Secret

"You need to tell him, he's been home for three months now.

"I will, Clare, I will. It's just not something you can casually mention in a conversation." Answered Udonna.

"You can't keep it a secret forever." Clare responded with a very un-clare-like roll of the eyes. "she didn't just disappear, I mean ..."

" As you have made it perfectly clear. But, now is not the right time child. I promise it will be soon."

"Do you know where she is?" The younger sorceress asked the elder.

"Not precisely, no, but I have heard that she is somewhere in the human world..." her voice trailed off.

"Phineas?"

Udonna nodded in response.

"How is it that he seems to know everything?" Clare wondered to no one in particular.

"He says it's one of the advantages of being a troblin" Udonna began, "When no one wants to see you, you see the things no one wants you to see. Or at least that's how he explains it."

"So, you've been asking about her?" Clare asked, her head turning towards her aunt.

"I have, but that's all there is to know right now."

"Are you scared?"

Responding immediately Udonna loudly answered "yes," but after seeing the shocked expression on her nieces face she added "Just because she left me doesn't mean that I no longer love or care about her. All it does is make me worry more."

"Like I get when Chip goes off on a mission?" Clare asks, referring to the trips her boyfriend and his mentor, Dageron, had been recently taking to train the yellow ranger into a true knight.

"Something like that." Udonna answers, with a bit of a chuckle. Though she would never have said it to Clare's face she thought that her love far superseded that of Clare and Chip, but after weeks of Clare nagging her about this, she was glad that the two of them were beginning to agree with one another.

"Then why don't you tell Leanbow?"

"Clare!" Udonna said standing up from the stool she was sitting on.

"He could help. Or maybe Nick. Yeah Nick, he knows all about the human world - I bet he knows someone who knows her. Either way you can't keep this to yourself, nobody should, I barely can. I mean everything has calmed down with the master and all the bad magic, so why don't we take a chance? What's the worse that could ha-..." But Clare didn't finish her sentence. As she had got more and more into her speech, Clare had started pacing and in her focus she had loss track of her aunt.

The fact that Udonna left in, what Clare thought was, the middle of their conversation frustrated the young sorceress. True, she didn't understand what her aunt was going through, yet, at the same time she was becoming frustrated that the older sorceress (along with others) always seemed to discount her opinions. She was frustrated that people ignored her, or always labeled her as bumbling, hadn't she preformed wonders when others weren't able, wasn't she the daughter of the famed gatekeeper.

'No.' she thought to herself 'It's Udonna's life. If she won't act than what am I going to do. I can't tell Leanbow, or Nick, they'd never believe me. Or maybe... No that would never ... but, it might just ... yes... no... Udonna's not going to do anything. It's you or no one.'

Reaching in her pocket Clare takes out the cell phone Chip helped her pick out, and dials the only number she knows.

"Hello." Comes Chip's voice from the other side. Clare never knew a voice, just a syllable could ever possibly be so cute, but he always could make it happen.

"I have a question to ask you."

"Okay, shoot."

"What do you know about finding missing people?"

TBC - In the future