BLA! Let's get some of this mystery over with, kay? Wait a sec, that's not a writer's attitude! I'm not in a good mood... BUT I MUST BE! UNLOCK MY HEART! CHARACTER TRANSFORMATION: AMULET SPADE! NEGATIVE HEART—LOCK ON! OPEN HEART!**

Not that it is nor does it need to be a particularly happy story, but...
Ugh. T-T


Celeste woke up suddenly, her feathers slightly damp with sweat and with a slightly sticky and sour taste in her mouth.

"What... a weird dream..." she mumbled. "Like Brewster still misses me... He's probably dating some city pigeon over the Internet, that idiot..."

I always find myself not being able to tell if a distant memory really happened or if it were a dream, especially if it is a particularly peculiar thing and it happened late at night. Like, perhaps, me asking a past-love who I have been trying to dreadfully avoid for several years due to reminders of my past life even though he lives two floors below me and still somehow misses me and is hopeful that I too miss him, to walk me home at night with a full moon in the sky, happily accepting his formerly unacceptable comments on how cute I am.

Now, that was an especially peculiar and long sentence, filled with many things that are peculiar happenings. And thus, if you wake up with this peculiar, late night, distant memory swimming around in your head, it is only natural you'd assume it to be a dream. As a result, don't think of Celeste as a scatterbrained, forgetful, senile birdbrain, even if she tends to be as such at times. (No offense, dear...)

Hopping off her perch, she laughed at herself, though she was not very happy about her statement. "Like I'm still anything special to that... vermin..." Of course she didn't mean it, but convinced herself that she did. Why wouldn't she? Why would she still care about what had been...? Keyword: been.

Looking around the room, she felt as though there was a missing presence. A "super awesome and fancy astronomical tely-scope," as Sarah called it, took up a lot of space, and with it gone the small room looked ominously spacey. Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, she read the note for about the 30th time, shivering in its mystery.

Don't be fooled by patterns, little red owl.

Smirking fowl bird, hiding its past, has nothing but his life to take.

Con-master will be conned, a sneaky orange fox.

Raccoon, fat and brown, I am the better bandit.

Artsy, smart brown owl, be finally outsmarted.

Blue and brown hedgehogs, too kind to resist.

Bulldog so drowsy, I take advantage of you.

I have started with you, little red owl.

She had gone to sleep at 3:00AM, and now it was 5:00AM, right on time to fetch some breakfast. (No, she doesn't get much sleep, and she sleeps at the wrong times for a nocturnal animal at that.) Trotting downstairs, where Blathers was already starting to get slightly drowsy as dawn approached, she attempted to talk to her brother. "Blathers? Blathers? I'm going to go run some errands, okay? First get you some peaches, then I'll ask Sarah to fish us up something for dinner, and then I'll see if Mabel or Sable'll wash my bow 'kay? You want me to get them to wash yours? It's gotten so dirty with fossil dirt and such; you know how Sarah always runs over and gives 'em to ya' straight from the ground. I wonder if you'd be courteous enough to lend me a few bells? And have you seen my extra bow anywhere? I'd look so empty without it..." Realizing she was blathering, and Blathers looked glassy-eyed and unfocused, she shook her head. He was sooooo not the older brother.

"ZAWK! Wot! Oh, dreadful sorry Celeste!" Blathers blurted, suddenly snapped out of his drowsy thoughts. "Yes, yes, go run your errands, but I'm afraid I can't release you my bow tie. I take so much pride in it; and I wouldn't dare allow a soul to see me in its absence!" he remarked, informatively, pointer-feather in air. "Wot, did you know that its green color evokes nature, good health, victory, and love, which is interesting because..."

"Are you sure you'll be okay? Like, with that thief and all. There hasn't been a single item in the lost&found for days now, as told by Sarah, and the telescope certainly hasn't returned." Celeste said, her voice filled with concern, as she tightened her brother's pride-filled bow tie, obviously uninterested in his knowledge on color symbolism.

"Wot! Why, of course, wot, that thief doesn't stand a chance against me!" he grinned, striking a Haruhi Suzumiya dance pose as in Hare Hare Yukai*, expecting Celeste to support him.

