November 19: Strange Footprints

One day, Arna was painting the floor. At least, she was trying to, except that persons kept on coming and going and walking across it. She did admit that it added a certain amount of textural interest to the otherwise plain blue floor, what with all the hoofprints and footprints and handprints and any other type of print. She was certain it also added a great deal of interest outside the room, wherever all those blue hoofprints et cetera went when they left the room.

It was a nice, deep, rich, dark blue. After the floor was all painted, and was still being textured by bird feet, and giraffe feet, and puppy feet, and people feet, and anything else, Arna looked around, satisfied, and decided to see where some of the footprints went. So she went down to the treasure chamber.

A great many creature-prints were on the stairs. Dragon-prints were particularly interesting, clawed, and a dragging tail, which bumped at the edge of each stair. Mome rath prints were tiny and cute. Hobbit-horse-puppy prints were confusing, as Tenny apparently changed her mind repeatedly as to which of her forms she was as she went down the stairs, and then did the same when she came back up.

A good many assorted creature- and people-prints led to and from the refrigerator. And a number of small creature prints lead into the shiny tunnel that Meppi had discovered. (But they were faint, and Arna was surprised that the paint had lasted as long as it had. But she supposed the same could be said of a lot of the other prints.) And some creature prints pottered aimlessly about the treasure chamber. Notably giraffe prints.

Back upstairs, there were also giraffe prints up one wall and on the ceiling, where they pottered about and faded out a short distance away from where a giraffe was curled up around a chandelier. Arna giggled.

The paint was still quite wet when Arna left for the night. She figured it would dry just fine overnight, and she would have more exciting footprints to examine and be entertained by in the morning.

The next morning, when Arna first came in, she noticed an exciting number of the regular sorts of footprints in the dried paint as well as coming from the painted part of the floor. Unibunny, human, horse, and the rest.

But then... those were strange footprints, thought Arna. She had walked almost into them, the long line of them, without noticing them, there were so many other footprints around. They were long and skinny and rectangular, unnaturally so, she thought, with two round dots at one end that she supposed might be from toes. So not a bird. She followed the footprints backwards, and found that they began at the couch (under which she had not painted). They didn't come back to the couch, either. And the floor under there was solid enough, no openings or anything. Odd. Very odd.

She turned and began to follow the footprints carefully in the opposite direction, feeling a little nervous. Whatever it was might still be in here, and she had no idea if it was friendly.

Hm... the footprints seemed to be only on top of other footprints. By the time they had reached the trap door that led to the treasure chamber (which Arna had painted as well, first carefully rolling up the rug and putting it somewhere where it wouldn't get paint on it or stepped on by painty feet), another set of footprints had not crossed on top of this set even once. It must have been here in the night, then, thought Arna.

And it was either strong enough to open the trap door by itself or someone had left it open, because the footprints stopped at the trap door. It was shut now, which wasn't really surprising as other persons had been here this morning before Arna arrived. Arna opened it and looked down the stairs at a long, long procession of rectangular footprints. One on each step. She was again surprised by how slow this paint was to dry and how many footprints could be marked from it before it was all used up or dried on someone's foot.

Arna started following the footprints down the stairs. But, they looked different here. Instead of being two circles in front of a rectangle, like toes, they were two circles, one on either side of the rectangle, something like an off-center division sign. And then two more circles closer to where the "toe" marks had been. And the rectangles were longer; they looked like they had been dragged forward from where they originally landed on the step. Not a creature with two toes, then? What in the world could this creature be? Arna thought.

Climbing carefully down the stairs, Arna followed the strange footprints. When they got to the bottom, they were like they were upstairs again, two circles in front of a rectangle. And they were heading towards the refrigerator.

Arna followed the strange footprints to the refrigerator. They wandered around the fridge for a goodish bit, mixing themselves up with each other, but they did not stay there. They went off away from the fridge and towards a suit of armor. They seemed to circle that a few times before heading off towards a treasure chest.

