RWBY Through Worlds

45: Tell Me to Hold On

What of Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang in all this time?

Like Arkos, they'd all been wandering around aimlessly.

The older three had all been alone for a while, but Ruby had befriended a mouse with a root...so that was nice.

Oh, and the mouse talked. [Despite how much I dislike the idea of wasting a whole Volume on this plot, in the short term I did think this was funny, so I kept it.]

Ruby had freaked out over that but then rolled with it and named her Little.

The problem was, Little didn't have any idea where her friends were or how she could get home, but agreed to help her look in exchange for a free ride and help getting food. Seems she had nothing better to do with her time than help strangers.

Ruby finally found Crescent Rose along the shoreline, and had to explain to Little what a weapon was...and then what a Grimm was...

This seemed to frighten the mouse.

"I don't like the sound of this," she said. "It sounds like the Jabberwocky."

"What is a jabber-who-cky?" Ruby asked.

"Oh, you don't want to meet that," Little said. "It's fearsome!"

She dove under Ruby's hood. By now it was dark...or dark-ish. Ruby saw the same odd continuous twilight that Pyrrha and Jaune did, where it only got truly dark for about an hour or two before it went back to being grey and pinkish.

"But what is it?" Ruby lowered her voice.

Little quivered. "Beware the Jabberwock, small one!" she said in a small voice, even for her. "The jaws that bite! The claws that catch! Beware the jub-jub bird and shun the frumious bandersnatch!"

"What's a jub-jub bird?" Ruby asked.

"A bird that eats small creatures," Little said. "We call it that because it makes that noise when it swallows them."

Ruby made a face. "And what's the other one?"

"It's a big furry creature that snatches things and eats them," Little said. "But it likes to follow them first. My family said it banders around and then snatches, so we call it a bandersnatch."

"So why do you call the other one a jabberwhatkey?" Ruby asked.

"Because it jabbers strangely and burbles and snarls," Little said. "It haunts the big hole in the ground by the tree of trails, and whenever the moon is full, it prowls around looking for something."

"For what?" Ruby said, in a hushed tone.

"No one knows," Little said mysteriously and fearfully. "But no one wants to find out. Some creatures used to try to approach it to make friends, and it clawed them to pieces, or at least that's what I've heard. Now everyone stays away. No one goes near the Jabberwocky."

"That's terrible," Ruby said. She tilted her head. "My friends and I slay monsters all the time--maybe we could get rid of it. When is the next full moon?"

"Tomorrow!" Little said. "Which means I need to find somewhere to hide soon. Please don't go near the jabberwocky, Ruby-is-a-Rose. It'll eat you!"

"No it won't." Ruby tried to sound convincing. "It's probably just some wild animal. It's no problem. Does it not talk like you?"

"It talks unlike me," Little said meaningfully. "I've never heard it, but my great grandfather once crept close, and he said it kept saying, 'Vorpol Sword.'"

"Vorpol Sword?" Ruby repeated. "That doesn't sound right."

"Well, if it's wrong, no one knows any better, so it makes no different," Little said. "What is right is wrong if you don't know it, and what is wrong is right if you don't know any better, nohow."