Chapter 24: Lost and Found

"He's gone! He's not in his bed!" Elli's chocolate brown eyes had begun to spill over with tears as she looked up and down the empty street frantically. "I-I tucked him in before I left for the Inn this evening! He was here! I thought he would be asleep!"

"But… but if Stu and May are both missing…" Mary wondered aloud with a frown, her brow furrowed in thought, "then that must mean…"

"He must have left with May!" Elli finished the raven haired girl's thoughts, choking out a sob as she continued, "They must have went out together! I don't think Grandma would have noticed him sneak out; her hearing's not like it used to be, and she's such a heavy sleeper to top it off... But this is my fault! It's all my fault!"

Karen quickly wrapped her arms around her friend in an attempt to calm her down as the others watched her outburst in shock, unable to react. "No, Elli... This isn't-"

"Yes it is!" The panicked nurse interrupted her, pulling away from Karen's grasp. "I left him! I should have known – he went out to find the monster!"

"The what?" Claire's heartbeat quickened significantly as Popuri voiced her question, the pinkette's eyes wide as the full moon hovering ominously in the darkened sky above them.

"You know," Elli cried, her voice thick with tears, "I-I know you all know what I'm talking about. The thing that's been attacking Mineral Town! You all want to pretend everything's fine and dandy, but there's no hiding the fact that something is definitely not normal around here!"

She wiped her tears on her sleeve. "Stu… He told me that he was going to be the one to solve the mystery just this afternoon while we were eating lunch, and I shrugged it off as nothing. He told me, but I didn't actually believe him - I didn't think he would actually go out and do something! I thought he was just talking, as kids so often do. And then I left him! I'm – I'm a terrible older sister!"

Mary let out an audible gasp when Elli mentioned the idea of a monster, and the rest of the group froze in disbelief to hear the young nurse address with such certainty that dreaded topic they had all been thinking at some point or other. The monster…?

Though they all had done their best to try and forget the attacks over the past season, they could hide from the truth no longer. As much as they had all tried to deny the existence of any such thing, there was no denying it deep down – even if there wasn't a monster involved, Mineral Town was most likely facing an adversary not entirely human.

"Elli…"

Claire took a deep breath and approached the brunette, gently taking Elli's shaking hands in her own. She did her best to give the girl a confident smile despite the increasing feelings of hopelessness and anxiety tumbling around inside her. "Elli, it's all right… We'll find him. It'll be okay. We'll split up into search parties right now."

"Maybe we should alert Officer Harris, or the mayor or someone…" Kai interrupted, scratching the back of his head with one hand. "Harris is probably out on patrol right now, he would be our best bet."

"But… but what about the curfew?" Mary spoke up tentatively, her fingers nervously clutching the dense fabric of her skirt.

"Well, forget the stupid curfew!" Kai snorted in response. "We've got an emergency on our hands! This is no time to be a goody little rule follower!"

The dark haired girl blushed deeply at his scornful reply, whereas Popuri crossed her arms angrily as she turned to face her boyfriend. "Hey… there's no need to be so rude about it."

"Guys, settle down! We're wasting time. I think Claire has a plan!" Ann shouted, giving the nervous blonde a wink before stepping back. Claire cleared her throat to hide her surprise. Me?

"Well..." she ran a hand through her golden hair thoughtfully, "Maybe… we shouldn't get anyone else just yet. I mean, we already have a pretty big group of people, and… and if we split up, it'll increase our chances of finding them. If we go to let the mayor know what happened, it might slow us down or even cause a town panic, which… isn't what we need at the moment, honestly."

Claire didn't expect anyone to agree with her, but to her surprise, Cliff nodded slowly in support of her words. "L-let's just get looking right now, and if we happen to see the mayor or Harris or anybody else, we can explain the situation then."

Kai nodded as well, his arms folded over his chest. "Fine. How should we split up, then? There's no time to waste, we need to get moving!"

He stared in Claire's direction, and the others all followed suit. They're looking to me for guidance? Claire stifled the urge to panic. Well, it was my plan, after all…

"Okay… Kai, you can go with… um…"

"Me!" Popuri piped up, waving a slender hand in the air. "We'll go search Mineral Beach, all right? I know the kids like it there a lot. So… maybe they just went out there to play?"

Claire nodded at the pinkette gratefully. "Yeah, sure."

The couple immediately dashed off down the road toward the beach entrance, and Claire turned back toward the others, feeling slightly more confident. "All right… Elli, why don't you go with Ann and search the church grounds? I know May and Stu like to go down there sometimes to listen to Carter's stories, so maybe they're just with him. It surely won't hurt to check."

