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Home is Wherever I’m With You [HDLW Sibling Week]

Day 1 - Adventure

Ao3

“You guys are gonna love this one!” Webby crowed, her face pressed against the glass of the plane window. “Della and I have crafted the perfect adventure. It’s full of traps, puzzles, and opportunities for daring stunts!”

“So what’s in store for us today?” Dewey called from the pilot seat. It was his first adventure as a solo pilot, even though he’d been taking lessons from Launchpad and Della for months. “Death-defying stunts? Villanous curses? Bad baddies?”

Webby grinned back at him enthusiastically. “We might see a sword horse!!”

Huey flipped through his Junior Woodchuck Guidebook. “Statistically, the chances of us encountering a unicorn are little to none. From our travels, unicorns mostly reside in glades deep in forests. We’re flying over the tundra.”

Dewey pulled a hand off one of the Sunchaser’s contraptions to gently punch Huey in the shoulder. “Look at you, calculating the likelihood of a unicorn spotting. Nerd.”

Huey rolled his eyes and shut the guidebook. He leaned back in the copilot’s seat, where he was keeping a careful watch that everything was running smoothly - just like Donald when Dewey piloted solo during full-family adventures. “The numbers don’t lie.”

“But did you take snow sword-horses into account?” Webby asked, finally turning her attention away from their descent to look at Huey. “They’re incredibly rare, but they live solo lives out here in the tundra. They canter at the speed of the wind!! Some brave adventurers report sighting one, but no one can ever get proof.”

“Sounds like a glorified Bigfoot,” Louie offered from his place in one of the Sunchaser’s seats. 

“But we can fight it!!” Webby interjected enthusiastically. “And earn its trust!! They say if you do, it’ll grant you one piece of sage advice for your future.”

Dewey frowned thoughtfully. “Well, not many people can say they’ve been granted advice from a snow unicorn. Anyway, coming in hot!!”

The Sunchaser made a less-than-graceful landing (Launchpad was his teacher, all right), sending snow flying up in clouds of soft sparkles around them. The four kids grabbed their gear and buckled up the last of their snow-protective clothes before stepping out of the plane and onto the snow. Webby was first, and her eyes sparkled with excitement as she took in the terrain for a moment.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Webby exclaimed, gesturing to the expanse of snow sparkling brightly in the sunlight. “And to think! Today, we’ll be one of the first to see and conquer a real snow sword-horse!!”

Louie slipped a canteen out of his pack and took a sip of some hot chocolate he had saved. “Yep, looks pretty snow-y.”

Dewey punched a fist in the air. “I’m ready to fight a unicorn!!”

Huey snorted affectionately and pulled out his rusty, trusty compass, emblazoned with the Junior Woodchuck logo on the side. “We go north first, right Webby?”

Webby opened her backpack and took out a slightly torn map, tied with a piece of glittery pink string. She was nodding before she’d even unfurled the map, but it confirmed her answer. “Yep!! We go left until we hit the rock shaped auspiciously like a tornado, and then we turn right. And then, when we get to the lone pine tree hidden behind the stone hills, we walk in a circle three times around it and follow the sun!”

Huey frowned. “A rock shaped like a tornado? That’s an… interesting description.”

Louie raised his head to the sky and covered his forehead with his hand to block out the blindingly bright light, reflecting off the snow and clouds. “Uhh, Webs, we can’t see the sun.”

Webby shrugged, positive as ever. “No worries! All the legends say that won’t be an obstacle. We’ll figure it out when we get there!!”

Without further ado, the pink-adorned duck strode off in the direction of their adventure. “Let’s go!!”

Dewey followed quickly behind her, rambling excitedly about how fun it would be to fight a unicorn. Huey and Louie exchanged a glance and a shrug, and then tagged along.

As they walked, Huey tried to start off a round of some of the hiking songs he had picked up at the Junior Woodchucks, but was quickly rebuffed. However, when Dewey tried to start a rendition of “1,000 Bottles of Apple Juice on the Wall” (the Uncle Donald-approved version he regretted teaching Dewey when they were on a road trip when the boys were five years old), Webby and Louie were suddenly much more enthusiastic about Huey’s options. He was more than happy to oblige, and even got them going on some sea shanties when the tunes started getting overly repetitive. Dewey grumbled for a bit, but before long, Huey and Webby’s collective, contagious enthusiasm had infected him, and he was singing along as loudly and proudly as the rest of them.

