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 Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2012 5:02 pm
It was raining, and muddy. A shiny growlithe egg had slipped into a ditch beside the high, gilded fence surrounding the theme park proper in the Clubs Faction. Something had clearly been trying to dig its way under the fence, creating the ditch in which the yellow egg now rested. If it wasn't for its bright colours, no one might ever have found it. As it was, a teen Seviper scaling the fence from the inside happened upon the egg, and crouched down next to it.
After digging through the mud for a bit, he managed to extract the egg with a squelching sound, and wiped some of the mud off with his t-shirt. It looked like it had a white tail and hair, if it wasn't so terribly dirty; the fur had matted together and seed pods were stuck in the muddy clots. Really, the egg was not a pretty sight.
At that moment, the Seviper's friend leapt over the fence, nearly knocking him to the ground. "Hey, jackass, what're you waiting for?" It was a very soggy Seadra teen, who appeared to be loving the rain. He shook his head so that his blue hair rained drops down onto his already saturated hoodie. He chewed on the stick of what had probably once been a lollipop. By now, it was mangled and soggy. His tongue was stained purple. "Man... is that an egg?" He looked disgusted, and dropped the lollipop stick into the mud. "Just leave it, we don't need an egg," he added, trying to snatch the filthy egg out of the Seviper's hands. The Seviper scowled and swore at him, gripping the yellow, muddy egg to his chest.
"I know someone who can take care of it," he retorted. "Besides, you don't just leave an egg when you find it-- I hope the Red Queen picks you up for infant abuse," the Seviper added, slipping the egg into his jacket and doing the zipper up a little, mindful of its tail and ears. The Seviper, ignoring his friend's angsty silence, extracted his feet from the mud where they'd sunk in, and wound around the gilded fence until he reached one of the larger outskirt-towns. At its edge, between the park and the town proper, there was an old house which was painted a deep purple. Its shutters were broken in places, but the house was kept in more or less good shape. Around the front, there was a wooden sign on which the silver letters Sweete Words were affixed. Underneath, someone had hand-painted the further title Rare, used and new books.
The two teens stopped on the porch. The seadra shook his head. "Oh, no, I'm not going in there. You remember what happened last time."
"Yeah... I don't need you with me, man, I can do this alone," the Seviper replied. He paused with one hand on the door knob, and took a deep breath. The Seadra, leaning against one of the old pillars, watched his friend.
"One question, Seb. Why him?"
The seviper, whose name was clearly Seb, opened the shop's door as he replied quietly: "He seems pretty lonely, you know?"
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Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2012 5:03 pm
Inside, the room flickered with light and heat. A Wheezing sat at the desk, dark shadows under his eyes, as he sifted through a stack of papers, a pack of cigarettes strewn across the desk. "I could really use a cigarette, right now," he murmurred to himself, and the fat cat that lay across a stack of magazines. "Too bad the smoke would damage the books." He sighed. It was common knowledge that this man had lost his husband, wherever the latter had disappeared to. Since there was no real death in Wonderland, as far as they knew, they had no clue where he could have gone.
So the man was left considerably bitter. He threw himself headfirst into his work. He had developed a cough in this weather, from all his smoking. "Can I help you?" he asked, looking up to see the Seviper treading in carefully. "Oh, it's you. You're filthy," he added, disapprovingly.
"I have something for you, old man," the Seviper said. He set the egg down on the carpet, took a few steps back, and then ran out the door.
The man set down the illumination he had been working on, very tenderly, and walked over to the muddy egg. "Hooligans, all of them," he muttered, scooping the egg up. He looked at it silently for a few moments, and then wiped some of the mud off its surface with his hand. "You could use a bath... and some heat, right?"
His face seemed tender, almost, despite his sleepless and displeased default expression. He raised his shirt, his hand under the fabric, and swiped it across the surface of the egg, cleaning it off gently, before heading into the kitchen to bathe the egg. "I think I will call you Logan," he added, as an afterthought. The fat cat meowed from the desk, to which Briar replied, "I don't know, because it's a good name. And it's not nearly as stupid as being called Briar."
With that, the wheezing stalked off into the kitchen, came back, popped a cigarette into his mouth, and then headed back in. At least in his kitchen he could seal the doors shut and smoke by the window while the water was running for the growlithe egg's bath. Maybe it was weird how quickly and without complaint Briar had accepted the egg from those teens, but... for one, it was a duty of the Wonderland denizens to adopt any eggs and care for them. Secondly, Briar had been wishing with all his heart for something like this. Something apart from his late husband's overweight cat, Gerold. Gerold was not sufficient intellectual stimulation.
The second this egg hatched, it would be elbows-deep in ink.
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