This chapter is dedicated to:

Coffee Luv (Yay! You get goldfish!)

phred doesn't like you (I'm updating now...)

Jade Roxanne (Thanks for reviewing...about your password...have you tried entering your email on the log in screen and checking the little 'forget password' box? I don't know, just a thought...I HOPE it works! I miss your stories and I doubt I could continue w/out mangling them into Isadora/Klaus stories...good luck!)

Iris Violetta Frankenmeyer (Lucky you, no school! Yeah, the Baudelaires are so...happy...scary-ish...Lord of the Rings rules!)

Kates Cousin (!)

Eris11 (Thanks! ^_~)

Goldfish are given to:

(All of the above ppl)

Bri of VFD (Wow—that was very creative! And cool!)

Sam (*Sigh* Tom Felton...mmmmm....)

And phred doesn't like you gets a muffin!

So...here we go, chapter three!

For sapphires we are held in here,

Only you can end our fear.

Until dawn comes, we cannot speak,

No words can come from this sad beak.

The first thing you read contains the clue,

An initial way to speak to you.

Inside these letters, the eye will see,

Nearby are your friends, and V.F.D.

          Like it? I wrote it. I was rather proud, at the time, as we wet the paper and rolled it around the crow's scaly leg. I still am, kind of, that I could write in a dark, slippery place like that. I mean, wouldn't you be?

          Well, I was.

          As I watched the crow fly off, I smiled. I hoped that Klaus would get the letter. I hoped that they could rescue us. I hoped for so many things...and they seemed to be coming true?

          Sometimes, it feels nice to be wet. For example, if it is a hot day and you go to the beach. Other times, it is very unpleasant. In my experience, up to the day I woke up in the fountain, the most unpleasant sort of wetness was wet socks. (A/N: I HATE WET SOCKS!) That day, I learned another sort of unpleasantness.

          You have not been uncomfortable until you have woken up, hungry, in a dark, cramped space, wearing a thick, wet, wool sweater. Imagine doing it every day. Ick.

          Duncan, Quigley, and I had gotten the sweaters for our birthday. They had been a gift from our grandmother. We had gotten them for our twelfth birthday. I'm thirteen now, by the way, so you can imagine how long a time that is to wear something like the sweater.

          They were awkward and cumbersome, but our parents declared that we had  to wear them. "Just be polite," said our mother. "Wear it until you grow out of it," said our father. I do not think I will ever grow out of my ugly sweater.

          After the fire, we wore them to remember our lives before the fire. I'd rather that we had something nicer, like our notebooks, but the orphan's shack got cold in the nights, so it wasn't really like we had any choice. And of course, lately it didn't look like we'd have much time to shove them on a hanger and hide them in the back of the closet, if you know what I mean.

          I suppose now you can begin to imagine what it felt like to come conscious wearing that enormous, cumbersome thing. Can you ever imagine it wet? And dirty? And can you picture waking up in that, cold and lonely, tired and sore, with no idea where or when it was?

          Didn't think so.

          I woke to the sound of dripping water.

          "Duncan?" He'd better be there, too. Or else I'd go mad. Well, if Klaus was there, maybe not very crazy, but still.

          I heard a kind of snuffling noise. Oh. My. God. I was stuck in this metal box thing with some kind of evil, flesh eating animal. I let out an involuntary scream

          "Shit, Isadora! I was sleeping!"

          Oh. It had been a snore.

          "You're asleep?!"

          "I was," came the annoyed, yet somehow reassuring sound of Duncan's voice. "Until you yelled like that."

          "How could you sleep here?" I asked disgustedly, suddenly wanting to give him a hug for being there. At least I wasn't alone.

          "I woke up. I banged on the walls. There's no way, Isadora, to check if they've got the messages. We'd better just act the same. You were still asleep. I looked around. There was nothing else to do." My eyes were starting to adjust, and I saw him shrug.

          "Duncan, why didn't you wake me up?" I asked, shaking my head. "We could have both yelled. Then it'd have been louder, at least."

          He shrugged. I sort of went all soft when Duncan shrugged, and I leaned over and hugged him.

