Nod was waking up very slowly. When he began to return to consciousness, his hearing came first. There wasn't much to hear though; just shuffles and slight snoring noises. Somehow, he gained the energy to open his eyes, but his vision was blurry. He didn't have the strength to panic, so he waited. Eventually, his sight sharpened and cleared.
A giant, sloping roof above him. Beams of sunlight streamed from the cracks of the slated window, dust dancing in the light. Except for that, it was mostly dark. He felt an ache in his shoulder blades from lying on hard wood all night. The scrape of claws on wood turned his head, and he beheld a bright-eyed and perky blue jay. Your blue jay, he reminded himself.
Nod rolled over and raised himself up, agonizing from his stiff muscles. Someone had been considerate enough to put him in his bed roll, but he wondered if sleeping in Flitterbite's saddle would have been more comfortable.
Last night's events hit him like a bursting beaver dam. M.K. coming back to Moonhaven, the Boggans invading, leaving Ronin, losing Cricket, and stealing Bufo's birds. His heart felt like an empty shell that could easily crumple. He should have cried when he lost his lovable sparrow but he'd held it in, thinking that he needed to keep it together, that he could shed tears later. Just thinking back to how his bird threw himself in front of him and M.K. made his eyes itch. M.K. could have died but Cricket did instead. He abandoned Ronin to fight the Boggans by himself, and the bringers of Rot were out for his head (or technically his arm) and he still had to take care of the rose, keep it safe, keep his friends safe, keep M.K. safe...
God, the fear, guilt, responsibility, and expectations were weighing him down and overwhelming his being. A few tears leaked out between his closed eyelids. His shoulders shook in silent sobs. A part of him was worried about being discovered by his friends in this sorry state; the rest was too shaken to care.
A warm hand suddenly rested on his leg. He looked up and noticed for the first time, M.K. was lying next to him, curled up in a blanket. Her sleepy green eyes were filled with worry for him. Nod wiped at his cheeks, feeling his ears grow red and hot. She had never seen him cry, not even in Wrathwood when he thought Ronin had been killed by Mandrake's army.
"It's alright, you know," she whispered before he could say anything. "I was a wreck when my mother died. But you can't hold it in; it's not healthy."
"I just don't know what to do," he said, his voice raspy.
M.K. sat up, wincing from her aching muscles that had spent the night on wood. She smoothed down her hair and stretched her slim arms. "First thing to do is drink some water. You sound like a desert."
Nod snorted but immediately felt a bit better. Leave to M.K. to shake him out of his misery.
"Everything will work itself out," she said, smiling a little. "You'll see." She handed him a canteen, and Nod took a deep sip. He drank every last drop of water, feeling refreshed with every gulp. It felt like he was washing away the fear and sorrow.
As he did, the rose rustled like it was awakening from a slumber. It raised its head towards the beams of light above them. Nod sighed. He and his pals were on the run, hiding like fugitives, and he still had to take care of the rose like it was a pet. On the bright side, he thought. At least Mub and Grub aren't here to make me eat that plant gunk.
"I'll wake up the others," M.K. said, kicking off the blankets and standing up. "Meet us downstairs when you're ready. Think you know your way around the house?"
"Yeah, I'll be fine. I know every mouse tunnel in the walls from all those times I sneaked in." Nod grinned mischievously.
"You know I hate being woken up early," she growled, punching him in the shoulder. "But you made up for it with the flowers."
M.K. left to wake up the group, and Nod began his climb to the attic window for the rose's morning bask. The conversation had lifted his spirits until they were as light as his steps. He still held uncertainty and fear of the future, but it was tempered by the hope and company M.K. had given him.
The professor received a call yesterday around noon from Detective Sullivan. He thought it was about the case on his house, but instead he was told that his daughter had been reported missing that afternoon. Two of her friends had filed the report. The detective said she was last seen at her high school's soccer field. She had ran into the forest in the middle of a soccer match. Jason Hale followed her in five minutes later, and he too had not been seen since.
Instantly, Bomba knew where M.K. was, but he played the worried, frantic father for the detective. He knew that by now, she must be with the Leafmen. So he sat down in front of the computer screens that still worked, with coffee and some food, and waited for M.K. to show up and explain herself, impatiently tapping his fingers, jittery as a caffeinated squirrel.
The anxiety increased as the day wore on and she didn't come. When night fell, he was tempted to go to bed and try again tomorrow. Yet he made himself stay, determined to be there when M.K. did show up or at least a Leafman that he could talk to. His cameras were switched to the night vision feature and he waited, going through three more cups of coffee.