Arna continued to follow the footprints around the treasure chamber in this fashion, going from one thing to another, almost as if the creature had been examining the contents of the treasure chamber one by one. Arna wondered why. Apparently not with the intention of stealing something valuable, or it wouldn't have made a beeline towards the refrigerator. nor in search of food, or it wouldn't have spent so much time walking back and forth around a harp. She also wondered why it had gone directly to the trap door when it was upstairs, without bothering to look at anything up there like it was down here.

Finally, the footprints died out while between two treasure chests on the floor. "What now?" said Arna, speaking out loud without realizing it. She considered the matter for a moment. She looked back at the way she had come and realized the creature had gone along one wall of the treasure chamber methodically, examining each object along it, then worked its way back through the next row of objects, and had started a third zigzag through the next row. Curiouser and curiouser, thought Arna. It seemed to be trying to memorize everything in the treasure chamber, or something like that. Arna determined that her best course of action would be to continue through the treasure chamber in the same zigzag fashion, watching carefully for anything unusual all the time.

So she began the tedious task, quite forgetting any nervousness she had felt in the monotony of her seemingly endless search for clues. Nothing. And nothing. And then...

"Hey! What's a graphing calculator doing here?!" exclaimed Arna, quite surprised. She picked it up and examined it. One long side was streaked with blue paint. She took it over to a "footprint" and placed the graphing calculator on it. It fit exactly. She peered at the calculator again, suspiciously, carried over to a table, put it on the table, and sat on the table next to it.

"All right, calculator," she said, sternly. "It's no use your pretending to be inanimate. I want an explanation."

A face flickered onto the calculator's screen. Sideways. Two arms unfolded out of the middleish of the side opposite to the paint, one on the button side of the calculator and one towards the back. It pushed itself up onto its painted side and, using its hands, pushed itself so that it was facing the kakapo.

"My name is Cindy," began the graphing calculator. "About a week ago, Islie's Youngest Sister hid me under the couch and promptly wandered away and forgot about me. Nobody came looking for me or noticed I was there. I quickly became disinterested with the underside of the couch, but it has been entertaining enough during the days to listen to everyone's chatter. At night, however, I've been bored, as calculators don't sleep, and have been exploring the room, bit by bit. The trap door down to here was never left open until last night. so after everyone had left for the night I came down here [hm, this doesn't work well for time zones. Oh well, I expect Cindy's in my time zone]. I realized, of course, that if I came down here, I might not get an opportunity to come back upstairs for quite some time, but this I did not mind much, as I was quite tired of the underside of the couch anyway and that was the best place to hide (as I wasn't done exploring and didn't want to be found and brought home until I was). So I came down and explored until people and creatures began coming around for the morning [which with time zones, wouldn't necessarily give her much time, but it must have been an unbusy night/morning], I lay down in a chest and hoped no one would notice me. But it seems that you have, so you'll probably be sending me home soon."

"You walked through blue paint," explained Arna. "You left all sorts of marks wherever you went, until it dried."

"Oh," said the calculator. "I didn't notice. I'm colorblind," she explained.

"Well," said Arna, "I suppose I'd better bring you to Islie. One of her siblings might be needing you."

"All right," said Cindy, resignedly. Cindy walked to the edge of the table. She did this by putting her two fits in front of here (where the "toe" marks had been on the "footprints") and then lifted herself up, swinging herself forwards, farther than one would expect she could, and landing ahead of the previous "footprint." She looked down from the table, but there was no way she would be able to climb down.

Arna picked her up, tucked her carefully under a wing, and carried her upstairs. Even though she was a little curious as to how Cindy would climb up stairs, she rightly guessed that this would be rather difficult for the calculator, and so didn't require her to but carried her all the way to the top.

After closing the trap door and replacing the rug, since the paint was now dry, Arna brought Cindy to Islie. And Islie, after being told of the graphing calculator's adventures, brought Cindy home and restored her to the correct sibling, who was very happy to be able to use her again.