When I woke again, Jay was putting her quiver on her back again. She took the ring that held all my baggage off her finger and held it out to me. I took it and placed it on my finger. It adjusted itself until it fit my finger perfectly.
"That ring will not come off unless you take it off of your free will. To get your luggage back, tap the gemstone thrice."
I nodded and stood. Jay took a map out of her pocket and examined it. She looked up at the horizon then back at the map. She nodded and put the map back. I stretched, my mouth stretched wide in a huge yawn. I tapped my ring for my luggage and rummaged through my new belongings to see if there was some sort of hair brush in there somewhere. I found a hair brush with a handle of ivory, bristles of peacock feathers, and studded with gems. I stared at it in amazement for a moment. Finally I shrugged, and was like 'what the heck' and started to brush my hair. I finished and went into some bushes to change in one of my BlueJay lookalike outfits. I snagged a matching sparkly headband and some better sneakers. I replaced my boring studs with some dangly feathers. Grabbed a magic bracelet or two, and the locket that I could hide Frost in. I was feeling more like myself. Jay helped me find a small bag that I could tuck the little chick into comfortably. Speaking of which, it looked kind of hungry. Me and Jay tried many different kinds of food, but we only found one thing he liked to eat; metal and minerals. We had to pry it off some pieces of valuable jewelry, but my old earrings were devoured by him. We dug around in my trunk and found some old jewels. We fed him what we could and tucked the rest into one of Jays pockets. As we cleaned the various things we had scattered, a weird thought occurred to me.
"Jay, where did your sister GET all this stuff?"
Jay's face darkened slightly, but she replied
"Most of it came from my fathers estate, but some of it.... Well, my sister is, as you know, not completely in her right mind. Some of the items she has acquired she has taken from travelers in the woods."
I didn't reply to that. We packed in silence, until we had all the necessary supplies we needed to continue on our journey to whoever would help me get back home. As we reentered the forest, I started to think about my home. Man, I missed everyone back there. Like, sure, his place was really cool, and I had gotten tons of free magical cool stuff. So, yeah, I was like,
'SCORE!!!'
But I still missed everybody and everything at home. Mittens, my cat, my parents, my friends, heck, I even missed Josie, my little sister. As well as Grandma. As I thought about everyone, like reading my thoughts, Jay asked,
"Tweet, where did you come from? How did you get here? How did I come to find you? Or, really, you found me,"
She said, smiling slightly. At first I was hesitant, but soon I was pouring the whole story out to her. I forgot about the journey and how hard it was to go through this crazy dense forest and talked.
"Well, first I kind of need to give you a little bit of an introduction, since all you really know about me is my name. Plus, I owe you from last night."
She nodded, and I went on. My name is Emiline, I'm 12, I love to draw and write, have lots of friends at school, that kind of thing. I told her about my artistic mom and funny dad, my crazy little sister, my loving cat, and about my... Well, awesome, amazing, fantabulous, eccentric grandmother. She is too cool. She uses a cane, and has this actual eye patch over one of her eyes, but other than that, she's really nice and funny. One of her hands always has a Michael Jackson glove on it, never without it. She normally keeps her silver hair in a bun, and has the coolest dresses and nicest laugh. She has these wrinkles around her eyes from all the time she spends smiling. She has his aura of, well, control, I guess.. But it's really more of an organized feeling. Her house is always clean, her bills always paid perfectly and on time, cookies always out of the oven at the right moment. I know I was kind of putting a lot of emphasis on her, but I love her a lot (she actually remembers what its like to be in sixth grade.) and she kind of is the reason I ended out where I did. So, anyways, I visit her a lot, but I was kind of surprised yesterday afternoon when I biked to her house (yeah, over a river and through the woods, to grandmothers house we go, I'm not kidding) and found no one home, but the house unlocked and, weirdly enough, cookies burning. Not that big for you, but this was a biggie for Grandma. I grabbed them out of the oven then went all over, doing a Grandma search. Didn't find a sign of her. It was weird. One thing odd I did notice, was that this door that