Author's note: An update one day after the previous one?! What kind of sorcery has been inflicted on us today? Well, the answer is that I tried starting soon after the previous chapter had been completed - and I like it more this way! The events and the characters' thoughts are fresh in my mind, so I'm better able to get a nice streak going. Of course, this doesn't guarantee that I'll have time to pen one chapter a day, admittedly - American universities don't earn their "public Ivy" status by affording their students excessive leisure time every day...

Oof, but now that I'm looking at the page views, they really are down the toilet. Recommend this to your Sonic-aholic fanfic-friendly associates, everyone!

On a related note, I've received the question a few times of whether Paint will ever meet Tails. Spoiler alert: yes! I have no intentions of pulling a Charles M. Schulz and keeping that long-desired goal from you all. It will just take a lot of time - for Paint and the gang as well as for you and me. Stay tuned, explore the wealth of other Sonic fanfics, and relax!

The hours dragged their feet by with increasing sluggishness and scarcity of energy, and so did the adventurers. Eventually the sun did decide that it had had enough of its own grating presence and that it was time to descend out of sight for the day - but while this alleviated the temperature's exacerbation of the animals' growing thirst, it did nothing to solve the core issue at hand.

Arrowhead licked the sides of his mouth futilely, clearly made uncomfortable by the extensive time spent with empty water bottles and no source of adequate replenishment in sight. Jewel and Maxwell weren't doing much better, either. Paint had it the worst of all, though: the greener areas of her fur felt stiff and increasingly lifeless - a bit of yellowing at the tips would not have surprised her, though she could not see any yet - and her muscles' movements had little energy or command behind them.

The endless swaths of meadow had eventually taken them to an increasingly hilly area with trees cropping up once more, though not on the level of a forest yet. It looked like an area ripe for a highly welcomed river, and yet none was in the vicinity. The soil, which was partially exposed through the patchy grass, looked rather unhealthy and grainy; Paint couldn't imagine Mobian animals, humans, or even Earth animals making their homes anywhere like this willingly.

"I don't get it," Arrowhead spat out in frustration as he eyed their map. "The river's supposed to be right around here, and I see nothing. We're supposed to be able to trust these things..."

"Hmm..." Maxwell grunted, jumped into the air, and made a buzzing of his wings - a weak one at first, but soon enough of one to get high enough to have a look around and see if they could be missing something.

His eyes did eventually find their target, or at least something worth their fixation, but his face showed little enthusiasm across it. He flitted back down and said, "Oh, the river's here, all right. In a few more steps we'll all be able to check it out for ourselves, yeah..."

Dim, orange-red flames of curiosity stirred in Paint's head and she picked up the pace a little bit; her other friends followed. The path Maxwell was silently pointing them in took them through a short, thin copse, past a few small boulders, and into a perfectly capable riverbed. A dry riverbed. Oh, there clearly had been a vivid spring of life here at some point, but that point had passed years ago. Paint silently cursed Sunny Clearing's isolation from industrialized, connected Mobian cities, and all of the inaccessibility to current cartography and news updates that came along with it.

Arrowhead groaned pitifully, pinching his forehead in anguish and about ready to yell. Jewel didn't look too happy at this time-worn, unpleasant sight, either, and even Star seemed dismayed just for its friends. The air and sky loomed heavy and tense as though curious about the burgeoning angst below.

"Ahah... maybe you were right, Jewel," she muttered exasperatedly. "Turning back... maybe not such a bad idea after all."

"It's a little late for that now, Paint," Arrowhead grunted with thin, aimless streams of bitterness seeping from his every pore.

"...Is it?" Jewel interjected with unexpected firmness. "I mean... I don't really see what choice we have."

Paint wasn't sure she did, either, but very much did not want to turn back if they were under no true obligation to. "Urrrrgh... I mean..." she growled aimlessly, upset at nothing but herself and the gods' logistics that had put them as infants in such an isolated, complacent corner of the planet. She wasn't saving her friends; she wasn't kicking butt. What would Cosmo have thought of this?

Her heart sank further as Arrowhead attempted to speak up again: "Guys, I really think we sh-"

Suddenly, a loud, acute thunderclap shook the entire area. Everyone was weakly startled by the giant sound, but Paint jumped for the nearest trusted being available - which turned out to be Maxwell. She gripped him tightly and shivered rather fitfully.

"Hey, calm down, why don't ya?" he asked abruptly as he took her primal fear in and remembered another recent time she had been startled. "...You've already peed a few hours ago, right?"

"Paint, what is it?" Jewel asked her. "Um... you don't usually get scared from weather or noises like this, in my experience. I even... a-ad-... um..."

"I don't like lightning," she sheepishly admitted, muffled by her mouth being unconsciously pressed against Maxwell's shoulder. Noticing this, he tried to shake the young Luddite off, but her ever-tighter clinging as a result caused him to give up.

Cleanly jolted from his previous misgivings, Arrowhead said, "Yeah, I've noticed it all the years I've known you. I- I still don't get it, though. Why lightning? Why that? It can't be the decibel count in isolation... heck, you yell enough for both of us."

"Plants aren't inclined to mmmfffmfmfph, mmfph mphfh," she suggested through her Max-pillow.

"Uh... I guess not," he acknowledged with a quick, stealthy eye-roll. "But hey... would it cheer you up to remember that lightning comes only with rainclouds, and we are all still parched?"

She poked her head out entirely, grinned, looked up and around the clumping cumulonimbus clusters in the sky, and replied, "It might."