Endings — 44 of 70

Part 9 - Regretful Things

Book 2 - Joyous

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- Story: Joy

It will be your wedding day. You look fantastic in your wedding dress, but you've forgotten some of the most critical elements: you need something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. Fact is, such things can be found around your apartment, but only in the form of... animals. You're going to have to convince animals with those properties to join your entourage... presumably by riding right along with you.

- Puzzle design

Talking or singing to any animal elicits some kind of reaction.

In order to keep the action of the scene going, we have a cell phone that rings periodically, every time you get a new required item.

The first call will be from your husband to be.... everyone's waiting, honey, and the caterers keep asking when you are going to arrive? What should I tell them? Okay, I'm not pressuring, but can you be here relatively quickly?

The second call will be from your soon to be mother in law.

The second call will be from your soon to be mother in law (now divorced). SHE will lay the shit on. Do you realize what an embarrassment you are to the entire family? Did you know that you were going to shame her son early on, or was it something you just came up with on the spur of the moment? If you go through the conversation tree long enough to ask her about her wedding, she will recall that she was late to it, and her husband's family couldn't tolerate it at all. If you continue being nice to her, she will give you the access key to her safe, which is behind a large family portrait of her son's family. It contains the stepmother's old and borrowed star sapphire engagement ring, plus a silver sixpence (for putting in her shoe).

In the living room is a box of recently delivered crickets, that dispenses unlimited crickets. You can't carry a cricket for too long; it has a small chance of hopping out of your inventory at any turn.

Underneath the sofa in the living room, a pair of eyes stares out at you, but eludes your grasp. Kitten will come out if enticed with a homemade toy: build a cat fisher with a stuffed mouse and a fishing pole

There are occasional rustling sounds coming from under your bed in the bedroom. Underneath the bed is completely dark. If a cricket is dropped or otherwise manages to make it into the bedroom, an eastern box turtle will sloooowly emerge and try to eat it. As a rule, crickets never hop away from the turtle if it is in the location. If you put a cricket on the window sill, it will hop onto the floor -- it won't stay on there.

In the kitchen, an orange and a banana are in the refrigerator. "Helps keep them fresher longer, said your mom, but you have your doubts."

If you open the window, If you take the orange and/or the banana from the kitchen and put it on the window sill, a hyacinth macaw (blue) will eventually fly into the window and munch on it. You'll need to gain the bird's trust by feeding it yourself, or petting it, before taking it (or rather, letting it hop onto your shoulder and making you look piratical. The macaw is both blue and borrowed.

A pamphlet, entitled An Amateur Introduction to Animal Care, sits on your coffee table. It promises to provide limited coverage of how to raise and enrich "over 14 well known and popular animals." You can consult or ask the pamphlet about the next step to get any particular animal.

A bag of peanuts in your kitchen can be used to coax a juvenile bluejay in the window, but he'll squawk until you open a nut for him. Once fed, he'll happily nest in your hair.

Old: turtle, star sapphire

New: kitten, bluejay

Borrowed: macaw, star sapphire

Blue: macaw, bluejay

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