The Journey Begins
As reluctant as he had been to leave at first, Percival seemed more than ready to temporarily relinquish a majority of his gang. Upon hearing that three members would be leaving, there was a large uproar as to who would be in charge while they were gone. Each member of the gang seemed to be equally convinced that they would make the best temporary leader.
Eventually, Percival settled the matter by bestowing the honor of temporary gang leader on the old, gray dog that slept on their front porch sometimes. The matter appeared to be settled, so he, Devon, and Beatrix set out on their “journey,” leaving the other boys to obey any commands the mangy animal might give them.
“What if we meet guards on our way?” Devon asked, mere moments after they had left the house.
“Then we’ll just have to deal with them,” Percival replied. “We’ll only be traveling for a day and a half at the most. It shouldn’t be too much of a problem.”
Devon nodded with understanding, admiring Percival’s casual confidence about potentially walking into the path of danger. He jogged a bit to catch up, starting to notice the fact that he had to work a bit more to keep up with Percival’s longer strides.
Devon was always the more talkative one. He kept a practically one-sided conversation going throughout much of their traveling, while Percival would only occasionally give him one word replies and Beatrix didn’t respond at all, except to squeak in pain whenever one of the boys let a tree branch swing back and hit her in the face.
Later on in the day, when the sun was finally setting, Devon was in the middle of telling them all his life story, and Beatrix was feeling her face for cuts from her most recent brush with a particularly thorny shrub, Percival decided it was time to stop. He announced this by simply stopping abruptly and swinging both his arms out so that Beatrix and Devon ran into him.
“We should sleep here,” he said.
Beatrix and Devon both paused what they were doing to look down at the ground, a small plateau of some kind, made up of thick rock. Devon tapped his foot against the hard ground.
“Here,” Devon repeated skeptically.
“Shut up. There’s less bugs on rocks. You guys can go find some mud, if you that’s what you want,” he replied.
“I’m fine with sleeping on a giant boulder,” Beatrix said and promptly sat down defiantly. She and Devon exchanged competitive glances.
“Fine, I’m good too,” Devon said, dropping his bag on the ground. He sat down as well, glaring at Beatrix with an intensity that was only matched by the stare she returned. Percival stared at them for a few moments before leaning back to rest his head on his bag.
“You two should start a fire or something. I’m going to sleep,” he said, closing his eyes peacefully.
“Great idea! I’ll go get some firewood!” Devon said, leaping up with a sudden burst of energy.
“I will too!” Beatrix replied, with an equal amount of enthusiasm.
“I don’t need help!” Devon said aggressively.
“I don’t either!” Beatrix said. They stared at each other for a moment more before quickly dashing out into the forest. Percival sighed.
“It’s going to be a long trip,” he muttered to himself, rubbing his head stressfully.