Being stranded in a giant ancient library can cause one to lose track of time without a watch, so the trio had stopped in one of the converted rooms, which now served as a lounge, to rest. Although at least one of the three had a habit of using what was supposed to be their time to rest for more private work. That one was Susan, while she thought Mr. Buzzard and Brycen were asleep.
Bits of paper, pencils, and cartography tools were scattered around her as she sat on the hard stone floor in front of a large unfolded map of the world with several little red X’s dotted all over it, and several more were being added by Susan. She was hunched over her map so closely that her chest was against the floor, her flashlight clenched between her shoulder and neck. The uncomfortable looking position didn’t seem to bother her, though, or rather she was too focused on her work to notice any discomfort.
She was also so far engrossed in her work that she didn’t see Mr. B, who was curled up with his back towards her on his side of the unzipped, fully opened sleeping bag, had begun to stir. Sleep just didn’t last as long as it should for the old vulture no matter how tired he’d got. He put his glasses on and twisted his head around to check what his funny little duck friend was doing. For a moment he watched curiously in silence before he noticed the cruder little partially drawn map of the library laying close to Susan. He always wanted a closer look at the smaller map.
He carefully rolled onto his belly as silently as he could manage on the soft, rustley fabric. He gradually spread his left limbs across the rest of the open sleeping bag, trying to be ever so subtle as he slid the rest of himself to the other half of the sleeping bag. The map seemed close enough to grab from his perspective angle but stretching his arm as far as it could reach over the bare sandstone floor showed it as at least a foot or so away from his wiggling outstretched fingers. After scooting himself right at the edge of the plush cloth and trying again with similar results. Despite not wanting to touch that dusty old floor with his body, he scooted part way off the sleeping bag and tried again... scooted a little further and tried again... with every failure he dragged his carcass every inch closer until he was halfway off of the sleeping bag.
Finally, he was just able to touch it with his fingertips and started scratching the paper closer into his palm. That was just when Susan decided to sit up and stretch her strained back. The sudden movement startled the old buzzard, all he could think to do is close his eyes and pretend he was asleep. The duck woman had to put the flashlight down to fully stretch her neck and shoulders. It was when she was giving her spine a twist when she noticed how Mr. Buzzard was sprawled across the floor, positioned like a dying man desperately reaching for the first drink of water he’s seen in days and the small map still in his fingers. She stifled a snicker as she looked down as her silly vulture friend before tapping his beak with a finger.
The boop made it clear that he was caught as one eye peeked open then both.
“What’re ya doin’, silly?” She whispered in case Brycen was still sleeping.
With a huff Mr. B picked his head up from the sandstone tile with a guilty expression.
“I wanted a look at this,” he said holding up the maplet, “If I may…?”
He finished the request with a wide toothy grin.
The goofy looking grin made her snort a little with a snicker.
“Of course you can. All you had to do was ask.”
That confirmation was all Mr. B needed to sit up with some confidence and unfold the paper to read. Nothing too interesting as he’d thought it’d be but as he brought it closer to the light he could see a faint image bleed through from the back of the map. He flipped it over and found that Susan’s been using the back of a worn poster to draw her map on.
“Huh…” he muttered, intrigued by the little individual pictures of what looked to be a duck family he'd never seen before. He tilted his head as he closely studied each of their faces.
“Who are these people?” he asked without looking up from the poster.
Susan glanced at him, her smile weakened for a sec before bringing it back.
“Oh that? They're my family.”
She turned her whole body around and scooted towards him and pointed at each picture, Starting with an older stern looking drake as she said, “This is my dad, his name’s Artemis but everyone usually just calls him ‘Arty’. He likes collecting antiques and he’d love telling me a little history about them.”
Her finger slid to an eternally tired yet kindly looking older female duck.
“That’s my mom Dorthia or ‘Dot’. She always seemed to worry about me a lot, but looking back she must’ve really had her hands full with fore kids and housework and helping Dad pay the bills and I wasn’t the easiest kid to take care of…” Her smile began to shrink as she lingered on the picture a moment longer.
