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"Oh yeah! Yellow paper!" Espen said slowly, attempting to get the pronunciation right, which he did, to his surprise. "Dat mus be it." and with a flash Espen stormed off towards the paper section again.

Shane caught Espen running down the aisle with a friend somewhere behind him and decided that it was best to just keep an eye on him from afar because it didin't look like he was causing any trouble...yet. Still, the guardian's expression was puzzled. What could that boy be excited about, in a shop that he clearly didn't like?

Espen remembered that the paper he had seen was a brighter colour and shiny, but he couldn't find any here so he figured they must've just been sold out of it. Instead he walked until he found some cardboard paper that was close to the colour that he had seen and pulled it out from the bottom shelf.

"Yellow paper." he pronounced the word slowly again, it sounded right, and even easier to say this time. Much better than saying 'yelwo'. He decided to hold onto the paper because Cody's hands seemed full.

Espen did a double blink and peeked around the corner of the aisle they just went through and then suddenly rushed to the other end of the aisle and peeked around those corners too. This time he didn't come back, his eyes were too wide with fear and shame, and so he froze at the bottom of the aisle. Espen knew where he was, he'd been here with his dad long enough but...he didn't want to admit to his newest friend that he had no idea where their parents were.

Espen didn't want to admit that he was lost and didn't want to scare himself or Cody more than he already was. He figured that the best way to get themselves out of their current predicament was to stay calm and find some way of retracing their steps. Wandering the place until they spotted them sounded like a good idea, but Espen knew that Shane was looking for a lot of outside and garden objects today, so he thought about moving towards that section first.

"Wea not lost," Espen reassured Cody "Pawents jus hidin'. Gotta findem. I tink somewhere wid fake fwowers. Come wid me."

Taking charge, Espen marched back up the way they had came and peeked carefully from one aisle to the next as they retraced their steps.

Espen nodded and lead Cody towards the hallway, which at first was empty, but then the figure of a woman with dark yellowy-skin and strange eye-makeup made a sharp turn into the hallway and began to walk steadily towards them. Espen moved uncomfortably as he didn't recognize this woman, and knew that it clearly wasn't his parent. Maybe he really was lost and they would never find their parents again.

"No, not parents." Espen said with his heart in his throat and turned to walk in the oposite direction and begin a new search.

Espen was ashamed at his terrible job as a leader, things were going so well up until this point. He had to redeem himself somehow for Cody or else risk total embarassment for the rest of his life for having gotten lost in a store full of stupid art and stupid tall shelves.

"If we wa biggah, we'd look ovah stoopid tall shelves." Espen thought out loud, trying to think of how they could do that. It was hard enough to just get the frame. "We needa lat-ter o sumtin."

Espen thought that he was good at climbing on things too, but decided that this wasn't the best place to argue. Instead, he kept his mouth shut and followed him towards the shelf with the wooden objects and began to stack them as best and quickly as he could, like a large block tower.

He wasn't sure what they were going to do as soon as they could no longer reach the top of the tower, but he guessed that's when Cody's climbing skills would come in handy. Espen wanted to be the one to climb the tower though, and suddenly a treacherous thought about toppling the tower while he was on it came to mind.

No, no. Espen thought to himself, Cody is friend. He just wants to help, like me. and as if to scare the thought out of his mind, he made a small barking sound as he continued to stack things until Cody told him to stop.

Espen felt terribly humbled. Cody was even giving him the chance to show off. How could he ever have thought bad about him? He had shown both friendship and devotion. He had followed Espen's advice everywhere, to the point where he had even gotten them lost and still stuck around, and now he was even giving Espen the chance to find his own dad without having to describe him to Cody. Here was a true friend, and Espen had doubted him.

"Thank you Cody!" Espen cried as he ran to embrace his friend, promising himself that he would never doubt Cody's intentions again. They were friends forever, and to prove it he plucked the biggest feather he could from his wing (the one in his pocket was probably squished by now too) and gave it to Cody.

With as much prowess as he could muster, to avoid looking foolish and show how he could climb just as well as Cody could, Espen focused and ascended the shelf until he was at the top, from which he could see the whole store. He looked out in front of him as far as he could see, and there was no sign of his dad. He looked to the left, and to the right too: nothing. Slowly, Espen turned around and looked behind himself, and there was still no sight of Shane anywhere. Espen was getting desperate, so he placed his hands to his mouth and got ready to call out...

Shane had been searching for Espen all throughout the store since he first realized that the boy was missing. It was only by sheer luck that he had been running through the aisle when he spotted Cody's head peek out from the other side of the shelf that he was running by. At first he thought he was seeing things, like the ghosts of other boys left to die after being lost in the art store too, before he heard Espen's voice on the other side of the shelf. Standing still, he looked up hoping for the boy to appear when sure enough...

"Pssst! Espen!" a voice came from below the boy. He looked down, and beamed when he saw Shane's half-frightened, half-relieved face looking up at him. "Where've you been? Get down from there ya crazy boy. You'll break your neck if you fall!" Espen nodded and clambered down the pile, jumping the last foot while beating his wings as he landed.

"Cody!" Espen called, smiling from ear to ear as he raced past "My dad's on de oder side!" Within a second, Espen was back, dragging a tall and scruffy, yet friendly-looking man along with him "Quick, Cody go fin yo mommy! We see you at da cashwegstra."

"Wait, you went and got him lost too?" Shane piped in "Okay, we're having a serious talk when we get back kid-o."

"S'a long stowy!" Espen pleaded.

"I'm sure it is," Shane scolded. Drat, a tone like that meant that Espen was probably getting veggies for dinner that night. "Look, Cody was it? If you need help finding your mom, we can come along...Espen should also probably apologize for having worried her too."

Espen wanted to plead that it wasn't his fault, but he wasn't going to go back on his word so soon about betraying Cody, so he crossed his arms, said nothing and pouted his face. He knew it was his fault anyways.