UnderHappened

4 - Bake sale

Finn wakes to find themself still holding the dummy, the frog sitting up beside them. They have no idea what time it might be now, but if they had to guess, they'd say it's around eleven in the morning, and they're starving. The last thing they ate was an almond butter jelly sandwich at lunch the day before. They might've been a bit worried about that, but considering they found candy down here yesterday, they have no doubt that they'll find actual food at some point or another - and there's plenty of clear mountain water around to drink, so Finn isn't worried about dehydration, either. That being said, they are pretty thirsty.

They struggle to their feet, and almost immediately, the voice in their head is back.

Good morning.

"So I wasn't imagining you," Finn acknowledges. Then, not wanting to be rude,  "Good morning to you, too."

"Ribbit," the frog says comfortably, assuming Finn to be talking to them.

Finn feels kinda guilty about that, and almost says good morning again, but they don't want to make this situation even more awkward than it already is.

Finn quenches their thirst in the candy room, then spends a little time crunching through the fun leaf piles on the floor before setting off again. The voice in their head says nothing more, so Finn is left to continue their path through the ruins, the frog hopping close beside. They pass several new and interesting puzzles, but the majority of them are already solved, and Finn makes their way through the rest with ease. They find new piles of dust, which Finn transforms: three become more butterfly creatures, two become frogs, and the other becomes a strange jiggly creature which reminds Finn heavily of a jello ring, but they all just run away, so it doesn't really matter.

I know something that could help with that, the voice offers suddenly as Finn enters a strange room with nothing in it but a mouse hole and a stool with a slab of cheese on it.

"What do you mean?" Finn asks, staring at the cheese. It looks extremely tasty at the moment.

Rotate the cheese one turn counter-clockwise.

That sounds extraordinarily strange to Finn, and they have a feeling that doing what the voices in your head tell you to do is not something you should be doing ever, but as they are now traveling through an abandoned underground city in the company of a giant magic frog, they grasp the cheese in their hand - it's stuck to the table somehow, but it's able to turn, like a strange yellow knob, and Finn turns it the way the voice told them to do.

Almost immediately there's a strange rumbling, and Finn hastily steps back as the table sinks into the cobbled floor, then re-emerges bearing a strange bundle of dark fabric.

"What now?" Finn whispers, but the voice doesn't reply, so they hesitantly set the dummy down on the floor and pick up the cloth. It unfolds to reveal a navy blue cloak, like the kind of cloak with a hood that you wear on Halloween to make yourself seem scary and mysterious, extremely thin black arm-length gloves, and a strange black fabric mask.

"It's a Halloween costume," Finn says, dumbfounded.

"Croak," the frog remarks, hopping closer to get a better look.

Finn slips their backpack off, excited about being given a chance to play dress up. They carefully slide the black gloves onto their hands - they're extremely thin, barely inhibiting Finn's sense of touch - then slip the black mask onto their face and wrap themself up in the cloak, draping the hood over their head. It's a bit too big for them - the cloak drags on the floor, but Finn likes it anyways. The mask is very strange and enables them to see out of it just as well as they would without it, and they feel very cool and mysterious.

They don't know what they're going to do about the backpack, though.

Eventually they decide on configuring the backpack so that the straps cross their chest like a satchel, which probably looks extremely stupid, but Finn doesn't care. At least they can both carry their bag and still remain concealed by the cloak.

"How do I look?" Finn asks, picking Mr. Dummy back up.

"Ribbit," the frog remarks, sounding pleased.

"Thanks," they reply, grinning. Then, realizing that the frog can't see their face, they lift the mask up a bit so they can smile at it.

Wonderful. Monsters shouldn't be as scared of you now.

"Really?" Finn asks incredulously. "Don't I look even more scary now?"

Trust me on this.

Finn shrugs and sets off down the path again, searching for a lump of dust to experiment on. There's a fork in the path up ahead, so Finn wanders through the doorway straight ahead of them first, deciding to double back and pursue the other direction later. They find themselves in a room almost completely empty except for a couple of spider webs and a little wooden sign post set up in the middle.

"Spider Bake Sale," Finn reads. "All proceeds go to real spiders." Their stomach gives a jump at the words "bake sale", but they ignore it. "Awww, that's so sweet! I love spiders." That was one of the things that had basically exiled Finn from every clique in their school. "I think I have a dollar in my bag." They're not certain, but they're pretty sure they hadn't used any of their lunch money yesterday.

I don't know what dollars are, but down here, the currency is gold coins. Just so you know.

"Gold coins?!" Finn exclaims, eyes wide. "You guys are rich!"

The frog looks up at them - it really doesn't have to look up very far - and narrows its eyes, then starts hopping back out of the room.

Finn looks sadly back at the web as they follow. "If I find some money, I'm coming right back and giving you all of it," they let the invisible spiders know as they leave.

The frog is waiting for them back at the fork in the road. It doesn't look very happy, though that's not saying much considering the frog's face seems to have been made in an irreversible frown. "Ribbit," it says demandingly. "Ribbit ribbit croak." For some unknown reason, it uses a paw to gesture at the dummy, of all things.

"I don't know what you're saying," Finn says helplessly.

The frog shakes its head, then pushes its way past Finn and back into the bake sale room. It returns a few moments later, with, of all things, a purple donut, which it forces into Finn's hand. It hops backward a few paces, looking extraordinarily pleased with itself.

"Wow." Finn looks at the donut in their hand, then back at the frog. "Thanks!" They're not entirely sure where the donut came from, considering all that had been in the room was spiderwebs and a signpost, but they guessed that the spiders must have materialized the food somehow after the frog paid. Magic spiders.

The frog nods, then starts hopping toward the other doorway of the fork. Finn follows, holding the dummy with one arm and nibbling on the donut with the other. They have to take their mask slightly off to accomplish this, which annoys them somewhat, but they're just happy they finally have something to eat. Besides, there's no monsters around to see them and be scared of them quite yet. They have to find another dust pile.