#teen shenanigans and ghost shenanigans and guess what? a new setting for davy and symmes

[tomswifty-fr]

(Explanation: this was for a forum thread where you were supposed to have your dragons tell stories to a story-ghost, but the original poster stopped responding and I’m not about to let 2300+ words of dumb teen adventures go to waste.) 

(My greatest apologies to mobile readers)

“Well, it started with me and Ithaca. We were bored. Square Toe is a dumb place to live, y’know? It’s so small and there’s nothing to do! They won’t let us into Habitat or Leo’s, ‘cuz we’re too young. The desert is just the desert. It’s boring and hot and everyone says it’s full of ghosts, but I’ve never seen one. I wish I had. Ithaca wanted to go flying, but I’m bad at flying. My wings are too short.” She stretches one out to prove it. “My uncle says they’ll get bigger, but I don’t think so. Everything else on me stopped growing a long time ago.

“Ithaca’s my best friend, by the way. She’s good at everything, and she’s really brave and stuff…. We spend a lot of time together. I told her I didn’t want to fly, and she suggested some other stuff. Hang out at the library, sneak into Tom’s workshop, go over to the orchard and climb trees until we got caught and chased out. I guess I was in kind of a crummy mood and kept saying no, I don’t want to do that, that’s dumb. I felt bad about it, but I kept saying no. I could tell she was getting annoyed too, so when she said we should go explore the old part of town I said yes, even though we’ve done it a jillion times before.

“Okay so, Square Toe’s a really weird town. I said it was small but there’s actually a lot of it. I guess there used to be a bunch more dragons living here a long time ago, so the city itself is really big and there’s a lot of empty buildings and stuff. Everyone lives close together though, so the old town is empty and really worn out. I used to think it was creepy until I started going there. You can find cool stuff sometimes, like old graffiti, and once I found a little carved hainu. Ithaca heard there was an old statue garden with lots of weird sculptures and that’s what she wanted to go see…”

Riley sneezed again. It was cooler in this cellar, sure, but there was so much dust it was impossible to see anything. She guessed Ithaca had given up on the statues by now; there’s no way they’d be someone’s old basement.

“Hey, check this out!” Ithaca was bent over the remains of a desiccated wooden crate, her feathered tail wagging fiercely and raising even more piles of dust. Riley stifled another sneeze and came over to look.

It was full of paper masks. Tundras with furry fringe, Guardians with drooping horns, Imperials with yarn whiskers, and even a Talonok with cutout beak. “That one looks like you!” Ithaca laughed, pointing to a Mirror mask with four eyes but only two eyeholes. “I could wear it to the library and check out books on your account.”

“And stick me with all the late fees? No way! I should pretend to be you, so I can eat at your house every night. Harry’s a lousy cook.” Riley snatched for a Wildclaw mask in faded purple, intending to hold it up and perform a scathing imitation of her friend, but the ancient paper crumbled in her claws. “Ugh.”

Ithaca made a half-hearted attempt to force the crate closed, giving up with the lid still open at an awkward angle. “Okay, one more basement? If we don’t find anything good, we’ll give up.”

Riley nodded. “Sure, next building?”

“I was thinking that.” Ithaca pointed, drawing Riley’s attention to an empty doorway on the other side of the room.

“That’s just a closet.”

“No, I bet it’s a connected basement. Feel? There’s air!”

Riley concentrated, then gave up. “I don’t feel anything, but I believe you. What are we gonna do about- ” She instinctively caught the small object Ithaca tossed her, then looked down. “Oh. Where’d you get these?”

Ithaca waved her own small lantern and stuck out her tongue mischievously. “Borrowed them from my mom. I told her we were going camping tonight. They’re magic, so we don’t have to worry about them going out. Don’t drop yours though, okay?” There was just a tinge of worry in her otherwise carefree tone; magic items were expensive.

“What do you think I am, a hatchie? I’m not gonna drop it.” She switched hers on with a sigh. “Let’s go.”

*

“How far apart are these basements supposed to be?”

