And here it is.
Usually, my chapters and one shots are a lot longer than this, but this one is an exception. In fact, this whole fic is gonna be an exception. I don't know why, but, for some reason, when I write for Animal Crossing, it ends up a lot shorter than my normal stuff. In fact, I've noticed a lot of stuff like that. Pokèmon varies between pretty short and really long, Professor Layton is sort of short, Kid Icarus is really long, etc. etc. Huh.
Fun fact: I always assign little acronyms to my fics while I'm writing them, prior to actually giving them a title. For example, a one shot about K.K. Slider and where he got his guitar (hint hint) would be "ACKKGOS" (Animal Crossing K. K. Guitar One Shot), and I would call the fic itself "ack-gohs" when I talked about it. This fic was ACID (Animal Crossing Isabelle Digby), so I called it "acid" for the longest time.
Now that that completely useless fact is out of the way, let's get this party started.
A Puppy's Sworn Duty
The basket of cherries clattered to the ground, spilling its contents across the once-pristine floor.
She had to be hearing wrong. Those jingle bells that hung from her hairband, giving a merry tinkle every time she padded by, must have distracted her from listening to her mother and made those words jumble in her mind, taking on a whole different meaning. There was no way. Her mom would never say that.
But, when she turned around, her mother had a wistful smile laying on her face. She was undisturbed by her daughter's reaction, as if she had expected this to happen. As if she had, indeed, meant what she'd said.
"W-what?" the blonde Shih Tzu stammered, her heart practically convulsing in her chest. A threat of moisture burned just behind her eyes and she blinked rapidly before they could start reddening. Her mother was the perceptive one of the family, and she would surely notice the tears before they were even there. No. Isabelle was not going to cry over this. She was going to be strong.
Her mother hung her head ashamedly, a few tufts of grey-streaked fur (since when did her mom have grey furs?) falling down to obscure her eyes. "I'm sorry, Belle... this is all my fault," she murmured, turning slightly as if she felt unworthy to even look at her daughter. "I should have foreseen this problem, but I just ignored all of the warning signals."
'So it's true,' Isabelle's mind whispered to itself as she struggled to keep her emotions in check. 'It's really true.' Again, her eyes began to heat up. She quickly crushed the urge to find the town's mayor and bite his fingers clean off. "But-but why?" she breathed, almost choking on the words in her throat. "Why would they evict you?"
Her mom slowly shook her head, her ears flopping about at even the soft and solemn gesture. "Like I said, it's my fault," she responded tenderly, trying her best not to upset her child any more than she already had. "Don't blame Mayor Ewegene... he was only doing his job. We didn't pay the full town tax; we haven't been paying it for a few months..." She carefully removed a folded-up envelope with a broken, once-ornate seal of red wax. "According to reports, what we paid was only half as much as we had to, and the payments didn't get in every month like they were supposed to."
Isabelle's eyes widened, then narrowed again. "Th-that's not fair!" she yipped. "They should have told us! They can't just never tell us we were doing anything wrong and then evict us when we don't stop! We never knew we had to stop!" She sniffled slightly, her eyebrows turning down at the ends. "They can't just do this," she whispered miserably. "Where are we going to stay? There's no way we can afford to buy a new house anywhere, not to mention the train tickets there..."
Suddenly, her mother's expression shifted unexplainably from sorrowful to nervous. "I've gotten an offer from your Aunt Fiveronica to live at her house in Waterdown, but... she..." Struggling for words, the elder Shih Tzu fumbled for a way to properly explain their plight without frightening the young pup. "Well, she says that..." She trailed off yet again, growling quietly in frustration. There were just no words that accurately summarized the problem but weren't terribly blunt. "I... don't know how to say this."
Isabelle only became more and more apprehensive for each time the words didn't come out. "What is it?" she mewled fearfully, her fur bristling but her ears practically gluing themselves to her skull. "Just tell me. I can take it, I promise." Maybe she could take it, maybe she couldn't. What she definitely couldn't take was knowing that something was terribly wrong but not knowing what that thing was. Her imagination, always overactive, began to belt out different scenarios, each one more gruesome and hopeless than the last. Aunt Fiveronica was as dirt-poor as they were. They were getting sent to jail. Waterdown had been burned to the ground. Digby had run away. Digby had been kidnapped. Digby was de-
Unable to bear the bad news any longer, her mother blurted out, "She can only take me, not you two," before she could change her mind and hesitate again. She immediately turned her nose to the ground, her ears pulling down as if to cover her eyes and hide her from the world.
