Adventures in Brightvale

      The Brightvale University alumni, a Blue Buzz, wrinkled his nose and hovered backwards for just a second so the Swamp Gas Uni wouldn’t notice. She did, of course.

      “Just put your name down on the sheet over there.” He pointed to a bulletin board Hazel was familiar with, because during her first year at BVU she’d tried repeatedly to start a club for pets of her same paintbrush colour.

      “Thank you.” Hazel pretended to ignore the Buzz’s immediate retrieval of air freshener.

      Her roommate, a Custard Usul named Naomi, had warned her not to participate in the school’s annual Brightvale Scavenger Hunt. “They’re always trying to rope us students into wasting our time on school spirit,” Naomi would say.

      Hazel didn’t know who “they” were. If Naomi was proposing that BVU purposely gave students an opportunity to not go crazy sitting in class all day… Hazel hastily agreed.

      Being a History major wasn’t the treasure-mapping adventure she’d thought it would be. Hazel had grown up in Krawk Island—where no one took a second glance at her Swamp Gas appearance or sniffed cautiously when meeting her for the first (or tenth) time. With her brother, Franklin, she would scour the beaches looking for shipwrecks or dubloons or simply an abandoned container of Negg Goo.

      Brightvale University was amazing. Of course it was. But where was the excitement? And even though school-wide activities hardly counted as thrilling, they were still rare.

      Today’s scavenger hunt wouldn’t start for another hour, so Hazel had time to run back to her dorm and grab a snack. The fridge was nearly empty but she found something soon enough.

      Sometimes, during their first year at Brightvale, Hazel had been so hungry and busy she asked Naomi to bring home her custard from haircuts. She could even eat a whole Aisha Cheeseburger in the four minutes it took from her dorm and to her first class. Now that such desperate times were through, what harm was there in taking a day off to do something hopefully fun?

      Sure, there was her essay. Or those lab questions. Or even that collage! But they could wait.

      Hazel finished scarfing down her Blueberry Roll and hastily checked her Alarm Clock Notebook for the time. It didn’t usually function as an actual clock or watch, but last semester she had rigged it up to. There were twenty minutes until the hunt’s start.

      A frequent deployer of the phrase “fashionably late”, Hazel usually wouldn’t have batted a wing at this. However, today she packed up her bag and headed back out immediately.

      She reviewed the pamphlet while walking: Hazel had become an expert at juggling various activities with her short travels over the years.

      “Students will work in teams to locate different aspects of Brightvale culture,” she read. “The prize will be a job well done.”

      Hazel stopped. Seriously? No actual prize?

      Activities Hub, she found in a minute, was already packed. Neopets of all major, species, and paintbrush colour stood arm to arm like the crates of shrimp they keep in the back at the Golden Dubloon. Hazel gulped nervously.

      Soon enough a familiar hand tapped her on the shoulder.

      “Naomi?” asked Hazel. “What are you doing here? I thought you said school events were only for students without any classes.”

      “Extra credit,” Naomi explained.

      Hazel nodded. That sounded like the roommate she knew.

      “So have you found a group?” she wondered. “There’s so many Neopets here, and somehow even though we’re on the same campus I don’t recognize any of them…”

      “I’m standing with my group right here. Don’t tell me you don’t remember Anna and Silas!”

      Anna and Silas, two Meercas, waved. Trying to look friendly, Hazel waved back.

      Naomi was from a small neighbourhood in Neopia Central where everyone went to a very well-reviewed Neoschool. Her longest lasting best friends, Anna and Silas, had also gone on to attend Brightvale University. They weren’t Hazel’s favourites.

      In fact, Hazel felt very insignificant and Swamp Gas-y in the midst of Naomi’s friends. For a while it had been her and Naomi against the world (or the university) and that was hard to adjust from. “So,” she asked the group, half-joking, “you aren’t all doing this for extra credit, right?”

      Anna immediately nodded her head yes. Naomi and a Peophin Hazel didn’t know followed suit.

      “Wow,” Hazel said. “I thought it sounded interesting.”

      “It does,” the Peophin admitted, “but I have so many essays I’d rather be working on!”

      Come on, Hazel thought, nobody really talks like that, do they? If her day was going to be spent around unenthusiastic Neopets who were only in this for a grade, maybe she’d rather be doing work, too.

      However, she was stuck—no way was she rude enough to actually leave and find another group or say she didn’t feel like doing this after all. Hazel would have to deal with it.

      “Listen up, BVU students!” a Pink Bruce called from the Hub stage. “You’ve all been handed your lists and been made part of a group. We don’t have access to Uni-driven carriages anymore, so you’ll have to make it on foot!”

      “Or you could fly us, ha ha,” Naomi said to Hazel.

      “Yeah, you wish,” she joked back.

