starlightcafe | There's lots of world out there.

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There's lots of world out there.

The funny thing about an inter-dimensional tunnel? You could never be sure where one would pop up.

Della was doing some solo exploring. She'd been back on Earth for over a year and finally felt ready to do as much, and - inspired by a certain dayglo-bright friend - she'd decided her first time adventuring on her own since the moon would be mapping out the unexplored caverns that stretched out past Coot's underground corn stores.

Speaking of Gobo, though- At first, Della barely too note of the tiny off-shoot tunnel; to small for her to fit through, but she supposed it ought to be on the map. And once she started paying it some mind, she got curious as to who or what had formed in. Leaning down, she peered inside...

With a delighted laugh, she waved at the very familiar figure she could just barely make out in the glow from her flashlight, and her free hand reached in to ruffle a messy head of magenta hair.

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Exploring was in Gobo's blood. It's what he does, and he's never happiest as he is when he's putting down new pathways on a map. That's what had him out in some uncharted- to him -territory today, extending far past the Duckburg he was coming to accept as a second home. Accustomed to the dim underground, he paused every now and then to map his progress, though it was on one pitstop that he head a strange sound up ahead. Huh, looked like the tunnel he was in led to another, larger one, and whatever it was was coming from there. He crept forward to investigate-

And was momentarily blinded by a flashlight. Wincing away some, he tried to blink away the spots now floating in front of his eyes. That scruffle that reached in though, that was a familiar hand and he laughed, looking up, though he still couldn't quite see.

"Della?"

"Uh-huh!" Della stuck as much of her head into the little tunnel as she could manage... Mostly just her face. "It's so great to run into you! How you doing? What are you doing here?"

"Mapping! Or I was when I could still see." He had a good humor about it though, laughing as he ground the heel of one hand against an eye.

"What're you doing down here?"

A sheepish grin at the teasing comment. "I'm doing the same thing!" Della explained, backing up a bit but keeping her face on-level with the tunnels' cross-section. "For all the adventures I've been on, though, this is a first for me! Think you can help? Maybe show me how to do this?"

He looked up in wonder at that, walking out to join her in the wider cavern.

"You want me to help?"

Della nodded, glancing over the map she'd started, then back down to Gobo with a grin. "I can't think of a better person to ask! You're great at this stuff, and we work so well together!"

Gobo absolutely glowed with that, nodding and waving his tail behind him. "Sure, I'd love to help you make your map! Why don't you show me what you've got so far?"

Della nodded appreciatively, and held out the map, which was... Something. She'd clearly given up on scale, and general impatience meant a lot of estimating on directions and other very specific details. That and Della just wasn't much of an artist, it would seem.

To his credit he tried. very hard to not let his first impressions show on his face, though the bristle of his tail certainly revealed it anyway. Rolling the map up, he handed it back to her.

"Alright well, we'll start in this cave and then go from there, how's that?"

The sheepishess in her expression only grew when she noticed that bristling tail out of the corner of her eye, but she wasn't upset - Della knew she was no artist.

"Thanks!" she said, her smile shifting from a bit awkward to entirely enthused. "And it'll be a lot less quiet and boring with good company, too!"

He took out the scroll he'd been drawing on earlier, and was already making notes of the tunnel he'd been in opening up into the cavern they were now standing in.

"Yeah, that's true!" A few more quick sketches with glances around, and then he smiled as he started walking in a direction.

"Let's get started, then!"

"Alright, you lead the way!" Della enthused as she followed him. She wasn't a follower by nature, but she wasn't such a fool that she'd deny that following Gobo on this one just made sense. This was his thing! He knew what he was doing. Besides, she trusted him. "Oh, we gotta take my way back, though, after! You can see the Golden Armory! Which... Is going to seem like a real let-down if I don't explain it," she realized as she spoke. A laugh. "They're old corn stores, but man, there's a story behind them!"

He beamed at her, and set the pace to walk at, a gear he fell into easily when walking with someone else. At her words he snickered some, looking over.

"You've already got my interest with corn but alright! What's the story?"

She chuckled at that - she should've known - and explained how Coot had used the corn to trick his attackers. She offered plenty of detail, as much as was known, and of course she told Gobo how Coot was an ancestor on her father's side.

"That's the non-Uncle Scrooge-side," she explained for further clarification. "And by the way, the corn stores haven't been replenished in a really long time, so I wouldn't eat any."

Gobo snorted some and nodded. "I had a feeling! Corn that long underground, without anybody around, doesn't usually last so well.

"Still, that's cool though! Setting that stuff up, and especially having someone really important like that in your background." A bit of a snicker. "I've got someone like that too! An ancestor of mine was the one who first discovered the Gorg's garden, and radishes, outside of Fraggle Rock."

"No kidding!" Della laughed, leaning down to give Gobo a one-armed hug. "That's so cool! I can't say I'm surprised, though! Adventure and exploration do tend to run in families."

"They do!" He laughed lightly, smiling at her. "You already know how closely immediate it is in my family, but it definitely goes way, way further back than just Great-Uncle Gobo."

Pausing some as they reached a new chamber of the cave, he made a note of it on his map, adding a quick sketched outline to be filled in later. "And it sounds like adventure goes pretty far back in your family, too!"

She nodded, truly listening but mostly paying attention to how he went about mapping the new area. (Look, focusing took a lot of effort for her.) She smiled a bit. So it wasn't about trying to cram everything in right away, then, huh?

"How much of this did your Uncle Matt teach you, and how much did you teach yourself?" she asked as the thought occurred to her.

Edited 2020-01-28 05:26 (UTC)

"A little of both, really." Making his final note, he put the map away for now. "Uncle Matt has made a lot of maps, but since he left for Outer Space when I was young, I had to study them myself to put the finesse on things. Then Mokey helped me develop my drawing skill too and, well, here we are."

"That's really impressive, squirt," Della pointed out. It wasn't long at all until they game to a spot where the tunnel divided off two ways. She turned to Gobo, glancing down at him in a silent invitation to lead the way.

Coming up to the two tunnels, he held up a hand and walked over to investigate them. What he'd do, he'd do for both: pausing to listen, sniffing the air, holding a wet finger up to check for moving wind. Returning to the first and listening again, he tapped his foot a few times, seemingly an automatic motion. Then he nodded and stood straight, returning over to her.

"The one on the right seems like an ordinary tunnel, but the one on the left has water somewhere down it, and smells like moss and mushrooms."

"Well, ordinary isn't exactly my go-to," Della snorted, leaning over to look down the left tunnel. "Maybe we go left? What were you listening for, anyway?"

"The water!" With a 'let's go!' wave of his hand, he led her down the left tunnel. "Wembley taught me how to hear it in places you normally can't. I think it's behind the rocks, but if we go long enough we might come across some that's bubbled up to the path."

"Woah, that's one of the weirdest cool things I've heard about this week," Della chuckled as she hurried along just behind him. "Finding an underground spring would be really neat!"

"Definitely! And it's good to know there's a possible source of water around too, when one's exploring alone."

He paused in speaking a moment, then snickered. "Well, if there's water around, you can certainly trust a Fraggle to find it."

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