48. Kindred Spirits

Chapter 48: Kindred Spirits

So, while we're taking a break and waiting for the swelling in Hop Pop's tongue to go down, I figured it was time to write about something that happened a little while back. It was during the couple of weeks between the tower incident and the time we left the valley. I probably should've written about it back then, but emotions were still raw and every time I looked at my journal, it just reminded me of the last time I had written in it. But I guess now is as good a time as any…

We were foraging in the swamp, looking for ingredients for a swamp souffle that HP was threatening to make. Maybe I should give him the benefit of the doubt, but when his selling point is that it tastes only a little worse than it smells, the prospects weren't looking to good. I was hoping that maybe I could talk him into tweaking the recipe a bit… more fresh herbs, less rotting moss…

Anyway, we were looking for something called pineapple fungus, which Polly thought she found. But it turns out that it looks almost exactly like the nose of a giant badger… beetle… badgle? Beeter?

[Drawing of creature]

THIS THING

Granted, this is from memory, but this is exactly as horrifying as I remember it being.

Anyway, Pissing off a giant creature and running from said giant creature is just another day ending in Y for us, so what makes this such a special case that I've made it worthy of a flashback entry? Well, this was the day I met another human. And not one I already knew!

But I'm getting slightly ahead of myself.

We were running from the badger-beetle monster when we ran into her. She looked about my age and height and had really good taste in shirts and leggings. She was kinda just standing there in a clearing with what I thought at first was another, older human, but I noticed something was off about her. She was very tall, unusually pale, with wild grey hair, one gold fang, and… this was the kicker… pointy ears.

The younger one introduced herself as Luz Noceda, and right away, I could feel like there was some kind of instant connection. Like, somehow, we sprang from some sort of common origin, despite the fact that there's no way we could have ever met.

We probably would have exchanged stories, but the older (though surprisingly foxy for her age; HP certainly seemed to think so, at any rate) woman reminded us that oh yeah, there was something after us!

Then something amazing happened. Luz whips out a piece of paper and slapped it down on the ground, and suddenly vines shot out of it and wrapped the badger-beetle up! This bought enough time for Sprig, Polly and I to do enough damage to finish it off.

Now that we had time to talk, I found out just why I got that instant kindred spirit vibe from her. Turns out she's also trapped in a strange fantasy world and looking for a way to get home, only her world is less "Wind in the Willows" and more Hieronymous Bosch. Two girls, stuck in a strange universe, with older mentors… I wonder if she also has a chaotic surrogate sibling of some sort.

We also learned that the older woman was named Eda, the Owl Lady (and yeah, I could see a certain owly vibe coming from her)

We didn't get too much time to bond, though, seeing that the portal that brought them to our realm was starting to fade out. And so I bid Luz a fond goodbye, and promised that someday, we'd have a sleepover. I bet living in a demon dimension has given her all sorts of great Scare Dare ideas.

Of course, we didn't find out until after they left that the Owl Lady stole HP's wallet. Well, joke's on her. I know for a fact that there's nothing in there but IOUs. Good luck spending those!

A.N.: Well, there it is! Thanks to Matt Braly, Dana Terrace, Brenda Song, Justin Felberger, Bill Farmer, Amanda Leighton, Sarah Nicole Robles, Wendie Malick, and Mae Whitman for giving us that special performance, and I really enjoyed the chance to try working it into the actual canon.

Jose: Yeah, the last couple have been short, next chapter should be longer. And thanks in advance to fickleness16 for giving me an idea of how to frame it.

Next: Swamp and Sensibility