Losing Our Sister

      It was a chilly day around Halloween and I was playing Kacheek Seek with my younger brother, Lertucas. He was off in the woods of the Haunted Woods counting to one hundred while I was finding a place to hide. I found a bunch of old dead trees that had fallen over the years and decided to dunk behind them.

      My heart was racing and I was panting behind a mossy tree trunk. I was scared that my heart beat would be heard from afar and Lertucas would come up and find me. I closed my eyes until I heard a rattling in the leaves on the ground. I looked all around me but there was no one there.

      I sighed a sigh of relief and sank back next to the trunk.

      "BOO!" Lertucas yelled behind me and I almost jumped out of my skin.

      "Don't ever do that!" I screamed at my brother while he was rolling on the ground, laughing.

      "You... should've... seen... your... face!" he gasps.

      While he was still whooping with laughter, I had a sudden thought.

      "Lert," I said, my voice dropping, "where's Meliyra?"

      I have never seen somebody jump up so fast like he did. His eyes grew wide and I knew right then and there the truth. She was gone.

      My eyes turned an even darker shade of red when I yelled, "Why weren't you looking after her? She was with you the whole time!"

      "It's not my fault!" he defended. "I told her to count with me and I swear she did."

      "Then where is she now?"

      He gulped. He didn't know.

      There was no time to keep on fighting like we were. I told Lertucas that we had to find her before we went home that night. Our owner (who we usually refer to as "Mama"), Kara, would be upset if there was just two of us instead of three.

      "Where will we even look, though? She could be anywhere!" he said.

      "Let's ask someone around here. Someone has had to have seen a Baby Korbat somewhere!" I suggested.

      We ran out of the woods, our breathes shortly catching up with us and our hearts rattling with doubt. When we exited the woods, we found ourselves in front of a massive brown tree that held together a variety of different shades of orange colored brain. Some of the branches of the tree peeked through the brain which made the tree look scarier.

      "Kneel before tree!" it boomed.

      I nudged Lertucas and he shook his head. I didn't want to ask this... thing where my baby sister was. I was terrified and so was Lert, but one of us had to speak up.

      "Uh... I was just wondering if y-you might've seen a... Baby Korbat walking by b-by any c-chance?" I choked out, beads of sweat popping out of my forehead.

      The tree didn't speak for what felt like forever so Lertucas and I began walking away when all of a sudden it boomed out, "I might've seen a Baby Korbat sometime this evening."

      A smile spread across my face as I yelped out, "Really? Where is she? Do you know?"

      It roared a laugh and said, "Neopian, you'll have to fetch me information about a crime if you wish to know where she might be."

      I looked at my brother and he shrugged. What did we have to lose anyways?

      I accepted and the tree smiled a crooked smile. It said, "Find when and where Stan Skeith died."

      "How will we ever find out?" Lertucas whined, tears brimming his eyes.

      "BE GONE!" the tree stormed and we ran away.

      Catching our breathes, we heard something breathing behind us. When we turned to face whoever it was, there was nothing but what looked like a glob that was stuck to the ground.

      "H-hello?" Lert called out, his voice shaking.

      "I AMMMMMMM ESOPHAGOR!!!!! I AMMMMM HUNGRRRYYYYY. FEEEEEED MEEEEE." the glob roared out.

      "C-can you h-help us?" I asked, every bone in my body shaking. "We need to know where Stan Skeith died and where."

      The ground shook as if an earthquake's aftershock had just passed through. It said, "I know of Stan Skeith. Fetch me a list of food items and I can tell you."

      I looked at my brother and we both said, "Sure."

      Esophagor sent us to get Chilled Eyeball Custard, Squishy Brain Wrap, and Pumpkin Pie. I knew where to get all of those items; the Deserted Fairground had a Halloween Bruce that owned a cart filled with spooky foods like such.

      We had enough Neopoints too! Mama always gives us a weekly allowance of two thousand Neopoints for chores we did around Neopia or our Neohome.

      When we came back to give Esophagor his dinner, he only told us one piece of information that we needed. Stan Skeith died on 4th day of Awakening in Y13.

      "We need to know where he died too," Lertucas said.

      Esophagor inhaled the food that we brought him in a nanosecond. He chuckled and said, "I'm still hungry. If you give me more food, I might tell you more."

      Tears streamed down my cheeks. "All I want to know is if my sister is okay and where she is."

      There was an awfully long moment of silence until Esophagor said, "Just fetch me one more thing and I promise I'll help."

      We went back and brought him his Devilish Cake.

      "Stan Skeith passed away in Maraqua," he said, licking the remains of the cake off of his lips.

      We raced back to the Brain Tree and told him what we knew. He smiled his evil smile and said, "Thank you. I saw this Baby Korbat running away crying through the woods."

      "She could be anywhere now!" I whined.

      "She could've ran through the woods towards the land beyond it," Lert said.

      "What's passed the woods?" I asked the huge tree.

      "Tell me when and where-"

      "Forget it." Lert and I both sighed in unison.

      We raced through the woods filled with dead leaves and trees and ended up in a sandy environment. Sand stretched as far as the eye could see and it was surprisingly hot; it was so hot that sweat started to pour down my face as soon as we stepped foot on the ground. Not to mention we couldn't see much with all the sand blowing around us too.

      We kept walking slowly holding onto each other afraid that one of us might blow away with the strong sandy wind. Soon I felt something tall and cold in front of me. I looked up and it was some sort of Shrine. The wind stopped blowing and it became clear, this was Coltzan's Shrine.

      The sand around us had this eerie green glow to it for a few seconds until a Ghost Lupe came out of the shrine.

      "Have you seen a Baby Korbat?" I asked the great king.

      "I have seen a Korbat recently. It flew to Sakhmet."

      Soon the Ghost Lupe disappeared back into the golden shrine and Lertucas and I both raced to Sakhmet, finally smiling from ear to ear. We were going to find Meliyra!

      It was going to be extremely harder than what we had thought. There were too many places in Sakhmet to search for our sister! We wouldn't be done in time and Mama expected us home before dark.

      We went through Battle Supplies where the Desert Aisha couldn't tell us anything. Next, we searched the Emergency Supplies but there was no such luck there anyways.

      With our hearts in our stomachs and tears streaming down our faces, we began to walk out of Sakhmet. That was until a Kepru ran in front of us. A Desert Peophin raced after the pink looking Petpet screaming, "Come back here!"

      We watched as she caught up to it's amazing speed and she picked it up by the hair on it's neck as if a mother would to her baby. She came back and we ended up following her to her Petpet stall.

      "Hello, I'm Peopatra. How may I help you?" she said, gasping for air.

      Lertucas said without hesitation, "Have you seen a Baby Korbat today? We heard she came this way."

      Peopatra thought for a moment before she said, "Is her name Meliyra by any chance? She came racing into Sakhmet crying for her two older brothers. I forget their names."

      "Lertucas and Niquilous," I said, smiling. "That's us! Where is she?"

      Peopatra picked something off the floor and low and behold it was Mel! She was sucking on her pacifier and smiled at the sight of us. She reached her small white arms towards us and said, "Brudders!"

      Peo happily handed her to us and said, "Keep an eye out on her. She likes to wonder."

      "We know," we both said, laughing.

The End