“Wake up, Lord.”

“Yo Lord, by the way, I found the cinnamon buns.”

“I tried to stop her, I really did. But she wouldn’t even listen to me.”

“Um, guys, is this normal that there’s just casually a huge tsunami that she caused? Just wondering if I should flee for my life.”

“Aileen? Please. I know I shouldn’t have thrown away that sack. But please, just wake up!”

Aileen groaned and rolled over. But she kept my eyes glued shut. She wasn’t ready to face them yet.

Oh, stop being so melodramatic. You’re awake, I know it, you know it, so don’t be petty.

Aileen couldn’t tell if Shade had spoken out loud or in her head, but her eyes popped open.

“Finally,” Shade grumbled. “Took you long enough. Congratulations, you made a good decision! Unlike your recent ones!”

Sparky leaned over Aileen. She had ditched her disguise, and her eyes were red and swollen, like she had been crying.

“I’m sorry, Aila,” She said. Her voice was choked up. “I’m sorry I’ve been so distant the past few years. I guess I was just sad, but I should have been there for you.”

Aileen opened my mouth and a stream of water poured out. She coughed and said, “It’s okay, Lilah. I forgive you - and I’m sorry too.”

“Well now that that’s settled,” Shade jumped in. “What were you thinking? You would have flooded Base Camp if Glaucous hadn’t stepped in!”

Now that she noticed it, Glaucous looked exhausted. “What happened?” She asked.

“Well we were just about to go out and look for you, but then we heard this deep noise,” Hopper explained. “Well, I was the only one who heard it at first because I have better hearing with them bunny ears” - she gave her ears a tug - “but that’s not the point. Sparky was like, ‘Look, is that a storm?’ but Ivory was like, ‘No, that’s a tidal wave,’ and Shade was like, ‘But there isn’t an ocean around here,’ so we all came to the same conclusion: Our Almighty Lord was doing Fancy Almighty Water Stuff!”

Hopper paused to take a breath. “Then we were like, ‘wait a second, that’s a TIDAL WAVE and by that I mean TIDAL WAVE,’ so Glaucous had one of her big brain ideas and froze the water solid so Base Camp wouldn’t be flooded and all the land for a while around wouldn’t be all the destroyed, and Glaucous was like, ‘Hurry, I can’t hold this forever,’ and Sparky was all, boom, fire here fire there and wow, how cool is that  the water is all evaporated so it’s probably going to rain!”

Aileen took a moment to decipher the actual story from the Hopper nonsense. “So I didn’t destroy anything?” She asked.

“Nope!” Hopper said happily.

Just then, her memory returned. She jumped up to block Sparky from seeing the same devastating scene as her in the basin, but when she turned, the fountain and all of the glowing chartreuse liquid had vanished.

“But we weren’t the only ones who saw the water,” Shade said, reminding Aileen that she was supposed to be listening. Shade glanced at Ivory, wanting her to take it from there. Aileen didn’t know Ivory well yet, frankly, she didn’t know Glaucous, Hopper, or even Shade well yet, but Ivory seemed to have a family-friend connection to Shade.

Ivory stared at her hands before saying, “Shade reached out to my little sister. Cerise. My family kinda broke up a while ago”

“Her dad was a member of the OctoFrog Cult, and that’s how I know Ivory,” Shade jumped in.

“Well anyway,” Ivory took the story back up again, “In my family there’s, well, I guess was, my dad, my mom, my triplet sisters Cathryn and Amelia, and my little sister Cerise, who I met with yesterday. I wanted to know how she was doing, but when I met with her… she tried to kill me.”

“Something definitely turned her against us,” Shade added. “I talked to her when she was asleep, in her dream. She said that Reb - I mean, Ivory - was from a different life. She seemed to be trying to forget about her family.”

“Anyway,” Ivory continued, “The spot where Cerise and I met wasn’t that far from here. So I’m sure she saw the tsunami too. Knowing Cerise, she won’t think it’s nothing, and her intentions are surely nothing good.”

“What do we do, then?” Aileen asked.

“Expect a fight,” Hopper answered. She seemed serious for once. “Cerise will come, we’re sure of it. And Ivory says she’s too smart to come alone. She’ll have other nasty people with her.” Ivory cringed at the word ‘nasty’, and Glaucous hastily said, “She means other people who have lost their way as Cerise did.”

“Where do we go for our fight?” Aileen asked. “If we go to Base Camp, it might get destroyed. Up here is too steep…”

“This is where Cerise knows to find us, though,” Ivory said. 

“Why is that a good thing?”

“Maybe we can make her see reason,” Ivory said. She sounded so hopeful that Aileen decided to not say anything else on the subject.

“There’s a clearing down there,” Sparky said, looking over the edge of the cliff. “It’s pretty big.”

“We should prepare, then.” Shade glanced at Aileen.

“Gather anything you need. Take either me, Sparky, or Glaucous with you. Send up a fire, water, or ice flare if you run into trouble. Meet back here in an hour, sooner if you see a flare,” Aileen commanded.

Shade grinned. “It’s good to have you back, Lord.”