And when I focused on that, everythin’ became clear. I had a goal. I was gonna show up that bully, and prove to him just how powerful I was. And so, I did.”

He edged a bit closer to her on the bench.

“Now, I think you’ve got a lotta power in that head’a yours. Ya just need to learn to channel it. Think… close your eyes. What makes you tha most angry?”

Espurr shut her eyes, and thought hard. Immediately an image came to her: Pancham’s smug face.

“Got one?” said Nuzleaf.

Espurr nodded.

“Great. Now… focus on that. And try again.”

Espurr concentrated again, imagining power flowing into her paws, focusing hard, on that image, on Pancham, on the bright burning annoyance she felt with somemon who’d lead others into a dangerous dungeon on purpose, twice…

Her paws heated up, and a strong blast of power suddenly left them. She heard the crunching of tin, and when she opened her eyes the metal container was crumpled in on itself.

The sound of clapping came from behind her.

“Now ya’ve got it!” said Nuzleaf. “Keep practisin’ with that. I think we’re gettin’ somewhere.”

~\({O})/~

“We’re going to Crossings! We’re going to Crossings!”

After several weeks, the day of the field trip had come. Tricky jumped up and down and hopped all around excitedly like a kit who had just had the run of the candied berry stall. Her pops, a large, blue, turtle-like creature who went by ‘Carracosta’, had forced her to brush her fur and wear a snow-white bow-tie atop her head. It did absolutely nothing to make her look any less untamed. The fennekin was doing orbits around the class group in excitement.

Deerling, who didn’t look super impressed, just yawned.

“In an hour or so,” she said, tapering off the yawn. “Maybe don’t combust before then.”

Goomy, who normally would have hung with them, seemed shackled to Deerling for the time being. He was mostly hanging around her, and though he didn’t seem especially happy about it, he didn’t make much of an attempt to come back to their side of the class. Espurr wondered about that.

Pancham and Shelmet were off bothering Deerling, which Espurr considered a plus because it meant they weren’t bothering her. She instead took a moment to settle down under her desk and pull out a folded piece of paper where no-mon else could see it. She unfolded it in her paws and stared hard at the drawing she’d made on the page, just so she could remember it: Three crooked-looking figures with bulbous lights on the ends of their arms, sleek, cloaklike silhouettes, obscured faces, and long, pointy hats which extended towards the sky entire feet above their heads. She’d been keeping an eye out for them over the last few months, but there had been no sign for a while. Where were they… and what were they doing?

The sudden sound of somemon clearing their throat caught Espurr’s attention, and evidently the rest of the class also – everymon had taken their seats. Farfetch’d and Simipour took positions at the head of the classroom, but didn’t say anything. Following them were Watchog and Audino.

Espurr was disappointed to learn Watchog seemed to be the one who was going to speak, as he took the centre position right at the helm of the desk and cleared his throat in an infinitely more obnoxious way.

“Alright, listen up, troublemakers!” he barked. “Some of you may know that the ferry service that goes between the different islands now has a route heading through us. This means we’re going to be using the boat to take our annual spring field trip to the province capital. But I expect all of you to behave perfectly. Remember, one step out of line, and we can send you straight back home. I hope that’s not lost on our rowdier members…”

A glance over towards Espurr and Tricky’s desk clued Espurr in on exactly what that meant.

“What Watchog means,” Audino started—

“Vice principal.”

“What the vice principal means,” Audino began again, “is that we expect you all to be on your best behaviour for the duration of the visit. I trust you all know not to act out too much.”

“Yes, Nurse Audino,” said the rest of the class, with a politeness that had not been reserved for Watchog. The Vice Principal just folded his arms and grunted. Espurr caught a clear whiff of quiet smugness of Audino as he stepped down from the pedestal: See? They respect me.

“I’ll still be watching you all,” he grumbled to save face as he returned to his sentry spot.

Farfetch’d moved forward, pulling a curly piece of paper from his bag. “As you’ll probably guess, class for today is cancelled, so we’ll just take attendance…”

~\({O})/~

The docks were in the other direction of town, fifteen minutes’ hike from the shore. The path led past tropical trees Espurr hadn’t seen before, and ended on a magnificent sandy beach surrounded by rich, green-blue sea. And at the end of it stood the boat.