I had never even noticed before, was open. Well, yeah, of course I knew it w I just never had kind of seen it. It was in her room, so I had always assumed it was a closet and ignored it. But it was open, and there were a many beautiful coats in it. Dresses, too. And the materials they were made of was even more amazing. Peacock feathers, leopard skin, one that even had the exact same texture of an Aura, though I didn't know it yet. I was astounded. I wondered where Grandma had gotten these dresses. Not at Target, thats for sure. Also, I was kind of wondering where on earth grandma used these dresses, since I had sure as heck never seen any of them. I stood there, staring at these mysterious clothes. And as I did, a childish feeling of mischief came over me. I had seen the movie The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe before, and guess where going through a closet of coats got that little girl? She became a princess, right? So, the crazy person I was, I decided to do something that I would rather regret. I pushed my way past the coats to the back of the closet. Funny enough, it worked. I stumbled into a snowy landscape. I was shocked. And scared. And confused. And lots of other feelings too, I'm sure. I had no idea if Grandma was here, how this had even happened, and whether I was going crazy or if this was actually real even though it shouldn't be. I turned around, ready to leave and forget about this forever. But, lo and behold, nothing was in the space my exit should be. My heart sank. I turned back around to face whatever was here. I almost peed myself when I saw what was in front of me. Emperor penguins, each the size of a grownup, waddled around. They had bow ties, canes, diamond flipper watches, tuxedos, monocles, and top hats on. The females (well, I guess they were females) had on slinky evening gowns. It was funny, but kind of weird. I started walking through the crowd. I don't really know what I expected to find. A map, like at the mall?
YOU ARE HERE. To get back to Grandma's house, go to northeast aisle, etc. I don't know. I just started walking through. I tried not to bump into any of them, really I didn't, but I did bump into this one guy. He looked down at me and narrowed his beady eyes.
"Hey, watch it!"
He snapped. Literally. His beak clicked on every syllable. I muttered an apology and shuffled my way around. When I had walked for a considerable amount of time, I was out of the penguins. I sighed with relief. I had no idea where I was going, but I had at least made it this far. I turned around and continued walking.
"Hey, wait!"
I stiffened, but turned around to see what it was. A female and male penguin slid up to me on their bellies, then stood upright in front of me. They were my height. They weren't dressed as smartly, more like two teenagers going to a dance. The girl asked me in a silvery voice
"Who are you? What are you doing here? Where are you going?"
The guys shuffled his feet a little and explained that his girlfriend had thought I looked lost and out of place and had wanted to help. I shrugged and introduced myself to them. I explained my predicament of not being able to get back, not knowing where to go and knowing no one that could help. I asked them if there was anyone they knew that might be able to help. They had looked lost for a moment, then brightened (if a penguin can brighten). They explained that they knew the perfect place that would have someone that could get 'my wing out of the fishing net'. They pointed towards a forest at the very edge of my vision. They explained that if I kept going I would eventually get to the kingdom of this land. I thought it was odd that there was a kingdom, like how old is that? But y'know, I had seen some pretty weird stuff today, so I let it go. I thanked them and gave them both hugs. They were very nice about it, and the girl gave me a magic diamond for good luck on a necklace. I put it on, and she assured me I looked 'prettier than the aurora at midnight' I said goodbye and headed toward my destination. I kept turning around and waving, and they were always there, waving right back at me. At around this point in my storytelling, I showed Jay my necklace, and she asked the names of the penguins that had helped me out. I told her that they had called each other Violet and Tommy. She nodded and smiled.
"The penguins you met were the snootiest flock of Dressy Penguins there are. They hate people but normally just ignore us. Violet and Tommy, the two you met, are exceptions. They don't dress up like peacocks, and are kind and helpful to any humans in need. Good friends of mine."
She nodded, looking satisfied.
"They are well known for their generosity and good advice."