Isabelle remained silent.
Taking her daughter's silence as an act of despondence, she hastened to offer cosolation. "I don't mean that I'll be leaving you; I plan on declining her offer-I would never, ever desert you two because you're my pups and I love you... I just wanted to tell you because we've been getting a lot of letters from her and I don't want to get your hopes up if you got the post before I did. We're going to figure something out; we'll-"
"Take the offer."
That was the first time Isabelle had ever interrupted anyone, much less her own mother. But it had to be done, she told herself. It had to be done. Immediately, her interjection paid off as her mother stopped stumbling over words and glanced back up towards her, flabbergasted. This time, it was her turn to believe that she must have heard wrong; that the puppy she knew would never say something like that.
Isabelle took a deep breath and steeled her nerves. She had to say this; she had to get it out quickly lest she manage to change her mind. For once, she wished more than anything to be stubborn like Digby was so that she could assure that she meant what she said before she said it. Her mother was starting to recover from the shock now, mouth poised to ask questions. 'Here goes... something.'
Before the older dog could speak, she quickly began to explain. "I got a letter from Major Tortimer of New Leaf just recently," she informed her mother. "He needs an assistant to manage the Town Hall there and heard about my volunteer work from Mayor Ewegene, so he's offering me the position." She paused momentarily, then looked down, unable to meet her mother's eyes. "I didn't want to show you because I thought that you might make me go during the summer." Another pause; this time, she turned her head back up, her expression fiercely determined. "The job includes a place to stay, and I would use my salary for food. I would be alright. Digby...?"
She trailed off, not sure how to account for her brother's needs, but her mom had a solution. "I was worried you'd insist upon letting me go," she sighed. "Digby has offered a very similar solution. He, as it seems, has been offered a job as part of the Happy Homes Academy. In his version of the plan, of course, he was supporting you on his meager wages as well, and I had the strength to say no. If you both had jobs and a home, however... it would make me a fool not to let you two go."
Isabelle's breath hitched. It would work? Her idea would actually work? She'd been prepared for rejection. She'd been ready to argue until her mother grudgingly let her take Mayor Tortimer's offer. But this meant that it would work.
She was going to get a job.
There was still a fair bit of dread wafting around in her chest, but she ignored it for now. At the moment, the only thing she would let herself feel was relief. It was going to work. It was all going to be alright. They were still going to get by. They would live.
They would live away from each other, never seeing each other in the mornings, never again to share a casual family dinner, never-
No.
That wasn't the situation. That wouldn't be the situation. There would be letters. There would be visits. There would be holidays and get-togethers and phone calls.
But not regularly. There would still be those huge, gaping chasms of time separating each and every meeting. There would still be loneliness. There would still be those mornings spent alone as she woke up from some silly nightmare, and she wanted her brother there to comfort her, and she realized that she was alone, and she cried, and she cried, and she cried, like the only week she'd ever spent alone, but this wouldn't be a week, this would be who-knew-how-long, and...
She didn't remember hugging her mother. Or did her mother hug her?
"Shh, shh, pup," her mother whispered soothingly as she shook with silent sobs. "You're alright, Belle. You're alright."
A third ball of fur and fabric joined the fray and she could spot a few tufts of brown. 'Digby.' Sniffling slightly, she nuzzled closer to the mass of family members, savoring the warmth and kindness and caring that they emitted. Still, even as she reminisced, basking in happy memories of familial bonding, the threat of moving out loomed over her like a swirling thunderstorm.
This was how it had to be. There were no alternatives; none that didn't make her selfish. Flashes of memory danced in front of her eyes, mocking her with tales of cowardice: all the times she had cried for Digby, Digby, Digby, because he was strong and he could handle it. Well, now, she could, too. She could be strong. She could handle it. She could endure a bit of time alone. If her mother could do it, and if Digby could do it, then she could do it, too.
She had to.
Aw, poor Isabelle. At least she'll be happy when she learns that Digby is going to New Leaf, too. And, yes, I am just calling the village "New Leaf." Why? Well, wynaut?
Anyone who got the reference in there is awesome. A little hint: it's a reference to a book about rabbits.