'What If...' No. 1

Chapter 2 - Ships and Secrecy

The second morning hit, I shot up out of my bed and packed a bag with everything I would need- a water bottle, pens, the map of Snaktooth and by far the most important, my journal. I admired the journal with its torn leather cover and slightly ripped pages before placing it into my bag and zipping it up. Putting my bag on my back, I walked out of my room.

Striding through the hallway, I headed towards the kitchen. I would need food for the journey to Snaktooth. Standing in the kitchen was Filbo. He stood by the oven with a pan containing a few slices of bacon. Filbo turned round noticing me, and smiled.

"Hey Buddy!" He spoke with a big grin on his face and a cheerful tone, "How's it going?" I walked into the kitchen as I opened the cupboard and took out a tall glass. "Everything's pretty good thanks. You?" I filled my glass up halfway with water, contemplating whether it was half full or half empty before filling the glass all the way. "Yup! Im excited for today!" He grinned widely as he walked over beside me.

Confused, I asked, "What's today?" Filbo stared blankly for a second before he realised something. "Ohhh! I'm sorry Buddy, I must have forgotten to tell you! I planned a picnic to get the whole group together. It's gonna be awesome!" He smiled as I took a sip from my glass of water. "This is going to make leaving for Snaktooth much harder than I thought." I thought to myself as I continued to drink. "I'll have to go off later in the day so no one notices I'm gone that quickly."

The smell of smoke filled the air quite quickly and I coughed a bit. Turning around, it could be seen that the pan was on fire. "Erm. Filbo. The pan. It's on fire." I pointed at the burning pan and Filbo's faced filled with shock. He quickly rushed over and tried to put out the fire by blowing on it. After a moment of thought, I walked over to the pan with my glass of water in hand and poured what was left of it onto the fire. The water doused the flames and all that was left was small cloud of smoke and some black thin blobs.

"Oh no!! The bacon's burned." Filbo's voice was filled with sadness as he looked down. I picked up one of the burnt pieces of bacon and tapped it on the side. It crumbled into nothing more than a black powder. "Looks like we're not having breakfast." The cremated bits of bacon were scrapped from the pan and into the bin by the cabinets. "Don't worry Buddy!" Filbo smiled widely, "We can just wait until the picnic to eat! That won't be too long of a wait." Filbo looked up at the kitchen clock. The time read '10:32'. "And speaking of the picnic, we need to get packing to go."

Filbo went to walk out of the room when he noticed the bag on my back. "Oh! You already packed? That was fast Buddy." I quickly began to think to myself of what to say "Y-Yeah, I had a feeling that there would be some plans today so I packed a bag just in case!" I laughed sheepishly, hoping that would be a good excuse. "Ahhh! Wow Buddy, you're really smart huh?" Filbo tilted his head as I nodded. "Yup. That's me. Smart. Now when is that picnic?"

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About an hour later, Filbo had packed a bag and was ushering me out of the door. He seemed to not have cared about what was in my bag because he didn't ask me at all. This whole picnic would make it harder to leave for Snaktooth, but not impossible. Just a slight delay, that's all.

Filbo kept on walking along before he began to wave frantically at two Grumpuses off in the distance- one dark blue with a straw hat and a patterned green shirt, the other dark green with a beige hat and a matching jacket. "Wamboooone!" Filbo spread his arms out wide as he hugged Wambus, who looked quite annoyed. Tiffany just smiled. "I told you not to call me that." Wambus said as he pried Filbo off of him. "Oh, right. Sorry." Filbo took a step back and the four of us stood there with a slightly awkward feeling lingering in the air.