Chapter Four; A Wondrous Return

Jurro franticly paced back and forth, nervously anticipating the safe return of his friends, as Prate watched him in amusement. "Where are they, where are they…" he muttered "They should be back by now, it's already been a moon!"

"Just relax for once!" Kernoes, grooming his gorgeous fluffy, cream colored tail, growled at Jurro. "They'll get back, whenever they get back." He calmly said "You know how long these journeys can take."

"I know!" Jurro barked at Kernoes, "And we all know how dangerous they can be too!" he paused and stopped his pacing, looked at the dirt ground he was standing on. He then looked over at Prate who was resting on a low growing tree branch, dangling his paws just inches above the dusty forest floor, he then looked at Kernoes, still grooming and straitening his fur, who rested on a soft, bright green pile of freshly grown moss. Jurro looked back at the ground and blushed "I'm just worried about, them…"

"Oh, my gosh!" Kernoes gasped "You have a crush on Rommy, don't you!" he said with squinted eyes and a smirk across his face.

"I do not!" Jurro, who was blushing even more now, defensively barked at Kernoes

Kernoes began to mock Jurro about his crush, repeatedly singing "You love Rommy! You love Rommy!"

Jurro was so annoyed, he nearly shot lightning bolts out of his head. When Prate began to giggle and said "No, he just said he doesn't have a crush on Rommy! He's in love with Fretch!" He began laughing so hard at his own joke that he fell out of the tree as Kernoes fell over with laughter alongside him.

"Ha ha ha!" Jurro sarcastically laughed rolling his eyes.

A familiar voice broke through the crowd and cheers of laughter, calling out "Hello! We're finally back!" Prate, Kernoes and Jurro look in the direction of the sound and see a handsome Vaporeon and a beautiful Umbreon.

The three of them raced off to them calling out "Fretch! Rommy!" the group came to a skidding hault and analyzed their newly evolved friends, expecting to find two Vaporeons, but instead, a Vaporeon and a gray and blue fox Pokémon, an Umbreon!

Jurro bounded forward and hugged the two of them "You made it back alright!" Jurro sighed, oozing with relief "You are ok aren't you?"

Rommy and Fretch both hugged Jurro back and the others joined in on the group hug. Fretch leaned in and kissed Jurro on his soft yellow cheek, then whispered in his ear "We're fine honey!"

"I'm just so happy to finally be back home with all you guys!" Rommy shouted with happiness.

"I'm so glad!" Kernoes exclaimed with excitement. They all took a step out of the hug and reunited each other.

"Ok." Rommy grunted "could we stop hugging, it's getting a bit hard to breath!" everyone agreed and dispersed from the hug, acting like nothing had happened. The five friends began to walk towards the square of the territory

Prate suddenly swung his head up in realization and a sly smirk creped across his face, "You two do realize, well, now that your back," he started to smugly say, "that all of our eevee class has evolved?"

"So?" Fretch asked.

"You know what that means right?" the other four looked up at him in question. "We can finally have our unofficial-official graduation party! You know, to celebrate everyone finally getting out of that stupid training for eevees!"

"Oh yea!" Kernoes gasped "I completely forgot about that!"

"What? What is that?" Jurro cluelessly stammered out the question as everyone else continued going on about how they 'can't wait' or 'it's going to be so much fun and amazing!'

Fretch gave him a blank stare "You mean, you don't know about the unofficial-official graduation party!?" he paused and leaned in "It is only going to be the most outrageous party we will ever go to in our entire lives! It is a celebration of our entire generation moving on and growing up in life! And some even say they get their first taste of nectar."

Jurro looked at him confused and blurted out "Sex?"

"No, that's during the mating season you numb skull! Nectar is alcohol!" Prate snapped at Jurro who looked down at his paws in embarrassment, with his ears down, for his stupid question. "Well it's not like the season isn't the only time it can happen." Prate said after thinking about it.

"Well!" Kernoes said "See all you there!"

"Wait?" Rommy spoke up "Where is it? Is it today!?" she seriously doubted that the party would be this day considering that Fretch and herself had only just arrived.