When the tornado-shaped rock first came into sight, the group of four was lagging behind Huey’s precisely-calculated pace for the best optimal productivity on adventures. But the sight spurred Webby’s already-high excitement, and she nearly sprinted the rest of the way. 

When the rest of the group reached Tornado Rock, panting, Webby was leaning against it with barely contained enthusiasm. “Took you long enough,” she said cheekily, but with no malice and a beaming smile. 

Louie shrugged and flopped down on the ground. “Ugh, Webs, why’d you have to run? There’s no time limit.”

Webby shrugged, still beaming. “The spirit of adventure!” She checked her watch and sat gently on the ground next to Louie. “So, lunchtime?”

Dewey plopped down beside her, and Huey followed suit. “I thought you’d never ask!!”

Louie rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, we know, you were flying the plane, you didn’t get a chance to snack.”

Dewey ripped open his lunchbox and grabbed impatiently at the first thing he could - a sandwich. He opened the foil easily and stuffed it in his mouth. “I’m hungry, Louie!”

As his brothers squabbled in the background, Huey glanced up at the rock towering above them. “Huh, I guess it really is actually shaped like a tornado,” he conceded quietly as he unpacked his lunch. “Accurate description.”

Webby followed his gaze, tracing the grooves and cracks in the rock with her eyes. “Yeah. You know, Isabella Finch, Uncle Scrooge’s inspiration, was the one who named it!!”

Huey perked up. “Really? That’s interesting. I don’t think I remember an expedition to this specific tundra in her journals.”

Webby shrugged, smiling. “It was a group expedition with some other seasoned adventurers. George Mallardy, for one.”

“The guy that Uncle Scrooge sort of was responsible for his death?” Huey asked apprehensively, raising his eyebrows. “I’m not entirely sure I want to be following in his footsteps.”

“But they’re the only other people to accurately depict and record tundra sword-horses!!” Webby exclaimed, leaning forward. “Wouldn’t it be so cool if us, for our first solo adventure, were the ones to do it second?”

“I’d rather be first!!” Dewey called. 

Huey shrugged. “I guess so. I am curious about snow unicorns. If there’s only one depiction of them, even if it is from Isabella Finch, how do we know it’s accurate?”

“I guess we’ll have to find out,” Webby replied, her eyes sparkling.

The kids packed up their lunch, making sure to leave no trace behind, and continued on their trek. Webby tracked their progress with a map, watching carefully for the hills of stone that would eventually rise out of the fog. Snow started to fall gently while they walked, and Dewey made it a game to see who could catch the most snowflakes on their tongue. Soon they were all running in uneven paths and laughing - or laughing as best they could with their tongues stuck out. By the time the first gray hints of the stone hills crested out of the clouds, Louie was winning staunchly, but Dewey refused to be beat. He nearly fell forward into a snowbank, but stubbornly kept going.

Their amicable chatter died down as the hills came close enough to touch - and Webby did touch, reaching out a purple-gloved hand to wipe away a few errant flakes of snow. The group paused, speechless at the sheer size and gentleness of the rolling hills.

Webby took in a deep breath, in and out, making a large cloud of breath in the cold air. “Snow sword-horses, Isabella Finch’s legacy, here we come.”

With Webby in the lead, the four ducks rounded the hills and finally made their way into the small clearing in the middle of the stone. And found…

“Nothing,” Webby said, her word hanging in the quiet air. Surprise and disappointment were etched across her face as she stared at the empty clearing.

Huey, ever the Dad Friend, snapped out of his stupor first and stepped forward to lay a hand on Webby’s shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay. Maybe we made a mistake.”

“Yeah, a mistake,” Louie echoed. “It was probably George Mallardy. He almost caused our uncle’s death. Can’t really trust that guy.”

“Maybe the sword horse is still around here somewhere,” Dewey added.

Webby pressed her beak tightly together. “Yeah, you’re right! Let’s keep looking.”

They scoured the clearing for any hidden passages. Huey analyzed the map carefully, looking for any possible errors or misleads. Dewey took it upon himself to rap each and every inch of the stone hills, looking for a secret passage. Louie walked in circles around the hills, looking for any other landmarks.

After an hour had passed of searching with no luck, the group reunited in the center of the clearing, where the pine tree would be. 