She hadn’t expected it to be so large. It must have reached at least up to two storeys, and it was sleek and modern-looking. Espurr would have thought it would still have used sails.

A boarding plank slid out of the pure white hull, crashing down on the sand in front of them. It kicked up a fair amount into the students’ faces. Espurr was able to dust it off quite neatly, and Tricky just spit it out. It seemed like poor Goomy had accidentally eaten some, though.

“Alright!” barked an impatient Watchog, walking past them with a bag on his back he could barely carry. Did he really need all that stuff? “Everymon on board! Get on with it!”

Espurr just shouldered her own bag, and began to march up the plank after Deerling and some of the older kids. Goomy fell in stride (slime… ? Espurr wasn’t sure) with them up the plank.

“It’s hot out…” Goomy panted, shaking some sand off his left antenna.

The ferry set out soon after they’d boarded. A handful of other townsmon had come too – nearly everymon Espurr recognised out and about in the town square most days. Even Kecleon had come. He seemed to be on holiday, and had taken all sorts of strange gear with him that Espurr assumed was vacation material for a lizard.

Like most of the class, Espurr was out on the top deck, enjoying the wind on her face as the ship bobbed up and down on its voyage. Some of the other students were seasick. She was just glad it didn’t seem to affect her.

“Boats…” Tricky moaned pitifully, flopped over the railing like a ragdoll. Espurr looked at her in slight concern. “I’m gonna puke…”

Espurr quickly edged several feet away. She did not want to see what the projectile vomit of a fire-breathing creature looked like.

Of course, there was one passenger she wasn’t quite elated to see. He was loitering around on the far side, probably because he knew that if he got too close to all of the villagers somemon would have taken issue. She was surprised they even let Ampharos on the ferry, given the suspicion much of the town fostered towards him. But he was there all the same.

That didn’t mean she had to be happy about it. In fact, if she wasn’t surrounded by enough friends that there was no way anything could happen without him being implicated, she wouldn’t dare to take her eyes off him. All of the sudden, fire-type vomit seemed a little less unappealing than it had a second ago. Espurr slipped away to the other side of the dock.

It wasn’t long before the boat was close to making its landing point, and a voice came out over the loudspeakers: “Please be aware the ferry will be docking at its next landing point in five minutes. Gather your belongings and be ready to disembark.”

The announcement played on repeat every thirty seconds. Luckily, Espurr had kept her bag with her at all times, so she didn’t have much to pack. Tricky just adjusted the snow-white bowtie she was wearing – clearly it made her uncomfortable, as she was scratching the area around it constantly – and Goomy was keeping a tight hold on the tin of crackers Deerling had given him for lunch.

The ferry came to a landing, and Espurr stepped off the wooden plank again to air that was much damper than it had been back in the village. It felt almost like walking into an airborne bath. The distant flatlands around her were covered in greenery like she hadn’t seen before, and nestled in between the emerald grass and trees, between several smaller islands and bridges, was a sleek white town.

“Welcome to Crossings,” said Farfetch’d, stamping his leek into the grass like it was a cane. All the other students were barely able to restrain themselves from running off into the large, sprawling, city ahead of them. Espurr walked with Goomy and Tricky, but made sure that Ampharos was a good distance away before she took her eyes off of him.

Crossings itself was a charming piece of landscaping – though Espurr had been here before, the largeness of it still carried her away. It seemed so much livelier than Serenity Village, with pokemon scurrying past to and fro in mostly straight lines down the pure white cobbled roads. And the shops! There were shops everywhere, and they seemed to be selling all manner of strange things.

The group toured the city for a small while, exploring some of the stores and old buildings. Tricky stopped Espurr and Goomy outside a shop that read “Dungeoneering Equipment For Exquisite Explorers”, practically pulling them inside. The shop itself was musty, and the shopkeeper looked like he’d been alive since Mew was young. Inside were a host of things Espurr couldn’t make heads or tailsof tails of, like a dusty old orb that apparently told you where the nearest life signatures were for the entire floor, or a magnifying glass that helped one spot where dungeons popped up in the first place. Tricky was particularly excited over a Neverending Knapsack.

