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You hold out a pile of bones, a ribcage and some limbs. Unlike the other fossils you’ve come across, these are soft to the touch. In your hands they feel warm, but that could be your body heat seeping into them.
“Let me see here... Hmmm...indeed... Hoo hoo!” Eyes wide, Blathers shakes like a bobblehead. “This is most assuredly a dolophoniosaurus torso! Superb, indeed, splendid! A rare fossil we do not yet have in our collection! This dolophoniosaurus torso is just the kind of discovery we want to showcase in the museum. What say you? Will you donate it to our noble institution of learning?”
You nod, zoning out of the same spiel you’ve heard countless times before. “I’m donating it.”
“Hoot! How wonderful! I’ll add this to our collection with the utmost haste. I never thought I’d lay eyes upon such a well-preserved dolophoniosaurus torso.”
Well-preserved is a stretch, but what do you know? You don’t have a doctorate in archaeology. “Are you going to ask me if I want to know more about the specimen?”
Blathers’s gaze is distant. “I suppose I could, yes. Would that be to your liking?”
You smile politely. “I’m good, thanks. I just thought you would want me to ask you to ask me.”
Blathers shakes out a cheerful nod, beneath it a note of relief unbecoming of the limitless font of knowledge you believe him to be. “Of course. That is very courteous of you. I appear to be out of it at the current moment. Being awake during the day is not beneficial for the nocturnal faculties of one such as myself.”
His eyes are already closed. How does he do that? He hoos softly as you about-face on the carpet and leave. You let him sleep and mosey on home.
In the stack of books on your unpainted wooden table is an unabridged encyclopedia of dinosaurs. Flipping through it, you notice absolutely nothing between Diplo tail tip and Dunkleosteus. Dolophoniosaurus is the absence of a thing.
You shove the book in your mom’s knapsack and make your way back to the museum by twilight
Blathers’s expression is less wide-eyed than usual as his freely-rotating head swivels to follow you.
You open the encyclopedia to the page you closed it on. “Can you tell me more about the dolophoniosaurus I donated earlier today?”
Blathers sweats buckets. “I’m just a simple curator. Surely there’s no need for this interaction to be so confrontational.”
You push the book millimeters closer. Blathers backs away as if it were a knifepoint, or worse, the egg case of a mantis. You try again. “Why are you lying to me? What are you hiding?”
“Let’s just forget this ever happened. It was the smallest hiccup in the provision of accurate information...”
“I’ve seen you scour paintings for minute details to prove their authenticity, yet now you peddle phony fossils? Do you have any scholarly integrity left?”
“That’s enough, hoo! I will not be slandered by a plebeian such as yourself, Resident Representative or not!” He swats the book from your grip, his feathers tickling your hand.
He closes his eyes until his huffing subsides. “I thought taking a position here would bring me a calm life. I would be but a blip in the glorious current of scholarship, but aren’t we all just tiny motes to history?”
You leave him rambling and step into the fossil display room. It takes a minute to find the dolophoniosaurus torso in the back corner.
“I should have known.” You look over your shoulder. Blathers shines the exhibit placards with a handkerchief. “My feathers are clean of the darkest deed, but I have aided and abetted, hoo.”
“It was the tanuki, wasn’t it.”
Blathers turns away, but his head spins round. His eyes meet yours. “You’re more perceptive than I give you credit for. I dare say, you could bring him down. Please endeavor to do so. Let me see my sister again...”
He looks up at the model meteor forever frozen in its hurdle toward the planet. Unlike the two of you, the fossils have nothing to fear.
In preordained unison you mutter separately to yourselves, “Nothing would make me happier.”
*
You toss and turn in your red cute bed. The sheets surround you like waves of blood. The down pillows you rest your head on become the flesh of your friends. Who knows where the feathers came from?
In the morning you visit the Able Sisters.
“Hey there. Welcome to Able Sisters, where we sell fashions made lovingly by claw.” Mabel dotes on you in her usual way.
Something catches your eye.
“A leopard tee? That one costs 800 bells. Do you want to buy it?”
You run your hand over the fabric. It feels like real fur. Sable has outdone herself.
“I didn’t know it came in white.” Your catalogue lists variations in yellow, pink, green, and gray. You hold one up to the other like paint swatches, just to be sure. It’s too bright to be gray.
Sable looks over from her perch at the sewing machine in the corner. “Oh, Label made that one.”
“Bianca moved away recently.” You scrutinize the pattern of spots on the shirt. It’s sparser than you remember. The garment itself seems too small. Wearing it would be skin-tight.
“I remember them.” Mabel nods. “Into the cute styles. Or was it modern?”
“Said they were going to be a pop star,” Sable adds.
“That’s the one.” Mabel wags a claw. “They were so sweet.”
“Went down a little rough if you ask me,” Sable quips.
Mabel pushes over a mannequin dressed in a chef’s outfit. “Oh, shit,” she mutters. “I’m so sorry, we’re going to need to close early today. I’m not feeling well.”
This charade has the integrity of wet paper, but you play along. Your hand reaches around in your inventory for clumps of weeds and a wasp nest to mash together into a mysteriously effective curative.
“I’ll take the leopard tee.”
“The shop is now closed. Please make any last purchases and make your way to the exit,” Sable implores. “It’s for your own good. You don’t want to get involved.”
“I think I already am.” You don’t feel brave. You feel small and scared.
“Now!” She bares her teeth. “Thank you, come again!”
For the first time as Resident Representative, you shoplift from the Able Sisters.
*
You run to the museum, carried on your legs like the strongest gust propelling a present.
“There’s something I need to see.” In a somber echo of hours earlier, you hold out your plunder to Blathers.
He locks the doors. “I always said the Able Sisters were too brazen, but they didn’t want to listen to an egghead like me.”
He’s known for a long time. The realization rattles around in your big, round head.
In the back corner of the fossil exhibit, you drape the leopard tee over the dolophoniosaurus torso.
It confirms your suspicions.
“The long, flowing garments were the fastest way to get rid of the skin, but also the most precarious.”
“How many villagers have I worn?” A shiver walks down your spine. You think of the parka dress gathering dust in your rattan wardrobe that felt too scratchy, the antique boots that had a strangely organic curvature in their seams.
“Hoo... let’s see... How many have moved out?” Blathers counts on his feathers.
“It can’t be.”
Villagers would ask you to leave the island, but you liked to keep them around, encouraging them to stay and get to know everyone better. The more friends the merrier—it was cliquey if you were an outsider, but the beauty of your tiny island was that everyone belonged eventually.
That dream has broken like a stone axe. All the photos you’ve hung on the wall of the upstairs room of your house are funeral portraits. You’re going to need more than one incense burner.
When you collect yourself, Blathers walks you back to the entryway.
“When I unlock these doors, there will be nowhere left on this island that will offer you safety, hoo. If the Able Sisters know that you’re privy to our island’s secrets, there’s no way they haven’t yet offered that information to Tom Nook as well. They will be on you like the furies, and as persistent in the execution of their holy wrath. And of you, hoo.”
You gulp down too much air. “I’m ready.”
“Godspeed. You’ve been the best Resident Representative this island has ever seen. In all fairness, I suppose doesn’t say much, as we’ve only had—“
“Owl, enough. Thank you Blathers, for being on my side.” You give him a hug. You realize you haven't put your arms around anyone since coming to this once-paradise.
He looks horribly guilty. For once in his life he has no excess words to unload on you.
He unlocks the door so you can flee into the waiting unknown.