Forest of Secrets (CoQ)

It's Convenient How a Convenience Store is so Convenient, Isn't it?

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"Dude, so this guy magically gets all this money? Obviously so unrealistic. Next!" -Akira Eliza

The Werewolves were once of royalty and some are born as a Fenrir. They have natural fighting skills that exceed others.

Noroi

To say that I was peeved would be an understatement. None of the places I needed to go are close. It looks like I have no choice but to get over it, because those errands arn't going to get any closer to where I'm at unless I get hopping. In the mean time, purely to keep me occupied until we arrive at the laundromat, I had fun trying to get the dryad to open up to me. It was time consuming enough, considering that he just wouldn't budge no matter what.

"What was the color of King James the Third's White horse." He blatantly ignored me! Go figure. I tried chatting my way into winning him over.

"You see, thats a trick question. All white horses are born in some shade of gray at first. When they get older they get white. Also, did you know that a cat has three eyelids? You can only see two-" The look he gave me was full of annoyance. He huffed loudly. His eyes went wide with panic and he quickly looked away, as if he wasn't allowed to be annoyed.

Ouch.

Later, then. Five minutes later, I tried again.

"I've heard that dryads don't like eating their own fruit. Is that true? Do you hate peaches?" I never got a verbal answer, unless you want to count the savage death glare I just got. Scared out of my wits, I went silent. Did he even know how to speak? No wait, definitely. How else would he understand me. Maybe he just couldn't speak. As soon as we got to the laundromat I made the dryad stay put and walked up to the washers. I fed the washer a few coins of Yari and dumped my foul-smelling clothes in. Lets make this quick and get out of here! Our one stop job zipped by without any interruptions and we were back on the road. The convenience store was just ahead of us now. Mr. Grumpy walked a little faster, and I walked a little slower. Now was the perfect moment for him to run away, but he waited by the door instead. I guess I could trust him to stay put. We walked inside the store. It was considerably small and there weren't a lot of food choices. Then again, most Romani's were.

"Alright, lets make this quick!" I quipped. I took advantage of my free pass card and grabbed everything in handy. I snagged two sleeping bags off the rack. I even made sure the dryad's sleeping bag was his favorite color. He seemed happy enough to have a purple sleeping bag. His eyes lit up and I swear, he almost clapped. Honestly, he reminded me of a lost puppy. It wouldn't be a bad thing if he stuck around like one. Scampering after me, we walked on the checkered tile floor. It seemed like it would collapse at any moment. I eventually found the camping stuff, and this is where it gets boring. All we literally did was walk around the store and got the stuff that we needed. Along the way I ended up finding a lot of cool stuff.

"Well, this looks cool."

"Hmm?" I pointed to the thingy on the shelf. There was this hot and cold bag thing that was really useful, at least to me. It could keep stuff the same temperature, at any temperature. I'm pretty sure these were made when humans existed, because they weren't fused with magic. Same thing with the matchbook. Any other day you could buy a wand in Kamaharia and build your own fire. Kamaharia is the land of magic, so you can guess the half of the continent that isn't covered in forest is strongly fused with it. And your guess would be right. Legless chairs floated off the ground and beds could rise and fall. Learning magic was a lot like school work, if you think about it. The dryad watched me silently as I dragged my hand across the shelf and filled the cart with instant lunches and canned meats. The hot and cold bag was useless unless we were saving stuff. Oh, and foods like cheese and stuff. Learning magic wasn't necessarily impossible, but it's definitely something that you have to commit yourself to if you want to be good. In a years' worth of time, I'm able to light fires, levitate, and make my presence unknown, but the problem is is that I snapped my wand a while back. It's a good thing that i stopped the spell in time before things got ugly. If you damage your wand while doing a spell you could get cursed. This is why magic is only allowed in Kamaharia or by wizards with an official license. I have anger issues, okay? The dryad pointed to a package of chopsticks.

"Oh, yeah. You'll see those. We're in the Japanese part of town." He took the package off the rack and held them out.

"Oh . . . Can you even use those things?" He nodded his head like crazy.

"Alright then . . . " He refused to look me in the eye, but I passed it off.

After getting a portable microwave (magic takes energy and I don't have a wand) and a blanket, I wrapped everything up in the thick red blanket and stuffed it in the drag bag. I walked up towards the cashier and paid for my stuff. His eyes bugged when he saw the card. He gave me a suspicious look before taking the card. He ran it under a light, and, after confirming that it was real, he sighed in frustration and put it away. Sucks for him and the store, losing out on hundreds of Yari. I take what I can get and give nothing back. I felt bad, so I paid with regular Yari for a few packs of batteries and gasoline. I paid for everything and turned towards the dryad to let him know that we were done.

only he wasn't there.

I glanced around subtly, wondering if he was nearby. I discreetly checked through the aisles, and like before, he wasn't there. At this point, I was panicking a little."Hey, uh . . . Mr. dryad? where'd you go?" I continued glancing around as I calmly called his name. Good Izu, if they found them without a collar . . . I went back up to the cashier. They seemed to have swapped since I began looking. He was big and burly and seemed to make it his mission to watch me. Befitting, considering how he was huge, unshaven, and above all unhygienic, I could only guess that the little guy ran to him for shelter against the big, awful, customer with a free pass card. His body was lumpy and he didn't really fit in. He was a werewolf, so I guess it's acceptable. We are known to be . . . Different.

"Have you seen an orange dryad with abnormally long canine teeth?" I asked politely.

"Walked out the door." He said gruffly. I ran out the door with my DragBag stuffed with things that are now miniature with the bag. I hastily stuffed it in Bessu. I was starting to get pissed. How did I not notice him disappearing from just under my nose? I glanced around and almost missed him standing by a trash can outside the door. I stomped over him, ready to throw one of my famous fits.

"And where the hell were you? I looked all over the place for you! What the hell!" He just gave me a blank stare. I raised my hand and his eyes squeezed shut. I'm pretty sure he was trying to hide it, but I could have sworn that I saw him flinch back a little. Instead of hitting him, which he was probably expecting, I shoved his shirt and pants in his face.

"I'm . . . Sorry. I shouldn't have panicked like that. But next time you decide to run off you tell me! We are marching straight to a bath house and getting you washed. I want you to try on your shoes." His face said huh? I explained to him that it was pretty much a large hot bath that people gather in to get clean and that you pay to get in. A custom to the area specifically, considering how this area of Kamaharia tries its hardest to imitate the human Japanese customs, a group of humans who are of the more proper and respectful side, to put it vaguely. The next look on his face said that's dumb. Yeah, well he can get over it. I dragged him to a sauna and paid for just one bath. He refused to bathe with others, as you usually do in custom Japanese bath houses, (before the humans went extinct) and jumped up in down in frustration. He stomped back and forth in his temper tantrum and seemed terrified more than anything. His eyes were wide and his breathing was hysteric. One thing that made me decide that his high blood pressure wasn't worth it was that every time I slightly raised my hand, even a little, he would flinch. So I did the right thing and secretly paid extra for a little privacy for him. Figured doing the same for me would be good and went along with it. When we both got out we were squeaky clean and shiny from head to toe. I laughed when he accidentally used up all the products, but his hair looked shiny enough. I briefly went over how to use shampoo and conditioner and left it at that. He used the correct products, so I knew he had some idea on how to use them. It occurred to me that he could not read. Or maybe he didn't care to take the time to read it. Damn. I'll teach him later when this adventure is over. He changed into his dart themed clothes and we headed out.

He proved me wrong when he read an article. Damn, the bastard just wanted to get the most out of the money and use all the products.