I'm killing the story.
Womp womp.
I'm pretty sure most of you forgot this story existed, much like I did. I'd lie and say I forgot my password for Wattpad, but if you look at my profile and all the stuff I have on there, I clearly haven't.
I've kinda lost my motivation to continue this one, and it's sorta the same with a couple of my other stories. I mean, most of em are old anyway. Plus after going through them a bit, they make me cringe, especially this one.
But hey, if some of you guys still like this, good for you. I was originally hoping to steer the writing of this thing in a new direction, but it's kinda too far along now to do that.
So at first, I planned on just silently deleting this thing, but then I see how popular it was and how many people interacted with it, and it makes me feel bad for just killing it without warning.
In the end, I decided this: I'll leave this up for the sake of nostalgia and such, along with the unpublished draft of what I had so far for the story. And, if you have any questions about anything related to the story, I'll answer them so you're not left unsatisfied.
But hey, thanks to all of the people that read this and stuff, it was really cool to have something I wrote blow up so much. Well, maybe not "blow up," but that's what it felt like to me.
So, thanks for indulging in this silly little project of mine, sorry again for putting it to permanent rest.
The aforementioned draft is below.
Three weeks since the stranding. Since Navalia hadn't slept well the first night, she decided to have sleepovers with Hunter. There was no consequence, if she slept, she slept well.
Cthulhu required more hydration on this side on the multiverse, so he was in a fish bowl often. Flapjack liked to perch on the rim. When Cthulhu fell asleep, his head would float to the top of the water and Flapjack would nap on his head.
The human world was very interesting. Navalia enjoyed the music, a lot of the movies and tv, the food, the science, the varieties of fighting styles, the weird animals, the calm weather, the literature.
She'd only gotten mere tastes of it all, but what she'd seen so far, she liked very much.
The kids had all gone to the woods house they portalled out of to check for anything that might help them get back home the day after they arrived. There was nothing, so Nav got right to her pre-experimentation stage.
She had spent her time not only immersing herself in human media, but in Luz and Camilla's textbooks on chemistry. They didn't offer much useful knowledge, but at least she knew what to use to make explosives.
And Navalia had just made a small one and attached it to the bottom of an old crockpot Camilla didn't use anymore.
She took it outside and began adding ingredients to the water she had put inside. A couple drops of the portal world elixir. Two grams of gold. A tablespoon of siracha. One of her own eyelashes. A thread of silk. And lastly, a glass shard from her broken ring.
Navalia stirred it with a stick she found. After five minutes, the surface of the liquid trembled and turned a shiny shade of red, the same color of the trees in the Boiling Isles.
She flung the stick out of the crockpot and lit a match. She backed up and threw it at the bottom of her makeshift cauldron and scurried a safe distance from it before it caused a small explosion.
Once the smoke cleared, she got close and saw her potion boil with gold bubbles.
Navalia put the sleeves of her jacket up to her palms and picked up the crockpot. She carefully poured it on the grass to make a circle the size of a lawn chair.
Once the circle closed, she whispered a chant on her knees. The potion started to swirl, looking like a running river as the chants gradually grew louder.
Suddenly, the potion shot up like an upside down waterfall. Navalia stood up and examined it. It didn't change into the black swirly thing that's usually seen when the portals are made.
She threw a rock at the thing.
It sunk into the potion and was spat back out from the other side.
She picked it up. Nothing seemed to be wrong with the rock. So Navalia came to the conclusion that she should stick her head into her creation.
After face planting into the potion wall, she had found herself with her head sticking out from the direct opposite side of the potion thing.
She pulled her head back and shook the elixir out of her hair.
Navalia took a little test tube sample of the experiment before it fell apart and evaporated. Then she took all her stuff back to the Noceda house.
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Navalia sat and took some notes on the living room couch as Bluey episodes played in the background.
As she scribbled something down, she felt a familiar hand on her left shoulder and a warm peck on her head.
"Morning," greeted Hunter with a cute smile.
Navalia returned it. "Morning to you, too."
"You been up long?"
"Since six," she admitted. "I did the first experiment today."
"For real?! How'd it go?" Hunter asked enthusiastically.
"It was surprisingly closer than expected. See, our original hypothesis considered the possibility that this dimension wouldn't respond to our world's sciences and would give us some fucked up result, right?"
"Yeah, and we'd have to do more stuff to get this place used to it."
"Turns out, it had a pretty good response without easing our otherworldly science into this one. Trial One could portal things from one extension of its fluid body to another!"
"Seriously?!"
"Seriously! And after some studies, who knows what Trial Two will be like!"
While everyone else finished breakfast, Hunter and Navalia talked and did some post-experiment work together.
Willow sipped an herbal tea as she glanced at them.
"You'd think they're on a date right now."
"Have they been on a real one yet?" Gus asked.
Luz shook her head. "Don't think so. Unless you count the times they hung out 'as friends' after fighting each other as Maverick and Golden Guard."
Willow and Gus exchanged a look, getting the same idea; they were gonna make those two date.
Even though they're already together.
