The Many Journeys of the Journal
Chapter 1
"WHERE COULD IT POSSIBLY BE?!?!?!"
An Irish accent pierced the air like a knife, rattling the windows of the ramshackle house and nearly dislodging a Buzzlegum hive hanging from the roof.
The owner of the obnoxious lilt, a green-masked girl with hair like a bad paintbrush, tore through a rather colorful chest of drawers, causing a tornado of papers to whirl around the room.
"I COULDN'T have dropped it, I COULDN'T have!" She tore at her already mussed hair, kicking a pile of papers in frustration.
"Leafos? What's going on in there?" The girl heard her father call from a few rooms over.
"Dad, I can't find my journal anywhere! Have you seen it?" Leafos yelled through the door. Not that she needed to yell; most of the other villages nearby have grown accustomed to her piercing voice. Some say she was the cause of Jardiniero becoming nearly deaf.
"The Journal is where it always is, on the table in the living room!"
Leafos buried her mask in her hands. "Not that Journal, Dad, the other journal! My journal!"
"I haven't the slightest, Leafos! Perhaps you lost it when you were on one of your constant walks outside?" her father offered.
"I couldn't have!" Leafos began mentally retracing her steps of the day before. "…could I?"
Meanwhile, in an exceedingly disorganized garden…
A young lady with short, curly dark hair and a chest as flat as her back pushed up the brim of her straw hat as she surveyed her garden. Her face brightened when she saw the local seed merchant rambling down the path towards her garden, but her happy look quickly faded when she noticed trouble trotting beside him.
"Are you suuuuuuure you're not coming to the garden to see Leena, Seedos?" Said Trouble, a brightly masked boy with red hair that looked like it needed to be introduced to a brush and a shirt that looked like it a rainbow had detonated all over it as he elbowed the shorter young man with strikingly unnatural bright blue hair and an extremely odd mask in the ribs.
"Yes, I'm sure, Yoto," Seedos rolled his bespectacled eyes and rubbed his ribcage in the spot where the other boy had jammed his elbow moments before. "I happen to like her plants a lot more than I like her."
Leena's heart felt like it wrenched out of her chest and splattered against a tree, and then slowly oozed into a gory, gelatinous puddle on the grass. She turned away and tried to make it look like she hadn't heard Seedos' comment and was busy watering her already perfect poppies.
Seedos made his way over to her and proceeded to peer at a poppy and Leena promptly turned the same shade of scarlet as the flowers.
Yoto noticed and wiggled his eyebrows at her, a sly, smirky grin crossing his face.
The redness on Leena's face darkened and she turned away from him; Yoto took her turning away as an invitation to walk over.
"Hey, Leena, have you seen Yen today?" he asked, looking around warily as if saying his brother's name would cause him to materialize out of thin air, as he was known to do.
"You're playing hooky again?" Seedos said disapprovingly, keeping his eyes on the poppy.
"Is your name 'Leena?'" Yoto narrowed his eyes at Seedos.
"No, er…I didn't see him today, Yoto…sorry…" Leena murmured softly.
Yoto began pacing about the garden, not-so-quietly talking to himself.
"Okay, good, he's not around, that means I won't have to do any work if I just-OOF!" Yoto interrupted himself by tripping and falling forward onto the grass.
Seedos looked up from the flowers just as Yoto tripped and promptly burst into laughter. Yoto struggled to a sitting position and gave Seedos a Look.
"Yoto, are you okay? What happened? Did you, er…trip over something? I-I don't think I left anything lying about…but…but I could have…y'know…" Leena dithered, twirling a lock of hair around her finger.
Yoto leaned over and picked up what appeared to be a book off the ground, giving it a glare that could make someone's mask crack.
"Oh, so YOU'RE the one that tripped me! You think you're funny or something?" Yoto growled.
"Yoto…that's an inanimate object. It can't hear you," Seedos remarked.
Yoto rolled his eyes. "Pfft. Hypocrite."
"Wait, are you talking about my seeds? They can hear me; they're actually alive," Seedos squinted at Yoto.
Yoto ignored him and turned his attention back to the book. "What the heck IS this?" He turned it around in his hands and surveyed all sides of it, searching for a name or a title or something.
"Um…it's not mine…do you think we should…er…find who it belongs to?" Leena suggested.
"Good idea, Leena," Seedos nodded.
Leena lit up like a Taffly that flew a little too close to a firebrand.
Yoto opened the book and began flipping through the pages.
