I Won't Let You Wilt

He got to me

A big thank you to pentakhlo for drawing this fan art, based on a scene from Chapter 7! It's so pretty :D

https://twitter.com/omobasil/status/1416387736219566088

~

"Sunny! Are you ready yet?"

"Hold on a sec, I have to put on my new eyepatch."

The city hosted a new years' fair on the first week of the new year. It was one of the city's most popular tourist attractions, so there were bound to be lots of people there. Among them, it would seem, was Sunny's mom. The date she'd picked to meet with them coincided with the opening day of the fair.

I don't think there's a connection though, she probably picked this day because she could get a few days off from work following New Year's holiday.

Before having the dreaded meeting with her, Sunny wanted to explore the fair with Basil and go on all sorts of rides. And now that they were now longer hiding themselves, Sunny thought that a return to his old fashion style, wearing an eyepatch over his right eye, could improve his look.

It'd make him really easy for his mom to spot, but he wasn't going to talk to her outside of their planned meeting location anyways.

He thought about adding a flower to his hair, but decided he'd wait until spring arrived so they could pick flowers from the field on the edge of town. The new eyepatch he recently bought already looked pretty good on him.

When he stepped out of the bathroom, he noticed Basil had picked up the controller and loaded up their most recent save file. Basil went to fight a boss that they'd been stuck on for days.

Unfortunately, Basil became toast in less than a minute.

"I really thought the new strategy I came up with last night could beat him," Basil said, sighing in disappointment.

"I told you he was really difficult," Sunny replied with a grin.

"Yeah, you're much better at this game than I am," Basil admitted. He closed the game and turned to face Sunny. "Your eyepatch looks great!"

"Thanks!"

"Ready to go to the fair?"

"Yep, let's go."

It was still winter and so they had to be dressed in their jackets and scarfs and earmuffs. The sky today was bright blue, without a cloud in sight, but the air remained freezing and heaps of shoveled snow still adorned the sidewalks.

The lineup to enter the fair stretched on for several blocks. Their estimated waiting time was over an hour.

Sunny had never seen a fair so big before. That wasn't saying much, because he had never even gone to an amusement park in his whole life; Faraway Town had once organized a fair about eight years back, but it had not been much larger than the plaza and only contained a few rides that every one of his friends found boring.

Okay, I have to be honest, that one mine cart ride was pretty fun.

Only I seemed to think so, though...

Luckily, this fair appeared to have some really fun and exciting rides. They could see the towering rollercoaster looming above almost all the other buildings in the city, and as they moved up the queue, they could hear the riders screaming as they plunged down its massive drops.

"Ever been on a roller coaster before?" Basil asked with a playful nudge against Sunny's shoulder.

"Nope," Sunny replied.