Return to Shenkuu

     "Hey, Princess, letter for you.” The Ruki said, leafing through a stack of business mail. He held out a little green envelope, sealed with a heart sticker.

     Alexi took the letter from him without any griping about the nickname because, well, fair enough, in an ironic kind of way. Only so many royal draiks came to work at the secondhand shop. Moreover, she was too surprised by the letter to think up a snappy retort. Who would send her mail? In particular, who would send her mail in a green stationery envelope? A scented green stationary envelope, if she wasn’t mistaken.

     She tucked the letter into her backpack and got back to work, but it stuck in her mind. As she held a mirror for a patron trying on hats from a big cardboard box, it occurred to her that she did know someone who would bring that level of ridiculous extravagance to a neomail. Rather, she had known someone. It would have been, what, five, six years? The last time she’d spoken to Margot, Faerieland had still been in the sky.

     But the letter practically had Margot’s name written all over it. Margot always had the shiniest jewelry, the brightest clothes. It’d be just like her to send letters with the greenest, smelliest paper.

     The bruce trying on hats stumbled over a pile of socks and upended a box of shoes. Alexi was quick to scoop up as many of the newly scattered tripping hazards as possible. A mess left alone would only grow.

     Margot would hate it here, Alexi thought. That’s why Alexi had never written to Margot, after all. Margot would have hated the entire life Alexi had built in Neopia Central. Her little house was one room, packed full of mismatched furniture and treasures Margot wouldn’t appreciate. The streets Alexi traveled to come to work were bustling with unordered commotion. Even the little deli Alexi made a daily habit of frequenting for lunch was in such constant motion that Alexi had to shout her order to be heard. Neopia central wouldn’t pause for Margot, even for a second. Neopia Central didn’t pause for anyone.

     What about Terry, or Clarise, Alexi wondered next. Why had they never been invited to come sleep on Alexi’s overstuffed couch for a visit? Terry could handle a city. She was making trips to Neopia Central all the time. By all rights, Alexi was half-surprised she hadn’t run into Terry just in the business of daily life. Alexi wasn’t sure about Clarise. The more she thought about, the more she wasn’t really sure what Clarise liked. Shiny things and neopoints, but they had all liked those things. That’s what the whole point of the thing had been. Extravagance and opulence and showing it all off in the most ridiculous ways.

     She biked home after work. It was only a short way from the secondhand shop, made shorter by the fact that Alexi had come to know all the necessary shortcuts. Quick left-hand turn just before Pizzaroo, and she could shave a solid five minutes off the trip. She sort of wished she hadn’t taken that particular shortcut, though. It was Tuesday, so Pizzaroo was cooking their Meat Feast pizza for the week. Alexi’s budget for the week dictated that there would be no Meat Feast pizza this Tuesday, nor next Tuesday, nor any Tuesday, until the leaky roof was fixed. She had some tinned peas. Those would probably taste fine. Unfortunately, they sure wouldn’t smell as good as Meat Feast pizza.

     She made sure to lock her bike against the tree in front of her house. The lady next door had told her there were Pant Devil sightings around the neighborhood lately, and Alexi didn’t know what she’d do without her bike.

     Dinner was fine, because for all her fixation on Pizzaroo, Alexi still had half a box of Pineapple Tarts left. So it wasn’t just sad tinned peas. It was sad tinned peas with a truly delicious dessert to supplement the affair. Maybe that was why Alexi hadn’t invited Terry or Clarise. Alexi would have been happy to share her Pineapple Tarts with them, but they wouldn’t have appreciated the inherent joy in sharing a box of Pineapple Tarts.

     Alexi squished through a mouthful of peas as she fished the letter out of her backpack. It had gotten a little rumpled, underneath her sweater and her water bottle, but it was still perfectly readable. She was right. It was return addressed to Margot, with the Shenkuu postmarks and everything. Margot must’ve paid a fortune for postage.

     Alexi unfolded the letter, and she could almost hear her old friend through the looping handwriting on the page.

          ***

     Deep within the high-security, climate-controlled, carefully-regulated halls of Virtupets Space Station, a meeting was underway. GRUUNDO Plushie Manufacturing conducted all of its business from Virtupets. Most of the factories were actually based on Kreludor, but that wasn’t an effective place to base a center of operations. GRUUNDO needed technology, communication, and high-speed power to make big decisions, fast. That kind of technology was only available without restrictions or regulations in one place: Virtupets. The wild west of space.

     Ten grundos sat around the meeting table, with five pets shellacked in robotic casings, and one very ostentatious faerie xweetok leading the room in rather impassioned debate.

     “Revenue is up five percent,” One of the grundos argued, “so the extra costs on button eyes were worth the investment.”