“Look—look!” she was practically bobbing up and down at the thing on display.

“What’s a Neverending Knapsack?” Espurr asked, looking at the sleek, white bag on the pedestal. They already had a bag.

“You can put anything you want in it,” Tricky explained in excitement, “And it’ll never run out of space! It’s state of the art. All the registered explorers get them issued now. I never thought I’d get to see one!”

That was kind of cool.

“It’ll cost ya,” said the ancient grovyle. Espurr practically jumped. She thought that was a statue!

“How much?” asked Tricky.

“Wouldn’t suppose you three happen to have any gold pieces layin’ about?” said the shopkeeper. “We only have one and it’s for display. You’d have to have a literal treasure to afford it.”

“Why keep something that’s only for display?” asked Espurr. Carefully, she shut Tricky up before Tricky could eagerly divulge that they did in fact have some treasure in their bag.

“So people will come in and buy other stuff,” grumbled the grovyle. “And because we’ll be getting another shipment of them in a few months. It takes a while for things to get down here from up North, don’t you know.”

Tricky perked up more when they entered an ice cream parlour. Some of the pocket change Audino had given them bought them all a nice sundae – in flavours Espurr could never have fathomed existed, like “tamato twist” and “lum express”. Espurr’s was neon green and tasted like a strange mix between watermelon and orange. They ate it on shiny white tables outside because heat and ice cream went together well. Though Espurr didn’t exactly like the soupy air and the way it felt against her fur, Goomy seemed to be enjoying it very much. Tricky had already finished her sundae and was staring at the bowl like it ought to refill itself immediately.

“Hey, mind if I take this seat?”

Espurr looked over at the one empty chair left at their table, where somemon stout and pinkish was looking up at them. It was another child from another school on the field trip. They didn’t seem much older than the three of them were, and the main distinctive trait about them – aside from their size and the long, pigtail-like adornments coursing down their back, was the large hammer they carried. Espurr recognised them from the bookstore immediately – Tinkaton!

The pink ‘mon looked at all the other tables, and then back at them. “Everywhere else’s full.”

They weren’t wrong. The place seemed to be fairly popular. Espurr nodded after getting approval from Tricky and Goomy. In response, they happily plunked their large hammer on the chair, hopped up and balanced themselves on the handle, and then plopped themselves on top of it. Now they were level with the table.

“Sorry for the inconvenience,” said the creature, pulling a sundae of their own out of nowhere. “We met, right?”

Espurr nodded. “At the book nook.”

“Right,” said Tinkaton. Then they saw over the rim of Espurr’s drawing. Their eyes widened.

“Hey, let me see that,” Tinkaton said, and before Espurr could say a thing they’d reached over and snatched the paper out of her paws.

“You guys seen these?” they said, looking up curiously.

“Maaaaybe?” Tricky trailed off.

“Do you know what they are?” asked Espurr.

Tinkaton looked up. “They’re Constructs,” they said dramatically.

“C-constructs?” stammered Goomy.

“Yup,” said Tinkaton. “Real nasty types too.”

They flipped the paper back towards Espurr. Espurr took it back. “‘Mon raised from the dead. Looks like beheeyem. You’ve seen ’em too?”

“You’ve seen them?” asked all three of them at once.

“Of course,” said Tinkaton. “The city’s on the watch for three beheeyem. They’ve been skulking around and acting shady. But from the way you’ve drawn ’em… now I wonder…”

Espurr, Tricky, and Goomy all looked at each other.

“What do you know about Constructs?” Espurr asked.

“I only know about ’em because my uncle was gettin’ into that stuff back when he had his slump,” Tinkaton said. “We eventually knocked some sense into him, but he doesn’t really talk about it much. All I know is he was doin’ it with some other guy. That guy got ‘im into it.”

“Who was the other guy?” asked Espurr.

“Beats me,” said Tinkaton. “We never saw ‘im. He disappeared when I was a hatchling. All we know is the ‘mon had a green cape.”