Mr. B now noticed how similar the duck in the picture looked to Susan, but there were still plenty of differences between them that he could still easily tell each other apart.
She then blinked back to reality as she moved her finger to the other three younger drakes.
“And these are my brothers. Charles, Anthony, and Ezekiel but I call them Charlie, Andy, and Ezzy. Charlie’s the oldest and even a bigger nerd then me,” She tittered a little under her breath before continuing, “Andy and Ezzy are twins but you can tell them apart ‘cause Andy’s super obsessed with dinosaurs since always, I guess, and Ezzy alway loves cars and machines and gadgets and he’d even build stuff outta junk he’d find…”
Her half maintained smile quickly faded once she stopped talking.
Mr. Buzzard looked between the poster and her with a slight look of concern. It took a moment to ask his next question. “So… How long have they been missing?”
Susan looked at him with surprise.
“Wh- How’d you know they’re missing?”
The vulture looked back at her bemused.
“Uuuuh, Because it’s written here on the poster…?”
“But it’s in Greek,” She said even more confused, “I had to run it through Waddle translator.”
“Oh. That must explain the weird grammar then.” He replied before reading the text out loud in a hushed tone, “‘MISSING! Have you seen anyone look like the people in this photo? This is the Spruce family. If you find yourself, you will receive a $200 cash reward and a FREE PLANE!’”
Susan was both shocked and impressed.
“I… Wow. I had no idea you could speak Greek, B.”
“Well, I can read Greek but I have no clue how the actual words sound…” explained Mr. B, “It’s actually like that with a lot of languages for me. I guess if I ever go abroad I’ll be useful for reading signs and whatnot but if a local comes up to me and starts speaking in their naitive tongue, all I’d be able to do is smile and nod while I’m sweating bullets because I’d have no clue whether they’re asking for the time or calling me a ‘stupid fat turkey’.”
A huff of laughter came out of Susan as that mental image popped into her head.
“So?” He pressed, “How long?”
Her smile once again faded as she sighed and looked down at the floor.
“Since the moonvasion... I filed a missing persons report with the authorities but there’s been no word from them and I got tired of waiting. That’s the main reason I’m a quote, ‘explorer’, unquote. I’m… I’m looking for them.”
Mr. B remained silent as a few questions entered his head, then he looked back up at her, head tilted.
“If you’re really just looking for your family how do you make a career out of being an ‘explorer’?”
“Well it’s actually real simple,” Susan started to explain, “I fly to a country in my plane, and then I start looking for em’, askin’ around, putin’ up posters and spreading them around, both English and whatever's the main language of the country, and then I move to the next place and do it all over again, and over…and over…and…over…”
Mr. B’s face was a mixture of puzzled and concerned for his friend. His head tilted the other way as he said, “I still fail to see how that makes any money…”
The duck woman tried not to look as tired as she felt while she continued.
“Well while I’m in that country, I get some temp jobs or seasonal work to earn enough to get me to the next country. For, ya’know, like food and airplane fuel…” She perked up a little remembering something, “Oh and I got a webstore up where I sell handmade clothes and figurines and mail it to customers…I mean, I’ve only had one person buy something there… but at least I sold something.”
The time for puzzlement ended, now the older Buzzard was completely worried as he harshly whispered, “Ms. Spruce! How can you live off that!? What do you even do for shelter?”
“I mostly just camp out, which is mostly, sorta, fun… except when the weather’s bad… but then I just sleep in the plane if it gets too bad outside.”
Mr. B was dumbfounded by this new information. He’s seen pictures of famous explorers in plenty of books through the library. He even read that Isabella Finch pulpit he found under the shorter leg of a wobbly table. Suffice to say he had a pretty good idea of what an explorer was supposed to be like, and for a while looking at Susan and the way she was dressed he was fooled into thinking she was like them but now…
“That sounds less like being an Explorer, and more like being homeless with extra steps.”
The bluntness of that comment really struck Susan hard.
