Xenoverse origins / R-087
Bambi BoggsOrigin story
Bambi Boggs and the Scent of Nothing
A gas sniffer who longs for a more respectable workplace must bargain away a treasured scent to recover the stolen odors that help her outpost find its way.
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For the first time anyone could remember, the Swamp smelled of nothing. Bambi Boggs opened her cabin door and enjoyed three glorious seconds of approval before her brass detector spelled LOST across its little glass face. Then every bell on the landing began ringing from the wrong direction.
Bambi Boggs must recover the Swamp's stolen smells after discovering that an odorless outpost is also a place without directions.
You have sold us cleanliness with all the landmarks removed.
From the dossier
Prologue — A Respectable Improvement
Bambi's job title, Bog Gas Sniffer, invited jokes from officials who would not have lasted an afternoon at her station. She wore it anyway, pinned beside the strap of her sealed brass detector. Its enchanted reed translated the bog's impossible vapors into words. Most were unflattering.
The Goblin Council sent its atmospheric reports through Bambi because she knew the Swamp outpost's patterns. Councillor Senn knew her well enough to arrive with a perfumed handkerchief already raised. She knew him well enough to offer the least comfortable chair.
She wanted a proper receiving room, a station people entered without a performance of disgust. When Senn proposed a trial of "civic freshness," she signed the requisition. A contractor installed a silver weather vane on the roof and promised to remove objectionable impressions from the surrounding air.
Bambi asked what powered it.
"An appreciation of refinement," he replied.
She should have rejected that answer. Instead, she imagined a delegation discussing her findings without interrupting themselves to complain about the smell.
The vane turned once during the night.
By morning, the bog's familiar sour notes, smoky reeds, and mineral tang had vanished. So had the smell of her breakfast tea.
Her detector wrote LOST, erased it, and wrote WHERE.
Bambi looked toward the landing. A line of marsh lanterns moved through the mist, searching for a bank they normally found without difficulty.
Act 1
The Map Nobody Could See
Act I — The Map Nobody Could See
The lanterns belonged to small bog spirits that navigated by scent. Bambi had often treated them as a nuisance when they crowded around the station's specimen shelves. Now they drifted into closed shutters, calling to one another in the clicking language of stones.
The station's direction bells rang from places where no bells had been installed. Without the scents that anchored them, their echoes had detached and wandered. Visitors followed a chime to the supply shed and discovered it coming from beneath their own coats.
Senn arrived to congratulate Bambi on the trial. His handkerchief remained folded for once. She showed him the detector's blank display and the confused lights beyond the window.
"An adjustment period," he said.
"For whom?"
"Whatever is adjusting."
Bambi went to the roof. The silver vane had become a narrow door. A price list hung from its handle. Inside, on shelves much deeper than the cabin beneath them, stood sealed bottles labeled with the outpost's missing smells.
The contractor sat behind a counter folding paper into tiny funnels.
Bambi demanded the trial be reversed.
He showed her the signed requisition. It authorized removal of objectionable impressions. The service had been completed. The impressions were now his stock.
She knew a bad bargain when it was explained after delivery. She also knew that tearing up the paper would not put the world back.
The contractor offered to sell the bottles.
Bambi emptied the station's petty cash onto the counter. The coins smelled of nothing. He pushed them aside.
"I do not collect money."
"What do you collect?"
"Things people would miss if they became more refined."
Below the roof, a lost marsh lantern knocked gently against the cabin window. Bambi heard the glass answer from somewhere far across the water.
Act 2
The Price of Familiar
Act II — The Price of Familiar
The contractor let Bambi inspect the stock. Each bottle held more than an odor. The sour reed smell carried a path used by lantern spirits. The warm mineral note belonged to a mud shelf where drifting echoes rested. The stale smoke marked the turning point of an old supply channel.
Together, they formed a map she had used without admitting it.
Bambi put the bottles back. "You have sold us cleanliness with all the landmarks removed."
"I sold you what you asked to notice."
Bambi tried threatening him with the Council. He produced a bottle labeled COUNCIL DISPLEASURE and explained that it was among his least valuable products. There was always more arriving.
She offered the scent of her favorite soap. Too easily replaced. The sharp pleasure of new stationery. Already abundant. The smell of official approval. He laughed and showed her an empty bottle.
He wanted something personal enough to give the purchase weight.
At the back of Bambi's cabin sat an iron kettle she had brought from a room that no longer existed. Its warm metal and faintly bitter tea reminded her of evenings when work ended, someone else made the meal, and she did not have to be the person who knew what every sound meant.
She had kept that scent privately, without writing it into any report.
The kettle's physical scent was already gone. What survived was Bambi's private memory of it, a comfort the contractor could recognise but could not bottle without her consent.
Bambi refused. She returned to the station and looked for another answer. She checked her stored samples. The labels remained, but the odors had been taken from those as well. She asked Senn to negotiate. He offered the contractor a certificate of distinction and received a bottle of polite indifference.
By afternoon, the lost lights gathered around Bambi's door. They were no longer knocking. They waited close together, dimming as they spent themselves searching.
Bambi took the kettle from its shelf. She held it for a long time before carrying it upstairs.
"I keep the object," she said.
The contractor nodded. "You will remember what it meant. You simply will not be able to find the memory that way again."
Act 3
The Air Comes Home
Act III — The Air Comes Home
The bargain required no ceremony. Bambi set the kettle on the counter. The contractor opened an empty bottle, and something familiar slipped out of the iron with a sound like a spoon being laid down.
She lifted the kettle again. It was still hers. She remembered the room, the table, and the relief of sitting there after a difficult day. But when she sought the little sensory doorway into that comfort, there was only blank air.
The contractor handed over the stolen stock.
Bambi carried the bottles down to the landing. The bog spirits recognized their labels before she did. They arranged themselves around the crate, each waiting beside a different jar. When the contractor's silver seals dissolved, the scents returned through the gathering dusk in routes no person could have drawn.
The bells found their proper directions. The lanterns moved away, brighter now, carrying their map with them. The station acquired its familiar smell, and Senn immediately raised his handkerchief.
Bambi told him to take the cloth down while she explained the cost.
The Council refused reimbursement for a private sensory asset. It also rejected the contractor's invoice for roof access. Both decisions arrived in the same envelope, as if their combined efficiency should console her.
She kept the kettle on its shelf. She brewed a different tea and disliked it without pretending that loss had become wisdom simply because she had paid for something useful.
Her next report described what the bog's odors did. She included the station's own part in the mistake. Senn could remove an adjective if he liked; he would have to work harder to remove the sequence of events.
Several evenings later, a courier arrived carrying an unlabeled parcel. Before he knocked, Bambi's detector woke on the desk.
HOME, it wrote.
For an instant she smelled warm iron and bitter tea.
The courier said the parcel was being sent to the Council's new private retreat. He did not know who had packed it. Bambi checked the address, then set her kettle beside the detector.
"Your delivery may be late," she told him.
She had recovered the outpost's map. Someone else was now traveling by hers.
The bog's invisible landmarks
Bambi's sealed magical detector reads the invented vapors of the Swamp outpost. In this story, scents guide supernatural residents and wandering echoes, making their disappearance a loss of shared geography.