“I don’t know.”

“Shouldn’t we turn around?”

“You can if you want.”

Riley turned her head, looked at the black tunnel behind her, and turned it back to look at the black tunnel and snappish friend in front of her, who was just as nervous but trying to hide it. “Nah, I’ll stay.”

The so-called ‘connected basement’ had turned into a too-long trek down a crumbling stone tunnel. It wasn’t quite cramped, but she and Ithaca were travelling single file. The only saving grace was that there didn’t seem to be any spiderwebs or even a lot of dust, but the slight dampness under Riley’s feet took away any reassurance she could have got from that fact. Flash floods were a fact of Highland Scrub life; thunderstorms were more common further south in Lightning territory, but rushing water could travel miles and miles and be just as violent with the distance.

Wouldn’t that be a stupid way to die, she thought. Drowned in a stupid tunnel with my stupid friend. At least we won’t have to pay for ruining the lanterns.

After another little distance of silence and worrying, the corridor opened up into another chamber. The two teens almost breathed sighs of relief, before noticing one crucial fact.

“Ithaca? This isn’t a basement.”

It was a large, natural looking cavern, with a ceiling towering dozens of feet above them (Riley realized, a little too late, that the tunnel they’d been going through had been a downward slope). Their lanterns didn’t illuminate very far but were able to reveal a few details: stalagmites jutting up from the floor, water droplets sparkling on the walls, and scuff marks on the ground behind them. The humidity was much higher than either of the desert-dwellers were used to; Riley’s scales itched, and she could see Ithaca’s headfeathers starting to poof up.

Ithaca reached up to scratch her feathers, her eyes getting bigger all the time. “This is so cool.”

“What?”

“No, it’s really cool! It’s a whole cave! And we found it! Do you think it’s connected to Square Toe Cave?”

There was a slightly manic tone to Ithaca’s voice, as if she were overcome by the potential of their discovery. It made sense; Square Toe Cave was the life of Square Toe; almost literally. The underground reservoir was the only thing that had let the original inhabitants build everything they did. Even in its diminished present state, it was all that let the current residents live lives of (relative) comfort in the desert.

“If it is, we didn’t really discover it though, we just found another entrance. They’ll close it off and put another guard up.”

“Ok, so we don’t tell anyone. We keep quiet and have our own cave.”

Riley was trying to match her friend’s enthusiasm, but it was hard. “We’d better not tell anyone. We’d get in trouble just for going through that tunnel.” She mimicked an adult voice, deep and monotone. “Stay out of the tunnels, they’re dangerous, they’re unexplored, they’ve got mimics in them- ”

“That’s for the tunnels in the library. And they just do that because they think they connect to Square Toe Cave.”

“They won’t care. I mean, your dad works in the Cave and he’s always going on about how dangerous it is underground, with floods and stuff and the risk of it collapsing and everything.”

“Yeah, but- ” A scraping sound stopped the argument in its tracks. Suddenly, both teens were extremely aware that they were in a weird cave they didn’t know anything about. Nobody knew they were here. There was something in here with them.

“A mimic?” Ithaca whispered.

“Probably.” Riley breathed back.

It made sense. Mimics lived anywhere they could. The library would have been infested with them, if it wasn’t for constant searching and pest control. This place? Dark, quiet, empty? It would be perfect for them. Mimics were harmless anyway. If you tried to open a mimic book you might get your claws nipped, but that was all. They were scared of dragons. Kimball even kept one as a pet. If it was mimics, it was fine.

The scraping sound appeared again.

They froze.

They waited.

They relaxed.

And suddenly a shape loomed up in front of them. It was large and dark and blue, and smelled like metal and water. Riley didn’t know any more details because by the time she registered the thing, she was already running back up the tunnel, the lantern beam bouncing wildly, strobing the blank walls. Something was running behind her, and she hoped hoped hoped to the Eleven that it was Ithaca.

