81. Bertram
Bertram
Bertram gave Helena a good hour or so before he decided to go after her.
Okay, technically it was ten minutes, but it felt like an hour.
He had hoped she felt the same—thought she felt the same, truth be told, but maybe he was wrong.
He should go apologize to her for overstepping.
Or, if she did return his feelings, apologize to her for not saying it sooner.
Whatever was going on, he needed to go apologize right now and get her back inside.
Ten minutes was enough time for her to get her thoughts together, and if she told him that it wasn’t, then he would go right back inside and leave her to her thoughts once more.
Bertram exited his tent, expecting to see Helena at the campfire, but she wasn’t.
Nor was she at any other outdoor location, which meant she must have gone to the lab.
She hadn’t.
If she was avoiding him, fine, he just wanted to make sure she was okay. He headed over to her old tent, in case she had retreated there for maximum solitude.
“Knock-knock,” he said. “Helena?”
There was no answer.
“Helena, we don’t need to talk right now, but if you’re in there, just say yes. Or even cough!”
There was no cough and no answer.
If Bertram were a fucking idiot, he might think that his confession of love was so overwhelming to Helena that she had stormed off in a fit of emotion, and he wouldn’t worry about where she had gone until it was too late.
Luckily, Bertram was not a fucking idiot.
This time, at least, he reminded himself.
Bertram returned to his tent and looked around the ground. It was covered in his footprints now, from his search for Helena. But there were also her own footprints distinct in the snow, her little (mostly) human feet so much smaller than his own.
And then the footprints stopped. They just stopped.
Part of him wanted to concoct a logical explanation for this, that perhaps it had snowed between the time Helena left his tent ten minutes ago and now, and then stopped snowing, and also had covered up some of her footprints but not others.
But between panicking unnecessarily before finding that she was perfectly fine or not panicking and finding out something terrible had happened to her, Bertram would choose panic every time.
“Lovey!” Bertram called.
Lovey trotted dutifully out into the snow, looking up at Bertram with her big silver eyes.
“Praw?” she said expectantly.
“Lovey, where’s Helena?”
Lovatch looked around. She didn’t immediately see Helena, which meant they were now playing the game.
Lovey’s entire body seemed to suddenly bristle with excitement—hair and feathers both raising, just a little.
Not enough to signify aggression or fear, but enough to signify a new level of engagement.
Lovey bounded across the campground, kicking up snow as she went. She snapped at a few clumps of snow, breaking them apart with her beak.
Bertram followed her to Helena’s tent, where Lovey stopped abruptly.
Lovey sniffed at the tent, then cocked her head in confusion.
“Mah,” Lovey said.
“I know,” Bertram said. “I don’t think she’s in there.”
“Mraaahh!” Lovey sprung back into action, tearing away from the tent and heading back to the lab. Lovey went all the way around the lab, then back all the way around the campfire in a figure eight. She did that twice, beak to the ground, sniffing, head cocked to the side, listening.
Then she returned to the front of the lab and collapsed in the snow.
“MRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWHGGGH!!!!” Lovatch screamed, curling up into a tight ball, her chin over her front feet. “MRAAAW!”
Bertram’s heart sank. “She’s gone, isn’t she?”
Lovatch tucked her head under her wings. But she never stopped screaming.
Bertram
I need you to get over here ASAP PLEASE it’s an emergency
Diana
A sexy emergency or the real kind?
Bertram
REAL KIND HELENA IS MISSING
Diana
be right there
Bertram sat down in the snow and gathered Lovatch to his chest. “Don’t worry, Lovey. We’ll find her. We’ll find her. She can’t have gone far.”