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Morningstar scowled at the sky. He was a young stallion, barely out of his foalhood, and what was he doing? Babysitting. Not that he minded, normally. After all, it wasn’t too long ago that he was one of the little ankle biters himself, but surely they could look after themselves! But his mother had asked…. At least he only had to deal with two of the little monsters…. Er…. Brothers.

Jareth lurked. There was no other way to describe his actions. He was crouched under a bush, feeling rather proud of himself. No one could see him, despite his very, very red scales. He had figured out the best way to camouflage his wings, too. It involved a great deal of rolling around in the mud, but that wasn’t too much of a hardship. It wasn’t like he could use his wings as anything other than a source of shade. Zahavah had told him, repeatedly, that they’d get stronger. They’d have to, wouldn’t they? After all, they were nearly as big as Uncle Gregor’s wings…. Well…. Compared to Jareth’s little body. At least, that’s what he was told. But they weren’t strong enough to carry him just yet, and that made them relatively useless right now. So on with the mud! He returned his attention to the large, orange stallion standing not too far from him, looking decidedly grumpy. Morningstar was tasked with babysitting them. A fact that offended Jareth. Gareth didn’t need a babysitter…. Why did he?

Calavera peered out from under Jareth’s wing, where he was hiding. He didn’t mind the mud so much, and he was fairly certain that Jareth was aware that he was there. It was a little hard to notice the small, warm body tucked so firmly against your own, wasn’t it? At least that was what Calavera thought. But Jareth could get focused some days, and Calavera could be sneaky. That was actually a fun game that Calavera enjoyed, sneaking up on one of his brothers and scaring them when they didn’t realize he was nearby. Jareth, however, couldn’t be so focused that he forgot Calavera was there… could he? The mini foal followed Jareth’s gaze to his uncle Morningstar. The older stallion didn’t look too happy. Possibly because he was stuck watching the younger foals. Calavera wasn’t sure why Uncle Morningstar would be so annoyed by that. They always had fun. At least, Calavera always had fun. He turned his attention back to Jareth and realized that the red foal seemed annoyed as well. Maybe there was something in the air. He sniffed experimentally to see if he could smell it.

Morningstar nodded to himself, satisfied with a future plan of attack. He’d corner his father and find out why he was stuck babysitting. Once he was done, anyway. Morningstar might flaunt authority for just about anyone else, even delight in balking orders, but never when it came to his mother. While he was fairly certain Zahavah would take it in stride, but he was just as certain that she’d find a creative way to teach him not to do it again…. Gyah! Was this babysitting duty punishment? He racked his brain trying to figure out what he could have done that would cause him to be punished in such a way. It had to have been something that wasn’t obviously bad, otherwise Zahavah would have just lectured him. It might even have been something that he had done without Grimlock, otherwise wouldn’t his brother be there with him? Or…. Maybe not… Grimlock might not have found babysitting duty as annoying as Morningstar did. Then again, he probably would. Morningstar shook his head, feeling a headache coming on. Maybe he should just stop trying to figure out his mother’s motivations and watch the kids…. The kids that he had lost track of…. Crud….

Jareth didn’t miss the slight wince on Morningstar’s face. Whatever was going through the stallion’s head right now looked to be giving him a headache. Not that Jareth really cared, he was already too distracted by his own plans of revenge. The first step, he decided, was to sneak away without being seen. Once he was safely out of Morningstar’s sight, he could set up an appropriately embarrassing trap for Morningstar. What that trap was, he wasn’t sure right now. Maybe he could ask Grimm for advice. The rabbit was good at petty revenge. Then again, maybe that wouldn’t be so smart. Everyone knew that Grimm was especially fond of Grimlock, and Grimlock and Morningstar were close. Not that the family wasn’t overall close, but they were closer to each other than anyone else in the family. So maybe not Grimm…. Better not to risk it. He could always ask… oh! Jareth glanced under his wing carefully, finally remembering the mini that was curled up against his side. Calavera wasn’t a pranking genius, but he was no slouch. Making sure he had Calavera’s attention, he nodded behind them to indicate that they should move.