“Is there any chance we could talk to your uncle?” asked Espurr, folding the paper and stuffing it into her bag.

“Nah,” said Tinkaton, shaking their head. “He’s been senile for years. Never talked about it anyway. But…”

They leaned in over the table.

“Here’s what I do know. If you guys are doing any investigating, you should look for thunderstorms or mysterious blackouts recently. It takes a lot of power to conjure a Construct. Electric ‘mon can produce that power, or an ordinary ‘mon could steal it from a town. But without power, or a way to channel it, I don’t know where you’d get all that power from. Especially for somethin’ this mean.”

~\({O})/~

“What more proof could we need?” asked Espurr. She, Tricky, and Goomy were sitting around a small, round table in the corner of the inn’s café area. Dinner had long ago been finished, and now there were half-eaten sticky buns on everymon’s plates. Espurr had the page with the conehead sketch in the middle of the table, where all three of them could see it.

“An electric ‘mon just happens to arrive in town at the same time somemon here is murdered, and then these Constructs show up, and the moment Ampharos breaks from the group, they’re skulking around Crossings again?” Espurr took a pointed sip of her drink. “It basically solves itself.”

“B-but how do we prove it?” Goomy stammered.

“I guess we’d need to catch him doing it…” Tricky said, her ears lowering in perplexment.

Espurr could only fold her arms. That had her stumped.

He was clearly somehow guilty; they all knew that. But in all their time watching him, they somehow hadn’t managed to catch a single thing that proved it.

“You guys look bleak.”

The atmosphere was so thick the three of them nearly jumped. Pancham, looking smug as ever, sauntered over and took a place uninvited on one of the empty seats at their table.

“We’re just… tired,” answered Espurr, trying to sound as casual as possible. It wasn’t false. She could already feel sleep dragging her eyelids down.

Tricky let out a wide, exaggerated yawn.

“Me too…” she said, pausing to scarf down the little pieces of dessert that remained on her plate. “I think I’m gonna go sleep…”

“M-me too,” said Goomy.

The table was cleared faster than it took a skwovet to wolf down a nut buffet, leaving only Pancham sitting at an empty table. Espurr didn’t look back to see what his reaction was, but she assumed he was perplexed.

~\({O})/~

“Now just so you’re aware,” said Audino to Espurr as they walked down the narrow hall of the inn’s second floor. Everymon else had already tucked in for the night, but Espurr had been out late digging for any information she could find on Constructs. So far, the town library didn’t seem to have anything… though they weren’t keen on letting children into the sections with older books.

She looked up at Audino, the sudden words breaking her out of her train of thought.

“Tomorrow night, you’re going to go see somem—”

“My guardian?” asked Espurr.

Audino seemed a bit startled, as if she wasn’t expecting Espurr to know.

“Y-yes,” she said, collecting herself quickly. “Not sure how you knew that.”

Espurr didn’t fill her in.

“Why not one from the village?” she asked.

Audino certainly seemed less prepared to answer that than she was the last two. Espurr caught what seemed like a slight pang of… sadness? But it passed as quickly as it had come.

“It just didn’t work out in the village,” she said. “But think on the bright side! You’ll live in a big city! Here you’ll be able to take the ferry back whenever you want.”

They reached the room Espurr and the other kids were staying in, and Audino knelt over to dust some dirt off Espurr’s fur. “And I know your new guardian is going to be very sweet.”

She gave Espurr a quick hug. Espurr hadn’t been hugged in many years and wasn’t sure how to react, so she let herself be squeezed like a disturbed fish and stood there trying to process it after Audino had let go. Eventually, she leaned into it. It felt warm and fuzzy.

“Now good night,” said Audino, standing up and walking away.

It took until Espurr was about to flop down on one of the straw beds to realise that she’d been wearing the bag all day and hadn’t noticed. She deposited it in a heap near the door then flopped down on the straw next to Tricky, who was softly snoring.

Left with her mind simmering, all she could do was stare up at the ceiling.

Dear diary,

I don’t want to go.

~\({O})/~

Music of the Week!

Glass Onion Theme Revisited – Nathan Johnson