Lost and Found

     There, nestled between the familiar shops in the narrow streets of Faerie City, was a storefront the 25th Anniversary Aisha was certain she had never seen before.

     Lost and Found was scrawled across the window in a script better suited to gloomy Neovia than the bright atmosphere of Faerieland.

     She glanced to the shops on either side, a cozy used book shop and a bakery. She frequented both collecting items for assignments from the Faerieland Employment Agency, and she was absolutely certain they had been next to each other the last time she was here.

     Curiosity overcame the Aisha, and she stepped inside. A bell chimed overhead, but there was no shopkeeper in sight to greet her, and the mostly empty shelves she found inside were covered in Spyder and Aboogala webs.

     Novelyx turned down one of the long aisles and perused the shelves. What remained were small trinkets--bottles of sand from Mystery Island, pirate memorabilia, discarded plushies. Cheap things, but the kinds of things a Neopet might have brought home from their travels and kept as a memento forever. As she explored further, she noticed that almost everything--maybe everything, actually--in the shop was damaged somehow: glass bottles chipped, wooden toys marred with scorch marks, thrice-read books that looked as though they'd once been waterlogged. Nothing was priced. None of the shelves bore any kind of sign, and as far as the Aisha could tell, there was no rhyme or reason to where the items had been placed.

     The Aisha turned down a new aisle. Did Faerieland have a magical Lost and Found she'd never known about? That would explain the lack of price tags, absent shopkeeper, and the variety of objects on the shelves, but as far as the Aisha knew, she hadn't lost anything recently--why would it appear to her, today?

     Near the end of the last aisle, she spotted a Shoyru-shaped plushie much larger than the others--big enough to be a real Shoyru, though a small one. An Aboogala skittered over the strange toy's burlap covering, weaving a strand of thread to sew up a small tear in its arm.

     Novelyx watched for a moment, fascinated, and, to her surprise, noticed a slow but rhythmic rise and fall to the Burlap Shoyru's chest.

     She started backward, and in that instant became aware of the faintest tingle of magic on her skin. It was an odd kind of magic the Aisha had never felt before--not faerie magic, which always resembled their elements, warm or wet or gritty, but an old, sad kind of magic. Nostalgic and soft.

     "H--Hello?" Novelyx asked. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean-- Is-- Is this your-- your store?" Novelyx was certain now that this was no store, but she couldn't come up with something better to ask. The magic around her grew stronger for an instant, then faded entirely, leaving her alone with the Burlap Aisha and the Aboogala. "Hello, Miss?" Novelyx said.

     Slowly, the Shoyru focused on Novelyx. Confusion spread through her beady black eyes as she looked around her, then back at Novelyx. "Do I know you?" she asked. And then, more confused still, "Wait, where are we?"

     "My name is Novelyx, and I work for the Faerieland Employment Agency. I was just on my way home for the day, and I noticed this place I've never seen before. It says Lost and Found out front. Do you work here?" Novelyx half-hoped that the Shoyru was just disoriented from having been woken from a particularly deep sleep, but she knew from the pit in her stomach that wasn't the case. She couldn't quite pinpoint why she felt so uneasy--she wasn't frightened of this place or the Shoyru, but there was something wrong going on here. Something terrible.

     The Shoyru shook her head. "Did you say the Faerieland Employment Agency? We're--we're in Faerieland?"

     "Yes," Novelyx replied gently. "Is that a bad thing?"

     The Burlap Neopet rubbed at her eyes, then looked around the shop again. "I-- I don't know," she admitted finally. "Faerieland. That-- I don't know if that's right. I don't know--"

     "What's your name?"

     "Tagney."

     "Tagney, it's nice to meet you. You seem to have gotten into a bit of a scrape? That Aboogala is fixing a little tear in your burlap. Do you know them?"

     The Shoyru looked down at herself for the first time since she'd woken. "She belongs to my..." Tagney's eyes grew wide. "I have a Spring Snowbunny. Where is she? Where's Jay?!"

     "I haven't seen a Snowbunny, but I'll help you find her. Come on, wherever she went, I'm sure there are tracks around here somewhere." There's so much dust, after all, Novelyx thought.

