Null Pointer

Forgetful Girls - Team Challenge

1. 20 Words - Vivian
2. 20 Sentences - Jedi1ant
3. 2020 Words - JStar8

20 Words - Vivian

Trixie and Honey forgot to groom the horses when they returned from their ride.

"Not again!" Regan exclaimed. "Those girls!"

20 Sentences - Jedi1ant

Earlier, Trixie caught the flash of a creature speeding by the building as they rode in to the stable.

Trixie shouted out, “I just saw something run by the building!”

“Honey, let’s leave the horses here where they’ll be safe and follow it before it gets away."

Hurriedly they dismounted and dashed out of the stables, leaving the horses in their stalls.

Trixie said, “I think that looked like a dinosaur running into the preserve.”

“Hurry, Honey!” cried Trixie quickly running back out toward the preserve.

“We can’t let that dinosaur get away!”

Honey cried out to Trixie as she ran to catch up, “Are you sure it’s really a dinosaur; after all, they are extinct.”

Trixie tossed her head and sniffed, “Jim would agree with me if he was here.”

Honey just rolled her eyes but caught up to Trixie.

They ran back in to the preserve looking for the creature or its tracks or broken branches to see which way it had gone.

Suddenly, the sky darkened quickly hiding the sun.

All noise seemed to stop; they could not hear a sound of any bird or animal or trees rustling.

Trixie and Honey stopped and looked around.

Nothing seemed to be moving and Trixie couldn’t spot ‘her’ dinosaur.

Then an orb seemed to appear from nowhere and float past them.

Honey’s and Trixie’s mouths dropped open.

Both were wondering “Could The Child be in there?”

Neither could move but just stand there watching the orb continue on its way.

In the distance, they could faintly hear the rest of the BobWhites calling them.

2020 Words - JStar8

“Are you sure about this?” Bobby asked Ben, giving the knot he’d just tied an experimental tug.

“It’ll be perfect. Trixie can’t help her curiosity, and there’s an inside joke amongst the Bob-Whites about a dinosaur in the bushes, so it’s absolutely fitting that we make it a reality.”

“I mean the orb. Are you sure that set up will hold? If the girls see any part of the mechanism, the jig is up. Trixie’s curiosity might be insatiable enough that she’ll chase after a dinosaur in the bushes, but she’s also really smart. Bad guys way smarter than us have failed to fool her.”

“We’ve planned everything and it all worked when I tested it yesterday, so, yes, I’m confident it’s going to work. Are you ready?”

Bobby nodded, grinning. “Let’s do it.”

They got into place just in time to put their plan into motion as Honey and Trixie rode back into view.

Trixie caught sight of the dinosaur almost immediately when Bobby gave the guide rope a yank to set it in motion. He could hear her yell out, “I just saw something run by the building! Honey, let’s leave the horses here, where they’ll be safe and follow it, before it gets away!”

Bobby made sure to keep the dinosaur moving continuously, without letting it get so deep in the brush that the girls would lose track of it as they hurriedly dismounted, stabled the horses, and rushed back out to chase down the dinosaur.

“I think that looked like a dinosaur running into the preserve,” Trixie reported, crashing into the bushes. “Hurry, Honey! We can’t let that dinosaur get away!”

Bobby gave a flick of his wrist, causing the dino to weave around a tree, but slowed how quickly he was pulling the dinosaur away, so Trixie wouldn’t lose sight of it just yet. Bobby risked shifting his position so he could see Honey hurrying through the brush to catch up to her best friend. “Are you sure it’s really a dinosaur?” Honey asked reasonably. “After all, they are extinct.”

“Jim would agree with me, if he were here.”

Bobby stifled a snicker. While that was true, so was Honey’s point about the extinction of dinosaurs. He refocused on the task at hand, deftly moving the dinosaur along the route he and Ben had mapped out, to lead the girls exactly where they wanted them to go.

If he got this right, the dinosaur would “disappear” into an old log right in a deep part of the preserve where the trees would leave everything in deep shadow. With no breeze, and the animals and birds scattered by the presence of too many humans crashing around in their bushes, there was likely to be an eerie sort of silence in the space.

If Ben got his part right, just as the girls started to realize it was too dark, too quiet, and they’d lost the fabled dinosaur, the orb would float right by their faces, surely drawing their attention.

Bobby held his breath as the dinosaur came loose from the worst of the brush into the hollow where the log that was his escape hatch was. So much could go wrong and the girls would realize they were being pranked before he and Ben could pull off the grand finale that would make the prank worthy of all the effort they’d put into planning this and luring the girls to a specific spot in the preserve.

Bobby let the breath go as quietly as he could as the dinosaur settled to a stop, lodged in the old log, just the way it was supposed to, rope pulled taut from there to where Bobby was concealed, and the excess rope coiled neatly beside him. The rest was all on Ben. Bobby knew a lot of people didn’t think Benjamin Riker was the sort of person who could be counted on, but even those people would agree that pranks were Ben’s specialty, so Bobby felt he could trust his friend to pull off his half of the prank.

All that was left for him was to settle in and watch. Just as Ben set the orb in motion, Bobby heard the guys—at least Brian, Mart, and Jim, call out for the girls from near the stables. Bobby crossed his fingers, and legs, and toes, and prayed the guys wouldn’t ruin this before Ben could pull it off.

Regan emerged from the office, having finished placing a supply order. He thought he’d heard the girls return from their ride. He was glad they’d arrived to exercise a few of the horses. He understood why Mr. Wheeler owned so many horses, and he couldn’t deny he loved having all the horses around, but he was one man, and several of the horses were high strung and needed long periods of exercise to settle down. When the Bob-Whites went a day or two here and there without riding, Regan could focus his attention on exercising the high-strung horses, like Jupiter, and letting the others get their own exercise in the paddock. But when a day here or there extended to a week or more, he couldn’t leave the other horses to their own devices.

