Chapter Text
The marble walls of the Adventure Bay Museum of History echoed as 26 feet patted against the floors. If walls could speak, these had the most stories to tell.
Ryder, along with the six pups of his PAW Patrol, strolled through the dimly-lit halls, peering at the artifacts from ages past. In particular, this section of the museum was from the late sixteenth-century. Mannequins clad in frills, petticoats, and stockings stood proudly behind one glass case. Inside another, a Cree feathered headdress, a pair of laced moccasins, and a map of the surrounding Bay Area hung on an opposite wall, also behind glass.
Ryder and the pups reveled in the living history, with each pup excitedly running to new displays.
“Wow Ryder! Look at this!” Skye yips gleefully in front of the dressèd mannequin. “She looks like a queen!”
Ryder chuckles. “I bet!”
Rubble winces as he approaches the other mannequin. “I dunno… it all seems a bit uppity!”
“What do you mean?” Chase adds.
“They all dressed so silly back then!” Rubble comments “I mean, look at how puffy those sleeves are!”
The three pups erupted in laughter as they admired the history.
Meanwhile, two other pups were walking in tandem down the hall of Elizabethan artifacts. Zuma and Rocky peered their wide eyes around, yet mostly kept walking.
“Wow, dude!” The Chocolate Labrador begins. “All this old-timey stuff is weally cool!”
“Yeah!” Rocky nodded, eyeing wall-mounted ship artifacts. “It’s crazy how similar things were back then; yet, completely different!”
“Yeah!” Zuma shuts his eyes imaginatively. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could go back in time and live there? Back when Adventure Bay was an old town!”
“Actually, yeah!” Rocky beamed. “Besides, they didn’t have to bathe back then!”
“You’re gross!” Zuma giggled.
“No, you are! Half of the time you’re freshly-coated in water!” Rocky playfully nudged his chocolate-furred friend, shuddering at the last word.
“No, you are!”
“No, you!”
“No, you!” They laugh in unison. By now, they had attracted the attention of the remaining members of the PAW Patrol, who were approaching the play-fighting pups.
“Aww! You two are so cute together!” Skye coos.
At this remark, the two stop dead in their tracks, turning to face the pups with raised eyebrows.
“Cute?” Rocky asks. “What do you mean?”
“You two are complete opposites! Yet, you guys are best friends!” Chase nods.
“It’s like you’re star-crossed!” Marshall giggles, taunting a kissy-face at them.
“Hold on!” Zuma huffs. “Wocky and I awe best fwiends, and that’s all!”
“Okaaaaaay!” Rubble drawls sarcastically.
“Whatever, I’m going on!” Rocky begins walking, his head still turned towards the back.
The gray mongrel, not looking where he was walking, soon felt a hard surface slam against him; or rather, himself slam against the hard surface.
Rocky had bumped into a shelf on the wall at the end of the hallway. The freestanding dark-wooden shelf wobbled, the artifacts rattling in the cubbies, and a velvet-bound book began shifting off the top.
“Oh no!” Rocky winced in anticipation of the entire shelf collapsing before him.
However, it slowly stabilized itself. Rocky slowly opened his eye…
And the book fell straight on his head.
“Oof-!” Rocky grunts, his head nodding as he collects himself. “Hey, what’s this?”
The PAW Patrol ran towards the sitting pup, and Ryder bent down to pick up the book. “It looks like some old book!”
“Ooooh!” The pups all stepped closer to examine.
The human boy gently flipped the cover to the yellowed pages. On it, he saw a little number etched in calligraphic ink. “1595…” he gasped. “That’s two years after Adventure Bay was founded! This must be someone’s diary!”
“Woah!” The pups shouted in unison.
“Is there a name, Ryder?” Rubble pipes up.
“Let’s see!” Ryder carefully flips the time-stained page to the next. On it, a name was written in cursive at the top, followed by a paragraph. “Hmm… it belonged to one… Riderston Patrolian! I know that name!”
“Who is it, Wydew?” Zuma squeaked, sitting next to a dazed Rocky.
“Riderston Patrolian was the first bard of Adventure Bay! It’s who I was named after!” The boy holds the book close to his chest.
“Woah!” Marshall cheers. “What’s a bard?”
“It’s like a storyteller! A playwright!” Ryder explains. “This must be his diary-”
“Or maybe it’s a story!” Skye cheers, performing a backflip from excitement.
“Good idea, Skye! Want to read it?”
“Yeah!” Chase, along with the rest of the pups exclaim. “Though, maybe we should leave these two star-crossed lovers to themselves!” The German Shepherd giggles.
“Stop it, Chase!” Zuma and Rocky shoot back, before the mongrel stands up. “We can come with you guys!”
“Okay! Why don’t we head over to that corner to read it?” The hazelnut-haired boy beckons to a corner of the hallway, between the back wall and an artifact shelf.
The seven happily trot over to the corner and sit around their criss-cross-applesauced owner. Carefully, Ryder drags his finger towards the paragraph scribbled at the bottom.
As the boy reads, the pups all close their eyes, and imagination takes over. They depart from the marble walls of the museum to a bustling colonial port town on Adventure Bay, long, long ago…
”Two households, both alike in dignity in fair Adventure Bay where we lay our scene, from ancient grudge break to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil paws unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life; whose misadventured piteous overthrows doth with their death bury their parents’ strife. The fearful passage of their death-marked love and the continuance of their parents’ rage, which, but their children’s end, naught could remove, is now the two hours’ traffic of our page; the which, if you with patient ears attend, what here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend…”