     It only took a few minutes and the exploration of a few additional aisles to find up the Snowbunny's tracks. The two followed the trail to a counter Novelyx hadn't noticed at the back of Lost and Found, where the petpet seemed to have squeezed through a gap between two showcases and scampered into the back room.

     "Hello? Is anyone back there?" Novelyx called out. She doubted there was, and when no response came after a few moments and a few repeated attempts, the Aisha clambered over the counter. Tagney followed, and together the two of them made their way into what would have been a stockroom, if Lost and Found had been a real shop.

     It was full of empty boxes, and they searched one by one. Oddly, each of the boxes was labelled with a street address. Novelyx recognised some from Faerieland: Faerie Castle Road, Water Faerie Way. Others she could guess: Dark Forest Path was certainly in the Haunted Woods, and Potionery Avenue had to be in Brightvale. But Meteor Lane? Market Street? Those could have been anywhere.

     Novelyx had a bad feeling about the labels. Something about them and the kinds of things she'd seen on the shelves out front made her particularly uneasy. She tried to convince herself that these were just moving boxes gone astray or something equally innocent--just unclaimed property that someone--or magic--had tucked away here, waiting for its owners to find it again. But there had been so much sadness in the magic she'd felt, briefly, out front, and—

     Novelyx shook herself, swallowing her unease, and helped Tagney search the boxes. One by one, they opened them gently, swiped cobwebs out of the way to make sure there wasn't a Spring Snowbunny dozing beneath them, and stacked the boxes in a corner out of the way.

     Tagney found Jay in the third-to-last box, curled up in a ball, sleeping as deeply as Tagney had been on the shredded remnants of a petpet bed.

     Novelyx gave the two of them some time to reunite and studied the box the Snowbunny had been found it. There was a street number clear on the side, 42453, but the street name was smudged, unreadable. She glanced back at the pile of boxes they'd made searching for the petpet. "Tagney, is your house number 42453?" Novelyx asked.

     The Burlap Shoyru set Jay down and moved to study the side of the box with Novelyx. "I-- I think that sounds familiar? Maybe? Or maybe it was--" She hung her head. "I don't know. I can almost remember, but it's like-- It's like there's this hole where my memory used to be, like fog, or--or a void."

     Novelyx shivered. "I think we should get out of here. Come to my house, I'll make you some food, and maybe that will help you remember."

     Tagney's eyes lit up. "You would do that for me?"

     Novelyx smiled. "Of course."

     ***

     Novelyx warmed some leftover Faerie Meatloaf and threw together a Celestial Salad for dinner. She filled her Kadoatie's Yellow and Pink Spotted Food Bowl with a double helping of petpet food for the Spring Snowbunny to share, and when they had all finished eating, she took two of her favourite treats, Cherry Faerie Bubbles, out of her super-secret sweet stash, gave one of them to Tagney, and bit into the other one herself. "They're so messy," she said, black cherry filling dripping out of the corner of her mouth, "and all this sugar isn't really good for you, but they're so tasty!" She popped the other half into her mouth and watched as Tagney tried to figure out the best way to eat her Faerie Bubble without staining her burlap. "It's like you've never had one of those before," the Aisha said.

     Tagney stared at the treat. "I don't think I have. Messy foods and Burlap Neopets don't mix very well. I-- It's weird. I know that. I know I've never had a Faerie Bubble before. I remember playing the game in an arcade, thinking about how sweet they must be, and deciding that I'd never want to figure out how to wash this goo off if I got it on me. That memory is so sharp, but other things... I don't..." Her voice broke. "I don't even know if I have a family. Or friends. Or... I mean, I know I was a writer. At least, I liked writing things. But I..."

     Novelyx put a paw on the Shoyru's shoulder. "It's okay. You're welcome here, and you're safe, and I'll help you. Whatever happened--" Novelyx's thoughts flashed to damaged keepsakes lining dusty shelves, empty boxes with street addresses printed on the sides-- "Whatever happened, we'll figure it out."

     Novelyx hoped that was true.

     She showed Tagney to her guest room, got the extra petpet bed out of her bedroom closet for Jay, climbed into her own Fyora Print Bed and drifted off to sleep. To sleep, and troubled dreams.

To be continued…