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In the time since she’s been back from the moon, Della has both told and heard a lot of stories.
The kids are all too ravenous for any story she can provide from her lifetime, from growing up with Donald and going on their first adventure with Scrooge (she’s been meaning to ask him for any updates about the Papyrus of Binding during her absence, complicated as that answer might be now), to all her tales of “conquering the moon!” She tries to save the latter for when Scrooge and Donald are around to listen, too—they’re just as uninformed about that part of her life as the kids—and she’s in a good mindset to tell them.
Even though there’s not as much ground to cover time-wise, Della’s been even more eager, if possible, to hear every detail she can about the kids’ lives—everything she missed. Their first adventure, their first steps, their first days of school, their dreams and fears, their favorites of everything (she’s quick to join in on their favorite pizza nights)—she wants to know them. It’s hard at times, especially after she found out that they didn’t get her recorded messages and lessons from the moon, and that they grew up separated from their great uncle and the manor, from the life they should’ve known from the start. It’s a journey, facing the reality of it all and trying to make some semblance of peace with it, one they all have to take and help each other with. But it’s worth it, she knows. She will fight to be a part of this family every single day—even versus the pain of the truth.
Donald, thank the gods for him, has been especially helpful in catching her up. After they rescue him from the island, save the world, and get caught up on his lunar adventure, he begins the process of filling in the details, particularly for the boys’ early years. Besides stories that are told in the moment, Donald and Della make it a point of dedicating at least one night a week to catching up over dinner together in his houseboat, in view of the wall of family photos and many, many more photo albums and his phone’s camera roll. Sometimes the kids join them after dinner, and they all cuddle together, and Donald gets a chance to shine as the storyteller for his family. But more often than not, the Duck twins will end up leaning against the houseboat’s railing with a couple bottles of sodas, watching the stars dance above to a chorus of crickets, and Della gets to see just why she has the best brother in the world. (Or “in two worlds!” as her brain likes to supply in Penumbra’s voice.)
Thanks to Donald, Della finds out that Huey has always been the best oldest brother to his siblings, from the very first time Donald found the boys in their room when they were three years old, and saw that Huey had given the two extra playing-blocks in their playset to Dewey and Louie to each have one extra.
She finds out that he’s been to every Junior Woodchuck meeting since he joined the local troop, save for one time when he was seven and had the flu. It had devastated him, and he dramatically wrote a resignation letter (which Donald still has in a scrapbook), finding himself unfit for his sash because he was no longer the perfect Woodchuck in his mind. (It took the “punishment” (which he begged his troop leader for) of having to find the perfect campsite and find the perfect materials to make a fire during their next camp-out, and in the end, he came home with a huge grin and having earned his Campfire Safety badge.)
For Dewey, Della gets to see that he’s always been as bold, daring, and vibrant as the night she first met him—that he definitely embodies the name Turbo. He got the secondary lead role in his first real school play, and while took that as a lesson to learn as much as possible about theater from any role he got, he still made it his mission (his first “Dew-stiny”) to get the lead role in a show as soon as possible, which came two shows later. The rest of the family surprised him by giving his opening night the red carpet treatment down the gangplank of the houseboat, and he cried very happy tears and gave many hugs all the way to the backstage door for his call time.
Louie has kept to himself more with his activities than his brothers, Donald explains, but he’s always been crafty and caring. One time, when they were all just starting to gain a little more insight about money in school, Donald came home from work one day to see Louie leading his brothers in running a lemonade stand on the pier. He found it adorable and took some pictures of them all posing proudly in front of their display, but when he gave them a dollar to be their first customer and took his first sip, he immediately shut them down—their main ingredient (and the way Louie figured they could save on costs to maximize profit) was seawater, straight from the bay. Donald wasn’t too mad, and gently explained to them all why they couldn’t do that, but promised to help them make proper lemonade for their stand over the weekend. What he didn’t expect, however, was to find a folded-up note on his nightstand that night, with the dollar bill he paid tucked inside and the message that these earnings were to “help with paying for groceries,” signed with love by Louie. Donald cried himself to sleep that night, his heart was so full with love for his boys, and when the weekend came and he got a proper glass of lemonade from them, he made sure Louie got that dollar back, along with a very shiny quarter for a tip.