     Another grundo jumped to the opposition. “Revenue is up five percent because we bought out our biggest competitor last quarter. If we hadn’t sunk millions on button eyes, we’d be looking at an even bigger spike.”

     The two grundos, almost instinctively, looked to the xweetok for consensus. She frowned, and then turned to the robot acara seated beside her.

     “Crunch the numbers on the button eyes.” The xweetok said. “Correct for the projected increase from the buyout.”

     The acara’s eyes glazed as power redirected to computational activity for a minute. “Correcting for projected buyout revenue increase, sales are up one point three three four-”

     “That’s still an increase!” The first grundo yelled.

     The second grundo, equally incensed, yelled back. “An almost negligible increase. We need to-”

     “Stop, please.” The xweetok told them. They fell back in their seats almost immediately, like puppets with their strings cut. She smiled neutrally at the room. “This isn’t a worthwhile conversation to have until everyone has familiarized themselves with the actual logistics of the situation. I’m tabling this until then. Take twenty, go have lunch, and read the report from R79. Then we’ll talk revenue.”

     Around the table, papers rustled and briefcases snapped shut, as Clarise’s employees somewhat guiltily shuffled out of the conference room. She wasn’t actually sure if robots could eat lunch. They could go oil their gears, she figured. Or maybe, actually, read the report for once. They could really do whatever they wanted, so long as Clarise had a chance to eat her lunch.

     She paced down the hallway to her office, pausing only to place a carefully manicured paw on the security scanner. Three sets of mechanized doors slid open, showing off the biggest workspace in the GRUUNDO marketing branch of Virtupets. Clarise’s desk was chrome-topped, surrounded by holographic windows. She could switch the holograms to show any land in Neopia. When she’d first transferred here from Mystery Island, she’d had them set to show waves crashing against a sandy shoreline. That had gotten tiring and distracting, so now the windows just showed the outside of the space station. Clarise found it calming to work surrounded by the black of space. She knew her employees found it intimidating to bring in notes to her, only to find themselves visually unleashed into an empty vacuum. That was fine by her. If they wanted friendly and welcoming, maybe they should have been nicer to the new transfer from Mystery Island, four years ago.

     There was a metallic box from delivery services on Clarise’s desk. She opened it, removed a plastic container of chopped fruit and greens. She had acquired a taste for azzle salad during her time on Mystery Island, and wasn’t about the start eating paste out of a tube just because the grundos did it. They sent it to her with the wrong kind of dressing, but that couldn't be helped. She’d have to make a note to switch delivery services.

     She skimmed through her other, less appealing deliveries, vaguely disgruntled. There was an update on the R79 report, which would no doubt go over like a seedless tigerfruit. There was a sample model for the new security scanner. So far as Clarise could tell, it looked fairly secure. At the bottom of the delivery crate, there was a green envelope.

     Clarise snatched the envelope out of the crate, ripping it open immediately. Her eyes flew down the page, wide with disbelief. She hadn’t given a second thought to Margot or any of the others in years. She’d assumed they’d have forgotten all about her, just as she’d forgotten them. They had been halfway to forgetting Clarise when they were all living next door to each other, let alone now, separated by miles upon miles of space.

     Margot wanted her to come visit Shenkuu again, said all the others were coming, too. Margot wouldn’t want Clarise to feel like she had been specially invited, or anything. Clarise wondered what they’d all been up to these last years. Alexi had been moving to the city, she remembered. That had been right around the time Clarise had received the job offer at Mystery Island. She had been so excited to tell them about Mystery Island, but of course, that had been small potatoes next to Alexi moving away.

     Well, none of them had become GRUUNDO’s chief executive in marketing. Clarise had become too accomplished to ignore. She called for her assistant to book a flight to Shenkuu, as soon as possible. It’d be good to see them again. More importantly, it’d be good for them to see her again.

     ***

     Terry was actually watching Neovision when she got the neomail, which was sort of a fun coincidence, all things considered. There was a blizzard outside, wind whipping through the trees and snow piling high. Usually the storms weren’t so extreme by the time they reached Happy Valley. Terry could only imagine how bad things must have been on the mountain.

     Bad weather called for old movies and Neovision reruns, that was Terry’s rule. She’d gathered up a nice bundle of blankets and settled down on the couch with Feather. The little yoakie didn’t care much for cold weather, so it had tucked itself cozily under Terry’s paws. Hot chocolate was prepared, and the curtains were drawn, so it was time to recline.

     Channel surfing had given way to reality shows, and where there were reality shows, there were reruns of Shenkuu Mountain Pets. Terry usually flipped past, but she was pragmatic enough to admit that there was a perverse sense of entertainment in the show.

     Shenkuu Mountain Pets had only aired for two seasons, before Alexi had moved away and the show had been cancelled. They had filmed the whole thing over a four month period. Little did Terry know at the time, those four months would be immortalized by public consumership, available to the casual Neovision subscriber even six years after the grand finale.

