I messed up! it thought, full of regret. All seemed lost. But suddenly, its body became lighter. Someone had picked it up with one hand.
The man cleanly sliced through the vines tangled around the mini-dragon with his long sword, running on top of the dome without a single wasted movement. He shifted the mini-dragon to his shoulder, then whirled back around and shockingly ran down into the monkeys’ forest. The mini-dragon didn’t know humans could move like that, so it doubted whether this man was a human at all.
But then it remembered. This person was the man named Wayne it had seen earlier. With superhuman athleticism, the man jumped from one branch to another without flinching even once.
“So?” Wayne let go of the mini-dragon. He looked around and rested his sword on his shoulder, inclining his head. “I thought you three were acting sneaky, so I came to check up on you. What’s going on here?”
“Kwee!”
“Grr-oink!”
The pair suddenly turned their faces away. They weren’t very good actors.
“Uh-huh.” Wayne smiled amusedly. He shrugged at the hissing caper monkey. “This is a pretty uneven battle. Sorry, but these guys are with me. I hope you’re ready for a beating.”
His sword flashed, and he grinned.
It had been a hundred against three, and now it was a hundred against four.
Only one person had joined the fray, and yet the battle was settled in no time at all.
∗ ∗ ∗
The caper monkeys had been beaten to a pulp and stacked in a pile with their eyes all spinning. In front of them, Wayne sighed.
“I followed on horseback at first, but you guys were going through some pretty tangled overgrowth, so then I had to run on my own feet. After that, I lost sight of you, and when I looked at the forest, there was suddenly this weird green dome.”
Wayne explained the reason he’d arrived late, but the monsters all standoffishly faced away from him. This was another form of human-monster relationship. Wayne had assumed that they’d be able to handle things on their own one way or another, so he wasn’t trying to earn their gratitude by saving them.
“You guys are monsters, so it’s fine with me if you do whatever you want, but...hey, what the heck?!”
Tee and the boar ignored Wayne and briskly headed back. The mini-dragon was confused as to what it should do, but then apparently decided that it should leave as well. It zipped past and headed back faster than the rest of the bunch.
Wayne, left behind on his own, shouted, “WHY?!” and ran after them. On the way, he retrieved the horse he’d tethered partway there and returned to Plume Village.
They made better time on their return trip. Wayne and Tee’s group arrived at Lacey’s mansion at approximately the same time. It had only taken them a few hours between morning and afternoon, but it had been a bit of a big adventure.
Wayne had been concerned about the trio and followed after them as soon as they left. He didn’t know what he was going to say to Lacey.
“Where’d you all go?” Lacey asked with a clueless look once they got back. The tea table was still set outside, and she was stirring something on top of it. Knead, stir, knead, stir.
∗ ∗ ∗
The three monsters and one person who seemed somehow more ragged than this morning looked at each other. Wayne spoke for them all and answered, “A little way out.”
Tee made a “phwee phwee” sound to imitate a whistle without actually blowing air out and tried to play it off. The boar snorted and swished the tuft of its skinny tail, facing away. The mini-dragon very caringly rubbed a bag with a torn strap against its cheek. Obviously something had happened, but since they were so transparent that even Lacey could see through them, she conversely lost interest in prodding them for more details.
It wasn’t as if Lacey hadn’t been worried about the four of them suddenly disappearing, but she trusted that they would be all right. After all, Wayne was with them. So when she pondered what she could do while everyone else was out, she decided to create something.
She repeatedly kneaded a white powder, then wrapped it in a cloth and wrung it.
“What are you doing there, Lacey?”
“I thought I’d create a scent. That little one doesn’t know how to get back, right? Then the best thing to do is to have someone else come pick it up. Mini-dragons have a keen sense of smell, right?”
“Pyu-whoa?” The mini-dragon flapped its wings and hovered in the air. Lacey had noticed that it now had a bag she hadn’t seen before, so she’d surmised that it had gone to pick it up. However, the fact still remained that she’d been at a loss as to where they’d gone.
“The Dragon Postal Service uses mini-dragons not just because they’re fast, but because their noses are good enough to locate people from far away, or so I’ve heard. So I thought that it might be worth infusing this little one’s smell.”
She had thought that she might be able to create something new by crossing the properties of a sachet together with a failed product from when she’d formulated her healing potions. However, coming up with the best ratio had stumped her, and before she’d realized it, whole hours had passed.
Wayne and the monsters looked at each other. “All right.” He rolled up his sleeves. “I’ll help. What do you want me to do?”
“Kwoo!”
The boar sniffled, and naturally, the mini-dragon flicked its big tail as well.