SURPRISE UPDATE
:D
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    I was awoken to a loud screech. I sat up immediately and glanced around blearily to see a little orange devil tearing through the building.

    "ORATIO!" Eryan followed, tripping over the two of us, in an attempt to catch him.

    The fox let out a happy bark as he jumped onto the shelves, with a small dead mouse in his jaws. He dropped it and grinned deviously at us from his perch above.

    "What time is it?" Ryan asked, yawning, she hadn't even opened her eyes yet.

    "It's early time." I replied, blinking as I looked for a shirt.

    "It's adventuring time!" Eryan said happily, standing up again, fully clothed and ready to go. "Are you guys ready to journey to Zestos?"

    I found my clothes and pulled them on, trying to ignore the fact that they should probably have been washed by now. "Oh yeah. Give me a sec."

    "Get dressed friends, I've already packed everything so we're all ready to go!" She said happily.

    Archery practice had gone terrible yesterday, if you were wondering. I couldn't aim to save my life. We had ruled out bows as my main weapon. For now, I was given a hand me down dagger, in case I was randomly attacked by any sword wielding wolf women again.

    We had to practically drag Ryan out of bed, but we eventually got going. The air was crisp and there was still dew on the grass. Most importantly, Oratio kept happily chattering and making little clicking noises as we walked. For the first day of our travel, it was okay.

    Two days later, it was getting annoying.

    "Sweet me." Peri groaned, repeatedly banging his head against my shoulder.

I wasn't much more optimistic. The only time Oratio had ceased the little fox noises was a short period when he spotted a rabbit and disappeared to catch it. I had learned so far that Oratio liked snacks too. Food and high level sound was basically all it was under that fur. The weird thing was Eryan never seemed bothered by it, maybe she was used to it, who knows.

Other distressing things that had happened over the past few days, we had encountered a normal snake that throughly freaked Ryan and I out until Eryan kicked it and we ran like the children that we were. Peri had caught a grasshopper, and I was slowly loosing my mind to fox chattering. Now it was late afternoon and we we just started setting up camp.

    "I'm gonna go refill our bottles, I'll be right back." Eryan informed.

    Ryan and I started setting out our small blanket-beds, like we had for the last two days. After that I started digging a small pit for a fire. Ryan supplied the wood. By that time Eryan had come back, we were racing to see who could get the fire to light the fastest. Eryan usually won.

    We settled down for the night, and didn't realize for once, that there was no background chatter, seeing as we were already exhausted. For once everything was quiet and we didn't notice. I guess we were tired. Anyway we woke up the next morning to a wonderful surprise.

    "Alright you guys, more dried meat for breakfast." Eryan said, stretching and reaching for one of our bags.

    "Wakey wakey, dried meat and disappointment." Ryan mumbled into the ground.

    That made me smile. At least until I saw Eryan's confused expression as she dug through her bag, then mine, then Ryan's. I started to worry.

    "What is it?" I asked.

    "I can't find any of the food we packed, except for..." She pulled out a small bag of dried mangoes that was mostly empty.

    "I think we found our culprit." Ryan said, pointing to a relaxed looking Oratio stretched out across the ground, several remains of dried meat scattered on the grass around him.

    Eryan's eyes widened. "Oratio!" She shrieked angrily.

    His ears perked up and he looked at her innocently, realizing he'd been caught in the act.

    "Did he eat all of that, is that healthy?" I asked Peri, who looked almost as impressed as I felt.

    "I mean it's probably wrecking havoc on his mortal body, but theoretically he'll be fine."

    Oratio looked us in a way the told me he was probably saying 'I regret everything'.

    "That was all our food for the rest of the week!" Eryan screeched again.

    "Are there any towns near here we can stop by?" Ryan asked.

Eryan shook her head. "We have to get to a Scobi bus before we're even close to the nearest civilization, we're too far to back as well."

"There's gotta be somewhere we can stop." I insisted.

"I mean, theoretically." Eryan said, pulling out her hair. "I can't believe you."

That last bit was directed and Oratio, who winced.

"We can fly ahead and check." Peri suggested, "and be back before sunset."

"We definitely won't starve before sunset, right?" Ryan asked.

"I guess that's our only choice." Eryan blinked. "This is not how I planned this trip to go."

The two parrots set off into the morning sky and packed up as fast as we could, we had to get an early start if we were gonna cut time.

"Okay so good news." Eryan started, once she had pulled out a map. "Because we got up pretty early the last few days, it's only gonna take us four more days, counting today, to get there. It's gonna take us two days to get to the Scobi bus however. Once we reach the bus we can take a different route to a closer city if needed. For now we might need to take hunting breaks, but that means our food will spoil easily."

    "Not to mention we really don't have to supplies to lug all that around, so that might slow us down a bit." Ryan also pointed out.

"Okay, miss buzzkill-" Eryan started.

"Hey you guys?" I interrupted them, pointing to the horizon. "Is that smoke?"

The stop verbally jabbing back and forth at each other to follow my finger.

"I think it is." Ryan marveled.

"Thanks Kosmos." Eryan said, laughing nervously. "I was really worried for a second."

"Smoke most likely means humans, which means food." I deducted. "Let's go."

At that moment two little blurs whizzed by and our parrots were back.

"Hey, you guys really were back before sunset." Ryan mused.

"That's only because there was this huge falcon circling." Peri gasped, wheezing for breath. "He's a familiar I know it, and he wasn't being friendly."

"What are they saying?" Eryan asked.

"There's a falcon familiar up ahead, not a friendly one." I translated.

"There's also a house." Ryan continued. "And we already saw the smoke."

"A house? That's even better. We can ask the owner for some leftovers maybe." Eryan offered, getting an idea.

"Peri doesn't trust it." I informed, watching him pace on the nearest tree branch.

"Peri doesn't trust a lot of things." Eryan pointed out. "Besides, this is kinda our only choice."

"Is it decided then?" Ryan asked.

"Mysterious other house in the woods, here we come." I finalized.

Ha ha, that was probably the biggest mistake I've ever made in my life.