This was the place where the peach of the Mushroom Kingdom had woken up her plumber (who she had once lovingly called 'my hero'; in result, the plumber had beamed and beamed before he had tottered to the floor) with her pasta-smelling perfume.
"To spend the night." Luigi poked his head into the doorway, wrinkling his nose as a horrible smell came to the travellers' nostrils. "I think this is yours, Mario. It smells like rotting…uh…meatballs?"
"Meatballs don't rot," replied his older brother somewhat crossly as he made his way past the thick knot of Yoshis and humans. There, he perched on the leaf-draped bed and pulled up the covers before pushing down below them. "They just start to smell a bit after a while."
"A lot," corrected Roberta with a laugh. "Well, I'll be off to bed." She addressed the whole group. "See you guys tomorrow morning." And with that she left, a small green figure quitting the ranks of a rainbow-coloured mass.
"I guess we'd better bring you guys to your rooms, too," Lila explained somewhat regretfully to the travellers. "Peach's room is just around the corner."
Within a matter of minutes, everyone was asleep. Except for a certain few, anyway.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Well, the travellers seem to be happy," remarked Canberra to the young Cloudfluff, who nodded.
"Mm," he agreed. "I wonder how long they'll be staying?"
They were all sitting in a small back room – actually, it was a small dining room. Rather a normal one by Yoshi standards, the kind that they kept in case of guests (Most of the time, they themselves ate in the tribe's main eating room, where the story started. If they had more than three travellers, though, the Yoshis' traditional island law stated that they would eat in the tribe main eating room. Otherwise, several dining rooms were scattered throughout the Yoshi's blooming tree stump of a tribe home.) Lila was there, of course; so was an assortment of Yoshis, in addition to yellow-amber Yoshi named Olivia.
"A few weeks, I think," Olivia said now, her legs swinging from under her chair. "Actually, I'd love it if they could stay here for even longer."
Elsa wrinkled her snout. "What, three weeks isn't long enough for you?"
"Relax, bud." Joro calmed her down by pressing one hand gently to her pink arm. "Actually, three weeks is plenty, I think."
"We have to show them the rest of the island, though." There was a smug grin on Gabe's face. "They ain't seen nothin' yet."
"Well, actually, Mario…erm…had an adventure here on the way to Peach's castle after I rescued him from Kamek and the Toadies," Yoshi pointed out, but the young blue Yoshi only shrugged in reply.
"A few months is nothing compared to eight years," he answered, cocking his head deviously to the side.
"Either way, I'm glad they're here." Canberra took a long sip of her tea. Yoshis' Island was famous for its tea; steamed up from the lava-filled volcanoes that grew nearby, the tinkleberry plant's berries were ripe and purple with just a fiery tingle. Their leaves were used to make the famous Yoshis' Island maple syrup and, as Lila had mentioned earlier, the juice that could be poured out from its delicate, iris-type flowers made an excellent refresher, if a little too strong for humans (thankfully, though, it wasn't three quarters as strong as the maple syrup). The tea, though, had a taste that satisfied all four taste bud types, in moderate doses, of course: sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. It was the sort of thing Canberra would drink, even though, in Yoshi years, she was technically a kid.
Meanwhile, something very strange was going on.
Midnight was staring down at the long table, his eyes squeezed almost shut, focused in front of him, as if he were staring down at his own hand, a midnight-blue mass lying absently beside a fruit-and-granola bar that the Yoshis kept in their larders. "Mythical Yoshi of Legend," he muttered to himself, inclining his head slightly so that his red scales glittered in the semidarkness. "Mythical Yoshi of Legend."
By now, all the Yoshis had seen him and were curiously watching, waiting. Alber, however, took things farther than the other Yoshis and placed his red hand on Midnight's arm. "You all right, Mid?"
But Midnight didn't even register that he'd heard the younger Yoshi – then again, maybe he hadn't.
Again, Alber patted the older Yoshi's arm, this time pressing one of his blue-booted feet upon his leg, hard enough so that Midnight was roused from his trance. He blinked his marine blue eyes as he looked up surprisedly at the younger Yoshi.
"What is it, Albs?" Alber cocked his head to the side and repeated the question, but Midnight shook his head slowly. "Am I all right? Well, I should think so. I was just thinking about the Mythical Yoshi of Legend, that's all."
"What about him, Midnight?" asked a slim green Yoshi named Tara. Accordingly, she was middle-aged by the island's standards, yet she looked younger than her age would tell. Oddly enough, her mate, Beran – a cerulean blue Yoshi who was the exact same age as her – looked his age.
"He came last night; it wasn't your first time," she continued. "You seemed all right then. What's happened now?"
"Well, nothing's happened…" Midnight glanced down at his swinging legs, as if he didn't want to look them in the face. "It's just that… It's just that… I want to find him."
Alber blinked. "That's a new one," he muttered under his breath. Then, catching hold of himself, the red Yoshi turned to Midnight, his eyes glittering in excitement. "He was so mysterious," he told him eagerly. "I want to find him, too."
At this point, Tara and Beran exchanged curious glances at each other, but no one seemed to notice.
"I can go with you two," Yoshi informed the other two. "It'd be great to talk to him, I think."
"So it's settled then." Everyone turned to see the Junglestream Island chieftainess cross her arms on the long low table, a light shining in her eyes. "You three are goin' out."