The Lost Scarf

After safely putting his newly acquired book under his pillow, Ryuu quickly took a look around his room; it seemed that no matter where he looked, he couldn't find his scarf. But it was so odd… He could swear he had hung it over the bed frame before bed, as he always did. It wasn't under the bed, nor was it anywhere else in the room. He sat down, taking a moment to think. Could Azelea had taken it and left with it? But why would she do such a thing? She knew how much he cared about that scarf… Loosing it would be akin to loosing his mind, which he felt was slowly coming to him as he sat there. Deciding that someone must have stolen it, somehow, he stood up and left the room, promptly trotting downstairs to the main lobby. He walked over to the first group of Wynglings he saw, stopping them in their conversation as he approached; having them look up at him this way only reminded him how tall he was now…

"Has anyone of you seen my scarf?," he asked, trying to sound as little worried as he could. "It's red, and wooly… Pretty long thing."

Most of them shrugged as an answer, but one of them – a small red Wyngling who looked much younger than the others – hopped closer to him, saying:

"Oh oh oh! I think I saws it! It'sh outshide! I saws it hanging on a tree!"

"Outside?," Ryuu repeated, unsure if he had heard right. "Where outside?"

"Out the back," the Wyngling responded, pointing a claw toward the back door of the Nook.

With an increasingly worried heart pumping boiling blood through him, Ryuu thanked the young gro before quickly trotting in that direction.

"This is so weird," he thought to himself. "Why would it be outside…? Is it a prank? Who would lose their time making a prank to me? This is ridiculous…"

Nervously, Ryuu opened the back door, using his larger frame to push it open. He rarely went out that way in winter, mostly because the roads were never shoveled out, but in summer the back of the Nook was a very interesting place to go to; it was a large, quiet garden… But now, as he cast his gaze upon this frozen wasteland, Ryuu felt no calm, no quiet. The silence was heavy, but his heart was beating increasingly faster, for no apparent reason, and it worried him greatly. He was getting hotter and hotter again, like last night, and he felt his blood boil even more as he looked around, the words of the Wyngling repeating in his mind…

"They said it was out here," he mumbled to himself, blinking the blurriness away from his eyes. "But I don't see it-"

He stopped everything. He stopped moving, he stopped breathing; there it was. His scarf, hung at a low hanging branch of a tree. No, it wasn't just hanging there… It was knotted. Carefully knotted around the branch, to keep it from going anywhere. Someone had put it there.

But the worst part wasn't that; he recognized that tree. The night before… it was under that tree that he had seen it; that large shadow, that he thought to be an effect of the moonlight. Why would… his scarf be there? Why of all places, was it here? Who had placed it there? He had spoken to no one about his dream or what he had seen, not even Azelea! Who took his damned scarf?? 

"That's not possible," he repeated to himself a thousand times in his mind as he stared at the slightly moving scarf, unable to move. "It's not possible… That shadow… That thing… it wasn't real! I just imagined it! Could it… no, it can't be a spite. Spites can't get this close to town, they just can't. Then… that… that shadow… No, it wasn't real!"

Feeling faint from the sudden heat rising to his brain, Ryuu emitted a low grunt, hanging his head low toward the ground as he exhaled the breath he was holding in. Why was he so scared? It had to be a prank. This was just a nasty prank someone equally nasty had pulled, and the fact that it was this tree was merely a coincidence. It was just that.

Taking another deep breath to try and calm his drumming heart, Ryuu promptly walked over to the tree. Now that he was tall, it was actually easy to just stand up on his back legs and hold himself against the trunk with one paw, using the other to untie his scarf. Careful not to get any bit of the scarf stuck on the bark, Ryuu retrieved his scarf, and didn't waste any more time here; holding it close to him, he practically ran back inside.

Locking himself in his room, Ryuu did not exit back out for the remainder of the day; instead, he sat on his bed, staring intently out the window, observing the tree. He almost expected it to move; but alas, for the whole day, nothing happened, and Ryuu ended up passing out on his bed; in his claws, he held the book Alma had given him, something already drawn inside… 

And there it is! This page was very nice practice for a different style, and I have to admit I greatly prefer making pages in this lineless style; it actually takes less time than if I had lined it, and it looks much better too. Pretty satisfied with this! And also the story continues! I think Ryuu's slowly going crazy here...