Sometime in the early hours, his eyes drifted closed against his will and he snoozed. That was how M.K. found him the next morning. She had woken up with the others and had led them downstairs.
It took a while, being tiny in a big house, but they made it to the study. Luckily, Ozzie didn't wake up from his bed. M.K. noticed that the house still needed cleaning up from the mess of the robbers who had broken in.
Now they stood on the desk, staring at her giant father with something close to awestruck. Sterling flew around his slumbering figure, inspecting him from every angle. The young warriors had probably never been this close to a Stomper. For Jason, this was one huge perspective change.
"Wow...they're a lot bigger up close," Thryn muttered.
"How are we supposed to wake him up?" Mason asked.
Bomba's snores were low and long, and it reminded M.K. of an earthquake. Shouting at him wasn't going to do any good. She looked around for an idea, and saw that Lex had her bow and quiver of arrows.
She bit her lip then posed the question. "Lex, could you shoot an arrow at him?"
The grasshopper girl looked horrified. "At your dad?!"
"Just in the shoulder or something," M.K. clarified. "It won't kill him, and I don't know what else to do."
Lex seem to think about it for a moment, then shrugged like she didn't have a better idea either. "Okay, if you say so." She slipped her bow from her back and nocked an arrow.
"Just don't miss," Mason added as she lifted and drew back the string to her cheek.
"Lex never misses," Ross corrected. The girl smiled at him, aimed her arrow, and let it fly.
The result was more than M.K. had hoped for. The little projectile hit her father in the shoulder, and the prick was enough to jolt Bomba awake. The professor jumped from his chair, yowling in surprise at the sudden pain, even though it was tiny. Sterling sped out of range of his flailing arms. Ozzie lept awake at the commotion and started barking. Bomba whipped his confused green eyes around, trying to find what violently woke him up. He spotted tiny figures on his desk, jumping and waving at him. Clumsily, he strapped on his helmet and adjusted the magnifying glasses.
"M.K.?!" he shouted when he saw his daughter. She was wearing Jinn clothes from the looks of it, and stood with five other teenagers and a dragonfly. "Are you alright?! Where have you been ?! I've been waiting for yo for hours! Did the Queen shrink you again? Who are these other-"
"Dad!" she yelled, interrupting his train of questions. "Don't shout like that, it hurts our ears! I'm okay. Yeah, Ariel shrunk me and Jason-"
"Hale?!"
"Hi professor," Jason came into his view and waved.
"And these are my friends, Ross, Mason, Lex, and Thryn. Oh, and Sterling," M.K. introduced them.
"Well uh...nice to meet you."
"Dad, I'm sure you have a bunch of questions but we're all kinda hungry."
A blank look came over his face before he shook it in realization. "Oh, yes, of course! I'll get you some food and then we can talk." He bustled to the kitchen, tripping over books that were still strewn on the floor.
In seconds, he came back with an armful of random food. A loaf of bread, two apples, a wedge of cheese, and slices of lunch meat ham. The food was gargantuan sized, and one apple rolled and nearly took out Mason. "I hope that's enough," Bomba stuttered. "Oh wait, of course it is, your tiny and...well...I hope you like it. I'll just slice up the apples."
They broke off bits of the bread and cheese, the latter being quite tasty to the forest dwellers, having never tried it before. When they tried the ham, they all started gagging.
"Are you guys strictly vegetarians?" Jason asked as he chewed his piece of bread.
"Well, not all the time," Mason choked. "We hunt squirrels and chipmunks for our meat and the occasional vole, but whatever this is, it is not meat."
Jason glanced at the soggy ham slices and shrugged in agreement. If it went through a factory, then it was mostly made up of chemicals and additives. After that episode, they stuck with the apples and bread.
M.K. recounted everything to her father, bringing him up to speed on what had happened. Bomba started pacing when he heard of the Boggan's attack on Moonhaven. "Maybe we should go up there and check," he suggested.
"I don't think that's safe Dad," M.K. replied. "We shouldn't worry though. With Ronin in command, Moonhaven will be fine."
"But without the Queen, how will the forest regrow and how will you come home?"
M.K. shrugged. "We'll just have to find Ariel ourselves."
"At least she's not in Moonhaven at the moment," Thryn added. She frowned in contemplation. "Funny how she disappeared right before the Boggan attack...like she knew it was coming."
"How would she know that?" Ross questioned.
"Perhaps in the same way she knew about the coming of the rose," a voice said behind them. Nod was leaning against a jar, arms folded casually. "Tara may have warned her," he continued. "M.K., didn't the wind bird say that Tara sent it?"
"Yeah it did, but how could she do that?"