      Once all the teams dispersed, Hazel set their list on the ground and began to read aloud. “Alright,” she said, “we have to buy an Air Mote from the Motery, colour one Coloring Page, and bring back one wild Icky Fruit. So—who’s doing what?”

      “Shouldn’t we all stick together?” the Peophin asked.

      Shaking her head, Hazel explained, “If we do that, it’ll take too long. Covering as much ground as possible makes more sense.”

      “But then we might lose track of each other,” Silas pointed out. His tail drooped.

      “So we just all meet back here.”

      Anna and the Peophin looked like they wanted to continue arguing, but Naomi stifled them with a glance. Regarding her thankfully, Hazel said in as calm a tone as she could muster, “Okay. I’m guessing nobody but me will want to get the Icky Fruit?”

      Her teammates were silent. Hazel rolled her eyes and added, “It’s fine. I don’t have a very strong sense of smell.”

      “Is that typical for Swamp Gas pets?” Silas asked.

      “Yeah. And the swamp stuff doesn’t smell very bad to us, anyway.” Hazel carefully tore the list into three pieces, one for each scavenger hunt item. “Here you guys go. Who wants which?”

      Anna stared at the scraps in disbelief. “Why did you do that?”

      “Um, so we don’t forget what we’re looking for…”

      “I had scrap paper!” Anna protested. “Seriously, Hazel, what if we needed to present the list—while it’s still intact—at the end in order to qualify? You need to ask the team before making decisions all on your own.”

      Hazel sighed. She didn’t completely agree with the Meerca’s reasoning, but had to admit she had a point with her lack of teamwork. “Okay. I'm sorry, Anna. What should we do?”

      “Nothing, now, I guess,” said Anna. “I’ll get the mote with Naomi.”

      Okay, this stung a little. Despite what Hazel had said, she still expected Naomi to come with her for the Icky Fruit, or at least part of the way. Now Silas and the Peophin would go together, leaving Hazel the only loner.

      Squashing her discomfort, Hazel went along silently as she and her team travelled to the approximate median point between the three destinations. After a mumbled goodbye to Naomi, she took off and began to fly.

      Hazel didn’t often fly. Her hooves were tough and she enjoyed using them to walk. But for a situation like this, of course she would fly.

      Having time to think while she searched for an Icky Fruit patch, Hazel determined:

      That it actually wouldn’t have made sense for her and Naomi to go together, because then they wouldn’t be able to fly. Naomi, being Custard, didn’t fare well with strong winds.

      That if she was going to end up on her own so often, at least she was becoming awfully well adapted to it. There were worse things than solitude, something she'd learned on many long afternoons spent exploring Krawk Island's tiniest coves all by herself.

      And that Neopets who came from different backgrounds were naturally going to have different reasons for entering a scavenger hunt. Hazel didn’t find much comfort in this last bit, but it kept her from feeling pessimistic while she flew over the emerald Brightvale forests.

      It really was a beautiful land, wasn’t it? When most of all it was known for scholars and wisdom, not its breathtaking scenery or various exports. Hazel’s experience with the natives told her they were plenty modest, just fairly uptight. In Krawk Island, everyone and everything was rough around the edges. She could learn to appreciate a little class.

      When Hazel got off on mental tangents, it took a second for her to snap back to reality. A barren patch of land materialized before her, spotted with bland green and just a touch of orange.

      Hazel dove.

      Usually, when she tried a risky move like this, the results were anything from Jhudora to the Darkest Faerie on the nastiness scale. Once she crashed into a coral bed, and had to stay in the Warf Wharf Neohospital for a week.

      This time, the Icky Fruit cushioned her fall. After groaning for a moment, Hazel picked herself up and regarded the piece of paper again. Really only one Icky Fruit? Nice.

      Slipping the Icky Fruit into her bag, she regained flight. One wing felt bruised, and that would hinder her speed, but altogether, good work.

      She wondered how her teammates were doing. Naomi and Anna would have trouble for sure—how many Neopets must be at the Motery right now trying to purchase an Air Mote? The poor Shopkeeper, too.

      By the Colouring Pages, Silas and the Peophin would have more luck. As long as the line wasn’t long, they could slip in and run right out to colour it somewhere in peace.

      Hazel laughed to herself. Her teammates, to put it nicely, didn’t seem like the most creative Neopets out there. What would they colour the page? Black and white? If Hazel was more mature, with a much nobler conscience, she would have reprimanded herself for saying that. But she didn’t really care.

      In truth, the solitude was starting to get to her. She enjoyed taking care of herself but better enjoyed having a partner.

      Franklin had been her first, and then Naomi, but Hazel figured that if she were to be paired with Anna, Silas, and the Peophin again, maybe she wouldn’t really mind.

     The End.