With an eyebrow raised, Celeste stared at him expectantly. "Hootie-toot, Blathers! Have you been watching too much anime?"

Blathers dropped his pose and looked at the ground. "A-ab-absolutely NOT, wot! I suppose it depends on what your definition of 'too much' would be, but I digress..."
Celeste sighed. "Cool story, bro." she muttered sarcastically. "By the way, red symbolizes love, and green also symbolizes fate. Other than that you were right on spot." She turned to leave when, to her surprise, Blathers mumbled,

"How interesting, wot, you're red, and one could say Brewster is a shade of gree—AIYEEEH!" Celeste gave him a kick in the shin and stomped off and out of the museum, leaving Blathers shaking his head.

He chuckled. "Celeste, you're smarter than me in most things, no doubt, but you fail to realize some of the most obvious things."


*From the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Look up "Hare Hare Yukai Dance Pose" Imagine Celeste, Brewster, Blathers, Sarah, and Tom Nook doing that.
NOW IMAGINE DANCING!
I'm sorry if I've traumatized any of you.
**Shugo Chara.


Because she was in a violent furor over her brother's teasing, she didn't noticed until she had calmed down a bit that every single one of the fruit trees in the town were bare.

No pears, cherries, oranges, apples, peaches, or coconuts. Even the money tree that Sarah had bragged about finally being able to grow was literally, er, fruitless. If money's considered a fruit.

This was peculiar, as though Sarah sells a lot of the town's fruit to Tom Nook (who could just go out and pick it himself—it is rumored he pities her) she never is so systematical or productive to cover all of them within 3 days, so there is always enough for the rest of the town to eat. (Not that she ever saw any of the villagers taking the fruit... Which is weird, because they're always talking about cooking things like spaghetti and peach tarts while Tom Nook sells no food.)

Hesitating for a moment, Celeste decided to take flight. As she gained altitude, happy to feel the cool morning air rushing through all of her feathers, giving her a thrill of exuberance for the first time in a long time, she couldn't help but laugh. From above she could clearly see that not only was Lucy up already, but Bill had planted new flowers, the cedar saplings Sarah had boasted about had grown to adulthood and indeed, every tree in the town of Luropo was void of fruit. "Weird..." she mumbled, eyebrows furrowed.

Almost convincing herself to toss the errands and fly around for the rest of the day—the wind in her face and the freedom to be alone in the skies of Luropo almost held her—she descended a short while away from Able Sisters. "What a silly idea..."she murmured, with a giggle. "I'd have all the eyes of the town on me, and maybe a few well aimed stones from a slingshot lodged into my wings too—they all have the idea that something good comes out of everything you shoot out of the sky; hootie-toot!"

Celeste, carefully trying to be as quiet as possible since majority of the town wasn't awake yet, rapped on the lighted window. "Yoo-hoo? You girls a bit too busy to help me out?"

The window hastily opened up to reveal the normally cheerful and hospitable Mabel with a dark look of grim on her face. "Darling, oh, the most frightening thing has just occurred!"

"I KNEW IT!" retorted Sarah, suddenly appearing beside Celeste.
"Hootie-toot! Where did you come from, indeed!" Mabel disappeared for a second to unlock the door for the two of her dear friends.
Sarah's face took on an expression of deep contemplation. "Some simpletons say I came from my mom, Celeste dear, and others remark that my origin lies in Venus. However, I daresay that I may be of seahorse or Martian descent, and thus I believe I came to be when that space shuttle landed on Neptune with an aquarium of..."
"Hootie-toot! We never went to Neptune!" Celeste interrupted.
"Well of course! Why would they let a Pekoponian* owl and a proud citizen of Keron go to Neptune together? It's so funny how ignorant you are, you poor, poor, uneducated owl!" she smiled, patting the poor bird on the back, who fought to keep her patience.
"We ought to ban anime in Luropo... This is what it does to people..." Celeste sighed, shaking her head.