"Fascinating," Bomba said as he gazed through his helmet at Nod's rose. He adjusted the magnifying glass and leaned in to get a close up of the little flower. "It's roots are actually inside your arm..."
"Dad!" M.K. said sternly when she saw how uncomfortable Nod was. "Don't look at him like he's one of your dead bugs under a microscope."
Bomba backed up quickly. "Sorry, sorry! Sometimes the scientist in me gets carried away..."
"It's fine," Nod assured.
"Right well, I'll call Detective Sulliavan and tell her to stop looking for you M.K." Bomba said. "When you disappeared, I told the police you were an enthusiastic bird watcher and had probably saw an endangered woodpecker and ran into the forest to follow it."
"Oh man, my parents!" Jason groaned, face palming his forehead. "They'll be worried sick at this point! What am I supposed to tell them?"
Everybody was silent in thought. Then, the professor got a gleam in his eye and he grinned wildly. "I can solve that problem!" Bomba acclaimed.
He ran to his library and returned with a strange device. No doubt of his own invention. It seemed like a demonic combination of a microphone and a speaker horn, both attached to the ends of a box, with dials, buttons, and a screen. Bomba set it down on the table in front of Jason and beamed like a child.
"Um, Dad...what is this?"
"I invented it! I call it the diminished dimension audio manipulating communicator."
The tiny teenagers all gave him a look that said, "the what?"
Bomba was oblivious to their confusion. "Or you can call it by the acronym. The DDAMC!"
"What does it do?" Jason asked.
"It enhances and super-sizes your sound waves when you talk. You speak into the microphone here, and the box in the middle will make the sound waves louder and slow them down, and most importantly, it'll deepen your voice to what it sounded like when you were human-sized. Then, your words will come out the other end, sounding perfectly normal and the human ear can hear it!"
"When did you make this?" M.K. wondered, amazed that her father could create such a thing.
The professor smiled, pleased that his daughter was impressed. "I've been racking my brains on how to improve communication between us and the Jinn. I can hear you fine with my helmet, but you have to slow down your hearing to listen to me. It's not unlike the console I set up by the computers so you and Nod could video chat everyday."
M.K. face-palmed and Nod scratched the back of his neck, smiling sheepishly. Both of them tried to ignore the snickers and giggles coming from their friends.
"I still don't know what to tell my mom and dad," Jason moaned, running a hand through his blonde hair.
"Well, that's for you to figure out," Bomba interjected. "I can only provide the means of communication. Why don't I take you to the phone and you can talk to your parents undisturbed." He held out his palm, inviting Jason to get on. The blonde shrugged and stepped on. Carrying Jason and the DDAMC, Bomba lumbered to the kitchen where the old, cord phone sat on the counter.
"What's the plan anyway?" Mason broke the silence. "I mean, what do we do now that we're here?"
"Simple," Lex answered, as she settled down on the table surface, crossing her legs. The others followed her example. "We wait for the Leafmen to beat back the Boggans, and for Ronin to send word that it's safe to come back."
"Assuming the Leafmen win," Thryn muttered gloomily.
Lex wanted to look on the brighter side of things. "I'm sure they can."
"I don't know, Lex, when we were flying out of there, I looked back and the horizon was dark. It was the middle of the day, but the flocks of grackles were blocking out the sun!"
"You didn't seem concerned at the time," Ross growled under his breath.
Thryn, of course, heard it and sent him a pointed glare. "We are trained to stay calm in those situations. Some of us take that training seriously."
Mason sighed loudly, pinching the bridge of his nose. "For crying out loud, what's bitten you two? You're acting like two kids who can't share the building blocks!"
Neither of them responded, and they shifted their gaze to stare at the wooden table beneath them. M.K. nudged Nod with her elbow, gesticulating with her head at the group of friends. It was obvious that their current situation was beginning to affect them. They were all uncertain and fearful of the future. Thryn and Ross were snapping at each other out of frustration. Lex was being and quiet and even Mason had lost his sense of humor.
Nod caught her meaning and scanned his gaze over his friends. "Okay guys...we're going to play a game."
Everybody, including M.K., stared at him incredulously. "You're joking, right?" Ross asked.
"Nope. We need to take our minds off of our predicament and get to know each other," he explained. "I've come to realize that I don't know much about you guys' personal lives, and we all call each other friends."
M.K. could see they were all reluctant to do this, but there was agreement among them of the assessment. She wasn't so eager herself, but if getting to know Nod's friends made it less awkward then she was willing to do it.
"The rules are it has to be something personal, something you've never told anybody else. Like a dream, a hobby, or a childhood experience," he explained. "I'll go first."