Della is beyond proud of her boys—and of Webby, too, of whom Donald doesn’t have nearly as many stories because of the circumstances, but Della’s overjoyed that her sons have such a strong, smart, and loving sister now, and that they love her just as much.
She’s proud of her family. Proud, and happy (if sad and bittersweet at times), and more grateful for Donald and everything he did for the boys than words could ever hope to describe. And she’s grateful to be alive to hear and learn about them, and to spend the rest of their lives making even more memories together.
Out of all the storytelling done though, Dewey especially has been keen to connect and share with Della. On their first adventure together to Boarway, she must’ve told well over twenty tales on the plane trips to and from the Doomsday Vault. She tried to get as many from her son, but he wanted to learn as much as he could about his mom as quickly as he could in those early days. It’s okay, she still has time, all the time in the world now. They all do.
One particular day, while she’s shining up the nose of the Cloudslayer in the hangar, Dewey, uncharacteristically reserved even through his determination and curiosity, brings something to her that gives them both an opportunity to hear and tell a story. Something she hasn’t seen in well over eleven years.
“The Sphere of Selene!” Della exclaims, dropping her polishing rag onto her stepladder and walking over to Dewey, stopping just short of actually grasping the artifact. It feels like a moment out of time, so many memories coming back to her.
Anything Dewey might’ve planned to say leaves him with a stunned expression. “Wait! You know about this?!”
“Well, yeah! How else did you think I ended up in all these snapshots?”
“Well, I...” He searches for the right words, before explaining, “Selene said that it was a treasure that even you never found.”
“Ooohh, pfft no!” Della laughs and shakes her head at her friend’s antics. “No, that’s just Selene being Selene. She always hid this away from me when we weren’t using it. Said that if I found her super-secret hiding spot for it, I’d prove my worthiness and she’d have Mnemosyne make a memory sphere of my own for me.” She smiles down at her son. “But now, well...”
“Oh, sorry...” Dewey immediately says, looking contrite for ruining his mom’s game.
“Nah, don’t be. I’m glad you have it. And, this could actually work out in my favor...” Even as the gears start turning in her head for that plan, she reaches out again in permission. “Can I?”
Dewey hands her the sphere carefully then takes a step back, watching her inspect it all around, getting reacquainted with it. He has a lot of different questions now than when he walked into the hangar just a few minutes before, but he starts with, “Who is Ne-...Nemo-...?”
“Mnemosyne?”
“That’s the one,” he confirms with a click of his tongue and a finger gun.
“She’s the goddess of memory, and maker of memory spheres. And Selene’s...aunt, I think? Right? Yeah, that sounds right,” Della muses to herself, before shaking it off. She needs to refresh her knowledge of the family tree of the Greek gods one of these days. “Anyway, she gave Selene this sphere as a gift. So, how did you end up getting this?”
There’s no tone of accusation in his mom’s question, but Dewey looks guilty all over again. Sending he has a lot to say, Della motions for him to come sit under the nose of the cargo plane with her and hands the sphere back to him. Before she can fully sit down herself though, she snaps her fingers and asks, “Hey, want a Pep? Maybe some chips?”
“Sure.”
Della stands up fully again and goes over to her mini-fridge. She grabs an orange Pep for her son, and a blue raspberry one for herself, along with a couple snack bags of chips from her secret stash in the cupboard above. While grabbing the chips, she glances over her shoulder to where Dewey is lightly tracing shapes over the glass of the sphere with his finger.
“...You didn’t steal it, did you?”
“What? No!” He nearly falls back against the plane in a futile attempt to distance himself from any unwarranted suspicions from the sphere.
Della laughs at his overreaction once she’s sure that he didn’t hurt himself in any way, adding, “Don’t worry, I’m just joshing you!” and walks back over to hand him his snacks and sit next to him. He takes the snacks with a glare, but there’s still a hint of amusement tugging at his beak.
They open their sodas together with a satisfying sizzle of carbonation, clink their cans, and take a sip. The nature surrounding the taxiway outside is perfectly framed by the hangar’s open rolling door, serving as a willing stage for the stories they are to share. A slight breeze coaxes Dewey to begin.
“Remember how we told you about our first trip to Ithaquack before?”
Della nods.
“Well, we—I left a part out. It was when Webby and I were first trying to figure out what the Spear of Selene was, way before I told Huey and Louie about the mystery, and so while the other guys were battling Zeus on the beach for glory or whatever, Webby and I snuck into the temple to try to find the Spear, or just figure out what it was. What happened to you.”
