In any case, several days passed quietly, pleasant to live through but without much to tell. The next venture out among people was going to be the trout derby.
Well, if the last two days before the trout derby were supposed to be event-free, the Green Rain put paid to that... Rowan hacked and slashed their way around their farm - the grassy areas weren't bad but every beach was covered, and there was a lot of beach... They found four different strange scraps of paper in the midst; a scrawl in nearly inhuman writing requesting may-pull syrup, a weird treasure hunt style map, and two musings from someone's diary or letter, about things they loved. One was the pretty artist, too...
The day after was pouring normal rain, and an occasional shocking jolt of lightning, so Rowan went back into the mines, and made it to another of the mysterious treasure chests. Which contained exactly the same boots they'd just bought from Marlon. Oh, well, two such pairs of boots meant they'd last twice as long.
Trout derby ho! Because of the stop at the carpenter's, and the community centre (though handing in the last lake fish, a sturgeon, netted them a highly useful dressed spinner), Rowan was a bit belated starting to fish, casting their line in front of Leah's cottage just before noon. And was three pike and one golden tag in before sheepishly remembering that maybe they needed to LOAD the trout bait. They also hit the point of dizzy exhaustion before remembering to eat again. Still, when they warped home at 1:30, their only break to say hello to Willy, Elliott and Leah when the latter popped out of her cottage, and to turn in the tags en masse at midnight, the final count was 34 trout, and 10 golden tags. Not a record, not even quite as much as they'd hoped for, but not embarrassing. And they put most of the fish - all the non-trout and half the trout - into the bin just in time.
And one of the treasure chests had yielded the dried starfish that both the museum and the rainbow trout pond had been asking for. The trout pond would get this one, which seemed only fair, considering how it was earned.