“I’m n-!” She stopped herself from yelling, she looked away and said in a soft whisper as she curled into herself, “I’ve got a home… I just don’t wanna go back there… not yet… not without them…”
This all was so surreal to the vulture… Or maybe it’s just his new perspective from this revelation.
“Why… Why didn’t you say anything about this to either of us? Why did you keep this to yourself when Brycen told us about him losing his family?” His tone sounded more angry than he meant, really he was more worried than anything.
“Nobody really asked, and I was afraid if I told him all this then, it’d just look like I was trying to make it about me when it wasn’t…”
The buzzard frowned. “That…makes no sense. How would sharing this kind of information make anything other than what you've shared about you?”
She was starting to get defensive with all these questions.
“I-I don’t know. I just…” Her tone broke from a whisper to a hushed yelling, “Well what was I supposed to say? ‘Sorry you lost your whole family in one event, I lost mine too. Let’s throw an Orphan Party! Wooooo’!”
Mr. B suddenly realized how upset all these questions were making her as he noticed her eyes were beginning to well up, but right now he was afraid her harsh whispering might wake Brycen. “Shhh! Okay, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please lower your voice.”
She did. She stopped talking all together. It was getting painful to speak anyway as she felt a lump form in her throat that she was trying to swallow down. Mr. B didn’t know what to do or say that could help in this matter. What do you say in times like this that hasn’t probably been said a thousand times before? What would actually help?
He suddenly remembered reading that child’s story, The Little Prince…
“Would you… maybe… like one of these?” He had spread his arms wide open for an embrace.
At first she was confused by what he meant but then it clicked. She crawled up to the old vulture and wrapped her arms around him as he did the same. She let herself sink into the plush old body as Mr. B draped his neck over her shoulder and rested his chin on her head. From his peripheral vision he could see the larger map with all the little red X’s that suddenly make such terrible sense to him.
He truly did feel sorry for the poor girl. All those times she liked to bring up something about her family, at the time he found it equally as endearing as annoying sometimes. Now it was painfully obvious why.
He found himself thinking out loud.
Susan huffed with a smile that was buried in his chest. With some sniffles she turned her head to speak unmuffled.
“Aw, thanks, B. This does help a little…”
“No. I want to help you find them.” He clarified.
She tries to look up at him, despite the fact his head’s still resting on hers and all she can see is the end of his beak.
“That’s real sweet Mr. B, but you don’t have to.”
The old vulture’s grip around her tightened slightly as he shook his head that still rested on her’s. He’s certain he’s made up his mind this time.
“You’re the first person to find me, you’re the first to try to help me,” He stubbornly whispers with determination in his tone, “Now I want to help you. However I can. Once I get the answers I want I’ll help you solve your problems as well, and I refuse to take ‘no’ as a viable answer, Susan.”
That seemed to be what broke the dam for her as the tears she was fighting to keep down for a more solitary moment to herself flowed out. She buried her face back into his chest to muffle her sobs, as her grip on him tightened as well.
Through the muffled sobbing she tried to say, “You’re a sweet ol’ man, B… B-but what about Brycen?” but it came out garbled.
Mr. B wasn’t sure what she said but he didn’t want to ask her to repeat it while she was like this. His own mind did find itself wandering Brycen’s way on its own anyhow.
He took his chin off her crown and lowered it to her buried face.
“Would it be a breach of confidence if I tell my brother about this later?” he gently asked.
She looked his way, shook her head and muttered, “No…”, as she tried to wipe some tears away.
She felt so tired now… or maybe she was just realizing just how tired she’s really been. There were still some streaks down her white cheeks as she closed her eyes. Her arms were still wrapped around his torso and it looked like the little duck woman had no intention of letting go anytime soon. Mr. Buzzard wasn’t perturbed as he reached back with one hand and dragged the now cold sleeping bag up to them both and maneuvered his way onto it to lay down without letting go of her.
As his own eyes slowly eased shut he looked at the abandoned mess of papers and the still active flashlight, Susan left just a foot away. He’d worry about the whole mess tomorrow when everyone is properly rested. Tonight, he’s content as serving as a pillow for his fellow lost soul and found family member.