He gestures in her direction, but Della can only think about just how far off they were by searching the temple for the Spear. A “whole moon away” off.
“We found the Sword of Selene, and the Spear of Poseidon, but even when we finally found the right room, Selene’s garden...no spear.” He glances towards her, to reassure himself that she’s there, that this mystery has been solved, and sighs. “We did find Selene though—she has a prophecy still waiting for you by the way—and she said she didn’t know what the Spear was, but she gave me this: the Sphere of Selene.”
With that, Dewey taps the sphere sitting in his lap to life, and scrolls through a couple of pictures until he lands on the really nice one of Della, the one he spent countless nights gazing at, trying to get as much information as he could about his mom just through a picture, trying to absorb her love through the glass. He turns to look at this dream come to life, as if meeting her for the first time all over again, and dives into her side for a hug.
Della, of course, returns it, with all the protective ferocity a mother can manage. Setting aside her drink quickly so it doesn’t spill, she pulls Dewey closer with one arm and cradles his head with the other, tucking him under her chin. She’s pretty sure she hears him muffle, “I’m so glad you’re here,” into her jacket, and she squeezes him back even tighter.
When they finally pull apart, Della keeps an arm around Dewey, and he sniffles, keeping his gaze on the sphere once again. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about this before, and that I asked the others not to tell you either.”
“Eh,” she shrugs, “I don’t blame you. Besides, this definitely deserves its own spotlight.”
Dewey gives her a shy, gracious smile at that, gaining some of his gusto back, then glances between her and the sphere. “Well, since you think so, do you think you could tell me the stories for some of these pictures? That’s the other reason I brought this to you—after all this time, I wanna know just what I’ve been looking at!”
Della smiles at his eagerness and agrees, snuggling him closer while he chooses which memory he wants to hear about first. While he does so, she says, “You know, Selene used to bring this thing around everywhere, and it is pretty ancient. I have to wonder if you’ve actually gone through the entire thing?”
“Definitely not. I’m pretty sure it’s sorted by date, yeah? I didn’t really want to stray too far from the pictures of you, but one night I tried to see how far back you appeared, and when I saw a memory of Selene and Storkules dancing to disco in the seventies, I knew I’d gone too far.”
Della snorts at the image in her head of that and at Dewey’s ensuing shudder, before taking a proper look at the image he’s landed on first. It’s a small clip of her lunging at some beast, defending Donald with sword and shield in hand.
“Oh yeeeeaaaah...” she draws out, “Yeah, I remember this. We were all having a beach party, and of course Zeus decided that was as good as time as any to ‘bring down the harpies!’—” She waves her hands around all dramatic-like for emphasis. “—to try to get rid of Scrooge and us, so we had to fight them off, and this guy here—” She points at the legs in the clip. “—was some boss-harpy or something, and caught Donnie off-guard, so I swooped in and saved him!” She finishes her story with a triumphant fist in the air, before quickly turning back in to tickle Dewey in surprise.
With a shriek, Dewey playfully swats her hand away, before leaning into her shoulder. “Okay, okay, how about this one? This one makes me wonder how you guys were allowed to become adults.”
He swipes forward a handful of memories to one that makes her laugh right off the bat, which is a far cry from how she actually felt in the moment. In it, Della is sitting on Donald’s shoulders in an attempt to better match Selene’s height, while both she and the moon goddess each hold up a foot of none other than Storkules, trying to hoist him high into the air. Della wanted to face off against Selene’s rather surprising strength. (“An arm-wrestling match isn’t gonna cut it, Donald!” she remembers yelling.) In the end, however, they simply looked like the most convoluted excuse for a cheerleader pyramid in history, with Storkules ready to grab onto the tree branch above him for dear immortality, and Donald’s knees looking ready to give way at a moment’s notice.
They did all eventually collapse, with Storkules taking a last-second flying leap off of his sister’s sturdy hand to thankfully land on solid ground instead of anyone’s bones. (Of course, he did crush Donald’s a moment later when he picked him up for one of his signature hugs.)
Della was so determined to prove herself that day.
Now, all she’s proving is how absolutely silly and ridiculous the endeavor was, and that she’s grateful no one was really hurt, save for her pride.