Elli nodded in agreement and wiped her eyes again with one sleeve. "Of course, Claire."

Claire decided it best not to mention that she directed those two specifically to the church because she thought it would be the safest place for them, the two most vulnerable, as the pair ran off in the same direction that Kai and Popuri had gone.

"I'll go with Mary then," Karen spoke up, abruptly grabbing the young librarian by the hand and nearly knocking her glasses off in the process. "We'll go double check Yodel Ranch and look around the Poultry Farm, too."

"Okay. And that leaves me with… Cliff. If that's all right?" The brown haired man blushed, and judging from the heat radiating from her face, Claire could guess that she probably looked about the same.

"S-sure." He titled his head. "W-we could go search your farm, maybe?"

"Er, yeah! Yeah, maybe they went off exploring there. Let's, um, go then." They hurried off into the dark night, thoughts whirling wild through Claire's mind with each step. Should I even mention searching the forest? she wondered to herself as they ran down the street in silence, past the darkened windows of houses whose inhabitants followed the town curfew rule, and thick groves of trees that looked vaguely threatening in the night, as if they could be sheltering secrets just out of sight...

The forest was the last place Claire wanted to check, and probably the most dangerous, too… But something deep within her was nagging at her, telling her that it was the most crucial place to look, especially if the kids were really off hunting for a monster like Elli said.

No… We'll just search the farm… They couldn't have gone off into the woods on their own, could they?

She quickly shook her head, as though the brisk, forceful motion could shake the guilt-ridden feelings out of her mind, as well. "Come on, Cliff… They couldn't have gotten far."

When Claire and Cliff finally entered the gateway to Sunshine Farm, they were slightly out of breath from running the entire way there. Claire breathed in the humid night air deeply, pushing her thin blonde bangs out of her face to wipe the sweat from her brow. Beside her, Cliff had already begun to search the premises, wandering out into the deserted fields where Claire's crops had once grown, before they were destroyed. She trudged after him into the dirt, the barren emptiness of her farmland, enhanced under the light of the full moon, bringing toxic memories of her crop failure into her mind.

But never mind that, she muttered to herself. You can always plant more. There are more pressing matters to take care of at the moment.

The couple silently looked over the entirety of the Sunshine Farm property as quickly as they could. Claire wandered off to look around her cottage and in the henhouse, where her chickens were clucking softly, sound asleep in their nests, while Cliff quickly searched inside the barn and stables, the former of which Claire had been hesitant to enter ever since the untimely death of her cow.

After twenty or so minutes had passed, they each returned to the top corner of the fields and shared their mutual failure to uncover even the slightest clue as to the whereabouts of May and Stu.

As they debated what to do next, Claire glanced over Cliff's shoulder at the darkened forest looming beyond the bridge at the far side of her farmland, the trees quivering ominously in the breeze. With a sigh and a twinge of guilt, she turned to face Cliff again and said, without another second of hesitation, "Come on… I guess they're not here, after all. Maybe we should go see how the others fared."

Cliff nodded solemnly, unspeaking, and together they turned back.

They met up immediately with another pair of searchers, Karen and Mary, right outside the path leading from Sunshine Farm, directly in front of the blacksmith's shop.

"Find anything?" Claire and Karen asked simultaneously, both of their voices sounding desperately hopeful.

"Nope," Cliff and Mary both responded glumly.

"We haven't seen head nor tail of those children," Mary added with a frown, her dark eyes brimming with seriousness behind her rimmed glasses. "I-I feel so bad for Elli, and for Barley, too… I wish we could do more, I just feel so helpless, I-"

"Well, the others are still out searching," Claire interrupted, forcing herself to sound as optimistic as she could manage, if only to brighten the others' spirits. "Who knows, perhaps they found something?"

"Yeah, about that… D-Do you guys know where Ann and Elli are?" Cliff spoke up, sounding concerned. "Or Kai and Popuri? Have you seen any of them yet? We must have been out here nearly an hour by now…"

"Kai and Poppy are probably getting it on- ouch!" Karen's inappropriate remark was silenced by a good hard jab in the ribs by Claire's elbow.

"Hey! That hurt!"

"Come on, Karen! This is serious!" Claire reprimanded. Behind her, Mary nodded, her expression disapproving and vaguely affronted.

Karen gave the blonde a look. "I was just saying. Why else would they offer to sneak off together down to the beach of all places, alone?"

"Um, I don't know," Claire sassed, her temper rising, "Maybe because they actually care about the welfare of those children? Our best friend's little brother, and his sweet little friend?"

