Sally paced anxiously. "I haven't even been a mother for a year, and I already manage to lose my child?" She accused herself despairingly.

"Now Sally," Jack interrupted, "you know that's not true. I know it's hard to admit, but Lenora's the one who wandered off-"

"No! She wouldn't do that!" She paused. "…Ok, so she's done it before, but that was just because she was scared! She wouldn't leave the house on her own at night if she had a choice in the matter. Maybe some of the other kids put her up to it?"

Jack sighed. "You know that we have talked to the parents, and even some of the children. Not all of them seemed exceedingly upset, albeit, but all seemed genuinely surprised. Maybe… Lenora will return on her own." Jack tried to console her, "As you mentioned, this isn't the first time she's disappeared, after all."

Sally looked at him worriedly. They both remembered the last time Lenora had gone missing – and she hadn't returned alone.

"Now, let's not make assumptions;" Jack began.

"Jack, you know what those three are capable of!" Sally urged.

"I know, dear," Jack replied, "but without Oogie around, they're just a group of kids. They have no reason for wanting to take Lenora. If they wanted to scare her, that would be easy enough to do out in the streets. Without a leader, they have no ulterior motive for kidnapping."

"You just said they were kids," Sally argued, "they don't need an ulterior motive."

Jack remained silent for a moment, contemplating the possibilities in his mind. Sally looked at him hopefully. Then, he shook his head, as much to himself as to Sally. "I just can't see why they would do it, what they would gain from it." He finally stated, "Sure, they enjoy scaring, but that's not their only activity, nor do they seem to relish in it as much as the town's kids. If that were the case, they wouldn't be so problematic… No, they prefer pranking. If they did do anything, then they probably would've tricked her and left her alone someplace…" Sally's face showed alarm, and Jack was quick to add "That is if they did anything. I'm still of the opinion they haven't had anything to do with her since that incident before. Or if they have, nothing to this extent. …Probably."

There was tense silence for a few seconds.

"… I'll ask a search party to look around in the woods." He finally conceded.

"Aren't you going to go with them?" Sally demanded.

"I'm only sending them as a precaution." Jack replied, "As I said, I don't think that those three would have much to do with Lenora. Now," he said definitively, "we are going to go about this logically and methodically. Those speedy questionnaires we did around town the other night were not very thorough. Let's take another look at what the citizens have to say, now that the fright about the witches' shop has been addressed, and I am sure more information will come to light."

It was obvious that this option was not the one Sally had been hoping for, but it also seemed apparent that Jack had decided upon a course of action and was going to stick to it. She sighed, then nodded, hoping that allowing him to go through with his plan would quicken the time to actually making progress in their search. Perhaps he was right, as well – hopefully they would be finding out soon.

There was a loud crash somewhere in the treehouse, accompanied by a short scream.

"…It's your turn, Lock." Shock muttered.

"Says who?" Lock shot back from his sprawled position on the couch.

"Says us!" Barrel retorted, "Remember? You lost at Rock Paper Scissors!"

"I never said I'd go!" Lock disputed.

"Yeah?" Shock countered, "Well too bad; it's your fault you lost!"

"It is not!" Lock snapped, "Barrel was cheating!"

"Was not!" Barrel argued, getting up from his place on the floor.

"You were too!" Lock challenged, also getting up from the couch.

Shock rolled her eyes and sighed as the boys attacked each other. Knowing that the dispute wasn't likely to end soon, she headed off to see what Lenora had hit or dropped this time.

It had been about a week since the bird girl had started living with the trick-or-treaters. It had been fun for the trio at first – they ordered her around and made her do random things simply because they could. They had verbally listed off a number of things for her to do, such as clean, fix up their weapons, make sure their traps worked; and the best part was that Lenora seemed earnest in wanting to do it all. They were so looking forward to watching her either screw it up, or simply do the things they didn't want to.

Usually it ended up being the first option, but that wasn't as fun as they had anticipated. The girl obviously had almost no idea what she was doing in most of the situations they gave her. She said that she had watched Sally do a few things, but that didn't seem to make her any better at them. The areas Lenora 'cleaned' usually just ended up wet, along with herself. They had learned quickly not to let her cook alone – especially since Barrel had tried to convince her candy made everything better. They had made her move what minimal furniture they had, or at least had tried – Lenora wasn't really all that strong. They smugly watched her move small things in circles, but ended up frustratingly pushing her aside when she failed to move things like the couch very easily. They mischievously watched her while she nervously cleaned their weapons, but she often dropped them, even without their startling her. Somehow, the resultant scattering of weapons usually did not seriously hurt Lenora or the trio, but it came close a few times. Snapping at her only made her drop more things, so they learned to just keep Lenora out of sight while she handled the weapons. They tried to get her to fix a trap once, but after they forced her to finally start an attempt after staring the thing down for at least half an hour, even they had narrowly escaped getting hit from the resultant explosion of sharp pieces, chains, and small, pointy objects.