     The episode was one of the early ones. Terry could tell, because during the individual interviews, she wasn’t looking directly at the camera. She had been so shy, during those early episodes. By the time the finale had signed off, Terry had wanted at least two cameras on her at all times.

     Onscreen, Terry and Margot were fighting. They had both entered in the beauty contest, and they both planned to wear the same gown. Terry was a kacheek and Margot was a krawk, so there was absolutely no risk of competition between them, but nevertheless, there had to be a fight. The producers had wanted Terry to pick fights about everything, so she did. She remembered apologizing to Margot off camera, laughing about how ridiculous the whole stunt was.

     The fans really loved the episode when it aired. Terry got fan mail, letters taking her side in a fight from months ago that had meant nothing. Terry had been the fan favorite, because she was the most willing to go along with the ridiculous suggestions the production team threw at her. Go raid Alexi’s closet? Terry would do it. Drink a cup of Rainbow Fountain Water? Terry wasn’t afraid! Rappelling down the Shenkuu cliffs? Terry would try it, screaming the entire time.

     It was exhausting, and Terry wasn’t really sure what was left of herself once the cameras turned off, but watching the screen, she had to admit it made for good television.

     The episode concluded with Alexi mediating the beauty contest fight. That was how a lot of the episodes had gone. Terry would get on Margot’s nerves in some creative new way, and the intensity of it all would keep ramping up until Alexi came in with her unbridled optimism and absurd energy to smooth the whole thing over. Segments of Clarise going on some tangentially related adventure would be spliced in after the fact, to show that while Terry and Margot were bickering over gowns, Clarise was, say, stuck overnight in a cave somewhere.

     Terry hoped they were doing well. Had Alexi actually been that enthusiastic about everything, or was she just better at faking for the camera than Terry was? Was Clarise still out there somewhere, getting into crazy misadventures? How was Margot doing?

     Every week, once filming had ended, they had all gone out together for dumplings. It was their own weekly ritual, just for the four of them, and it had made Margot so happy. Terry loved dumplings, and presumably the others did too, but just sitting around the little wooden table together had brought such a smile to Margot’s face.

     After Alexi moved away and Clarise left, Terry had taken a break from packing her own luggage to go get dumplings with Margot, one last time. Margot had still smiled and laughed, but it was missing the vitality she’d always had. Someone new already moved into Alexi’s old house, Margot had said. A replacement friend, for the friends that were scattering around Neopia.

     Terry had written to Margot every single day, when she arrived in Happy Valley. She had imagined Margot all alone in that great big house back in Shenkuu, which wasn’t hard when Terry herself was all alone in her own great big house up in Happy Valley. But it was hard, because Terry wasn’t really sure what to say. At first, she would read the letters out loud, pretending that she was talking into a microphone. That helped, because she could imagine what she would say to Margot if they were both still in front of the camera. But she had always been so unnecessarily catty to Margot for the show, and Terry didn’t want to be mean anymore. When she wrote letters about her day, and the things she spent her time doing, those were even worse, because they were worse than mean, they were boring.

     So the letter-writing had tapered off, and Terry settled into her perfectly boring life in Happy Valley. The neopoints left from the show would keep her comfortable for a while, and when those ran out, she’d write a book about the whole experience. She was sure she could slip back into her onscreen persona like a glove, if she had to. She bet Neopia would really go for a tell-all account of her life at Shenkuu Mountain, in all its glamour and glitz.

     Until then, it’d just be her and Feather, up in the snow.

     When the credits finished rolling, a documentary of the first Chomby and the Fungus Balls world tour started up. Feather really liked Chomby and the Fungus Balls. Terry had a growing suspicion that yoakies were part fungus, so that made sense. Terry wasn’t necessarily such a big fan, so she extricated herself from the nest on the couch and went to sort through her mail pile in the kitchen.

     The holiday cards started coming in, from the neighbors. It was nice of them to think of Terry. Terry wasn’t close with her neighbors. She wasn’t sure how to approach them, or what she’d talk about with them. Her friends had come with a script, last time.

     At the bottom of the mail stack, there was the green envelope from Margot, and Terry wondered for a second if it had somehow gotten lost in the mail for all those years. It wasn’t an unreasonable idea. Margot had written a lot of letters, back then. She’d responded to every single note Terry had written, no matter how boring or mean or confused they had been. But, no, the date on this letter was undeniably recent.

     Terry read the letter, wondering what, after all this time, could prompt Margot to schedule a reunion. She looked around her empty kitchen and living room. She had planned the black-and-white color scheme to look tidy, when she moved in. It did look tidy, but it also looked severe. Her home back in Shenkuu had been furnished mostly in shades of green, and had always been full of visitors.

     Terry could probably use a vacation.

To be continued…