Calavera perked up a bit when Jareth looked at him. Seeing the nod behind them, he returned a nod back and started to wiggle and squirm. He was careful to keep as quiet as he possibly could until he managed to slip out from under the wing. He was able to mince his way out of the bushes without rustling so much as a single leaf. Calavera didn’t always appreciate his tiny stature, but at times like this, when he was trying to be sneaky, he was grateful for his small size. He was able to slip around twigs and another things that might give away his location. He wasn’t sure where Jareth wanted to go, but he was pretty confident that the purpose was to sneak away from their current guardian, Morningstar. This wasn’t an unusual game for the two foals. They were constantly sneaking away from their babysitters. Though this was the first time Morningstar had that particular pleasure. Calavera kept going until he was certain he was out of sight of Morningstar, then he settled down to wait for Jareth to sneak away. This would take awhile longer.

When looking for color failed, Morningstar frowned. Okay, so maybe Calavera had gotten better at hiding. He was pretty small, after all. He could be huddled down in some of those bushes, or in one of Grimm’s holes. It wouldn’t be too hard for the mini foal to hide. All Calavera really had to do was hide the colors on his body. Morningstar made his way over to a batch of bushes and started nosing about in them, grumbling to himself. He successfully startled a robin from one bush, but other than that didn’t get any sort of reaction. Worry niggled at the back of his mind. Maybe the foals weren’t near him at all. While he was brooding, they could have taken off and gotten themselves into danger. It’s what Morningstar and Grimlock would have done, he realized. With a wince, he pulled himself out of the berry bush he had been prodding. “Guys?” he called, hoping that they’d come out and laugh at him for not being able to find them.

Jareth had waited until Morningstar was nosing the bushes farthest from his hiding spot before he eased his way out of them and toward where he had seen Calavera disappear to. He couldn’t believe that Morningstar was actually looking for them! Well, okay, he could kind of understand it. Zahavah had tasked Morningstar with keeping an eye on them, and she wasn’t the type of mare you wanted to let down. Jareth smothered a snicker. Morningstar would be in so much trouble if he didn’t find them before she got back. It might just be the revenge that Jareth was planning for. Of course… there was just as much possibility that Jareth and Calavera would get in as much trouble if not more than Morningstar. Zahavah was somewhat unpredictable when it came to placing blame. Not that she was big on punishment or blaming anyone, but she had a tendency to go to the root of a problem rather than just dealing with the fallout. Jareth frowned as he cleared the bushes and spotted the smaller foal. Maybe he should talk it over with Calavera, first…

Calavera perked up when he saw Jareth. He grinned brightly and started to call out before remembering Morningstar. They were probably too far for the older stallion to hear them, but Jareth was sneaking around for a reason. Just because Calavera wasn’t completely certain what that reason was didn’t mean he should risk them being found. So, he swallowed back the greeting and bounced to his feet, closing the distance between him and the other foal. “What’re we doing?” he asked, keeping his voice to an excited whisper. “A prank? Are we just hiding? Are we gonna set a trap? Lead him on a chase? What do you have planned?” That Jareth had something in mind was a given. Jareth and Gareth always had a plan. Either that, or they were both exceptional at playing it off like they did. Calavera was never really certain which was more likely. He was a cheerful, trusting soul, though, and so he liked to think that they planned things out rather than flying by the seat of their rumps.

Nothing… no sound, no movement. That’s fine. Morningstar hadn’t even started to hit his stride yet. He wandered around, peering into the bushes a bit here and there, looking for any fresh sign of passage. He wasn’t certain if they were still there, or if they had taken off, but he knew he had to act as if they were still around, watching every step he made. Which meant acting like he wasn’t on the verge of panicking. “You guys don’t want to play hide and see with me,” he called out, arrogantly. “I’m the hide and seek champion.” He wasn’t, not really. He wasn’t horrible at it, but it wasn’t his best game. The foals were trying to mess with him, though. He knew that. It was a fact, a law of nature. Foals messed with their babysitters. Morningstar did it when he was a snot nosed little brat. So did Grimlock. He’d heard stories of the trouble Akis and Addy had gotten up to when they were just fillies, and every time the subject came up regarding Woflgang, Pavlov would cringe. Nova was possibly the only exception to the rule, but Morningstar never counted her. She was practically a saint. So, he knew the game. He didn’t like being on the other side, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know the game.