“Any luck?” Huey asked grimly, already knowing in his gut what the answer would be.

Louie shook his head regretfully.

“No,” Dewey muttered, the disappointment clear on his face.

Webby rubbed her toe anxiously against the snowy ground. She opened her mouth, clearly unhappy, and then froze, surprise overtaking her features.

“Webby?” Louie asked cautiously, but she ignored him in favor of leaning down and brushing snow away from a certain spot on the ground. Her brothers stared, frozen, for a moment. But when a splash of dark green peeked out from the snow, Dewey instantly dropped down into a crouch to help her. Huey and Louie followed suit in realization, and in no time they had cleared a little patch of snow away, revealing a tiny pine tree sprout.

“Huh,” Dewey said, breaking the tentative silence that had lain between the four of them while they dug. “I did not expect this.”

“It’s only a baby,” Webby breathed.

Louie frowned. “That’s weird. Isabella Finch and George Mallardy probably came here like a century ago. How could the tree be only a sapling?”

“Maybe it got cut down and replanted,” Huey reasoned logically.

“Or maybe it’s like a phoenix,” Webby breathed, the corners of her beak turning up. “It’ll come back! 

Dewey smiled. “It already is.”

Huey stood up, and held out a hand for his siblings. “We should get back to the plane. Maybe back at home we can do more research on magical pine trees and mystical tundras.”

Webby smiled softly and pushed herself to her feet, the last out of the four of them. “I’d like that.”

She unfurled the map again, and they trekked back to the plane, a little subdued but still energetic. Despite this branch of their adventure being mostly complete, their return seemed to go by in a blink. Soon they were boarding the plane and shedding their snow gear. Dewey settled into the pilot seat and, after a moderately smooth takeoff, they were in the air.

After about a half an hour of flipping through his Junior Woodchuck Guidebook, Huey slipped out of the copilot’s chair and made his way over to Louie and Webby. Louie was scrolling through something on his phone, and Webby was reading one of the books Scrooge had given her for her birthday. Darkwing Duck was playing idly on the Sunchaser’s tenuously supported TV in the background, but neither were paying attention to it.

“Look at this,” Huey announced, sliding into the seat next to Webby and holding out his book. It was open to one of the pages about plants and fauna. Huey tapped a small paragraph in the corner with his finger, and Louie and Webby leaned in to read.

“Longer-living plants, like redwoods, go through many stages in their lives, many of which last long periods of time,” Louie read aloud. He glanced at Huey. “That’s purposefully vague. I don’t think it relates to the pine tree.”

Huey’s eyes glinted, like they always did when he got excited about a research project. “Maybe it’s purposefully vague. Either way, it’s a good starting point for an investigation!” 

He smiled. “We may uncover the mystery behind this pine tree and the unicorn just yet.”

Louie typed in a search on his phone. “Heck yeah we will. Ducks don’t back down, remember?”

Webby tucked a colorful bookmark in her book and set it on the chair beside her. “You’re right.” She pulled out her own phone and started to search too.

“This adventure is looking to be bigger than ever!!”

~

hi this is very messy n bad cause i wrote it in an hour but i also have a lot of other big projects goin on (i’m writing the script for an instaronpa!) but i don’t usually have the motivation/time to do events like these. i’m going to try to do a little bit each day, so the parts will be shorter than what i usually write, but hopefully there will be 7 of them!! what i did was i set a timer for 30 minutes and tried to do just that, but i was only halfway done so i kept going. idk if i’ll have the motivation to keep doing that though

anyway i think this is gonna be like a connected story btw. all the more pressure to finish it ahaha. i hc that in this story, they’re all a little older, like teenagers (hence why they’re on an adventure by themselves). there’s one comic where dewey really wants to learn how to fly, so i snatched that headcanon when i realized if they’re on their own, they need a pilot. i considered briefly having Launchpad fly them in and not go, but I like Dewey flying. The whole “Webby planning an adventure” shtick is a brief nod to a couple lines from my group chat fic, where Della inspires Webby to plan an adventure. Since that happens when they’re at their canon ages, this isn’t the adventure they’re talking about. it’s just my inspiration.

title is a lyric from Home by Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes. (two for two on using secular songs I sung at camp last year for fic titles haha)

see you tomorrow for the next installment of Home is Wherever I’m With You!

@hdlwsiblingweek2020