Wonderer's Wish World: An Empty Land

Hot, Hot, Hot Chocolate Sandwich!

Kipo, Tulip and Mira sat in silence, each with their own cup of hot steaming cocoa in their hands. The sun in front of them was almost down, and as it sank, it coloured the sky in front of the girls a beautiful canvas of red, orange and pink. It was a lot nicer looking at it with friends and hot chocolate, rather then completely alone with only a useless old book for company.

Tulip let out a sigh, catching the attention of the other two. "You know, as awful as this... 'involuntary camping' is, it would probably be worse without hot chocolate."

"Well, that's just obvious," Mira laughed, taking a sip. "This place is taking some liberties with the fantasy front. Like, first, everything is made of wood, and there's not a machine in sight, and then there's a bag of modern hot chocolate in the kitchen, as well as modern sinks and whatever."

Kipo hummed as she sipped her cocoa. She remembered something Wirt had said earlier, about the buildings in the town.

"These buildings mostly resemble middle age English buildings," he'd noted to himself at the time, frowning at the scenery. "But those were made mostly of stone, because building wood buildings in a time where you got most of your heat from fire was stupid. Do these things have fireplaces?"

Kipo had listened in, agreeing with him, despite the fact that she had no clue what he was talking about. But he couldn't be wrong, especially with how confident he sounded (which was a bit of a rarity, from Wirt). Kipo trusted him.

But now she found herself remembering those words, especially two of them, as she gazed into the chocolaty brown of her drink. "Was there hot chocolate, in the middle ages?"

Kipo looked up to find Mira and Tulip glancing at each other. For a minute, no one spoke, thinking that over. After some time, it was clear than none of them exactly knew the answer to that.

Eventually, Mira shrugged. "Who knows?" she said, nonchalantly. "Even if there was, it probably wouldn't taste like this. Normal chocolate is actually pretty bitter, I think, and this has got, like, probably a half a million cups of sugar in this."

"You're right," Tulip agreed, but she sipped her drink with a sour look in her face. "Ugh. That question is going to bother me for weeks, though."

"You could try looking it up in the library!" Kipo offered cheerfully, but before she even finished, she realized how silly that was.

Tulip played with her hair, thinking over what Kipo said. "Would something like that really be in there?"

'Probably not,' Kipo thought; history, or anything like that, was not a topic she'd come across often in there. But that didn't mean it wasn't there, so out loud she said: "I'm not sure; I'll help you look!"

Tulip smiled over to her, and Kipo returned it with a playful grin.

"Well, even if there was hot chocolate in the middle ages, there definitely wasn't... whatever Kai found," Mira said, referring to the very strange contraption Dib had uncovered earlier. He'd apparently dug it up while searching for paranormal creatures (why he was looking for paranormal creatures in the dirt was still a bit of a mystery), and for the first couple of weeks or so, he'd kept it a (not very well hidden) secret from the rest of the town. It was only after he'd realized that it wasn't some sort of high-tech alien weapon or surveillance device that he disappointedly handed it over, especially after it became clear that it wasn't exactly his area of expertise. But, a little bit surprisingly, it was Kai's.

So now the super weird thing was resting in Kai's room, and when she walked past his house, she could hear him tinkering at it. Unfortunately, though, last she checked, he hadn't really made any progress.