Bubbles's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Bubbles backed away from the griffin slow, hands up, until the mud swallowed his shoes. He didn't run. Running spooks animals. Instead he turned and walked, muttering to himself. "Okay, Bubbles. You need a plan. You need to find out where the frig you are." His arc goal hummed in his chest under the fear. Somewhere behind him were his litter boxes, his cat food, his whole dream of a shelter. None of it mattered if he couldn't get home first. He pushed through wet ferns and came out on a rutted dirt track. A road meant people. People meant maps. He followed the ruts until the trees thinned and a building leaned into view. Weathered timber. A sagging red roof. A carved sign hung crooked over the porch: Old Traveler's Tavern. Bubbles nearly cried. "A bar. A frigging bar. Now we're talkin'." He stopped one step onto the sagging boards. A shape sat between him and the door. A turtle. But not a turtle you'd find under a trailer. It was the size of a truck, its shell scarred and mossy, its beak hooked like a can opener. It didn't move. It just watched him with one ancient eye, the way the griffin had watched him. Guarding the door. Bubbles's stomach dropped. "Course there's a giant snappin' turtle. Course there is." He looked at his screwdriver. Useless. He looked at the turtle's jaws. They could take his arm clean off. But through the dusty window he could see the glow of a fire and shapes moving inside. Someone in there knew this world. Someone in there could tell him how to get back. He crouched, the way he crouched for strays. "Easy, big fella. I'm not here for trouble. I just gotta talk to somebody inside." The turtle's beak parted. A hiss came out, low and long, like air leaving a tire. Bubbles took the risk. He shuffled sideways along the porch rail, keeping his back to the wood, eyes on the beak. His heel found the door. He shoved it open and fell backward through it. The turtle lunged. Its jaws snapped shut on the doorframe and tore off a chunk of timber the size of Bubbles's head. Then it settled again, chewing wood, uninterested. Bubbles lay on the tavern floor, chest heaving, glasses crooked. Boots surrounded him. He looked up at strangers he had no name for, at lamps that burned with no bulbs, at a scraggly cypress branch nailed over the bar like a trophy. On the wall behind the counter hung a map. Old, stained, covered in coastlines and names he'd never read. He climbed to his feet and pointed at it. "Okay," Bubbles said, breathless. "I dunno where I am. But that map does." He was inside now, alive, and for the first time since the mud, he had somewhere to start.