Karen glared at her, as though she were thinking up an angry retort, but then thought against it. Instead, she rolled her eyes and muttered, "You could lighten up a little… It was just a joke, geez. Trying to lift the mood here. And I think we all care about what happens to May and Stu."

"Hey!"

The entire group whipped around at once to find a young man in a red and blue cap and a smudged work jacket that had been pulled on hastily over a plain shirt and checkered pajama pants. He glared at the situation in front of him accusingly as he stepped into the road from the blacksmith's shop, looking rather threatening despite his questionable attire. Gray.

"What the hell is going on out here? Some people are trying to sleep, you know… There's this thing called a curfew in effect at the moment, in case you didn't know."

Karen slowly looked him up and down and snorted. "What are you wearing…?"

"Well," Gray frowned at her, "Since you woke me out of bed, I had to come outside to see what all the commotion was in whatever clothes I was sleeping in."

Karen stifled a laugh as she looked over Gray's dirty, plaid, loose fitting pants, and the young man folded his arms crossly. "Hell, with all the noise you're making out here, I'm surprised Harris hasn't caught you yet."

"Gray…" Claire approached him, and his hard gaze softened ever so slightly. "Gray, this is really important. I-I'm sorry we woke you up, I really am, but something bad has happened…"

Quickly, knowing their time was dwindling, Claire explained the entire situation to the blacksmith's apprentice, and Gray looked around at the group with his eyebrows raised. "Well…? What are you waiting for? We need to find those kids!"

Mary spoke up tentatively, "Well, we don't know where Kai and Popuri and Elli and Ann are at the moment… Kai and Poppy went to look for them at the beach, and we haven't seen them since, and Elli and Ann went to check out the church…"

Claire nodded. "Yeah… So Gray, if you want to help, I guess you can team up with Mary and Karen for now… We'll have to split up again and continue the search." And probably search those woods…

She took a deep breath. "Hey guys… maybe we should-"

"Hey!"

A familiar male voice hissed at the group, interrupting Claire's suggestion before she could even say it, and once again they all whipped around at the sound. For a split second, Claire expected to see Officer Harris glaring at them for breaking town curfew, but instead they faced a frantic looking young man, red faced and completely out of breath, his usual white apron tied on haphazardly as if it had been done in a hurry.

"Rick…? What's wrong?" Claire asked, genuinely confused and concerned. Beside her, she could have sworn she heard a growl escape Karen's lips.

"Wh-what are you all doing out here?" Rick's voice came out in a strangely high pitched whine, and his eyes darted up and down the street anxiously, as though he were looking for something.

"Well-"

"Ugh, never mind," he interrupted, looking distinctly agitated. "Do any of you know where my sister is?"

"Well," Karen took a few steps forward, her eyes narrowed, "Poppy went off with Kai down toward Mineral Beach, last I saw her."

"What?!"

"B-but only because – we're looking for-" Mary stammered an attempt to explain the situation, before she was interrupted again by the uncharacteristically rude Rick.

"Damn it, that little… I need to find her. You guys… you have to get back inside, this is important."

"We're kind of busy right now," Claire began quickly, tapping her foot impatiently against the pavement. They were already wasting so much valuable time! "This is really, really important. We're looking for May and Stu, they're not at home, and-"

"No… No, you can't stay out here. We have to go back inside. All of us." He reddened at the slightly disbelieving stares of his peers, and the panic in his voice increased to a hysterical level. "I'm serious, it's too dangerous to wander around outside like this, we're all in grave danger right now, I-"

Claire raised an eyebrow in a somewhat condescending manner. "What are you babbling on about?"

"Do I have to spell it out for you? We. Are. All. In. Danger! Seriously!" Rick stammered, forcefully emphasizing each word. He glanced around frantically. "Where is Popuri again? I'm serious, I need to find my sister, I need to get her… All of us, we have to get inside now!"

"Rick, you – you're not making any sense. What are you talking about?"

"I just told you, I-I can't tell you any more than that…"

Mary spoke up timidly, her face pale and scared in the moonlight. "Perhaps… we should turn back?"

"No!" Claire glared at her, and the raven haired girl shrunk backward in fear. "We have to find May and Stu, we have to make sure they're safe!"

"But-"

Claire turned back toward Rick, cutting him off before he could speak. "Is this all about the curfew? Because-"

"No, this is not about the Goddess damned curfew! This is – this is life or death!" He stomped his foot on the ground in a fit of rage. "I don't think you're getting it!"

