She teleported into the center of the Blue Feather, per usual. Home. But no more Linden woods, she sighs while staring out the transparent wall.
She spots Woody’s first addition: an abandoned car next to the Fal Mouth Moon gallery next door, which cheers her up somehow. Something new, something different. “Oh well,” she speaks aloud to herself. “Time to march onward and upward, as Baker Bloch might positively say. Or Woody now, I suppose. Let’s see, he said meet him at the town dump…”
Wheeler decides to change into Hidi tonight before heading out in public. Quick and easy. She moves toward the front door of the club, and then spots something else different: pirate mausoleum’s wall penetrating through (although she didn’t guess this at the time).
She then goes outside through Blocking Shrub, takes a gander up and then down the main road bisecting 7 Stones.
Oh me Gods, she thinks. The crystals are back, pheh. I suppose that’s what you get for having a wooden toy decorate your town now. On cue, Woody pops into view across the street, first a glowing white ovoid, then himself. He was sitting in a rocking chair, looking smug and proud as usual. And that voice (!) She must brace herself.
—–
“Well I’m here. What’s you got, Dummy?”
“Woody, please.”
“Oh that’s right,” Wheeler/Hidi amended. “You’re a toy, not a dummy. And not a dummy toy.”
“I have a college degree!” he spoke in a high, irritating register while holding forward his glinting gold key.
“Diploma, yes.” Wheeler remembers seeing Woody for the first time with that key. She remembered the key didn’t like her, even though Woody didn’t say it out loud. Thought her *aberrant*. Well… I’ll show him — it — who’s aberrant now.
Woody takes a long, deep sniff. Wheeler didn’t like this gesture either, although no nasal vocalizations are involved. Just the fact that it came out of the same nose, I suppose. “Smell that?!” The voice again, ugh. “Ewww. Doesn’t smell *good*, does it? Aberrant more like it.” Like you, Woody thinks, but once again doesn’t say aloud. He gets up. “Let’s go see where it’s coming from.”
“The dump, I would suppose,” states Hidi logically while following Woody past the appropriate sign.
Before she knew it, Woody had run ahead of her and dived off what appeared to be a bank.
She gasped, walked much more carefully to the precipice, and peered down, fearing the worse. But there was only Woody sprawled atop a mouth shaped floatie toy, looking up from a interestingly decorated swimming pool. “Oh hi, Wheeler! Long time no see. Dive on down. The water is perfect today!”
The closer she got to the bank, the more the smell dissipated. “Oh what the hell.”
Sunklands 