"No!" Kernoes said with a scoff "That would be awesome though, but the news wouldn't travel that fast."

Prate butted into the discussion "It'll probably be tomorrow night, once the word gets out that we, the final students to have evolved, are finally back and ready to party!"

The group dispersed, Rommy noticed that Jurro was looking glum, she trotted over to him "Don't feel so bad, I didn't know the unofficial-official party was a thing either." Suddenly he didn't look so sad, she even felt better, knowing that she wasn't the only one who didn't know about it.

Rommy and Jurro walked off to their dens. Jurro arrived at his den, this particular den was a larger burrow made to house a family rather than one or two Eevees or Eeveelutions. The den had six beds in it there were two larger ones, for his parents, three average sized beds, one for him and two for his older sisters, and one small, empty one, that would fit a newly born eevee or an egg, snug between the two larger beds. He entered the underground den and plopped down in his bed, a few bits of ripped up moss and yellow fur flew up and gently drifted back down on his bed.

"Oh, Honey! Your home earlier than usual." An older female Jolteon, with longer tail fur than an average Jolteon, her white neck fur was less coarse and spiky than normal too. "I mean," she continued "you normally stay out longer with your friends. Did something happen?" she gasped.

"No, Mom!" Jurro groaned "Hey mom, there's a party tomorrow night, so I won't be home, then…"

His mom glared at him blankly, "Is that a question, Jurro?"

"Yes." He replied rather quickly.

"You aren't by any chance," she said with a sigh, "Oh, I don't know, the 'unofficial-official graduate party' that the graduating class puts together each year?"

"Ye-yea!" he stammered "How did you know?"

"Oh!" she started to talk while having flash backs of herself as a young Jolteon with spiky bangs while drinking lots of nectar while hanging out with her girl friends and flirting with guys, "Well I wasn't always as mellow as I am now, yah know, and your sister was talking about how she couldn't wait for your friends to get back so the party could actually start. When I was young, that was the only party everyone ever talked about!"

"Oh." The disappointment was obvious in his voice that his slightly older sister had told their mom about the party before she told him. Jurro was only born a few moons after his sister, Query, who never let him forget that she was the older one, so she was in charge, and that 'technically, he was a mistake.' Because they were born in the same year they were in the same eevee class. Query is a snobby, drama queen of a Flareon. "I-I'm gonna go hang out with friends…" Jurro stuttered as he slowly left the den.

He trotted around the village-like territory of the pack and found the den of Prate and Kernoes, they were roommates. 'What a perfect pair.' Jurro thought. He entered the den to see Prate admiring the way light bounced through the dark, icy blue gem on his forehead and Kernoes… sleeping… noisily. "Hello!" Jurro called. Kernoes had a leaf covering his eyes and entire face. The burro was a mess with shredded bits of moss on the ground along with bits of blue and red fur. It was obvious the den hadn't been swept for extra dust, dust clouds would be kicked up every step he took.

"Oh, hey." Prate said not looking up from watching the glare of the sun bounce off his crystal.

"Who is it?" Kernoes grunted as he slightly looked up without moving the leaf from his face.

"It's just Jurro." Prate replied.

"Oh!" He leaned forward slightly, still on his back, his fluffy tail waving back and forth slowly with his back legs spread apart, and removed the leaf from his face. "So what brings you here, bro?"

"Oh, nothing really!" Jurro replied "But would you mind if I stay the night here?"

Kernoes stared at him, dazed, and plainly stated "Well I don't really give a fuck if you stay here, Prate, what do you think?"

"We don't have an extra bed, so as long as you don't mind sleeping on the floor." Prate finally looked up from what he was doing and asked, "Why would you want to stay the night…" he paused and looked around the den, "here?"

Jurro thought for a second about why did he really want to stay the night? "I-I just wanted to get out of the den and away from the family."

"Well your always welcome to stay here, ya know… if ya don't mind floors!" prate said with a chuckle. Kernoes went back to sleep and soon after Prate dozed off as well. It was getting late so Jurro found a soft patch of dirt and scraped together a pile of moss bits to lie on and went to sleep.