Claire folded her arms menacingly. "No, you're not getting it. There are two innocent children out there somewhere, who could already be in danger, and all you care about is saving your own damn skin!"

Rick sputtered indignantly, his words barely coherent at this point. "I – it's not – this isn't about me!"

"Then we're splitting up to find these kids! We're wasting more valuable search time, standing around here arguing like a flock of stupid, squabbling gulls!"

Everyone took a stunned step back, unaccustomed with the anger now emanating from the usually mild young farmer girl. Taking charge, Claire turned toward the chicken farmer, a hardness in her eyes. "We'll divide into pairs like last time. Rick, you go with Karen. Mary and Gray. And I'll be with Cliff again."

She had barely spoken these words when Karen let out a derisive laugh, short and scathing, as she flipped her hair and stuck one hand on her hip angrily. "Oh, no. Goddess no, I'm not getting stuck with him." She shot Rick a contemptuous glare, which he did not return.

Has everyone gone completely insane? Claire fought the urge to smack her own head against the nearest lamppost in utter frustration. For once, she actually wished her brother Jack was there; despite their disagreements, Jack was always a stable, reliable figure, and knew how to keep a cool head in desperate situations. Which is exactly what Claire would define this as, at the moment.

"Fine. Fine – Rick, you come with me and Cliff. Gray can stay with Mary and Karen." She turned to give Rick a deadly glare. "Is that all right with you?"

Rick nodded, though he refused to speak, his eyes trained on the ground in front of him. Claire shrugged at his response – or lack thereof – and turned away.

"You guys can go search the streets, or something… I don't know, you decide." Without looking back, she said to Cliff and Rick, "Come on. We're going back to Sunshine Farm."

"B-But… We just looked on your farm, and… we didn't find anything…" Cliff stammered, somewhat confused.

Claire took a deep breath. "I know. We… we need to search the forest, over the bridge beyond the farm. I think that's our best bet."

Cliff nodded his head in agreement, though Claire could detect the faintest spark of uncertainty in his voice as he replied, "Y-yes… that makes sense. Kids… like Elli said, they get ideas into their head, and…" he drifted off vaguely.

As the trio passed through Sunshine Farm minutes later, Claire couldn't help but consider bringing her horse Thunder along, to speed up the searching process, but she quickly dismissed the idea. No… Maybe if it were just Cliff and I, but not with three people. There's no way we could all fit on the horse.

There was that, and then there was the fact that Claire didn't want to put another one of her beloved animals into any unnecessary danger, knowing how questionable the forest's safety could be. She could never live with herself if her poor horse got hurt out in the woods, or worse… And she could barely shake off the image of the mutilated doe that flashed into her mind, the one she had discovered with Cliff on a day that seemed so long ago.

The three young adults passed over the bridge in silence, murky water rippling in the stream just under the wooden planks beneath their feet, and then took off into the dark forest on foot. Claire found herself holding her breath as they walked along the dirt trails – the forest was unnaturally silent, in her opinion, without even the high pitched chirps of crickets in the grass or sleepy nighttime birdcalls. Instead, the only noticeable sound was that of their boots squelching in the thick mud, occasionally cracking a stray twig in half. The ground was still damp from an earlier rainfall, and the sunlight hadn't been able to shine through the trees enough to dry it.

"We should probably call their names," Claire ventured, glancing over at Cliff's barely visible form in the darkness. Even the moonlight could scarcely pierce through the thick layer of forest canopy above their heads. Perhaps they should have brought along a flashlight, but the thought hadn't occurred to Claire until it was too late.

"May? …Stu?"

Her voice was shaky, hesitant, as part of her didn't want to attract any sort of… negative attention. But how else are we going to find these kids? she asked herself, and began to call out a little louder.

"Hey, May? May!"

Cliff quickly took the hint and joined in, his voice faltering at first. "Uh… Stu? Stu! May? Hey!"

Next to Cliff, Rick could just barely be seen by the faintest glint of moonlight reflecting off his glasses. But Claire could sense the unusually panicked aura surrounding him, even considering the situation at hand – she could hear him mumbling to himself in the darkness, and it frightened her a bit to see the normally calm and friendly chicken farmer behave so erratically.

"Come on," Claire urged him. "Help us out here."

He didn't respond, only grumbled louder. Claire shivered; it was almost like he was possessed.

Suddenly, the trio came out into an open clearing, bathed in pristine white moonlight. Ahead of them, the gentle rush of a waterfall could be heard, splashing into a pond with a surface that glittered under the night sky like crystal. Somehow, they had made their way to the Harvest Goddess's clearing, though Claire couldn't recall taking that path at the crossroads specifically.