          There is one thing a person carries with them no matter what happens. Somebody can be in the most terrible of circumstances, but that thing will never leave them. Besides courage and love and determination and stuff. That thing is somebody's personal smell.

          Duncan, I noticed, still smelled like newspaper print. (A/N: This might sound like it was easy to think up—it wasn't. You try walking around all day, smelling random things to use for a story. People start to look at you funny...) I breathed in his very familiar smell well he squirmed and wondered aloud about why I was behaving so oddly.

"Oof! God—what?"

          I remembered that the way Duncan smelled was also how the room he and Quigley shared. My room was across the hall, we shared a bathroom, for those of you who are very curious. They had a bunk bed. Before bedtime, I would always go in their room we would all sit on the bottom bunk. (That was Quigley's, for all you curious people.)

          I remembered how we all had cutesy-cute nicknames for each other that I'd made up. Quigley was Q-tip, (see, his initials were Q.Q., he had a 'Q' on each 'tip' of his name,) Duncan was Donut, (Duncan Donuts, see? Yeah, it's not funny even when you explain it,) and they called me Izzie (you've got to be really thick for me to have to explain that one!)

          I remembered how we'd sneak cookies and stuff into their bedroom and than we'd eat them together and just be...well, it sounds corny (yeah, like I haven't already,) just be, like, three. Three was my lucky number before the fire. Now it's not. I don't have a lucky number. I don't have luck, so why a number? It doesn't seem worth the trouble.

          I remembered eating a cupcake on their bed and laughing. I tried to shake it out of my head, tried to forget how the various frosting decorations felt on my tongue and how afterwards I felt slightly queasy, but I couldn't. I shivered, trying to rattle the happy memory out of my unhappy mind.

          "Are you okay, Isadora?" asked Duncan. (We didn't use the nicknames now.)

          "Yeah...kind of..." I pulled away and sat facing him.

          Now's time to explain something to you. I am kind of sensitive. Not sensitive as in a healing booboo, or a new layer of skin. Sensitive as in, crying at embarrassing times when you can't think of what to say. Some people giggle. Other people fart. But I have to cry. It's soooo humiliating, and soooo babyish.

          I could feel my breathing get trembly and my vision get blurry. But it was that feeling that you get, where you want to cry—but you just can't. Like when something bad happens to an acquaintance that you just barely know and can't real feel for. Or when you're listening to a song that's sad, but not that sad. Or when you see on the news that something terrible happened, but so far away it doesn't seem real.

          I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. "I'm okay..." No, I wasn't. I hadn't written one poem since we had been taken away from Klaus. Except for that awful acrostic poem and the messages. But no more couplets...just normal couplets...

          Duncan tilted his head. "You sure?" I kind of folded up and sniffled. Duncan squirmed awkwardly and patted me on the back gingerly. "Aww, don't cry." He sounded sort of embarrassed.

          "It's not your fault," I whimpered. "I'm (gaspy breath) okay. I'm (sniffle) okay! Leave me alone!" I tried to squirm away.

          "I can't. It's too cramped in here."

          Okay. That was so obvious, and so uncalled for. But all of a sudden it sounded really crazily funny. You know what I mean, when a lame joke, or something that was meant to be serious just makes you burst out laughing.

I started giggling hysterically. "Oh...my...god...Duncan...that...wasn't....funny!" I choked between spurts of laughter. Now, you'll notice that whole something-not-funny-being-funny thing only lasts if somebody joins in with you. Which Duncan totally did.

There we were, laughing and rolling around and having an awesome time when suddenly we both stopped and froze.

We heard voices.

Familiar voices.

It was the Baudelaires.

And they were outside our fountain...

Yay! Kind of a cliffe! I'm REALLY excited about the next part, 'cuz Lemony wasn't specific about the dialogue...so for the first time I can write dialogue between Isadora and Klaus! *Evil cackle*

PLEEEEEEEEAAAAAASSSSSSSEEEE review!

Goldfish to people who review this chapter! (Or muffins, whatever! ;-)! )

Kirby