Camilla clapped her hands together. "Alright kids! I've recently come up on a raise and a bonus at work, and we're pretty much out of clothes for you to wear, so we're going thrift shopping!"
Even though Luz wasn't in the best mental state, she liked the sound of that.
The other kids were just confused.
"What's a thrift?" Gus asked.
"And why are we shopping for one?" Amity added.
"Oh!" Navalia perked up. "I know this! Thrift shopping is when you shop at these human secondhand stores where people can donate stuff and others can buy it for a bargain. You can either find the most random and ridiculous items or the most awesome and rare stuff with barely any in between."
"Yeah, that sums it up." Vee confirmed.
Willow got excited. "Cool! Let's go!"
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The witch kids were astonished. There were so many things they'd never heard or thought of amidst the clothes. It was like a treasure trove.
Navalia felt at the grooves of a vinyl record. Hunter gently put his hand on her arm with a CD case in his other palm.
"What's that?"
"Something I never learned the name of. I've been to a whole shop of these on one of my last trips before the door was destroyed. They do something with sound. How'd it work?"
She balanced the center on her middle finger and spun it, expecting something to happen. Nothing did.
"Hmm. I'll ask Luz and Vee later. What about you? What's that?"
Hunter stared at the CD case.
"A box. I thought the picture was interesting."
Navalia looked at it. It was art of a dark street. There was a man under a streetlight and under a sign that read K. West.
"David Bowie. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars... is that some sort of human legend?"
"Maybe. If it is, I'd like to hear about it."
"If this is a box, it should be able to open."
Navalia looked at the rim for the opening side. She found it and got it open, though it was a little tough. There was a shiny reflective thingy that looked like the record Navalia had inside.
"Is that some sort of cookie?"
Gus popped up between them. "Taste test!!"
Navalia held it up in the air before Gus could bite down on it. "We haven't paid for it! And I'm pretty sure it isn't safe for us to eat. It's all hard."
"I'm gonna go find one that isn't expired."
As Gus left, something else piqued Navalias interest. She walked up to a painting with the back facing her.
When she looked to see what the painting was of, she was surprised to see it was of old Bonesborough. It was titled "The Future of our Town."
Young men stood in rows. One caught her eye. He was a blonde teenager with a hooked nose, and his hand was on the shoulder of a little boy in front of him.
Hunter went to see with her before she could say anything. His eyes widened when they landed on the boy who looked exactly like him.
"I can burn this right now, just say the word."
"No, don't. It drained you before, it probably still will... let's just make sure the others don't see it."
"There's a list of names in the back corner. Did you want to...?"
Hunter gulped and nodded. "Read it to me?"
Navalia held his hand as she looked through the names. Hunter studied the painted expression on his doppelgänger intensely.
"Caleb Wittebane."
"Wait, seriously?"
"Yeah. Weird we used the first name on you, huh?"
"Uh huh... let's get that away."
They put it behind a much larger frame and went with everyone else to get some clothes.
There was a montage of all the kids finding their style and some decent outfits. They didn't buy everything, but all the stuff they wanted but put back had mysteriously appeared at the house the next morning.
Yes, Navalia stole, but just because she was in a new world, that didn't mean she had to stop doing one of the things she was best at.
Anyways, over the next week, Hunter and Navalia worked together to analyze the previously used recipe and get together a new potion recipe. Now it was just a matter of finding the ingredients.
Half of it was easily found in stores around town, but some other stuff took time. For example, they needed fresh rainwater, and they didn't know when it was going to rain next, so they'd have to wait.
Navalia and Hunter were in the midst of planning a trip to the woods for some fur of a woodland creature and a shedded reptilian skin when Gus and Willow walked in slightly robotically.
"Gee Willow, what is that in your hand?" Gus asked at a volume louder than usual.
"Oh, this?" Willow said just as loudly. "It's just a poster I found advertising a fair that's coming to town!"
"How interesting! Could you read it out loud?"
"Sure! Seasonal fair, one weekend only! Food, games, rides, live music, and more! Fun for everyone!"
They looked at Hunter and Navalia, who were very weirded out. The realization dawned on Navalia and she looked at her boyfriend.
"Don't know if you heard about this fair thingy, but it sounds like fun. You wanna go?"
Hunter's face got a little flushed when he realized that he was being asked out on a date. "Ye-yeah! I'd love to!"
She nose laughed with a closed smile. "Did you forget I'm already your significant other?"
"Huh? Oh. Maybe... now that it's sinking in, I'm a little sad you beat me to the question."
"Aw, I'm sorry."
"Whatever, I'm already over it. It's on me for not picking up on whatever those guys had going on first."
"Next time, I'll be more patient so you can pop the question."
"How kind of you."
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Hunter had been nervous all week. He was going on his first date ever with his crush, who he had to remind himself he was already with.
He'd gotten an itinerary drafted, and he planned his outfit, as well as concocting a potion to make his ears round for about 3 and a half hours. He wanted everything to be perfect, but he knew it would be perfect regardless because he'd be with Navalia.
She was pretty excited herself, actually. The date had gotten her mind off all the things stressing her out for a little while. On the day of, Camilla helped her do her hair all nice so it went with the outfit she chose.