Montana Shingles and her antennae puppy-dog-shaped yokai pal Vira passed a large abandoned Skrotall cannery and a closed down roller rink but didn’t see any humanoids or yokai or robots around. By-and-by they followed a turn in the road and saw before them a big brown balnut-bearing fleshtree making a shady spot over the road. In the shade sat a curious looking little puppet-class yokai. His skin wasn’t meat like Mono’s or fur like Vira’s, but a mauve felt-like substance, and his round head had no features except for a wide, unsmiling mouth. He wore a thick pair of black framed glasses and each opaque lens was white with one animated black dot in the middle. The little boy was digging a hole in the earth with a big soup spoon. He must have been digging for some time, because the hole was already big enough to drop a humanoid head into.

  Montana came to a halt before the little boy, who kept on digging in a sober and persistent fashion. The portly tween put Vira down and the puppy dog didn’t yip, but she did creep up to the boy and started to sniff him and his hole violently.

  "Who are you?" asked the girl.

  He looked up at her calmly with his round black pupils.

  "I'm Pucas," said he.

  "But what's you real name?" she inquired.

  "Pucas."

  "That isn't a really-truly real name!" she exclaimed.

  "Isn't it?" he asked, looking back towards his digging.

  "'Course not. No one is called Puke-kis. You must have an actual name."

  "Must I?"

  "To be sure. What do your parents call you?" She was beginning to feel like an Inquisitive Slobberwocky.

  "Pucas."

  "But why?"

  "Don’t know," said Pucas. And then he leaned forward and puked into the hole.

  "Um," said Montana. She pulled out her light blue handkerchief and handed it to Pucas to wipe the barf off his face. "So, er... Where is your family?" Montana asked.

  "Don't know."

  "Where do you live?"

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  "Don't know," was the reply.

  "How did you come here?"

  "Don't know," he said again, handing back the now really gross handkerchief.

  "Keep it. Don't you know where you came from?"

  "No," said he, stuffing the pukey handkerchief into his hoodie pocket.

  "Why, you must be lost too," Montana exclaimed. "What are you going to do next?"

  "Dig," said he.

  "But you can't dig forever; and what are you going to do then?" she persisted.

  "Don't know," said the boy.

  "But you must know something," declared Montana, getting provoked.

  "Must I?" he asked, looking up in dull surprise.

  "Of course you must."

  Never before had Montana met with any one who could give her so little information. The boy was evidently lost, and his family would be sure to worry about him. He seemed about seven or eight, and his dark blue zipfront hooded sweatshirt, cerulean blue T-shirt (with a black Sal Ammoniac icon on the chest), and dark grey corduroy trousers were very nicely tailored, as if some one loved him dearly and took much pains to make him look well. His black squishball sneakers looked almost brand new. How, then, did he come to be in this lonely road?

  "You're just awful unhelpful, Pucas," she said.

  "Am I?" he asked, looking into his hole. His vomit was draining into the soil and there was just a thin layer of gack at the hole’s bottom.

  "Yes, you are."

  "Why?" he asked, looking up at her.

  She was going to say: "Don't know," but stopped herself in time.

  "That's for you to answer," she replied. "It's no use asking you questions, but I don’t think I should leave you alone here. You’d better come with us to Schmegma City."

  Elvira Daisy Shingles had stopped sniffing Pucas and had been looking with great curiosity into the hole which the boy had vomited, and growing more and more excited every minute, perhaps thinking that Pucas had thrown up just for her. The little yokai began barking loudly and jumped into the hole herself, where she began to dig with her tiny paws, making the vomit-soaked dirt fly in all directions. It spattered all over the mauve boy. Montana seized Pucas and raised him to his feet, out of the line of fire.

  "Stop that, Vira!! Bad, Vira! NO!" she hollered.

  Vira yipped again while looking down at the hole and then back up at her best friend, then down, then back up... Mono finally noticed that the little puppy-dog’s digging had uncovered something that reflected the pink peach-shaped sun. She reached into the hole and uncovered a tiny, molybdenum-framed mirror. Vira stopped, sniffed at the mirror suspiciously. Mono picked it up, shook the dirt and puke off, and put it into her backpack.

  "Thank you, Vi-pie. Well, let’s move on, or we won't get anywhere before night comes," said Montana.

  "’kay," said Pucas.

  "Rrrrr-YIP!" yipped Vira, wagging her tail happily. Then she pooped in the hole.