Hello dear readers! Welcome to chapter 1 of the story, which correlates with chapter 1 of the official comic, where we begin to see Oakewood's thoughts on the events that take place. My apologies in advance for this not being as exciting, as this and a few of the future chapters will mostly be a retelling of what we've already seen in the comic, but rest assured its only going to get more interesting afterwards.
As of now, each journal entry is going to be its own chapter, and the chapter length will be based on that, so apologies in advance for some chapters that might be very short. Also I had intended to write the journal entries in a different font to distinguish them from third person sections but alas its not possible so I'll have to make do with writing it in italics instead.
And just to put things in perspective: In general, Oakewood usually writes his journal entries at night, chronicling the events of the day/previous days. However he does not necessarily write a journal entry every night, only when there are events he considers significant enough to record.
The Stars Among Us
Summerearly, Day 5, 576AS
I thought I had seen everything.
If anyone had asked me before yesterday, I would have told them I considered myself having lived a fulfilling life. In my youth I traveled to numerous places, met with a variety of creatures, saw all kinds of species. But what I saw yesterday proved me wrong. I suppose it was arrogant of me to proclaim nothing else could surprise me, but karma has a way of knocking one down a peg. Worse yet, I was arrogant enough to accept a bet of chess games with Ainsley, a bet I lost no less! That'll teach me!
And to think I was planning a nice evening for myself in the cozy comfort of my library with a warm cup of tea in one paw and a good book in the other... only to instead end up drenched in the rain trudging through a mucky, wet forest in the middle of the night. Fate certainly has a cruel sense of humor. But sometimes fate does reward one for enduring challenges it throws at you.
We discovered a kit of an unknown species. Or at least, unknown to anyone in the area. Perhaps credit for the initial discovery would go to Ainsley, who had gone scavenging in Rattleglen forest and was the one who first ran all around the town screaming like a raving lunatic about a 'ghost'. Superstitious twit!
From her own confession, it seems Piper ended up pushing said kit into the ravine when she and her friends decided to 'hunt' the 'ghost'. Given how fragile I had discovered the kit to be later on, I'm still surprised it didn't die from the fall. And then they retrieved, of all creatures, Belfry Baker, to investigate, who promptly fell into the ravine herself and injured her leg. I swear if I hadn't seen this cockup for myself I would've thought someone had dreamed all this up!
But perhaps that ended up being for the better otherwise we would have never found the kit, who Belfry refers to as "Tamberlane". She claims the kit told her this, but it is not clear if that is it's actual name or the name of it's species, or something else entirely. Since it's just a kit, it could have just randomly babbled this word, but due to a lack of any further information, we have decided to name it such. Additionally, we now know that the kit is capable of limited speech, and from it's limited understanding, it told us it is three years old. Again, it's difficult to say if this is accurate or not but its all we have to go on for now. It certainly does not appear to display the level of maturity of a three year old however, but at least it is not a wild animal as we had initially thought.
Another perplexing mystery is that there were no clues as to the reason for the kit being there. There were no signs of it's parents, or any other creature that could have left it there, and questioning the kit for any information was unsuccessful. Sometimes it didn't understand what we were asking, other times it just didn't know the answers to our questions.
I don't know what exactly happened between Belfry and that kit in that ravine before we reached them, but for some inexplicable reason Belfry has taken an immense liking to the thing, becoming fiercely protective of it even as soon as we pulled them out of there, so much so that she ended up adopting it as her own kit right on the spot. I felt like it was an unusually hasty decision. Why would you immediately adopt a creature you know nothing about after spending what couldn't have been more than an hour or so with it? Often times Belfry's thought process eludes me. I never figured her to be the maternal type either. Does she have even the slightest idea on how to take care of another living being? And given her track record, would the kit even survive?
Then again, would the kit survive anyway? Some of those who saw it believed it was too malformed to survive for long, and I couldn't help but agree with that conclusion. The kit has no fur except on the top of it's head, no muzzle, no tail, deformed paws with no claws and fragile skin. This thing is an evolutionary disaster! How it lived even this long is a mystery. At this point, Belfry is the only one who has any faith in this kit whatsoever.
As if she and Tess hadn't already exhausted all topics to argue about, they had an argument about whether to keep the kit or not. Had it been an ordinary animal's cub in such a poor condition, I would have agreed with Tess, which would be unusual even for me, but seeing as this was a golden opportunity to study a potential new species, I'm glad Belfry resisted. Her childish stubbornness finally came to some good use for once.
Regardless of whatever Belfry's final decision would be, I wasn't going to let an opportunity like this slip by. I managed to 'convince' Tess to allow Belfry and 'Tamberlane' to stay with me for some time until I can properly research this discovery. Not to mention I'll also be able to supervise Belfry's handling of the kit so she doesn't accidentally break it's neck.