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Prompt: Are they Gone

Count: 502

Genre: Episodic Fantasy

The Foxxfyrre Chronicles: Episode 4

The Five Ws

The Cantus Sirenum was a humble little paddle steamer that had run mail and passenger service to the Weeping Hollows twice a day for the past fifteen years. Weather permitting, the trip each way took just over two hours.

Today, the weather was not permitting.

The channel was violent, and Rennie was feeling every single swell.

The wallaby stumbled back into the dimly lit dining cabin after relieving the bulk of his stomach over the starboard rail. He collapsed onto the wooden bench opposite Foxxfyrre.

"Still with us?" Foxxfyrre asked, taking a calm, measured sip of his tea.

"Aye," Rennie groaned, resting his heavy head on his paws. "Us wallabies are a hardy bunch... provided our feet are planted firmly on terra firma."

A faint, dry smile touched the edge of Foxxfyrre's muzzle as he returned his attention to the brass cylinder. He was meticulously working a stick of graphite over a thin piece of parchment wrapped tight around the metal.

"What do you think you’ll find by doing that?" Rennie asked, his voice muffled by his arms.

Foxxfyrre paused, his glowing blue eyes scanning the smudged paper. "See these words here? You can clearly make out 'Are They Gone'. But just before that, there are faint depressions—words that appear to have been carefully sanded or polished off the brass. I’m rubbing the graphite into the parchment to hopefully bring out the residual indentations."

"Don’t you think it would just say 'Where'?" Rennie offered, lifting his head slightly.

"I thought that too, for a moment," Foxxfyrre replied. "Then it struck me that grammatically, it would make more sense to say 'Where have they gone', not 'are'. And if you look at this rubbing now, the graphite has caught the edge of a 'Why'."

"Why are they gone?" Rennie mused, his natural intuition momentarily overriding his nausea. "Well, that just leaves a couple more 'W' words to ask."

"Pardon?"

"Yes. Why are they gone? Who is gone, and where did they go?"

"And were they taken?" Foxxfyrre added quietly.

"Taken? That’s a massive leap to make from just rubbing a 'why' onto a piece of paper, mate."

"That, my dear Rennie, is exactly what we are going to determine."

"And you think we’ll find the answers at the Weeping Hollows?"

"Perhaps not all of them, but surely the beginning of the thread. Because I am quite certain this cylinder is leading us directly there." Foxxfyrre held the cylinder up, pointing with the tip of his graphite to a microscopic cluster of etchings near the bottom rim. "Do you see these letters?"

Rennie squinted. "Just barely."

"They are initials. I.A.H. I believe it refers to Iola Anne Huxelley."

"Lord Huxelley’s missing daughter?"

"Precisely."

Foxxfyrre looked up, waiting for Rennie's deduction to catch up with the revelation, but the wallaby's eyes suddenly went wide. The ship pitched violently over another massive swell. Before he could utter another word, Rennie slapped a paw over his mouth and bolted for the starboard deck once more.

Thanks for Reading

TTFN