"Hey, what are you doing? That's probably private property!" Seedos ran over to Yoto and glared down at him.
"Lee said we should find out who it belongs to, and I'm doing just that!" Yoto looked up at Seedos and stuck his tongue out at him.
"Hmph," Seedos crossed his arms.
Yoto began reading a page with a serious look on his face that slowly morphed into a broad grin.
"Seedos, Leena, you'll never believe this!" Yoto waved the book around like a battle flag.
"What, you can read?" Seedos gave Yoto a blank stare.
"I think we hit the mother load!" Yoto jumped to his feet. "This book is LEAFOS' DIARY."
"What."
"She must have dropped it! Ohohohoho, am I going to have fun with this!" Yoto licked two fingers and turned to the first page. He swallowed a bout of laughter and did a flawless imitation of the journal's owner, complete with dramatic gestures:
"Today that wonderfully mysterious Yen showed up near the garden today. Sure, it was just to find his disgustingly obnoxious brother, but I was allowed a few quiet moments to observe his silent beauty. I sat sighing at the kitchen table and watched as he slid across the garden, looking elegant as always in his dark coat. He nattered on for quite a while with that horrifically plain Leena-"
Leena frowned.
"-which gave me a good few minutes to watch his mask- he actually almost smiled. ALMOST SMILED……wait. What if HE LIKES… HER?! No… no… this cannot be!!"
Yoto couldn't hold back his laughter any longer and fell into hysterics on the grass.
"No…no way would Yen ever like Leena. Not in a million years!" Yoto lifted his mask a tiny bit and wiped a tear from his eye. "Besides," -Yoto gestured at Seedos- "Four Eyes saw her first."
Leena turned bright red, but Seedos ignored Yoto's last comment.
"Ahahaha (oh), very funny," Seedos put his hands on his hips and narrowed his eyes at Yoto, his words full of bitter sarcasm. "Now get up and hand that over, if Leafos ever finds out you read that, you're going to be in deep doom-doom." He held out his hand.
Yoto sprang to his feet, but he obviously had no intent on handing the book over to Seedos as he was hugging the journal to his chest as if it was permanently fixed there. "I know you're crazy, Seedos, but man oh man, you've reached a new level of insanity if you think I'm going to hand Leafos' diary over!" Yoto smirked like a smirky thing in a smirking contest, a mischievous glint in his green eyes. "For too long she's spread rumor after rumor about everyone in the Village, it's about time we got some dirt on her!"
"But isn't that…erm…stooping to her level?" Leena inquired.
"No kidding," Seedos added.
Yoto opened the diary again. "Seedos, on this page Leafos calls you a barmy idiot and Leena is a hopeless loser for seeing anything in you." Yoto slammed the journal shut and triumphantly grinned at the two of them.
Leena looked like she was about to cry and Seedos looked ready to faint. Or strangle someone. Or both. Probably both.
Seedos took a deep breath and counted to ten or something to regain his composure. It took quite a while for him to count to ten.
"Maybe it would be best if you held onto that for a while…" Seedos said through clenched teeth, glaring at the diary like Yoto had a few minutes before.
"So glad you see it my way!" Yoto ruffled Seedos' hair, much to Seedos' annoyance. "I promise I'll take good care of it!" Yoto made a cross over his heart. "But I need to show this to as many people as possible before Leafos finds out…" The exceedingly smirky smirk returned to Yoto's lips.
"Oh NO, Yoto, you aren't planning to bring it to P-Factor tonight, are you?" Seedos said sternly.
"…good idea, Seedos!" Yoto beamed and slapped Seedos on the back, nearly knocking him over into Leena. "I'm supposed to be judging, I bet this'll be a hit in the lobby!"
"You aren't bringing it there on MY watch!" Seedos attempted to nick Leafos' journal out of Yoto's hands, but Yoto easily moved it out of Seedos' reach.
"Come on, Seedos! Leafos won't be there! Don't be a bore!" Yoto said, still holding the journal a safe distance away from Seedos. "She's going to get what she deserves! It'll be a hoot, come on!"
"Ffffffffine," Seedos forced himself to say, even though his expression showed that he didn't approve at all.
"I better see you two there tonight whether you want to come or not; I don't want you to miss this for the world!" Yoto winked at Seedos and Leena. "I bet it'll be-"
The sound of the door to Leafos' house creaking open interrupted Yoto.
"Crap!" Yoto said through clenched teeth before bolting, not bothering to say goodbye to Seedos or Leena.
