I had to be a really good girl today. After this morning, where I might have gotten a bit too upset with big sister Unique for not giving me the remote. Big sister Emily had to leave the comfort of her showers, she really loved her showers, to take the remote and I think we really annoyed her with all the noise we were making. I had never heard her as upset before, nor had I ever seen her slam a door before. However, it was the look that was on her kind face that made my stomach feel really nasty. It was a look that usually had the following words spoken afterwards, I am not mad, I am just disappointed. Personally I think those words hurt more than any loud or firm scolding. Making someone disappointed in me was the worst feeling in the world. I usually heard it at school when I got a bit too restless and my countless fidget spinners and soft balls I could squeeze weren’t working. A lot of my teachers understood that in the classroom I was at my best, and if I chose not to perform well they would use those words.
And then spend about an hour comforting me, since that one word always made me sad and cry, disappointed. I don’t remember why I hated that word so much, I just didn't.
So after me and Unique had made up like good sisters. We were on the road in the back of the car Emily had rented for our trip. We had finally made it to Rio Grande City, in Rio Grande Dul So, Brazil. (A long name I know) This was the port city that we were gonna be using for our investigation. According to the information that Emily got from that weird lady, Ms. Dawnbreaker. Our search was gonna start not on land but in the water, about 20 miles off the coast between this city and another one. There was a discovery made that most think are just a series of large rocks I think that are deep in the water. However, jepei users could see faint traces of old jepei no matter where we were, it is what makes jepei archaeologists so sought after. I think my momma used to be paid very highly by different groups for her help in finding information.
Just thinking about my momma and daddy back home stung just as much as when I thought about Xaiver whom was probably having a good time in Sparta Greece. I missed them all equally, but I had to be a strong girl for this trip. I couldn’t let Emily or Unique down, especially not after this morning. Besides, while I didn’t have my family here, I was forming a new family with the girls I was traveling with. Unique could be really mean sometimes in the morning if I woke her up, but she seemed to be okay with me sneaking a few swears here or there. She also had a really good singing voice and knew so many different stories off the top of her head. She always wore a lotion that smells like sweet melon and I think cucumber. It was really soothing to breathe in while I drifted off to sleep. Emily was the oldest and I think the leader of our team. She always makes sure that I am not being too naughty, she has given me, Bonnie and Esther a list of rules to follow after we had wandered off in the airport. I know she doesn’t do it to be bossy, but it is to keep us safe, she is more like a second mommy than a big sister, but maybe good big sisters gave off that kind of presence. I didn’t want her to think that I was just a bad child that needed someone to watch her every hour of the day. I was on this team for my gift in speaking and reading nearly every language on the planet. I couldn’t keep being so naughty or she might think Bonnie and I are a bad influence on her furry daughter, Esther.
And after hearing Emily give her daughter a more stingy punishment. I really didn’t want to press my luck anymore. My momma had given her permission to use whatever punishment she found necessary on me and Bonnie. I don’t know if Unique’s parent;s had also given Emily that same permission, but I don't think anyone wanted to find out what else that girl could come up with. Maybe a short tanning would be better than standing in a corner? Questions for later.
151Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMeTfMh4Sel
We had arrived at The Oceanographic Museum. It was one of the only museums in this port city, a popular tourist trap. A long light blue building that was surrounded by palm trees. Emily looked relieved once we had stepped out of the car, she seemed to be someone that liked being on time, so when she thought we were gonna be late by even a few minutes it really bothered her. Standing in front of the building, was a lovely looking woman with light skin like Unique. She was wearing tight jeans, and a light blue shirt that had the same symbol as the museum. Long brown hair and light brown eyes, she was not a jepei user as she showed no signs of it but she still seemed really nice. “Emily Walker?” She greeted in an accent filled to the brim with portuguese.
“Yes,” Emily said, shaking the slighter shorter woman’s hand. “Dr. Gaberilla Silva?”
“That would be, welcome to our humble home.” She said, with a wave towards the older building. “I am so glad to meet you and I thank you for reaching out to me about our recent discovery off our humble coast. We don’t get many of you jepei users here in Rio Grande, so I am hoping that maybe your special eyes might see more than what we can at the current moment.”
“It is a pleasure to help you, and it is only fair that we help you when you are helping us.” Emily placed a hand on my shoulder and one of Unique’s. “These are my friends, Unique Fullmoon and Sarah Springchaer.” We had chosen to go by Unique’s middle name rather than last name for this trip, I didn’t really understand why but Emily just told me to trust her. Sometimes I felt like they were keeping secrets from me, and I didn’t like that feeling of benign left out. I may be young, but I am far from dumb.
