#peakthemrmime

With late spring approaching, so too was Bluey's 20th birthday (in game time). Her spirits had slowly started to lighten though she still found herself rather blue, a curse of her lonely nature.

Though she wasn't allowed to dwell on her lonely thoughts when a chatty clown sat down next to her and asked to join her. Parts of her wanted to be left alone to reminisce on her feelings, but the other side of her truly enjoyed having company to distract from her lonely nature.

It was nice to sit and chat about nothing and mostly talk a bit of trash about things and people who they found obnoxious. It was comforting, truly. A new friend to help give her some new points of view.

Bluey was still feeling rather gloom and decided to slip away from her teammates shortly after finishing cutting the wood for the recent construction gig the guilds got roped into. While she'd always loved helping people, and even though she had done a good job cutting the wood evenly it did little to lift her spirits and she wasn't entirely keen on getting dragged somewhere by Tuca in her current state. Bluey sighed as she walked down the dirt path that led back towards Lakeside. She fiddled with her claws as her eyes stare blankly at the ground, lost in her own thoughts. Maybe she didn't do a good enough job on the thindle, maybe it was too simple...maybe it was too colorful...or was it too cheesy of a concept? Not that any of that mattered now but she couldn't help but wonder what she could have done better, it felt like a whole year of her life was wasted when she had to break it, she had foolishly put so much of her own worth and self-confidence in hope her confession would have gone the way she had wanted. Her mood dipped further feeling selfish about how she was feeling, it wasn't like it was anyone's fault but her own she felt hurt and maybe it was little selfish of her to want something different. Bluey stopped in her tracks and smacked the top of her helm out of frustration, and with an angry growl mixed with the echoing sound of metal impacting metal, she shook her head to try and push these thoughts out of her mind, mumbling to herself, "You are such a big baby, Bluey. You need to grow up."

She stood in silence for a few moments frowning at the ground angry at herself for feeling bad, before she was pulled out of her thoughts by the sound of unfamiliar voices coming from farther up the road. Placing her hands on her cheeks she smacked the tears that had weld up from her eyes and shook off her feelings to put on her usual bright front she tried to maintain in public, Bluey has to show that she's bold, bright, and full of life. Can't have herself looking like she was upset, especially if the Pokémon ahead were new in town, her guild wouldn't very well be represented by a dull gloomy face, even though inside she wasn't feeling like her usual self today. Without hesitating further, she put on a hopefully not forced looking smile and continued her walk up the road, as she got closer she noticed a group of pokemon standing next to a lop sided wagon, it seemed a caravan was coming through and one of the wagons lost a wheel, as she walked closer to see if they needed help she started to pick up bits of the conversation.

"How did this happen?" A Mr. Mime sighed scratching the back of his head looking at the busted wheel "I don't know I was trying to pull it out of the ditch, and everything was just fine then there was a snap, and the wheel flew off!" A Tauros said shaking his head in disbelief. "What do you think Smidge? Is it repairable?" The Mime asked a Grafaiai next to him. "We'd need a whole new beam for the wheels" She frowned, "The Axel was the part of the wagon that failed. We'd need to find a bar to replace it or at least temporarily replace it till we can get in town for a full repair." "I could help y'all with that!" Bluey called as she approached the group. "Unless you got a wagon axel on you, I don't know if you can little lady." the Tauros frowned as the Mime gently thwacked his side with a gloved hand for coming across as rude. "Forgive my companion, it's been a long day. We've spent the past hour trying to pull our wagon out of this road divot we missed and in doing so we damaged it further. The strange smell from the forest nearby hasn't been pleasant while we've been trying to get ourselves out of this pickle. Its got a few of us pretty grumpy. The rest of our group couldn't stand it much more and went on ahead without us." "Oh well that's unfortunate. The vile wilds tend to have a disorienting effect of people, so I say you got lucky that you only stumbled on a hidden ditch. As for that Axel, I don't happen to have one, but I can carve one that should last you long enough to get your caravan to Lakeside." Bluey said as she displayed her blades, "I'm a pretty good wood worker." "We'd appreciate the help, I definitely don't want to leave this wagon behind to head into town and walk back to repair it. It's got a lot of our stage gear in it." The Mime said with a tired smile. "Oh, you are performers! For a moment I thought you may have been traders coming into town from Onryx City. But if you hand me the Axel pieces so I can get a rough thickness and length idea I can easily patch that up." "No, but we did have a show there!" The Mime chimed as he fetched the two broken pieces. Bluey examined the pieces and laid them flat on the road where she used the length of her blades and the width of her hooves to measure the dimensions before trotting over to a tree to carve out a large enough plank of wood to whittle down. As Bluey carved the wood the Mime sat crisscrossed on a nearby stump, watching her with a keen eye, after a few moments of silence he piped up "I hope this doesn't sound...weird, but are you by chance from Painted Sands?" "Huh? Oh y-yeah I was born there! Thats a very specific observation, not probing my mind are you?" She said with a raised brow, "why do you ask?" "O-Oh goodness no! I just happened to notice that trinket around your neck that's peaking out from your poncho from time to time. Thats a whats it called-" He trailed for a moment snapping his fingers in thought, "A thindle! Thats what that is right?" "Oh uh yeah it is. It's my personal one I made to represent myself. We all do it when we turn 18. I'm surprised you know what it is, have you been there before?" "Oh yeah, our companion Nina is from there, so we perform there at least once every year! Gives her a chance to catch up with her family and I've always liked how lively that city is." He smiled pulling out a trinket from behind his collar, "I even made myself one last year when we visited."

"Oh that's lovely" Bluey smiled looking at the swirled design of whites and blues, "Is that bone? Thats an interesting medium to use." "Yeah, when I was a kid, I took a pretty nasty hit to the face and knocked out my two front teeth, luckily they were baby teeth and grew back. But as you can see, I got some pretty big teeth, kept them for a long time because the story over the years has become kind of a funny one to me and I thought why not represent myself with well...some of myself." "You know that's actually a pretty clever approach to a personal one. Shows how creative you are."