Helping Out J.J.R

“Hey there! Thanks for answering my letter, I know it’s kinda strange to receive a letter from a stranger,” the tall cinna chuckles to himself, thick glasses falling a bit further down his snout but he doesn’t seem to notice, “But I could really use the help! I know it’s sorta a big ol ask but would you be willing to help me out with my research?” The cinna was a large dog, rounded teddy ears, maybe a bit taller and fatter than the average cinnadog. He wore a thick pair of rounded glasses on his face, his fur was messy, it looked like he wore a hat most days. His fur smelled of the sweet candy grass of the woods along with the scent of dark chocolate. 

“So you know how there’s been some new friends around lately! They seem to come from the creature known as Chaosma, or well maybe not come from but seem related- Oh right you probably don’t know what I’m blabbering on about.” He waved a large paw, laughing it off. “In short I’m a researcher, archaeologist. I've been spending my time in the jungles trying to find out more about our origins and ancient cinnas of old.” He had a toothy grin on his face now, one of his teeth seemed to be replaced with a peppermint one. 

“Okay, okay I’ll get to the point, sorry.” Another hearty chuckle escaped him, “I’m not asking you to wander into the woods or travel all the way to the jungle! I just wanted to know if you’d help me out with exploring the area around here! I wanna know if there’s artifacts or even clues that we may have overlooked around more populated areas. We sorta ran off into the jungle as soon as we could instead of actually exploring here!” Sheepishly he rubbed the back of his neck, “Even just chatting around with some others may help! Whatever you can do to maybe further my research would be helpful.” 

It wasn’t a huge ask, basically more of “Can you explore around your own town to see if there’s anything about old times?” though even so he still looked sheepish, a bit nervous about asking such a thing! 

The cinnadog other than being large, had soft brown fur with splotchy darker and light brown spots, his eyes were mismatched and he had a few scars coating his arms and one along his face, probably reckless “adventure” or digging around places he maybe shouldn’t be. He had two tails, doughnut coffin tails, one the darker brown colour of his fur and the other the lighter brown. He was certainly an interesting looking cinna! Though you probably wouldn’t guess that he was an archaeologist!

“Like I said, you don’t have to! I just figured getting some help before I head out again would be a good idea!” He had a jolly although slightly nervous disposition about him, maybe some sort of social anxiety due to not being around many others.

“You’ll help?! Really?!” One large paw was immediately in a hearty handshake, making it feel as if your arm would fall off. “Oh truly thank you so much! I don’t know what I woulda done if you actually had said no!” He laughed before finally letting go of the handshake, moving away but the big smile never left his face. “I’ll be around for a couple of weeks so if you find anything just let me know!! After that though my team and I will be headed back out to the Sugar Jungles so I won’t be available, I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

It’s easy to explore the town, it’s large but not too big, mostly small homes and businesses, you could always try to find someone to chat with about the past, there’s surely more cinnas who know about that better than you do! And there’s stories of cinnas who are actually immortal and they may have lived in the past that the researcher wants to know about!! Chatting around town it was easy to learn about how the town started, who founded it but getting information about further than that it was a bit harder to find! In the small town building one of the walls was painted with the oldest known historic piece in the town! It showed a bunch of cinnas planting crops in a field. The colours were faded but you could still make out some of the colours of the cinnas. 

Now finding artifacts was a lot harder, most things around town would’ve been explored and removed by now but going a bit further outside of town, past the farm fields there could be something out there! It was easy to get together with a few friends, head out farther than the fields and explore. It was actually quite fun! Even if finding nothing was what happened most of the time, asking some farmers around they had their own stories of their parents or starting the farm themselves. One farmer happily gave over an actual artifact they had found the first time the field was created, the object was probably from the founding of the town, it was made of sugar rock and seemed to be a tool of some sort. The farmer guessed it was a multitool of sorts, one end was flattened and the other was rounded but flat as well. Maybe a type of hammer? It was sorta hard to tell but finding anything made of sugar rock was impressive! Especially if it's been buried this long! 

Chatting, exploring, it was all fun, learning more about history, about your own history and more about the town or cinnas, the myths and legends, it was all like a whirlwind and also amazing! Exploring near the woods it was easy to find long lost forgotten things but most of those probably weren’t actually old or from long ago. In the end though, finding out more about the town and the people in it was a lot of fun, maybe something you had never even thought about before! Receiving another letter from the archeologist that he was leaving soon it was about time to return and tell him the things that have been learned and found!

“Woah! You learned a lot, though mostly about the town huh? It may not help me with my research but I bet it was a lot of fun to do your own research! That’s the main reason I wanted to be an archaeologist was because of how much fun I had learning.” That goofy grin was back on his face, this time he was wearing a hat to keep his face out of the sun. “Thank you for listening to an old dog's request! I’m glad I was able to help you and your friends have a lot of fun. It was important either way, whether it helped me or not doesn’t really matter since in the end you had a good time and learned some stuff!” He seemed to stand up a little bit straighter, rolling his shoulders. “Oh! I never told you my name, huh? Names Jalil, Jalil Journe Rumtopf! Though everyone just calls me JJ, so you can too!” Another strong, study handshake enough to pull your arm from your shoulder but it ended soon enough that popping your shoulder wasn’t a possibility. “It was great to meet you! And I hope when I can get around to coming back we can compare notes about the new things we’ve learned!” JJ’s huge toothy grin never left his face, he seemed excited! And maybe you were too, learning more about the town wouldn’t be such a bad thing!!

Word count: 1287

Also I love JJR (obviously i’ve written like 3 of these) so I doodled him <3

https://sta.sh/0a63r39vzy8