I continued with my story. After I couldn't see them anymore, I had started jogging across the stretch of increasingly grassy land before me. The sun was barely up in the sky here, while it was around 4:00 in the afternoon back home. However, I felt awake, like I do in the morning. Like my body had adapted to this new world or whatever it was. Along the way, I saw many odd things. Tribes of cats racing over hills, 12 headed snakes sliding through the sand, dragons flying over head, trees with faces forming in their leaves, rocks with water flowing out of them, and much more. I kept up a steady pace until about noon, when I plopped myself down at some sort of beautiful oasis. I met a pride of lions that were also relaxing in the shade. When I noticed them, I tensed, ready to run. However, even though a lot of them looked over at me curiously as I rested, none of them showed much interest in me. After a while, a dozen or so cubs bounced, rolled, and ran to me. They played around and near me, and since I didn't bother them, soon they were crawling over my legs, playing king of the mountain on my head, and sleeping on my stomach. I couldn't help but smile as the clumsy cubs, one by one, fell asleep on me in various wildly complex positions. When one of them started snoring, I had to try really hard not to laugh. I fell asleep, too. They were the perfect warm blanket. We slept for about a half and hour. When I woke up, a lioness was silently moving the sleepy cubs back over to where the lions were resting. She looked at me and blinked, long and slow. I blinked back. She nodded and continued. When all the cubs were gone, she came and sat next to me. She nudged my hand with her muzzle a couple of times, and when I opened my palm, she dropped a lion fang with a hole in it into my hand. Carved in it was a rough picture of a lion cub. I found an old piece of yarn in my pocketbook (which I still had on) and slung the tooth round my neck. She nodded again and walked silently away. I stood up slowly and stretched quietly, not wanting to leave, but I did, after waving and whispering a quiet farewell. Here, too, I showed the necklace I had acquired to Jay. She looked surprised.
"This kind of necklace is very rare. The pride you saw was most likely the Loyal Pride, the most noble. I can tell for no other tribe has this jagged edge on their teeth. This necklace is a symbol of friend to mother lions and cubs. A very rare honor. It will also help you if you meet a male lion, for they are always wishing to gain favor from the females and helping a Friend is a very good way to do so."
I continued again with my story. I had started jogging again, feeling refreshed. Soon, I reached the edge of the forest. It looked really creepy, but I had walked in anyways. Inside, even more wonders and terrors met my curious eyes. I was starting to get hungry, but I pressed on. When I was deep in the forest and my stomach was growling of hunger, I came across an odd sight. Yards and yards of the ground were covered with pure white mushrooms. I bent down and poked one. I'm not kidding, it felt exactly like a marshmallow. I picked one up and poked a hole in it. Looked like marshmallow. Now, what I did next was pretty stupid and probably could have ended out really badly, but it didn't. I took a bite of of the strange mushroom. Tasted like marshmallow. I waited a couple of minutes, and when I didn't die from poison, I finished the mushroom off. Yum. I feasted on marshmallow for my afternoon snack. When I had picked a good area clean, I went on my way in what was probably the right direction. After an hour or so more of hiking, I found a small clearing full of flowers. Really beautiful flowers. I walked to the center and breathed in the sweet scent. My eyes started to close. I was tired, and it smelled so nice and- but then I saw something that really should never happen and of you ever see this, run away. The flowers were moving. And growing. And snarling. My eyes snapped open. The Tiger Lily's petals formed a tigers teeth. The dandelion was drooling. The foxglove was barking. And lots of other stuff that really shouldn't happen was happening. They stretched their stems so they could grow their way to me. The rose, always one of my favorite flowers, had its thorns pointed towards me like daggers. Vines started worming their way up my legs. I felt them slowly tighten. Then, in my comatose-like state, I thought
'I don't want to be killed by a bunch of flowers! I don't want to die, period!!!!'
I unfroze and ran. Ran. Ran. Didn't stop. Didn't breathe. Didn't think. Ran, ran, ran. For ages. Or minutes. Anyways, the point is, I ran away as fast as I could. Until I couldn't. So I stumbled along. Until I heard a voice yell
"Hey! Are you okay?"
And tripped on a root. And found myself at the feet of BlueJay.
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