It was entirely possible that he had been too optimistic about the werewolf thing.

This thought ran through Bert’s mind even as a pair of dirty looking boys with bare feet ran towards them. He flinched, mentally, when leapt into the air with blood curdling screams at Old Yeller.

“Raawrrghhh!!”

Old Yeller threw the dead duck he had been holding into Bert’s arms and grabbed both boys/pups/kids/whatever out of the air. Wow, that man was super strong. Bert really admired strong people, for the very simple reason that he himself was a very weak person.

He usually open jam jars by heating the lid in hot water first before using a rubber glove to twist it off. The one time he tried to use manly strength to force the top open he sprained his wrist. The most awful thing about the whole situation was that Roberta popped open the jar easily after he had sprained said wrist…

“Raarrgghh!” Old Yeller…yelled at the boys.

“Rawwr!”

“Rowwr!”

They appeared to be having a conversation.

Despite not knowing the language, Bert decided that it was impolite to eavesdrop and cast his attention elsewhere. Well, there’s the dead duck in his arms.

Oh duck, how he loved duck. Ducks are the best thing ever to happen to mankind’s dinner table.

“Hey, how long you’re gonna hug that fer?”

A small girl in a slightly tattered skirt stood with her hands on her hips, looking very authoritarian. There was a brilliant red headscarf, with white polka dots tied into a messy bow on her head.

“Um,” said Bert intelligently.

“You gots to get it cleaned up before you can eats it.”

“Yes, I know that.” said Bert, a little defensively. He knew cooking, he maintained eye contact for full five seconds before shrinking away.

The girl smiled. Clearly realizing that she had won, and therefore was magnanimous. “Come on, I cans show you where to gets it cleaned up.”

Her speech pattern was somewhat familiar, but Bert just couldn’t place it…

The place to clean up ducks, it turned out, was the kitchen camp with two caravans parked almost right next to each other. A camp fire burned merrily in between. A stream chattered happily just 10 meters away. There was even a large tree with a squirrel poking it’s head out to watch Bert as he carried his prize towards it.

Like the rest of the camp, it was unusually clean. The grass underfoot was a brilliant green, perfectly lush and soft, not at all like the grass in the real world that contained stickers and thorns and razor sharp blades.

A middle age woman came out of the caravan just as they approached. She wore a red scarf with white polka dots around her neck. There was also a man at the back of the caravan busy chopping wood on a tree stump. He was wiping his face with a red handkerchief with white polka dots on them.

Bert was sensing a pattern here.

The girl ran up to the couple, who could only be her parents and started making wide gestures and pointing at Bert in intervals. She then ran back to Bert and dragged him over with a surprisingly strong grip.

“Ma, pops, this the guy Old Yeller brought in.” She grinned up at Bert. “I’m Fly Amanita, that’s me ma, Muscaria, and me pops Agaric.”

Bert:…

He decided not to comment on their names either, but was crying in his heart at Amanda Glowheart’s lazy way of naming things.