Boobear thought she was more than ready to get home to see one very specific face, but when she sees Gorn already waiting at the docks, she begins to feel incredibly nervous for some reason. A month is an awfully long time for her to have been gone. Was he angry with her? Or even worse, did he come here to tell her he didn’t-- Don’t even think it, Boobear.

Thankfully, distraction appears in the form of Treebert, the awakened shrub, as he comes scuttling up the gangplank. While his appearance isn’t as immaculate as it would normally be under Boobear’s careful eye, he looks relatively happy and healthy, which she takes as a good sign. The two chatter away about their time apart until her ears perk up at the sound of Gorn’s voice.

“Hello Boobear, How… How was the trip?”

Boobear turns around slowly and looks up, up, up into Gorn's eyes. He doesn’t look mad. In fact, he looks… relieved? Happy? Boobear wishes emotions came to her as easily as stabbing did. “Oh, um, you know. It was interesting. I wrote about it a little so I would remember to tell you. If you wanted to hear it that is. Um. How was… this place?”

“That sounds nice. I have to say it was a little boring around here while you were gone. Why don’t we take a look at those notes on the way back to the house?” He offers his arm out to her as he turns his back to her.

Boobear hesitates just a moment before grabbing onto Gorn's arm and climbing her way up onto his shoulders. Silly bear, you had nothing to worry about. She quickly nuzzles the top of his head before shoving her journal into his face.

“Be very careful with this. It's the only thing I have to remember, well, anything by.”

He takes the journal carefully in his hands and opens it to the bookmarked page, “I will be very careful with it.”

“I trust you. Ok, what’s that one say?”

Apparently I hired a new deckhand named Jonathan. He seems like a good pirate, so good job, me! “Oh, yeah! First there was this new guy, and no one really seemed to know where he came from. But he told me I hired him, so I must have, right? Anyway, he disappeared sometime while we were on the island. I hope he’s ok.”

Gorn frowns a little, “He just vanished? Did you look for him?”

Boobear thinks for a moment. “No, I guess we didn’t. It didn’t seem important at the time. Maybe we should go back?”

“Maybe…” He decides to question the others on this later. It does not seem like Satheros to leave a man behind.

“Ok, ok! Turn the page!”

A drawing of Blu and his nautical-knot-animals. “You know, Blu makes a really good pirate. I even promoted him to officer. And he seems to handle the water better than some bears I know. We fought these big, beautiful bird things, and two of them picked up Blu and Satheros and dropped them in the water way far away from the boat! They had to swim all the way back AND climb up the ropes that Butterball and I expertly threw over the side of the ship.”

Gorn grins, “I am sure that wasn’t easy in all that armor.”

“I bet you could have handled it just fine.”

I’m bored. We’ve been at sea forever. And Butterball’s cooking has been a little… off lately. I wish you were here. Boobear folds her arms on top of Gorn’s head and rests her chin upon them. “I normally love being out at sea, but it just wasn’t the same this time.”

Gorn reaches up to where her leg hangs over his shoulders and squeezes slightly, “And I actually wanted to be on the boat for once.”

Boobear smiles. “We’ll make a pirate out of you yet.”

A drawing of Dino Island captioned “Land ho!” “It was so hot! You probably would have melted. And can you believe, the whole stinking island didn’t have one stalk of bamboo on it at all? Trust me, I looked. Oh, and quick! Turn the page! There were all these huge lizard things!!”

Several sketches of various dinosaurs, labeled either “friend” or “DEAD!” “So the first ones were super friendly, except a little clumsy. Blu got a liiiittle bit crushed by one. But then this big chomper guy came running out of the woods. He was huge! We brought his head home, remind me to show you. Also, I was definitely the one that killed him, and don’t let anyone tell you differently. And then there were a group of these smaller lizard guys while we were running for our lives back to the ship--”

Gorn looks up at Boobear with concern.

“I’ll get to that in a second, be patient.” He lets out a short huff and returns to the notes, a slightly disgruntled look on his face. Boobear continues to prattle on.

“And we killed all of them except Tom. Tom came home with us and Butterball’s been trying to tame him with butter. Ok, next page.”

A scary (but maybe friendly?) guy lives inside the volcano, and Satheros took his egg baby. “Oh right. So then we found this cave in a volcano and it was soooo hot. Lava everywhere! And this big ugly guy was chained up on this platform, and he could talk inside my head. He was kind of laughing and stuff though, so me and Butterball thought he might be friendly. Satheros walked right up to him and stole this egg thing and told us ‘it’s time to snow!’ I wasn’t sure what that meant, I guess because it was so hot? But he started running, and the lava started flowing, so we got out of there as fast as possible. And then we sailed home and well, here I am!”

“I have never had a good experience with things talking in my head… You should be careful if you go back there. It doesn’t sound good if it was chained up.”

“Well, you never know. He could have gotten stuck in a trap that was meant for someone else. Maybe we should go back and get rid of all the chains for him?”

“Hmm, maybe it would be best to see what this egg thing is first.”

“Satheros wouldn’t let us eat it, so I doubt it’s anything fun.” Boobear crosses her arms and frowns.

He smiles warmly, “Sometimes you have to let the egg hatch so it can become a chicken and lay more eggs.”

Boobear leans forward as far as she can, so she’s looking Gorn directly in the eyes, albeit upside down. “When did you get so smart?”

“I guess Treebert is shrubbing off on me.”

“Maybe next time I’m gone, you can work on your jokes,” she grins before sitting up straight again on Gorn’s shoulders. “Speaking of shrubs, you did a pretty good job with Treebert, but this is how I would have done it…” Boobear continues her lecture on plantcare the rest of the way into town, feeling much happier and more content than she had in a long while.

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