Chapter 311: Half-Baked Idea
Having Harold Carson show up at the bare fringes of dawn, wasn't Kim's idea of a good way to get woken up. Though, she doubted that Harold would be willing to shut up and go to sleep until an actually reasonable hour, but Kim wasn't sure she should have expected anything different after the way the night had ended with the discussion about what strategy to try and employ against the oversized bear.
While Harold seemed friendly enough, Kim couldn't help but notice that his teammates didn't seem particularly enthusiastic about his return. Which made her wonder how much of an 'accident' it was when he'd gotten left behind. Though, she doubted that he noticed himself.
Also, Kim couldn't help but notice that Heather and Sonya didn't have a problem being friendly with Harold. Which she suspected had to do with the fact that he hadn't been part of those who had abandoned them to the goblins. Unless there was more to the story than any of them were willing to talk about.
When they had a fire going again, Harold shifted out of his hybrid wolf state, and how his limbs dislocated in order to allow the body to shift back before re-locating themselves in the position they should normally be, was rather unsettling to Kim, and she had a feeling others, Heather and Sonya included, felt the same way. Even though no one actually said anything.
"You have no idea how long I've been trying to catch up with them," Harold said as a pot of water was put above the fire to start heating up. "I knew they were going to head towards the bear first, but it took me a while to even find a way out of that bog."
"We thought maybe you'd gotten sucked up in some of the quicksand Thomas saw," Stanley said, though Kim had a feeling that statement was a complete lie. Though it did appear that he was recovering, if only a little, from how he'd been unable to do move much after their abrupt exit from the fight with the stellar bear.
"No worries," Harold said, almost too carefree for Kim's liking. "What's important is that I caught up to you guys."
"In that case, you're in time to help us figure out what strategy to use against the bear," Jonas said, though he gave Kim a look like he was planning on using that as a distraction.
While Kim understood why he might want to do that, she wasn't as certain what he might be trying to distract anyone from. It could be to distract Harold or Stanley and the rest of his group, or everyone else altogether. She hadn't had a chance to get with Jonas to know what he had in mind, just that he was up to something.