By now Mabel had let them in, and suddenly awakening from their argument, the two gasped. The room was nothing but its drearily colored boards, few windows and patterned walls. The decorative quilt, the desks, the display mats, the mannequins, the cash register, the tape measure, the boxes, the rolls of patterns, the books, the pin cushion and its pins, the umbrellas, the hats, the glasses, the clothes (obviously), the cute little clock, even the sewing machine—

"And the pictures... Gone!" cried Sable, who they almost didn't even notice sitting in her former working corner. "Gone, gone! N-n-now we have a-ab-absolutely nothing! He... or she... whatever, h-h-he didn't even have... didn't even have, h-have the decency to leave us... leave us our own parents! Nothing! NOTHING!" The sight of her on her knees with truly nothing but the apron upon her back in the barren, desolate room—it tore the three onlookers to pieces. Mabel walked over, unable to let her younger sister start crying, genially said,

"We... We have each other, Sable." with a slight smile, meant to cheer her up. Sable at first didn't seem to hear her, and then she suddenly rose and stood face to face with her sister, their noses almost touching.

"We had each other when the shop was going out of business. We had each other... when... when Mom and Dad died! Mabel, they died! I'm not a little kid anymore, I get it, they're dead, dead, dead, DEAD!"

You'd think that not a single soul in the room was without tears in their eyes at that moment, but the fragile, timid Sable hadn't cried a tear. Even Sarah found herself in shock of the quiet Sable's sudden audacity. After a slight awkward pause, Sable turned away from Mabel and towards to the wall, refusing to look at us.

"We... only sorta' had each other when... when Labelle walked out on us. Now you say all we have is each other. Again! Why should we keep trying and trying and working and working when the world is just going to keep taking things away from us? Are we never gonna' get... are we never gonna' get anything out of life! Am I ever going to be happy, Mabel? Does happiness even exist? Because I surely haven't seen any of it in my time, and I don't think I ever will!" The young hedgehog beat her fist upon the wall.

In an attempt to calm her down, Celeste came over and put her wing on the girl's shoulder. "Hun, Mabel was just trying to help, and..."

"NO! You don't get it! None of you get it!" Sable suddenly whipped around and slapped Celeste across the face. The clear sound echoed through the room: PAP...PAP...pap... and suddenly, Sable blinked, and, abruptly realizing her brazen behavior, covered her mouth. The tears suddenly flooded her eyes and she was down on her knees.

"I...I'm so sorry, Celeste, dear. Ohh, I'm so sorry... So sorry...!" Celeste seemed unaware of the red mark where Sable had struck her as she held the poor hedgehog in her wings.

"It's okay, hun. Now you stop your tears; You don't want Sarah to start fishing in here—that ridiculous Biskit convinced her to fish in every body of water she came across, and before you know it villagers were complaining that she was trying to catch the fish in the aquarium room."

Under normal circumstances, nobody would have laughed at such a dumb joke, but they all seemed to be desperate for a way to break the tension. However, Sarah remained silent. "Sarah?" questioned a concerned Mabel.

"Doctor." she uttered, her face now filled with serious contemplation that was no longer about seahorses. She turned her gaze directly at Celeste, noting that she was referring to her.
"Um, yes?"
"I do believe, Doctor Watson, that under the current circumstances it is evidently very, very imperative that we solve this case." though they were tempted to giggle, Sarah had a rather adamant look on her face. Celeste smiled.
"Indeed, though I cannot conceive anything which will cover the facts, Holmes."
Turning to the two sisters, Sarah sat cross-legged on the floor and said, "I wonder if you will be willing to recall what took place here that resulted in the absence of all that was under your possession."

Putting her arm around her sister, Mabel smiled. "Why of course, Master Sherlock." Almost sad to see her brief smile fade, Holmes and Dr. Watson listened intently as Ms. Mabel the Hedgehog gained a distant look and began to state what had gone on.
"It was... so fast..."


Okay, I have this dreadful feeling that I've been rambling on and on, so I'm just gonna' stop here and let you all... rest your... eyes? -_-" I haven't been in a good mood lately, as I've said. So I guess I had to write a very moody bit. =_=

BTW, I've been reading Sherlock Holmes-wonderful, wonderful books. Really, you should read it, it's AWESOME. All of them are. Sir Conan Doyle ftw. Or you could read some fanfictions about 'em, since you're here reading this and not a book. ;]

Next chapter soon enough. ^—^

*Keroro Gunso, people. Get with it-I'm an anime otaku. (Blathers is a bigger one, though...)