Buttercorn’s Bag - 📝

Semiplume scrutinized the items ordered across the mossy floor. She counted them. Then recounted.

She sighed. Long, deep, and hard.

According to her numbers (that wouldn’t change no mater how much she recounted or willed it to) over half of the group’s supplies were gone after contents of Semi’s bag had been sent flying during yesterday’s spontaneous loop-de-loops. That included most of Semi’s food, the tent, flashlights, and, troublingly, the first aid kit. The later would have definitely been helpful in patching the insistent leak the trabble’s food bag had sprung.

Or perhaps in stopping Semi from having a figurative heart attack when Buttercorn suddenly and loudly appeared.

“Semiplume!!! I can’t find it!!”

“-!!!! -Butter!!”

“Please, don’t sneak up on me like that!”

“But I can’t fiiinnnnd itttt!!!”

Semi sighed with warmth this time.

“And “it” is…?”

“The bag Semi!! The one that I got and put all the little eggs into! There were a bunch of green eggs and I wanted to look at them and now I can’t find them anymore!!”

Semiplume cringed.

“You… had it last night, right…?”

“Uhhhhh.”

“No.”

“…”

“Did you have it after we landed in Creoi?”

“Oh, uhh? No?? I think I had it before andd uhhhh…”

“………”

“I think I dropped it.”

“…During the loop-de-loops?”

“During the loopy-loops.”

Semiplume resist the urge to cradle her own head in her hands, at least while the child-like bird was watching.

Buttercorn’s bag had been green (the trabble’s favorite color). The Eggster eggs that she had collected and put in the bag were green.

And they were in the moss capital of the planet.

“Your face is looking funny...”

“Let’s… regroup with Ali. We have a few stuff we’re gonna need to find…”

~~~

“So… why are we in the middle of the woods again?”

“(Or moss overgrowth…? Is it still a forest if it’s all just moss???)”

“Umm, basically I’m hoping against hope that we can manage to find some of our supplies. Because I’m really not ready to try trabble food.”

“Your loss.”

“…This sort of seems like a lost cause, though. Why not take some odd jobs again and buy more supplies?”

“Well, one, I’d like to get to Buzzdew before next year. And two, Buttercorn lost that Eggster bag she was carrying around. I’d really like to find at least that.”

“Oh… the green one?”

“The green one.”

Human and pterrabble (and hovering Dragolfi) steadily progressed their search through the under-moss. Semi looked up periodically to see Creoi tucked deeper and deeper into the moss-like trees that were slowly consuming the sky. As the blue above their heads was eaten away, the land around the three became increasingly silent.

…Except-

“Ali. Freeze.”

Alicanto was already ahead of the human. Out of the corner of her eye, Semi could see the Pterrabble had stiffened, feathers tight against their body. Their not-quite-eyes were honed on the silent, vast shadows that had surrounded them.

The darkness whispered in muffled tones. Low guttural snorts. The sound of vegetation uprooted and snapped. Shuffling noises that weren’t quite like the wind.

Human held her breath, trabble silently arched their neck, and dragolfi cowered as the shadows gave form. And an absolute mammoth wandered forth.

Earth brown fur dashed with blotches made the beast seem like a bizarre hallucination under the mossy forest’s dappled light. Its size was absurd; a tower of fur that made the tall Trabble to Semi’s side look inconsequential.

Semi’s heart caught in her throat (Birds had hearts. Did trabbles?). Tusks, ridiculously long tusks, cut through the shadows as the beast lowered its head and passively upended the earth in search of roots.

Semi’s wonder-based brain raced, tripping over itself to place what on Earth the unknown beast was. But her muscles were frozen and some deep instinct instructed with frigid fear that she. Must. Not. Move.

Out of the corner of her eye (Real. Unlike trabbles) Alicanto’s neck edged ever slightly downward. Semi could tell the Pterrabble was primed to hiss and flare their feathers in an attempt to scare the beast off. Semiplume stretched her hand a hair’s width; a signal for the trabble to remain still.

The beast froze.

Its head snapped up.

Steely ice gripped the human’s chest.

It meandered forward.

The trabble’s hiss died in their throat.

Its nose scanned the lichen floor. Till it was inches away from Semi and Alicanto’s face. Sensitive nostrils drew in the scent of the little aliens who had dared to wander among giants. But Semi had forgotten how to breath she had closed her eyes and the icy beast’s breath was dancing across her vision and so were the stars.

And the beast lowered its head. Snorted. And wandered back into the hungry shadows.

(Had they been judged?)

(Had they been found disappointments or worthwhile?)

Semi remembered thinking these thoughts as, thawed, human, trabble, and dragolfi quietly rushed out of the silent moss forest and back to the safety of Creoi.