Jareth sat up a little straighter under Calavera’s attention. He took a moment to figure out how he was going to ask his questions while still seeming like he had everything under control. “So here’s the deal,” he started, making sure to keep his voice low. He figured if he laid everything out like as if he’d already thought it through, he’d give himself a chance to think up a plan. “Mom left Morningstar to watch us for awhile. We don’t know why, and it doesn’t really matter. That means it’s you and me against him. He’s probably thinking this will be an easy job. Just sit on us for awhile and then go do his adult cool stuff.” Okay, so Jareth was just a little annoyed that Morningstar, who really wasn’t that much older than them, got to be considered an adult. Just because he was bigger. Where was the justice in that? He shook his head, scolding himself to focus. “We’re not gonna let him keep thinking that, though, are we?”

“Right!” Calavera agreed quickly, then hesitated. Wait, was that supposed to be where he voiced his opinion? He didn’t think it was. It sounded like a basic question to make sure Calavera was listening. In fact, Jareth seemed pretty deep in his own thoughts, as if he didn’t quite notice Calavera. The mini foal was pretty sure that Jareth was plotting as he spoke. That meant the other foal hadn’t figured out a plan just yet… or maybe that he was still figuring out the tiny details. Yeah, that was probably it. Jareth was just figuring out all the possible outcomes, because he was smart like that. Satisfied with his own explanation, Calavera focused more intently on Jareth. Sooner or later, somewhere in his explanation, Jareth would ask the important question, the one that Calavera needed to help him with. The mini would be ready for it!

The branches were most definitely freshly broken, and Morningstar could see a tiny red scale half buried in the dirt. Jareth was definitely here. He was pretty sure the foal had been there within the last hour, though that might have just been wishful thinking. The stallion turned his attention from the scale to the rest of the dirt, trying to read the signs. This… would probably be a lot easier if he was an actual tracker, rather than just guessing at what he was doing. Maybe he should have paid more attention to Midagi growing up. The kirin wasn’t exactly a hunter, but he was the closest thing to a tracker they had in their little valley. Or maybe Curador… the healer knew his plants and knew how to read the signs around them… Or maybe Gregor? As a warrior, wouldn’t he have to know how to read signs in the dirt? Morningstar shelved these possibilities as things to be investigated later. Once he had the ankle biters off his hooves.

Mess with him. Jareth made a show of considering that answer. Mess with Morningstar. That was definitely the more fun option, but it was also the riskier one. Well, maybe not riskier. Both possibilities had their fair share of risks. Still…. He grinned. “Okay, messing with him it is! First we need to know exactly where he is, but we can’t let him find us. If he finds us, then the game’s all over.” Yes, Jareth was making all this up on the fly, but Calavera didn’t need to know that. All he had to do was keep mixing up the rules. Those were the best games, in Jareth’s opinion. The ones where no one knew what, exactly, was going on and it was complete and utter chaos. Of course, those were also the games that rarely had a definite winner, but that was hardly the point, was it?

“I can do that!” Calavera volunteered, happily. He didn’t even bother asking about what game they were playing or what the rules were. He knew Jareth well enough to know that he wouldn’t understand the game, anyway. Jareth and Gareth always played such complicated and convoluted games. Why, if Calavera was a less understanding foal, he’d accuse the two winged foals of changing the rules as they went along. But the mini colt knew that couldn’t be possible. It was far more likely that he simply didn’t have the ability to grasp the intricacies and nuances of the games that the bigger foals liked to play. That was fine. He found it was more fun to just go with it than to try and understand it, anyway. Besides, this particular task sounded like it was right up his alley. He was good at being sneaky. Better than Jareth, anyway, what with the bigger foal’s eye catching red scales.

The tracks that Morningstar had been following finally paid off. He could hear voices, young, male voices. He started to choose his steps with more care, not wanting to spook his charges. It wouldn’t do him a whole lot of good tracking the little buggers if they ran off as soon as he found them. He’d have to start all over again. Morningstar was pretty confident that he could chase them down. His legs were far longer than either of theirs, after all. Especially Calavera. The mini had absolutely no speed in him. But Calavera, and to a lesser extent, Jareth, were smaller than he was. They could duck into tiny cracks and be gone by the time Morningstar figured out how to follow. No, it was much better to corner them after figuring out what they planned on doing. So Morningstar settled in the bushes where he could see the two little troublemakers and listened.

