A story because I felt like writing it. :) Concrit is always well received!

This story has been edited since I first published it.

Dewey Alone

I didn't want to watch the sunset.

It's one thing when it goes down on a perfectly good day, like the kind where you've spent every second outside and don't want to go home. But when the sun starts to set while you're in the middle of the jungle full of mosquitoes and mystery bugs and you're lost, tired, hungry and most of all alone, well, you get the picture.

"Great, just great." I said to myself, "Way to go, Dewey."

I really should have listened to my gut and picked a campsite earlier. So that, you know, I'd be in a safe place long before it got dark. But obviously I didn't.

I stopped to look around and see if the place I was standing in was one of the better spots to spend the night. If Huey were here, he'd start talking about the right place to camp, why it was best, which leaves to use for a lean-to, how to build a lean-to...dang it, why couldn't I be lost with Huey right now? Better yet, why couldn't Huey be the one lost while I was back with everyone else? He'd have already found his way back to Uncle Scrooge by now, if he were the one in the jungle.

Okay, so I really didn't know how to choose a safe campsite. I decided to wing it and climb a tree, if only because spending the night in a tree in the jungle seemed like a better option than spending a night in the jungle on the ground. That didn't really solve any of my problems, though. I was still hungry, tired, lost, and alone, and once I climbed a tree I was probably going to be stuck there for the night, which wasn't really encouraging.

So I decided to walk a little further, looking for the perfect tree to spend the night in before it got too dark. And maybe I could find some kind of a river or something while I was at it, because water is important.

"Nope, not that one, too tall, nada," I muttered as I passed by the candidates for my bed. It didn't seem right to be too loud right now. I was starting to think that creepy creatures were going to wake up soon, and I didn't want them all coming to me because I was too loud or something.

"Nope, nope, no-ouch!"

Okay, so I deserved a little hurt to the nose. I had walked right into a giant stone wall, and it wasn't completely dark yet.

"Wait," I said out loud, "A wall? YES! Finally, civilization! Uncle Scrooge, you'd better apologize when I call-"

Hang on. If this was civilization, why was the stone wall really, really old and really, really broken looking?

"No, wait, no!" I said, running along the left side of the wall to see if I could find a door or a way over it, "No!"

Unfortunately, yes. The wall was totally broken down here, and I easily stepped over the rubble.

On the other side was an entire city-there were houses, a palace, whatever, but everything was made of stone and obviously left behind. As if the broken walls weren't enough, the fact that random plants were growing everywhere tipped me off to that. No one would be able to stand a tree that giant growing in their front doorway, just imagine trying to squeeze past that with your groceries.

I groaned. "Great. This must be the ancient civilization Scrooge was talking about." I said.

I picked up a stone from the wall rubble and tossed it at the nearest house, just to let the city know how upset I was. After all, the city was the entire reason I was even on the treasure hunt with Uncle Scrooge to begin with.

"It's no wonder no one's found it though," I thought out loud, tossing another pebble, "They've all been looking in the wrong part of the jungle."

Well, maybe I could spend the night somewhere in this city. Sure all those empty houses were creepy, but if the people who lived here built a wall in the middle of nowhere in the jungle, maybe they built it to keep out jungle animals and stuff. Which was also really creepy.

But the sun really was going down now, and the shadows of the city were getting creepier by the second. It wouldn't take too much to imagine some of the shadows living there, kinda like ghosts...

NO! BAD IDEA, VERY BAD IDEA!

I can't do it, I can't let myself think about ghosts...Too late. There was no way I could unthink that now. I needed to get out of here fast, before I imagined that some of the shadows were actually moving-dang it, why'd I have to think about that too?

If I left the city and just stayed somewhere close, Uncle Scrooge would find me. Because as long as there's treasure in the city, he's gonna find it. All I had to do was spend the night in a tree somewhere, and I'd be fine.

I turned around, half-thinking about climbing the wall and using it to jump to some nearby tree branch, but someone or something was behind me.

"Found you!"

I didn't think.

I ran.

I ran straight towards the city, the exact opposite of where I wanted to go, and I ran even faster when I heard someone screaming. The city was starting to get really dark and scary, but the only sounds I could hear were my heartbeat, the screams, and the sound of running-not mine, it was coming from behind me.

I blindly followed the stone road of the city, passing by creepy plants and yawning doors with black nothingness inside, and still I ran. It wasn't until I tripped on a brick and fell flat on the road that the screaming stopped, and for the first time I realized that it had been me screaming all along.

Although I had just fallen to the ground, I could still hear the sound of running footsteps. I knew that I definitely wasn't alone, so I picked myself up as fast as I could and continued running.

There was another sound besides the sound of running, but I didn't want to listen to it. Because if I did, and there were human words there, what could I do? It might have been stupid of me to run into the city when an unknown Something was behind me, but I wasn't going to get caught by it. In front of me was a crossroads, and when I turned left I saw the city wall at the end of the road. If I could just get there and climb out of this city-

Something tripped my leg. I went down hard, and whatever was chasing me pinned me to the ground.

"What are you thinking?! Hold still for a spell!"

Wait, what? How could this creepy shadow speak English? Wasn't this some kind of ancient jungle civilization?

"Dewey, are you alright?"

Itknowsmyname, itknowsmyname!

Something told me that it was time to open my eyes and take a look at whatever held me down, but my eyes wouldn't open.

"Here, drink this."

Something touched my lips. Poison?! Everything in me fought. "For crying out loud m'boy, it's just water! Now drink up, lad."

I knew that voice.

I opened my eyes.

"U-Uncle Scrooge?" I asked.

"That's right," he said, putting away his water flask and getting up, freeing me from where I was pinned to the ground, "Next time, don't wander off after a fall like that. Took me hours just to pick up your trail."

"Uncle Scrooge!" I shouted, jumping at him for a hug, "I thought you were a g-g-ghost."

"Yes, yes, I figured as much." He sighed, twirling his cane. That's probably what he used to trip me. "Anyway, we'd better start heading back."

"Back?" I asked.

"Yes, back. Do you realize how far ye walked?"

"But Uncle Scrooge, what about the treasure?" I asked. After all, wasn't the treasure the reason for this trip in the first place?

"Do you really want ta go looking for treasure right now?" Uncle Scrooge asked, looking at me funny, "In the dark, after ye fell out of a moving plane and have been wandering the jungle for the last four hours? If ye really have yer heart set on it be my guest, but I'm heading back to the place I left Launchpad and yer brothers. Care to join me?"

"Um, okay," I said. Then when Uncle Scrooge turned around to walk back the way we came, "Wouldn't it be faster to go this way?" I pointed ahead of me, towards the wall at the end of the street.

"That direction? No way. There's a giant hole in the ground just on the other side o' the wall. Some kind of sinkhole. I almost fell into it meself before I found you by the othe wall. Trust me, this way is the fastest."

He pushed me gently from behind in the other right direction, as if to tell me to get going, and started talking about some crazy adventure he once had in a city just like this one.

Maybe he started talking about stuff to make the place seem less scary. I don't know if he meant to or not, but it was a lot easier to walk across the ruins and over the broken wall with him standing next to me chattering away.

It wasn't until we had cleared the wall and were back in the now-dark jungle that I realized something. Uncle Scrooge was still talking about adventures even as he made a torch to see the path, and his eyes glittered in the torchfire every time he mentioned the city's treasure.

If he loved treasure so much, and knew that there was treasure in the city behind us, was this the first time he ever willingly left it behind?

THE END