The young Leafman thought for a minute before continuing, a smile playing at his lips. M.K. knew that smile; it meant mischief.
"When I was five, I put on Ronin's helmet and vest while he was visiting my parents. Then I rode away on his hummingbird and declared to anybody around that I was 'the great general Nod.'"
His friends and M.K. laughed when they pictured a naughty little boy wearing a helmet and vest that was way to big for him, and riding the stolen mount of the highest ranking Leafman in Moonhaven. Nod laughed right along with them, not at all embarrassed.
"You committed your first crime at age five!" Mason chortled.
"Ronin and my Dad ran after me for at least a mile before they finally caught me. Man, was I grounded! Gave my parents a heart attack. When I got older, it was the running joke of the family."
The laughter wore off and it felt like the tension had lifted away from the friends. Heavy steps came from the kitchen and Bomba walked back into the room and set Jason down on the table.
"How did it go?" Lex asked.
Jason visually winced. "I told them that after half-time, I bailed and went on a road trip with my friends from a different school. They were mad at first but they bought it."
"Sorry for getting you into trouble," M.K. apologized.
"Aw, it's not your fault we got shrunk by a mysterious force. I'm the golden boy in the family, so they won't stay mad for long. Can't say the same for my coach...he's probably livid."
"Well come and join us," M.K. said. "We're sharing stories with each other. Nod apparently pretended to be general for a whole day when he was five, which doesn't surprise me." The brunette flashed her a cheeky grin. She stuck out her tongue playfully.
"I'll go next," Lex volunteered enthusiastically. "I'm the youngest of seven brothers and seven sisters." The boys whistled in astonishment. "One time when I was ten, my whole family went to see a parade celebrating Queen Tara's birthday. In the crowd, I got lost, found another grasshopper family and went home with them. It was only when I wasn't at my house, did I realize that I followed the wrong family."
"Seriously? That's traumatic," Mason remarked. "But how could you not tell?"
"Have you ever seen two grasshopper Jinns stand next to each other? I'm not joking when I say that they can look almost exactly alike. After that, my mom made us wear matching shirts." They all snickered at the thought.
"Okay, my turn," Mason said. "In my spare time, I like to build bombs!"
Silence...
"Why does that not surprise me?" Nod muttered.
Jason look worried. "Should we be concerned?"
"No, of course not, it's not like I build them to hurt people! They're just for pranks. I can do smoke bombs, fire crackers, bangers, flare bombs, stink bombs-"
"We get it!" Ross interrupted.
"Well what do you have to share Mr. Sunshine?"
"Nothing. I'm not playing this stupid game," Ross stated, crossing his arms against his chest.
"Come on Ross, we won't judge you." Nod reassured.
"I don't have anything to share."
"Please Ross?" Lex pleaded, casting her big green-gold eyes on him.
For a moment, Ross didn't look like he was going to give in but Lex continued to stare at him with her eyes getting bigger and more puppy-like with every second. To M.K.'s surprise, she could see Ross struggling to maintain his stony scowl. Then he wavered and slumped his shoulder in defeat; Lex's Bambi eyes were too much for him.
"Fine." He thought for a moment, hesitated, then murmured something.
"What was that?" Nod prodded.
"I said," Ross spoke louder, with more conviction. "I like to write poetry."
Longer silence...
"Well..." Mason drawled. "That certainly wasn't my first guess."
Lex didn't waste anytime in asking Ross multiple questions about poetry, either because she was interested in his secret passion or just trying to distract him from strangling Mason. M.K. could tell that Mason had a dozen humorous jokes on the tip of his tongue and surprisingly, it was Thryn that was shooting him glares to keep his mouth shut. Jason joined the conversation, telling about the time he had to recite "The Highwayman" for a school play, not that the others even knew what that was.
While chattered, M.K. turned to Nod sitting next to her. "This is the best idea you've had so far."
Nod put his hand to his chest in mock hurt. "You wound me, milady! What about that time I demonstrated the back flip while riding Cricket?"
She punched his shoulder, laughing at the memory. "And you nearly missed and scared me half to death! Besides, you know it's pointless to try and impress me with moronic tricks."
"I can't help but keep you entertain," Nod consented. She felt his warm brown eyes on her skin and his face softened to something that looked akin to longing. "I missed you M.K."
The redhead tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and looked at her hands. "We see each other almost everyday."
"But it's not the same. Despite the circumstances, I'm really happy that you're here...with me."
M.K. met his gaze and smiled, nodding her head in agreement. "I missed you too, Nod. And I'm happy you're alright."
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