Now, while it had been funny for the first while, it soon grew tiring to hear the girl's scream, or crying, following a cacophony of falling metal or similar crashes. Not only that, but it was getting trickier to keep Oogie in the dark; he was starting to wonder about the 'ghosts' upstairs, and the infestation of bigger 'rats'. Honestly, the trick-or-treaters weren't sure what the Boogie Man would do when he heard of their uninvited guest, and they were trying to figure out a clever way of telling him, before he investigated himself.

Shock turned a corner to find Lenora facing away on her knees on the floor, a handful of knives sprawled out along with her. Her shoulders lifted in sporadic bursts and she coughed while slowly gathering them up, obviously trying to hold in tears. One bandaged hand was searching along the floor for the knives, as if she wasn't really looking at what she was doing. Her eyes were probably too blurry to see clearly. Shock gave an exasperated sigh, which was in turn followed by the clattering of a few knives as Lenora dropped them again in surprise.

"I-I'm sorry," Lenora mumbled, still facing away, "I didn't mean to-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know;" Shock cut her off, "Just pick them back up without cutting your hand off!"

"Y-yes, I'm trying…" Lenora murmured, hand searching along the floor again.

Shock watched for a second, then stalked over and began helping, annoyed with how agonizingly long it was taking her to just pick up a few knives. "All you gotta do is just see the knife and pick it up-" Shock glared at her and was going to go on, but she saw that the bird girl had her eyes closed. Shock paused. "…What are you doing?"

"Umm… picking up… knives..." Lenora mumbled.

Shock grabbed Lenora's face with the hand that didn't have any knives in it. "Like this?!" she demanded, "What are you closing your eyes for? You're practically asking to get stabbed!"

Slowly, Lenora opened her eyes some. All she could see at first was Shock's irritated expression, which wasn't pleasant, but she had seen it enough lately to handle it. Then her eyes expanded their view, and she caught sight of the knife in Shock's hand. She quickly closed her eyes again.

Shock rolled her eyes and shoved Lenora's face away from her, making Lenora fall a little to the side. "Fine, why should I care?" Shock growled as she prepared to toss the knife in her hand away somewhere. Then Shock saw one of Lenora's legs, which had extended for balance after Shock had shoved her. The bird girl already had a number of bandages on her body, not to mention scabbed scratches left to their own, but a new slice was bleeding quite readily on the front of her calf. Shock rolled her eyes again, dropped the knife, stomped over, and grabbed Lenora's arm.

Lenora dropped a few more knives in surprise, for her eyes were still closed. "S-sorry-"

"Leave 'em!" Shock snapped before she hauled Lenora up onto her feet. Lenora obediently dropped the remaining knives, although dangerously close to both of their feet. Simply giving another irate sigh, Shock proceeded to drag Lenora behind the knives and off down a hallway. They soon reached a small closet door, which had a box beside it. Shock pushed Lenora onto it, and then opened the closet door. Lenora had opened her eyes again by this time, and sat on the box a bit dejectedly.

"…I've gotten better at it." Lenora eventually said.

"What, tripping with your eyes closed?" Shock snorted from the closet.

"No;" Lenora said, a bit defensively, "…doing things with knives."

"Oh, so this is an improvement?" Shock asked snidely as she emerged from the closet with handful of surprisingly-clean bandage wrappings. The quality of medical care available in the treehouse had greatly improved since Lenora's arrival, mainly because it was now used rather frequently. The trio hadn't been too enthusiastic to work with it at first, but when Lenora had accidentally gotten a scorpion sting and Shock had had to hope that her antidote kit wasn't out of date, such supplies had been updated rather quickly. They didn't want to have her need real medical attention in town, after all…

"Yes." Lenora responded assertively, "I used to not be able to even hold them before."

"Put your bandage on." Shock ordered as she thrust the ensemble into Lenora's hands, then watched as the girl attempted to do as she was told. Shock knew that Lenora wasn't a fan of knives; that had been apparent from the first time they'd gone into the armory. Of course, they had all assumed that it was just the pure scariness of their weaponry in general that held her in fear, but the girl had avoided the knife section the longest. Lock had once slipped a knife near Lenora's head before she woke up, and they all had laughed at her panic when she saw it; until she had smacked one of them with her wings by accident. That had started a tussle in which everyone was involved. Afterwards, all had bruises, but Lenora still avoided the knife. Shock thought that had just been that one event, though, not a long-standing thing. Although, now she somewhat remembered a mention about a knife some other time when Lenora had been scared… When she had run into them in the woods. That first time, on the night of the opening scream… They never had gotten the full story from her.

Lenora was holding the rest of the bundle of bandages out, although it was still attached to the bandage she had created. She looked like she was trying to figure out how to detach the extra when Shock snatched it from her. Briefly glancing at the bird girl's work, Shock tightened the bandage, then tore it at the lose end. "Thanks…" Lenora said as she finished up, and Shock put the rest of it back in the closet.

"So…" Shock began, "What's your deal with knives? They're just sharp objects that are really quite useful. You can cut, stab, slice, threaten, throw…" she listed, smirking as she thought of all the possibilities.

"I-" Lenora started, interrupting loudly, then continued softer, "…I know." There was silence for a little while.

Shock came back out and raised an eyebrow at her. "Geez, I'm not asking for your life's story here, I'm just wondering."