She explains the memory, and many, many more, to Dewey over the course of a couple of hours. Parties, battles, girls’ nights (which definitely included the boys on more than one occasion when they tried to attack them with both make-up and pillows), obstacle courses (those were some of Della’s favorites), and innumerable funny and sweet photos of everyone just having a good time (except Zeus usually) and smiling for the sphere.
There are many images of Della and Donald introducing Selene and Storkules to the eggs for the first time. In those, Donald’s watching the hero of strength with the most worried look for if he so much as even breathes on the eggs (let alone tries to hug them with those muscles), but Selene grants them a special lunar blessing. Della almost wants to laugh at the irony of it now, but considering that she did make it home and was more than able to give her boys the moon and stars, and to see that they grew up into such amazing, adventurous young ducks, she figures that, for all that the present moment is worth, things turned out pretty well.
By the time the sun has set, Della has moved on to showing and telling Dewey all about the Very Infamous Prank War—or the V.I.P. War, as it came to be known.
It was during a week-long stay on Ithaquack, and in that week, Della and Selene took on Donald and Storkules in an all-out prank war that started out simply enough, as a group-effort prank in fact.
Selene had gotten a new pet turtle (which she had named Charlie the turtle, based on his Greek name—Χαρλεϊ η χελώνα). And someone in the group—Della can’t remember who for the life of her—got the dumbest idea for a prank, but it all had them giggling like mad the whole way through.
They set Charlie ambling along the width of Zeus’ courtyard, where he was focused on one scheme or another. The rest of them watched the scene from a mystical fountain in another room and waited to see how long it would take Zeus to notice the turtle (as Selene hadn’t told him about him yet). It took him just under fifteen minutes, but when he did, it confused and flustered the heck out of him, leaving him to look this way and that for the source of the random creature to no avail. When he finally grew agitated enough and was about to hurl a thunderbolt at him, Selene snapped her fingers to bring him back to her, leaving Zeus to lose his mind as they all cheered for Charlie.
That’s when the war started. Della challenged Donald and Storkules, as was her way, claiming that they couldn’t successfully pull off as great a prank as that (even though she still isn’t sure who came up with it now).
In the end, it came down more to a matter of quantity over quality, one side trying to get the last laugh over the other.
There were tripwires, re-flavored drinks, sudden transports into ancient Greek mazes (or even to just another part of the island), towel-flicking (Della had never heard a man of Storkules’ stature scream so high), pies in the face, the moving of beds and their inhabitants in the middle of the night (when Della woke up in her bed on the beach, she immediately took a bucket of sea water up to Storkules and threw it over him), and so much more.
As Della finishes this last tale, a high-pitched distant shout of “Dinneeeeeer!” reaches the hangar from the manor’s back door.
“Guess it’s chow time, sport,” she says, looking over to Dewey with a smile.
He doesn’t want their time together to end, not yet—he didn’t realize just how much he desired to hear about the sphere specifically—but with a contented sigh, he stands up from the concrete with his mom, holding the artifact just that must closer while she stretches out a few kinks in her back.
“Hey, mom? Thank you. For all of that. I’d been wondering for so long,” Dewey starts, rubbing the back of his head.
“No problem! It was pretty nice to see all of those again anyway.”
“I have one more question though, before we go in: do you know how to actually capture a memory with this? I tried so many times but I could never make it work.”
Della grins a secret grin. “Well...that’s the thing. Only the sphere’s owner can do that, which is why I wanted to get one of my own.”
At that, Dewey’s intrigue falls a bit, and she nudges him forward to start the trek into the house.
“Buuuut...I think it’s high time I figured out where Selene’s hiding spot was, and maybe...we can see about getting you a sphere, too. Or get you set up on a quest for one.” She rubs her chin in thought, then shakes her head. “Mnemosyne probably doesn’t want to go handing them out all willy-nilly. But at the very least, we’ll get Selene to get a picture of us together on this sphere, okay? What do you say to a trip to Ithaquack this weekend?”
He perks back up at that. “Really?”
“Yeah! Besides, I’m overdue on giving her a call—it’ll be more fun to surprise her.”
“I’d like that,” Dewey agrees, glancing at the sphere. “And hey? Do you think Selene still has her turtle? Charlie?”
“You want to try to prank Zeus again, too, don’t you?”
“Oh yeah!”
The two of them share a conspiratorial smile as they walk up to the back door.
“It’s high time we write some new history!”