“That’s right,” Jareth confirmed. “Just watch him and make sure he’s not doing anything sneaky.” Hopefully that wasn’t too vague an order. And hopefully Calavera wouldn’t get too bored. Calavera could be pretty patient at times, but he was as young as Jareth, and the kalona foal wasn’t the most focused of individuals sometimes. He plowed on ahead before Calavera could think too hard about how dull his job was going to be. “Meanwhile, I’ll get the game set up. I’m thinking traps, pits, feathers… the works!” He actually didn’t have a whole lot in mind, having more fun making it up as they went. But he was sure that there would be feathers. Feathers made everything a hundred times more fun.

“Okay!” Calavera agreed quickly. He bounced on his hooves and started forward, fully intending on charging ahead to watch Morningstar. Then he stopped, so quickly that he nearly tripped over his own hooves. “Um…. What do I do if he sees me?” he asked, thinking that it wasn’t an unreasonable question. Sure, the chances were unlikely. Calavera did hiding very, very well. As small as he was and as dark as his coat was, it was rare that anyone spotted him when he didn’t want to be spotted. But Morningstar was a tricky one. A lot of the time he seemed to just KNOW things that foal didn’t want him to know. What if he knew Calavera was there? What if Calavera made a mistake? The mini wasn’t as confident as his older siblings. Not that he doubted his own abilities, he just knew his limitations and no one was perfect. Regardless of how Jareth and Morningstar might think of themselves, even they were fallible. Normally, Calavera would just go with the flow and roll with whatever happened, but this was Jareth’s plan. He didn’t want to accidently mess up whatever Jareth had in mind with his improvising.

Morningstar fought back the urge to snort. Well, at least Calavera knew to ask the important questions, even if he was a little too quick to jump in with whatever Jareth was planning. Not that Morningstar thought Jareth really had a plan. In fact, he was almost certain the little partial kalona foal was making all of this up as he went along. Seeing the red foal hesitate at Calavera’s question only further cemented the impression. Not that failing to plan things out was a bad thing… Morningstar frowned a bit, feeling as though he’d been through this thought process before. He shook his head slightly then froze and watched the foals to see if they had noticed the small movement. He could kick himself for making such a mistake. He, better than anyone else, should know that the key to hiding in plain sight was to stay perfectly still. He could only believe that the foals’ pure idiocy was starting to rub off on him. Yes, that must be it.

Jareth froze when Calavera asked his question. Signal… right… that was important, wasn’t it? They needed some kind of signal so Calavera would know when his job was done… But not something so obvious that Morningstar would figure out what they were up to. He couldn’t just shout that he was ready. Maybe he could whistle… oh… “I know!” he said, cheerfully, proud of himself for coming up with a flawless, brilliant plan. “I’ll make a sound like a waking sloth, and when you here that, you’ll know that’s the signal!” Jareth said, proud of himself for coming up with a perfectly identifiable sound that wasn’t common enough to be mistaken for anything else.

“Okay!” Calavera agreed, happy to have a signal. Then he paused and tilted his head at Jareth as something occurred to him. “Um… what’s a sloth?” He felt like he’d heard the word before, but he couldn’t bring an image to mind. Was it some kind of bird, maybe? Did it make a caw caw sound? Or a tweet tweet? Ooh… that brought up another question. “What does it sound like?” he asked. Maybe they could find a sloth so he could ask some more questions. Calavera loved asking questions, and he especially loved learning from his questions. Sometimes he was even able to confuse the adults when he asked his questions. That was fun, too. Not that he was trying to confuse Jareth now. Oh, maybe Jareth knew a sloth that was going to make the sound for them as the signal!

Errol Dynamyk sat perched in a tree, watching the scene unfolding. He’d been there long enough to have a general idea of what was going, and long enough to realize that the scene wasn’t going to wrap up any time soon. The winged mini had gone months without having to interact with anyone in this herd, and it seemed that he finally ran out of luck. Of course, that could be mostly because he’d been venturing closer and closer to the herd lately. His curiosity was getting the better of him, sad to say. He hadn’t meant to be stuck in a tree directly above the plotting foals. That had just… happened. But now, from his vantage point, he could even see the stallion lurking in the bushes. He knew that the large orange stallion wasn’t a stranger, but rather part of the heard. No doubt he had been tasked with babysitting. Why he was watching the foals from the bushes rather than nipping their planning in the bud, Errol didn’t know. He wasn’t certain he even cared, not really… Okay, so maybe he did. But finding out would require that he reveal himself to the trio. He wasn’t certain he was ready for that yet.