"We're- we took the long way, but we made it. We're here." Grian puffed out, the first one having run to camp, panting with his hands; on his knees.

The sky was lighter, and it was easy to see the camp without flashlights now. At the edge of camp, the adventuring group was starting to catch up.

Doc was one of the first few to make it out, less tired from running than Grian, or at least recovering faster. He spotted Gem standing on the other side of camp, rocking her weight onto her heels as she waited for- well him actually.

He waved with both of his hands, trying to get her attention as he ran over.

"Gem!" His voice came out as a whisper scream as it debated whether to yell and get her attention or avoid waking everyone up. She didn't hear, so he tried again.

"Gem!" He said a little louder.

More hermits finally caught up, and the crowd caught Gem's attention. She looked at them all in disbelief, before rubbing her eyes and looking again. When it was clear they were real and she wasn't dreaming, she ran over quickly, sparing Doc the effort it took to run any longer.

"What are you all doing here?" He asked quickly. "Are you all here to see the flowers? I mean they're pretty but..." She trailed off and spoke again before anyone could get a word in. "Wait no- what are you guys coming from the woods, what happened? Why do Mumbo and Cleo have sticks in their hair? What's going on?"

Mumbo frowned and felt around his hair, trying to find the stick before pulling it out with a wince. His hair was already disheveled and frizzy, and as the strands loose from the slick fell back down, it only added to the mess. Cleo didn't move to pull anything out of her hair. Honestly at this point, what was the point?

"No time to explain." Doc said. "We need Xisuma right now. It's an emergency."

Gem searched their faces, all nodding or looking at the ground nervously. No one was joking or laughing, this was serious.

She hesitated, mentioning something quickly about having them all explain more later, before turning around and running straight for Xisuma's tent.

She found it pretty quickly since it was next to hers, and hesitated at the "door". Was she suppose to like- knock? Or uh, tap the side until they noticed?

No. Wait. Doc said it was an emergency.

Gem shook her head, and unzipped it quickly and loudly.

"Xisuma! Wake up! It's an emergency!"

"Whaaa-... huh?" Xisuma sat up slowly, with a clowlilcked hair and a crumpled band tee shirt, trying to open his eyes better to see the intruder.

"What's goin' on?" Joe slurred next to him, rubbing his eyes as he sat up before grabbing his glasses. "Gem?"

"There's an emergency by the trail and they need you." Gem said quickly.

"Emergency!? What emergency?" Xisuma woke up much faster.

"I don't know, Doc just came out of the woods and told me to get you." Gem looked worried too, her voice rising a litter higher and faster.

He shook his head quickly, trying to rub off the sleep, before jumping out of bed and grabbing his shoes on without socks to rush out. Joe was a little slower but skipped wearing shoes at all to follow Xisuma out of the tent.

"What happened?" X asked as he rushed towards the group.

"Xisuma we are so sorry."

"We didn't think it would get so out of control!"

"It was meant to be fun."

"We're sorry."

"Woah woah woah what's going on?" Joe interrupted them as Xisuma scanned their faces quickly, almost counting them up in his head.

No one was sure who should explain it, until Etho stepped forwards.

"We went out at night on the trail and lost Bdubs and Keralis." Etho squeezed his eyes shut and blurted.

The silence was deafening.

Gem was blinking rapidly, trying to make eye contact with Doc to ask what was going on. He avoided her gaze by staring at the ground, no one else would look at her for long either.

Joe was just startled a little processing the information with squinted eyes that didn't seem as surprised or worried as they should be.

Xisuma, well...

"You what?" He asked slowly.

"It wasn't their fault. I offered the idea." Doc butted in.

"No no we went with it. We didn't think- we thought it would be fine." Beef said.

"Hey, we all agreed to go at our own times." Tango added. "It's all of our faults."

"Speak for yourself." Cleo muttered, rolling her eyes.

"We looked for hours on the trail, but couldn't find them." False said with a defeated sigh.

"We're so sorry." Grian added quickly.

"You mean to tell me that you lost two hermits in the woods, at night?" Xisuma said stiffly, enough to get everyone to freeze. "Keralis and Bdubs are out there right now, alone. Is that what I'm hearing correctly?"

"Yes." Etho cracked out the whisper.

X took a deep breath in, and no one was sure if he was preparing to lash out or he was trying to calm down.

"Then we're going to find them right now."

That wasn't quite the anger most of the group expected, but it was better than all getting yelled at.

"I'll have time to be extremely angry with all of you later, and don't you think this can be shoved under the rug whatsoever, but right now we're starting an emergency search party." Xisuma continued.

"We're sorr-"

"Ahp! I don't want to hear it." Xisuma interrupted. Everyone stayed silent after that.

"Gem, wake up everyone else and tell them what's going on. If we fan out and search from both directions of the trail, we should be able to find them eventually. If they somehow got onto another trail, we'll search on those after and keep a few hermits behind so we aren't running loops around them somehow. We can divide the area to find them more quickly, and use the buddy system to make sure no one else gets lost."

Xisuma sighed deeply. He turned around and shook his head slowly, trying to mask his fear with anger. He was still very mad at them, but the worried fear took over, and Xisuma was nothing if not completely stressed at the moment. 

They said they had looked for them for hours before coming back; what if something happened? These were safe woods, he knew that as camp leader, but that didn't exclude the possibility of them getting seriously hurt or worse.

He took a deep breath, trying to set his mind straight and focused on the task. His priority was to find his friends, and that meant he had to stay calm and steady over his fears and worries.

Xisuma lifted his head up, ready to do this. He turned halfway back to the group before hearing a russell of bushes behind him and the silencing crack of a twig.

Everyone seemed to hear it above the nervous silence, and Xismua whipped back around to see what he least expected at the moment.

Bdubs and Keralis were walking- or rather, limping,- out of the woods, struggling to get through a few bushes because they were side by side on the one person wide section of the trail. Bdubs arm was over Keralis's shoulder to stay upright, with his hurt leg lifted up behind him, and Keralis was using both arms to help Bdubs walk forwards.

They slowly looked up, and stopped with a soft gasp when they saw all of the hermits looking at them.

Stunned at the sight of the very people they were looking for suddenly in front of them, everyone was silent, unsure of what to say. Everyone was tired, dirty, and in shock, and the silence emphasized by the whistle of the early morning wind blowing past them.

Bdubs shifted to lean more of his weight on Keralis slowly as he let go of his walking stick, letting it fall into the crook of his arm so he could wave awkwardly with his now free-ish hand.

He was the first to break the silence.

"Hey guys." 

------ 

(1366 words, shorter one today!)

I wanted to finish this by the end of summer, but life has been absolutely hectic, and I'm going to be completely offline for a week pretty soon, (I'm going into the woods at night and following the footsteps of these idiots!) so I'm not sure that's a reasonable goal. 

Thank you for reading and maybe leave a vote or comment if you liked it? Have a great day or night wonderful internet strangers!