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"WHY are we OUT of tea AGAIN?!" Silk Kimono shouts from the kitchen, stomping her hoof on the floor. In his small bedroom, Paper Lantern flinched and silently begged forgiveness from his mother.

"Gomen'nasai okasan.." he said under his breath as he lifted up a large sheet of paper and turned it over in the shallow vat of tea. He did the same in another vat that had several smaller pieces but in a weaker brew. He had to get the papers the right color of sepia for the best look.

On his desk was a old book he'd borrowed from Mooncake of old sailing maps with pictures and legends of sea monsters drawn on them. He'd considered just ripping out the pages and using them, but his brother would throttle him if he harmed the book. And he was bigger and older now....

So instead he worked on replicating it with his own touches. There were only a couple days left before he'd be meeting Jolly at his ship, and he wanted his gift for his newest friend to be perfect.

Paper dashed across the city, his large map rolled up and strapped to his back. He was super late because the map hadn't dried up enough and it was causing the glue holding Australia on to run and the land down under kept relocating to the South Pole.

But kept wondering, when Jolly had said ship, did he mean a REAL ship or a....

Paper slid to a stop, his wings buzzing, acting like drag to slow his forward momentum and stared up at the boat.

"Oh...ship...."

"I..uh...honestly I thought the ship wouldn't be like..a ship.." Paper walked up the gangplank, his tiny hooves making even tinier clicks on the wood and he steps up onto the deck. The natural sob ebb of the deck made his little legs splay out as he wasn't used to feeling, even subtle movement of the ground under his hooves.

"I..whooooaaaaaa...this feels weird..." he little wings buzzed rapidly in surprise and the urge to lift off. He looked at Jolly who seemed super natural on deck. "How do you stand on this??"

"Oh well one time my brother called his book fort his own library that he built with his own two hooves..." Paper felt like the boat was swishing this way and that but slowly righted his legs straight. "He hyped it up so much I thought he'd built a whole building by himself. Instead it was just a book fort with more books stacked in it...Fool me once I guess.."

"Oh this?" he turns and pulls the large rolled up paper out of the small bundle chord his mother had wrapped it with. "I heard you said you needed something for your voyages. I made this, I think it will help.." his chest puffed a little and he lay the rolled up map at Jolly's hooves.

Paper was a little baffled. Did Jolly not like the map? The colt hadn't smiled at all! He was still sussing out his new friends rather stoic emotional spectrum when he vanished into a door.

"I...er...o...ok!"

Paper gaped. It was just what he needed! He had mentioned it ages ago though! Had Jolly been collect these all this time..?

"Amazing..! Jolly, you're..you're too kind..." it was taking all of his willpower not to dive his hooves into the bag and start folding the paper into the tiny stars.

Paper picked up the bag and walked over to Jolly, only sliding once or twice and drops the bag back down, tapping the colt on the shoulder.

"So...friends aren't we?" He holds out his hoof for a hoof bump. "I mean..we have to be now right? Only real friends would do nice things like this for each other for no reason right...?"

"Right!" he uses his hoof to bump Jolly's and settles beside his new friend, open the bag back up, takes out a golden wrapper and starts folding it into a star.

"So tell me uh..matey...where will we go first...?"

~Fin