Regan didn’t see Honey or Trixie anywhere in the stable, but he supposed they could be back in the tack room cleaning their gear, if they’d arrived back sooner than he thought. He walked down the middle aisle until he reached the stalls for Susie and Lady. He frowned, seeing both horses were sweaty and ungroomed.

"Not again!" Regan exclaimed. "Those girls!"

They’d have some good reason for leaving the horses like that, some mystery, some charitable cause. He didn’t think they were bad people—none of the Bob-Whites were—but they were old enough to be more responsible than this. No matter how many lectures he gave, he couldn’t seem to make them understand that the horses were living, breathing creatures, that caring for them had to come first, before human wants. It was part of the bargain of domestication. If the girls had gone to the gym, or gone for a jog, worked themselves to the degree they worked the horses, they’d go change clothes at least, probably take a shower. If the horses were part of a wild herd and had worked themselves up like that, they’d find some cool, shady, grass to roll in, or a nice cool stream. But they were domestic horses, so their humans owed it to them to take care of the “change of clothes and probably a shower” part, in the form of removing their tack and grooming them, making sure they were comfortable after their exercise.

Regan couldn’t figure out why it was such a challenge to make that make sense to the two young women. If it was just the tack, he’d deal with that. He’d still lecture, because Mr. Wheeler had told him that he expected the kids to take responsibility for their riding, but Regan himself kind of thought taking care of the gear was his responsibility as the groom. That was his title—groom—not stable manager. But leaving the horses in this state, without even bothering to tell him, so that he could take care of them promptly? That was neglectful. Calling it animal cruelty would probably get him accused of being overly dramatic, but that’d be from someone who didn’t have to look a horse in the eyes who’d been well-ridden and put away untended.

Regan shook his head, and got to work properly settling the two horses and he rehearsed his next lecture on the subject for the two girls.

“That looked like Honey and Trixie racing into the bushes,” Brian commented, puzzled, as the guys walked up the Manor House driveway.

“Trixie was yelling something about seeing a dinosaur,” Mart agreed.

“We should go after them,” Jim pointed out.

Dan snorted. “Of course you’d say that. I thought they were out for a ride. Shouldn’t they still be grooming the horses? If they left the horses ungroomed again, Uncle Bill is going to have their heads!”

Brian frowned. “They mean well.”

“Fat lot of good those intentions do their horses,” Dan retorted. He’d lived on the streets. He’d seen exactly what “they mean well” had gotten him, and others who needed help. “But let’s agree we’ll leave that matter between Uncle Bill and the girls. Are we chasing them through the preserve or not? I know Jimbo here believes Trixie’s every word, so if she said she saw a dinosaur, there must be a dinosaur, but the rest of us understand the realities of extinction, right?”

Jim scowled, even though he knew Dan was just teasing and trying to rile him up. “If Trixie says she saw a dinosaur, I believe her. I’m not saying I expect real live dinosaurs, Jurassic Park style. I’m saying I trust her instincts and her power of observation. I’m saying I believe she’s worth listening to, because when she says something is important, she’s right more often than she wrong.”

“And mostly she has you wrapped around her little finger,” Mart pointed out.

Jim shrugged, stepping carefully into the brush, trying not to damage the plants too badly. “If you’d like me to return the favor the next time Di bats her eyes and you cave, go right ahead and keep talking there, ‘Dear Martin’,” Jim informed his friend.

They easily followed the path the two girls had broken through the preserve – neither girl had been particularly careful as they chased whatever Trixie had seen.

Soon enough, they found the two girls, a glowing orb spiraling in through the air around them. The girls seemed mesmerized by it. “Trix?” Jim called softly, not sure if it was safe to approach, if there was a reason the girls were just standing in the middle of the small clearing where a tree had fallen, letting the orb fly around them.

Trixie glanced over, her face lighting up when she saw him. Jim loved that look on her face. Loved that it seemed to happen just for him. He wasn’t sure he deserved it, but he loved that he got it anyway. “Hi Jim!”

“What’s going on?” Brian asked his girlfriend.

“Trixie saw what she thought was a dinosaur running along the side of the stables when we came back from our ride. We followed it this far, and then it disappeared, which is when this pretty orb appeared. Do you think The Child could be in there?”

“Baby Yoda?” Dan asked. “A fictional alien visiting earth is about as likely as Trixie having actually seen a real live dinosaur running around in Sleepyside.”

“Well, there’s one way to find out,” Mart announced, stepping forward and attempting to grab the glowing sphere out of the air. It evaded his hands, as if it could sense him, spiraling higher. Mart jumped for it, trying again to capture it, only to fail again, landing with a solid thump.

The orb completed its spiral and then burst, exploding above their heads. They all flinched from the sound and from the debris raining down on them. Or what they thought were debris; once their initial startle reflex passed, they realized most of what they’d been doused in was glitter, and the rest were little dinosaur figures, the kinds a kid would have that came from a coin operated dispenser and grew in water.

“Bobby!” Trixie shouted, immediately deducing the culprit. Bobby had loved the water & grow toys.

“Benjamin!” Jim added severely. He glanced at Trixie. “No way Bobby pulled off the technical aspects of this prank on his own. Plus, Moms never let Bobby have glitter. Ben, on the other hand, knows how much some of us hate the stuff that gets absolutely everywhere and is impossible to actually clean up.”

“Show yourselves,” Brian called out.

Laughing, and high-fiving each other, Bobby and Ben stepped out of the shadows between the trees, joining the Bob-Whites. Bobby stooped down long enough to extract the stuffed dinosaur from the log.