Lana held me and Danor as the three of us hovered some distance away from the closest human village to the North Pole. Unlike the earth the north pole of the moon wasn’t as cold, which was why humans could live so close to it.

“Are you sure we need to go from house to house asking if anyone lost a toy?” Lana asked and she sounded not quite convinced of my plan.

“You have a better plan?” I asked her instead. Lana stared blankly at me.

Lana, Danor and I went from house to house in the village, asking if the toy belonged to any child of the house. We made up the story that we had found the toy in the outskirts of the village. The villagers cast us suspicious looks since we were obviously rather earnest in returning the toy to the child, but the most they did was shake their heads and ask us to go away from their homes.

The entire day went by. We were now inquiring in the very last houses of the village. If the toy belonged to nobody in this village then we would have to continue our search in the next village, because I had promised the succubus that I would get the moonstone for her and she in return had lifted her deadly magic from the waters and even casted a new spell to heal all those who were in coma. Perhaps it was the sheer joy of the villagers at seeing their loved ones revive because of which they didn’t not bother about us outsiders going from home to home asking about the toy’s owner.

Finally there was only one last house remaining. Something felt rather odd about it. All the doors and windows of the house were closed. The other houses had been in a rather festive mood unlike this one.

“You think the owner of the toy is in this house, sir?” Danor asked.

“Well, let’s hope so,” I replied. I felt tired. My health bar had slowly fallen because I hadn’t eaten anything in a while now.

I went and knocked at the door of the very last house.

We waited for nearly a minute but nobody came out.

“Think no one is inside?” Lana said.

I wasn’t sure. The door was not locked. There had to be people inside. But after a few moments and after repeated knockings nobody came to open the door and it became evident that nobody was going to open the door at all.

“Perhaps they are sleeping?” Danor offered.

Disappointed, the three of us turned and were about to leave the house when there was a sound and the door opened a chink.

“Is it you, brother?” the small voice of a child said. He then gasped on seeing us.

I could only see the eyes of the child through the opening.

I held up the toy that I had been carrying all along.

“We found this toy—”

“It’s mine!” the boy said, his eyes wide, swimming in happiness.

The boy opened the door wider.

“It’s mine,” he repeated, “where did you find it?”

I exchanged glances with Lana and Danor. I was really at a loss as to how to proceed. Should I beat up the boy to make him confess the crime he had committed and tell him that he alone was responsible for all the problems that the moon people had to face lately?

The boy snatched the toy from my palm.

“Who is it, Gony?” a female voice said from the inside of the house. The voice sounded rather weak.

I squatted down near the boy so that I was at eye level with him.

I placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it gently but also maintained an air of authority.

“Do you remember where you dropped it, child?” I asked the boy.

The boy nodded. His earlier elation at getting back his toy was somewhat vanishing, as though he now thought that he was in the midst of doing something that he shouldn’t or that someone had forbidden him to do. The boy, Gony, suddenly shook his head and held out the toy.

“It’s not mine, sir,” he said, with a slight shiver in his tone.

“But you just said it’s yours!” I said.

“It looks similar,” Gony said and it was crystal clear from his face that he was trying his best to invent stuff out of air, “but it’s not of the same colour and the shape of the toy is a bit different from the one I lost.”

Just then a cry pierced the air from behind.

“Hey!” a male voice yelled, “What are you doing to my brother?”