"May?"

Beside the Goddess Pond, there was a movement, and Claire's heart seemed to jump into her throat. Two figures approached them… two very small, very dirty figures.

"Oh my Goddess… May! Stu!"

She ran at the children, her voice flooding with unsuppressed surprise and relief.

"Claire!" The two kids hugged at her waist, their hands and faces smudged with dirt, and the blonde farmer girl laughed, torn between her relief at finding them and anger at the problems they had caused.

"You two…! What do you think you were doing? You had us all so worried! You're lucky nothing bad happened to you! Stu, you made your sister cry! And May, what about your poor grandpa…?"

Claire's reproachful tone faltered as May began to cry, and Cliff quickly (and rather awkwardly) gave the girl a reassuring squeeze. Meanwhile, Stu mumbled, "We're sorry, Miss Claire… W-we really are, honest. We just wanted to go on an adventure, find the monster, you know? So the whole town would be proud of us, and we'd be heroes! But… but it didn't work… We didn't find anything, and it's so dark in here, it was hard to find our way out… May was getting really scared, too…"

"I-I was not!" May hiccupped, her face buried in Cliff's thick brown vest.

Claire studied Stu's face in the moonlight. The poor kid did seem genuinely sorry, and visibly upset as he sniffed sadly and quickly wiped his nose with his sleeve. "Oh, come here…" she wrapped her arms around him in a hug, adding, "Come on… Let's get you guys home…"

"Claire…"

Claire and Cliff turned to face Rick, who looked sickly pale in the moonlight and scared out of his wits, which frightened Claire more than anything else that had occurred over the past few hours. He nervously took off his glasses and wiped them on his apron with shaking hands, but dropped them into the dirt in his haste. As Claire bent down to pick them up for him, he burst out, "I'm sorry!"

"…What for?"

"I don't know how she got out..." His voice barely reached a whisper, and Claire struggled to hear him over the sound of the nearby waterfall.

Claire exchanged a puzzled look with Cliff as she asked, "You mean Popuri?"

"No, not-" He paused abruptly, his gaze focused on something in the distance. Claire and Cliff stared at him, the former still holding Rick's glasses, and the short, uncomfortable moment of silence was quickly interrupted by a familiar feminine scream in the distance.

Oh, no.

Claire and Cliff looked at each other, the same thought immediately entering their mind. "Popuri!"

"No…"

Upon hearing the shout, Rick paled even further, and he snatched the pair of glasses from Claire and roughly pushed them onto his face.

"Rick?"

Rick mumbled another quick apology, his eyes brimming with fear, and he promptly took off down the trail back into the forest.

"Wait!" Claire shouted after him, her voice filled with panic. "Rick, I know how you feel, but we should probably stick together!"

He continued running without so much as a glance behind him, and Claire swore under her breath. Beside her, the children stared at the scene in shock, their eyes wide, and May let out a frightened whimper.

"Rick, wait up!"

Her heartbeat quickening, Claire grabbed Stu's hand, and Cliff took hold of May's. Together, they tumbled into the pitch black forest after Rick, tripping over twisted tree roots and splashing right through the mud as they pulled May and Stu behind them through the trees.

Ahead of them, Rick could just barely be heard stumbling through the undergrowth, ignoring the worn dirt path that wound its way through the woods.

Within moments, the two young adults and their child companions had made it to the bridge, and after passing over it into the sprawling fields of Sunshine Farm, bathed in moonlight, they collapsed onto the ground to catch their breath. By now, Rick was nowhere to be seen, and Claire could barely contain her rising panic at the situation that gone from good to bad to better to worse over the course of the night.

Somewhere over the trees that surrounded Sunshine Farm, Claire could hear what sounded like shouting, though she couldn't make out any comprehensible words. She didn't know how much time had passed since they had heard Popuri's loud scream from the Harvest Goddess's clearing: it could have been minutes ago; it could have been mere seconds. But judging from the look on his face, Cliff had heard the commotion, too.

"Cliff-" the blonde coughed, her breath coming out in strangled gasps, "...Cl-Cliff, we need to move, I-I don't know what's going on, but something definitely isn't right..."

She froze, and her blood ran cold as she heard what almost seemed to be a wolf howl in the near distance, cold and guttural, sending a foreboding shiver down her spine.

A/N: So, perhaps you already know what's going on by now? If you do, your suspicions shall be confirmed next chapter! Thank you so much for reading; reviews are great!

-CCM