"Thanks again for helping organize the Hall of Hearts Brave Heart."
"Sure thing Tender Heart. It will make issuing the caring missions a lot easier." Brave Heart opened another drawer in the desk, causing a cloud of dust to cover his face. Sneezing so forcefully he flew back in his rolly chair, he hit the wall.
Tender Heart laughed as stars circled his new best friends head. 3 months had passed and most of the cousins had merged into the family seamlessly.
Dusting himself off, the lion cleared his throat and "CHARGE." He attacked the desk and began dumping out the drawers.
"Wow, he's really going at it." Cheer, Love-a-lot, and Proud Heart had wandered in to offer their help. "Is he always so adamant about work?"
Proud Heart rolled her eyes, "Prrrrrrretty much."
Tender Heart came over and linked his arm through Love-a-Lots. "You can help me over here."
She blushed but let him pull her over.
The remaining two went to a filing cabinet in the corner. Proud Heart pulled on the top drawer and met resistance. "Hey, this one is locked. Where is the key?"
The others came over to investigate. "Hmmm, I don't know. I haven't seen one. Have you Brave Heart?"
He looked into the lock, "Not one that will fit that."
"Cheer, can you go get Grumpy and Bright Heart and ask them to bring their tools?" She nodded at Tender Heart and left.
"What do you suppose is in there?"
"We never used it Proud Heart. It always just stayed in the corner. Come to think of it, I don't know why we never used it." Love-a-Lot looked to Tender Heart who shrugged.
"…and how am I expected to get anything done if he keeps having me start a new project when I'm in the middle of another."
"Sounds like they're here." And indeed Grumpy, Bright Heart, and Cheer came into the Hall of Hearts not even a millisecond after Brave Heart had finished announcing their arrival. Cheer pointed out the troublesome filing cabinet to Grumpy while Bright Heart got out a screw driver, drill, and hammer.
"Why do you want this thing open all of a sudden?"
"Because Grumpy, we are organizing. That means everything will be organized."
He grumbled something intangible and started to hammer the screw driver through the narrow top of the drawer.
"Grumpy why not just put the drill to the lock?"
Bright Hearts question caused him to miss and hit his thumb. Dropping the hammer and shaking it to alleviate the pain he turned on the raccoon cousin. "Because, in case they decide to use the filing cabinet again, which I have a feeling they will, they'll want to be able to lock it." He picked up the screwdriver again, gave it one more final whack, and ducked as the drawer shot open.
"There, happy?"
They ignored him, six pairs of eyes looking into the drawer. On top of a pile of old papers and photographs, lay a photo in a mahogany frame. The picture was of a yellow bear sitting on a cloud with a purple horse hugging her from behind. Both were smiling at the camera. The room had suddenly gotten very very quiet.
Gingerly, treating the frame as if it were made of glass, Brave Heart lifted it out to inspect it more closely.
"Who are they?"
"How should I know Tender Heart? Their picture is in Care-a-Lot and we didn't even know about Care-a-lot till recently."
"Well I've never seen them before and we've lived in Care-A-Lot since as long as I can remember."
"Oh my goodness, look at this." Proud Heart had fished out another photo. This one was of a castle made of yellow clouds with a gorgeous rainbow fountain in front.
"Where is that?" Grumpy had finally taken interest in this conversation.
"Dunno. What else is in here?"
"Give it back Swift Heart!"
She laughed and ran backwards, dangling the whoopee cushion in front of Playful Heart. "I said I would, but you have to catch me." Because she wasn't looking where she was going, she hadn't realized she'd run into the Hall and was about to collide with the others already there.
As she hit them, they went flying in a bunch of different directions like a group of bowling pins hit by a ball.
Laughing Playful Heart snatched his property out of Swift Hearts paw before she could orient herself. "Hahahahahahahah, looks like I got you this time." It was then he noticed the picture frame on the floor. Picking it up and looking at it, caused a short image to flash across his mind.
He was in a tree with Proud Heart as cubs. Behind them was the purple horse, trying to urge them down.
Just as suddenly as it had come on it was gone. He furrowed his brow and focused more on the picture. "Swifty, do we know them?"
She shook her head a final time to clear it before looking at the photo. She could hear the others slowly getting to their feet. The faces registered nothing familiar for her.
"Don't think so. Where did this picture come from?"
"Well if you had entered and asked at a normal speed then maybe we could have told you instead of being bowled over."
Rolling her eyes, "Grumpy, you should know by now I don't do slow." She looked at the picture again.
Why little Swift Heart Rabbit you little stow away…
Her ears twitched around the room, "Who said that?"
"No one said anything. I think you got knocked a little silly there Swift Heart." Brave Hear glanced at the picture of the castle again and noticed the Cloud Skimmer resting near the fountain.
A bright light was shining on him as he rolled over in his hammock below deck a frustrated Grumpy swatted at his tail. The yellow bear smiled at them.
"That's odd." He looked at Grumpy. "I think we knew each other before Nicholas and the Spirit made us meet.
"But you just said you've never seen them before."
"I know. But I also heard tales of far off places long ago. Those had to come from somewhere."
"We need to figure out who these two are. I'm suddenly getting a bad feeling about all of this." They agreed with Tender Heart and continued to search the filing cabinet.
Later that evening the entire family had been gathered for a Care Bear Conference. Among the rest of the contents of the drawer were photos, letters, simple children's drawings, and a map. These were now being passed around the table for everyone to examine. The photos were mostly of when they were cubs and most had some part of the yellow castle in it. But they all showed both Cousins and Bears.
"So it's obvious we all knew each other as cubs, but for some reason we can't remember anything about that, or this castle, or these two."
As Tender Heart spoke the pictures reached Brave Heart. He looked through them casually until he realized one was thicker then the others. Examining the side he saw that two pictures were stuck together. He carefully pulled them apart and froze as another memory flared to life.
He was in a cloud row boat on the rainbow lake. Across from him sat a violet bear gazing at a glowing star buddy with a smile on her face. When the star buddy flew away, she fixed her eyes on Brave Heart.
Harmony
"Hang on a moment. Look at this!" He shoved the picture under Tender Hearts nose. "I remember her! Her name was Harmony."
Share snatched the picture from him, "I remember her too!"
With the mention of her name, many of the others voiced their sudden enlightenment on once having an acquaintance with this bear.
Swift Heart stood up, "So lemme get this straight. According to the evidence presented here, we all grew up together, were separated and had our memory wiped and in our case tummy symbols stolen, and three members of our family just vanished. Does any one else think this sounds crazy?"
"I'll admit it's a little far fetched, but what other explanation is there." There was murmured agreement around the room with both Tender Heart and Swift Hearts statements.
Tender Heart continued, "We need more answers, and to get them I think we're going to have to find this yellow castle."
It was decided that in the morning a small group of Bears and Cousins would follow the Rainbow River upstream via the cloud mobiles to see if they could locate the mysterious castle.