"W-well…" Lenora began slowly, "…it kind-of has to do with my life…"

"No kidding." Shock remarked sarcastically.

"…before I came to Halloweentown." Lenora continued, ignoring the comment.

Shock perked up – this was something new. No one knew where the girl had come from, although most assumed the human world. How exactly that was possible, Shock didn't know or particularly care, but she was interested in the story at least.

"…Where I was… was awful." Lenra said, "And not like Halloween awful. It was scary, and the people were never nice, and…" A shiver went through her, ruffling her feathers.

"What do you mean?" Shock asked, wondering what the big deal was. Scary was fun, for most everyone she knew, and while the people of Halloweentown generally weren't usually mean, they also weren't exactly nice to the trick-or-treaters.

"…They had things there;" Lenora tried to explain, "Always things around to hurt you or hold you down."

"…Like knives?" Shock probed.

"Y-yes…" Lenora replied, "…And other things."

"Like what?" Shock continued curiously.

"Just… a lot of things." Lenora said with effort, "And they didn't just wave them around and threaten you; they used them. A lot."

"Well, sounds like you oughtta stay on their good side." Shock commented.

"There was none!" Lenora exclaimed, surprising Shock, "They had no good side, there was just the test-side and the study-side! When they test you, they used everything on you! When they study you, you just hope that you didn't fail the tests!"

Taken aback by Lenora's sudden outburst, Shock let silence sit for a few moments. But eventually, curiosity overcame her surprise. "…What happened if you failed?"

"They took you away," Lenora answered hollowly, "and you never came back."

Shock did not have a comeback ready for that. Heck, she wasn't even sure how to respond to that. It unnerved her, those words, and the empty look Lenora had as she'd said them. It was as if the girl had resigned herself to a fate she knew she couldn't change, and couldn't avoid, no matter how much she wanted to. Shock immediately closed the closet door, purposefully shaking them both out of the moment.

"…Anyway," Lenora said, the usual timidity back in her voice, "t-that's why I don't really like knives…"

"Well, at least you're making progress." Shock muttered, wanting to change the mood.

Lenora smiled a little. "Yeah."

"But still, don't go around with your eyes closed, especially around here! That's just stupid!" Shock rebuked.

Lenora's smile grew a little. "Ok." She continued sitting for a moment, then threw her arms around Shock in a hug.

More than a little surprised, Shock just stood there for a second. Then she started squirming a little. "H-hey! What have I said abut hugging!" Lenora loosened her hold, and Shock shrugged her off like a blanket which was too warm. Lenora still had a smile, though. "And wipe that stupid grin off your face!" Shock said, pushing the bird girl off the box.

Lenora surprisingly caught herself on her better leg, though, and didn't end up all the way on the floor. She was looking down at the floor again, though, and she now looked at the trail of blood she'd left on their way over. "…I'm going to have to clean that, huh?"

"Darn right you are." Shock asserted. She looked for a moment at Lenora, as if contemplating something. "….You go and get the scrubbing stuff – I'll put the knives away."

Lenora's face lit up, but before she could for a smile, Shock made some noises to hold her off. "Na-ah-eh! This is just to keep you from slicing yourself up even more today, ok? You bleed any more, and you probably won't have anything left. This is not some pathetic attempt to pity you."

Lenora gave a warm smile, though she tried to keep it subdued. "Ok. Thank you, Shock." She then went off to get some water.

"And try not to soak your bandages off, huh?" Shock shot after her before going off herself.

Lenora couldn't help but let her smile overtake her face again as she left Shock's sight. She had actually talked about… before, and she hadn't cried! She didn't say too much specific, but still! And Shock hadn't laughed at her, like she thought might happen.

She was so wrapped up in her moment, Lenora almost didn't hear the caw as she passed a window. She paused, then backed up and slowly opened the window. She wasn't allowed outside, that was one of the first rules the trick-or-treaters had told her, because she was their 'prisoner', but they at least let her open the windows now. She looked out now and saw a raven on one of the treehouse's small branches. It had 4 red eyes, and was staring at her. That was that weird guy's pet… Lenora looked around. He was nowhere to be seen, thankfully. Lenora relaxed some, and looked fondly at the bird. She didn't like his master, but the bird himself didn't seem that bad. After thinking for a moment, she remembered the bird's name was Pariah. Lenora extended her hand half-hopefully. "…Pariah?" She called softly.

The bird looked up at her word. Lenora waited for a while, watching for any sign that he might fly over to her. After a little bit, and still no motion from Pariah, Lenora let her hand fall back to her side and sighed. She wasn't sure if she should be relieved that he didn't seem too interested or not. "…I'll leave the window open for you." Lenora said to Pariah. She then turned and started heading for the washing materials again.

Pariah watched the girl leave the window, and waited for a few moments. Then, the bird flapped over to the open sill. He cawed again, and saw Lenora's head turn back in surprise. After a second, she smiled, and turned back to her task. Pariah would follow if he wanted, she was sure – and he did.

That's it for this chapter! Mostly dialogue. Progress? Perhaps. At least for Lenora. What do you think?

Thanks for reading~!