After what seemed like a long time, too long, she emerged from the tunnel. It was Ithaca behind her. Immediately, in an unspoken agreement, they grabbed the crate of masks and pulled it to the opening, tipping it over and scattering masks across the floor. Neither paid attention to the paper disintegrating under their claws or the sequins and yarn bits bouncing around their claws. It didn’t block the entrance perfectly, but having it there made them both feel a little better.

Outside, Riley wrote ‘BEWARE’ on the building front with a piece of chalk Ithaca found in some pocket of hers. “What do you- what do you think that was?” She was babbling, but tried to concentrate on thinking and writing to soothe her pounding heart. “I’ve never heard of a mimic that big, and it couldn’t have been a dragon. It didn’t- I mean- ” Instead of talking, she pointed to her front eyes, the heat-seeing ones. “It was cold. It didn’t smell like a dragon either. I don’t know what it could be.” Turning to give back the chalk, she saw Ithaca, pale behind her feathers. She was shaking.

“Hey, hey?” Riley took her claw as she handed the chalk back. “We’re okay, right? It didn’t follow us.”

“No, it’s not that.” Ithaca looked sick. “I lost my light.”

“Oh.” Riley paused. “That sucks.” It seemed inadequate.

“Yeah.”

“Let’s head back.”

“And it really just seemed dumb. We just escaped some kind of cave monster and it’s still there under the old city and we can’t tell anyone, or we’ll get in big trouble. I know we should, but I don’t want to. What if we just imagined it? But even if we imagined it, there’s still a cave down there. And losing the light was stupid too. It almost felt worse than, than, whatever happened down there. I mean, it felt more real, you know? But that’s not the weirdest part.

“Ithaca slept over with me that night, because it was already late, and she told her parents we were going camping anyway and she didn’t want to tell her mom she lost one of her lanterns. When she went back the next morning there wasn’t anyone home- she told me this part, I wasn’t there. I guess her dad was at work and her mom and her sister were somewhere, which is pretty normal. But the lantern was lying on the kitchen table. It wasn’t broken or anything. So she gave them both back and didn’t get in trouble, but it was really weird. The whole thing is just weird.

“Anyway, that’s what happened. I guess nothing really bad came out of it, but it was a couple of weeks ago and it’s still weird. Creepy, even. I’m gonna be thinking about it for a long time. She gets up, stretching her legs. “I just wanted to get that off my chest. Thanks for uh, thanks for listening, I guess.” She leaves, in that same loping run as before, not bothering to wait for a response.

*

Some time passes, and another form fades into view. This one is paler and transparent, and if it ever was a dragon, it sure isn’t anymore. “This isn’t even a story, but something strange happened to an acquaintance of mine a little while ago.”

“His name is Davy, and he was alive until very recently. Death’s been a hard adjustment for him, especially since the person he’s haunting moved very recently, so he has to get used to a whole new place as well. He likes to stay underground, in caverns and cellars and so forth. I think he finds the darkness comforting.

“Well, he told me that the other day he finds a couple of kids spelunking, goes over to say hello, and they start screaming like they’ve seen a ghost- which I suppose they had!” She laughs. “He noticed one of them dropped something, so he went to ask if I could return it since I’m more familiar with the town. Been around it longer, so to speak. Well, I recognized the description, there’s not that many kids around that age in town, so I returned it.

“Later, Ripper tells me- he’s another, well he’s not quite a ghost.” A frown. “Well, we stick together, all us not-quite-dragons-anymore. The one kid, the feathery one, has started asking Vince about ghosts. She didn’t tell him what happened, just acting curious, but I just had to laugh. Vince calls himself a ghost hunter, but his idea of trying to catch us is a propped-up box with a string and a peanut butter sandwich! And all the while she’s sitting there, soaking all his nonsense in, Mike is puttering by right in asking distance. Mike knows miles more about ghosts that Vince does; he’s dating one!”

She shakes her head. “Well, maybe that’s not funny either. Time can warp your sense of humor, I’ve heard. I just think it goes to show. I’m not sure what it shows, but it shows something.”