The Tale of Roland

== Author's note ==
Okay, here's the second Salmonberry Pond book, The Tale of Roland!!! It's a prequel, but starts where SoSP left off. 
P.S. The prologue might change, I'm not very happy with it, but I'll just put it here for now. ;P
== Prologue ==
"Hey, Pebble, want to join us?" Dipper said. She, Star, Flippa and Huckle were sitting under a tree with a large book on Star's lap. She was just opening it. 
"What are you doin'?" he asked. 
"We're going to read this book that we found, remember?" 
"Oh yeah, the one that was on the shelf in the cave." he sat down beside them on the grass. "Sure! It looks intriguing." Star looked in the book. 
"It's kinda hard to read, it's so old and deteriorated, but I'll do my best." So, with that, they all settled down to read The Tale of Roland.
== Chapter 1: Arrival ==
It was a hot summer day. Buzzards circled in the sky, waiting and watching for something to eat. The sun had turned most of the grass below to brown, and hardly a living creature stirred out in the open, except for a few bugs. Under the cooler cover of the trees, however, a smallish animal watched from a tree branch as a mouse wriggled his way to the edge of a cool, shady clearing in the woods. In the clearing, several ducks could be seen, surrounding what looked like a large pile of feathers. The pile was obviously alive, though, as it was moving up and down steadily. The mouse suddenly got up and began to charge, but his footpaw caught on a Solal branch and he tripped, falling flat on his face. This alerted the ducks, who immediately surrounded him menacingly. 
"What are you doing, furbeast?" asked a large one, flapping his wings angrily. 
Up in the tree, the figure whistled like a bird. The mouse was about to get up and answer, but a masked creature bounded out of the bushes and grabbed him, and was gone as quickly as he had come. The ducks, though surprised, tried to chase them, but some arrows came flying from all sides, cutting them off. The ducks looked for whoever had shot the arrows, but saw only a branch bouncing back into place in the distance. 
If the attackers had looked back, they would have seen the pile of feathers uncurl and stand up on its long legs, revealing a great blue heron. 
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By the time the mouse recovered from his surprise at being kidnapped, he found himself in a tunnel, firmly held by a strong creature in a mask. The mouse was furious. "Who are you and what do you think you're doing? I almost had him! After weeks of tracking him! Why-mmf!" The creature clamped a paw over his mouth and kept running. 
Finally they stopped in a cool underground cave, lit by a few torches. The mouse was set down, and three other mysterious creatures appeared, one larger, one smaller, and one very small. They all pulled down their masks and revealed two rabbits, a chipmunk, and a tiny shrew. The shrew spoke first. 
"Woah, why is he so mad? We just saved his life!" 
"I sure hope he's the right one." said the chipmunk. 
"He must be, I don't see who else it could be." said the female rabbit, going over to the mouse. "Sorry about the rough kidnappin', but-" 
"I almost had him!" yelled the mouse angrily. "After weeks and weeks of tracking him, I was just about to get him when you came and messed me up!" 
"Woah, woah, calm down." interrupted the male rabbit. "We did just save your life. You could never fight all those ducks alone and win! Anyways, we need you!" The mouse calmed down a little. 
"What do you mean you need me? And I don't care if I couldn't fight them all! At least I would go down fighting!" 
"You already were down." pointed out the rabbit. "And we'll explain why we need you in a minute. I should introduce us first. I'm Dan. This is my wife, Daisy..." he pointed to the girl rabbit. "This is Trillium, best knife thrower in the Pond and most beautiful singer..." he motioned to the chipmunk, who smiled modestly, "And this little rogue is Leafbud, but we just call him Leaf." he ruffled the headfur of the young shrew. 
The mouse calmed himself and ran his paw through his rather messy hair. "Um, nice to meet you. My name's Roland. Sorry about my getting so angry, I was just so... frustrated." he sighed. He was very handsome, about eighteen seasons, with ice blue eyes, a ragged red tunic, and fur that would be bright as snow if it wasn't so dirty at the time. "Wait- where's my sword?" 
"You mean this thing?" Trillium handed him his weapon. It was straight, and sharp, and the golden hilt curled up at the crosspeice, with a bright green pommelstone at the end. 
"Yeah, thanks." Roland sheathed it on his back. "Well, thanks... for... saving me, I guess. I probably would have gotten killed before I could reach Deathbeak, anyway." 
"Why are you after Deathbeak?" asked Daisy. 
He looked sad. "It's... something I'd rather not talk about right now. Maybe... some other time." He was silent for a moment, then said, "I wasn't expecting those ducks, where did they spring from? I've never seen them around Deathbeak before." 
"They're longtime enemies of Salmonberry Pond." explained Dan. "They're always trying to eat all our fish, but we don't want them to because they're one of our main sources of food, besides berries.They're very rude, so we always have to fight them off. But now Deathbeak came along, and he would love to eat not just our fish, but us too. So now he's recruited the ducks as his own army, and there are so many of them, we can';t stop them from eating our fish!" 
"Who's 'us'?" asked Roland, having only seen the four of them. 
"All the other creatures that live here at the Pond." said Daisy. "There's us rabbits, and the chipmunks, a few squirrels, some mice like yourself, and the frogs and salamanders, who are constantly in danger of being eaten, because they have to live in the water. We do have a cave that's full of water though... anyway." 
"What did you mean by you need me, anyway?" Roland asked. "You don't even know me."
TBC
== Note ==
Well since I want to rewrite the first book, I'm putting this on hold for a while. Who knows how long that will be, because I also have my fanfics I want to work on, ya know. :P Sorry about doing it at such an awkward spot in the first chapter, but I don't think I should go any farther now until I've rewritten the first book, cause then I might want to change a couple things in here. So yeah. ;P
Btw, what I have so far on here of chapter 1 is actually rewritten, because quite a while ago, I wrote up to where they were actually off on the quest, but it's so absoloutly terrible that I decided to start over. XP
Meanwhile, you might as well check out the SP wiki, if you haven't already. ;DCategory:Heather's Stories
Category:Original Stories
Category:Salmonberry Pond