“Whatchu doin’ here any way?”

Bert kept a wary eye on the silent ducks as he followed the spaniel eared man away. Apparently the ducks were kind of a source of food for Old Yeller’s people. They were ‘a bunch o’ patchwork lot, we are’ but they make it work. Bert gave Old Yeller’s ears a look and received a smile that was at least two quarts more bitter than his usual lopsided grin.

“I am…lost,” he said truthfully.

Old Yeller gave his outfit a glance, noting the tailored trousers, shirt, neck scarf and heavy weatherproof coat. Roberta was very thorough with her crafting. His nose gave a twitch as he stared up at the stranger in the black fancy clothes. As partially canine, his nose was more sensitive than most humans’ and could generally tell the difference between the undead and the truly living.

Though the clothes were those favoured by those damned blood suckers, this person was clearly living. The fear-smell was real too, the boy really had been afraid of the ducks. Hah!

Although… those eyes really looked a lot like dead fish eyes. He had seen bloodsuckers with more life in them. Especially when they were hungry, or angry, or hungry and angry, or hangry, as the young ‘uns like to say nowadays..

Hehehe.

Old Yeller laughed at his own modern hipness.

Bert pretended not to see the muttering and secret grinning. Roberta would sometimes do the same thing whenever she pondered upon one of her projects. Sometimes, the mutterings would be interspersed with cries of ‘I’m such a Genius!’ with her rushing away to prove her genius to the world.

They arrived at camp after an hour’s walk. It was a nice camp, Bert supposed. There were the expected large tents and carts or carriages, or whatever you call the large wooden constructs where people on the move would live in. Ah, caravans!

The scene was like something out of Enid Blyton’s imagination.

Colourful tents, check.

Colourful caravans, check.

Colourful people, quite literally when it came to their clothes, check.

People with random animal features. He counted two pairs of spaniel ears, three sets of cat ears, a fox tail and a child running past him in hoofed feet. Right, random animal features. Check.

The camp was very, very clean, kind of like a television set of what a camp should be. There were no litter, no random piles of junk, no strong body odour despite the mix and match animal features.

In short, it felt very artificial.

He tried to recall what Amanda Glowheart (Author of the best seller series Twee Light) had written about this particular place but could not actually recall much.

Lucinda Mavis came from a family of singers and musicians. There were some indications of her grandfather or great-grand aunt or something that had noble connections, but that this branch of the family tree was the odd fruit that decided to pursue music instead.

The parents died in a tragic fire.

Lucinda had a younger called Lucretia, very dramatic name, who died during a vampire raid in volume one and was tragically revealed to be alive later in volume two as a slave for some random mean vampire.

He remembered this bit because Roberta had shrieked and ranted about it to him at midnight the second after she had finished reading volume two for the first time. She also showed him all the dissatisfied fans’ comments and rants at every time they meet up. Sometimes, she would show the same thing five times in two days.

Bert quickly got tired of it all, but endured in the name of friendship.

So, in sum:

It was entirely possible that he will meet Lucinda (and Lucretia) soon.

Second, it was possible that Amanda Glowheart read Enid Blyton when she was younger.

Third, he hoped the food would be ok here, but since it’s based on Enid Blyton he’d probably see a blue cake sooner or later.

At least all the characters were wearing shoes, except for hoof boy, meaning he had not accidentally stumbled into a werewolf camp.