Unique gave the woman a soft greeting but I couldn’t help myself as I spoke to her in her language. “Good morning, Dr. Silva.”
I never got tired of seeing the look of surprise and shock wonder for those that first heard me speak their language and even get the accent right. The look was always followed with a warmth and a bit of pride that someone from so far knew their language. The woman lowered herself down to my level and rested a hand on top of my curly hair. “It is a pleasure to meet you as well, young scholar. I think I have a few little animal friends that you would like to meet once we finish our boring meeting.”
“What kind of little friends?” I asked, looking up at her with excitement starting to fill my eyes.
“I will keep that a surprise,” she ruffled my hair for a moment before standing back to her full size. “Come on,” she said in english. “I will take you to my office first, then give you a personal tour of the facility. A few exhibits might be off limits for a bit though, we recently got a very large package of funding to remake and rebuild our museum here. One that I believe came from a member of your council of five warriors? Is that what it is called?”
“The council of five,” Emily clarified as we followed the woman through a set of double doors and down a nearby hallway behind a counter.
“Council of five.” The woman repeated, though it was kinda funny to hear the skeptical tone in her voice. We finally reached another doorway in the back of a square shaped room that was mostly empty aside from the four computers that were against each wall. Each had a nice sized desk to go along with them. We walked into a much smaller room that had maps of the oceans, chats of different sea life that lived in them such as birds and fish, but also large sea lions and even better they had a few species of penguins that were in the area. Now I was really hoping that those were the little friends, Dr. Silva had promised were penguins.
She took a seat behind her desk and opened up a nearby drawer. Unique and I took the other chairs on the opposite side of her and Emily seemed quite content on standing up. “Give me a second,” I whispered to my gemstone as Bonnie was trying to get my attention. I motioned over to Emily who bent down a bit. “Bonnie wants to know if she and Esther can go explore the museum.”
Emily seemed to think about it for a moment before whispering to Unique who nodded in return. “Yes they may, but Fortune is coming along too, and she is in charge.” I nodded my head before relying this information to Bonnie who gave me a slight groan. She didn’t really like the large thunderbird spirit, sometimes about her being a bully. I didn’t think Fortune was a bully, just really stern with the younger spirit animals… which now that I think about it. I unlocked Bonnie since I could remember, Esther had been unlocked by Emily when she was ten, and Fortune had been unlocked since Unique was ten as well. So by that logic, Bonnie should be in charge! Questions for later.
Dr. Silva had finally finished going through her drawer and set out a series of pictures in front of us. The photos were in both black and white, as well as a green color from the water in this part of the ocean. In these pictures I could make some odd structure that was sitting on the bottom. It looked to be four to five pieces of some kind of building, it looked older and ancient, a few holes carved into the side that looked like windows. There even seemed to be a bit of what looked like broken chests or other small stones that surrounded this structure. However, in the black and white photos, I had a better idea of what this structure looked like. Cause the colored pictures didn’t do this one justice. While I am sure Dr. Silva could not see it, I knew that Unique and Emily could see the same thing that I had seen. There was a large amount of jepei aura that was flowing off each of these pieces of tower.
“How far down is this structure?” Emily asked.
“It is about a mile and half down, right before the ocean goes much deeper. We think that there was a part of Brazil that sank underneath the water about 9,000 years ago. However, we cannot be sure, we have done some testing on some rock samples from this site. It goes back to about 9,500 years. We just have no idea what this tower could actually be, we have gone through so much of our history in the area, rumors and ideals have been placed out. We have no idea what we are looking at, and one of the two other relics we have of this site was taken by the President of Brazil for his own personal collection.”
I looked up at Emily who gave me a nod. The relic that he had taken was back on the island and that was that piece of the behemoth gemstone. So we could really be looking at what remains from the tower of babel. It was just deep underwater, but not so deep that we couldn’t reach it with the right equipment.
I always wanted to go scuba diving.
“What is the 2nd of these relics?” Unique asked.
The woman’s smile faded away as she pinched the bridge of her nose. “It was a slab of stone that had writing carved into it, we carbon dated that at around 9,600 years old, we have been trying to decipher it for about six months or so. However, recently it has… gone missing.”
“How did it go missing?” I asked.
“Well,” Dr. Silva began. “About a week ago, when a large tour was being brought through the library. One of the tourists from a cruise passing though somehow managed to cut her leg near a vein. We know that was foul play by some odd woman that was passing though with the group, in the chaos that woman simply lifted up the case, took the stone slab we had and slipped it into her purse. Authorities have been looking for her but as far as I know, we have not seen her since.”
“Why do you say that the injury was foul play?” Emily asked.
“Because we watched as our mystery woman did it so quickly that no one would have noticed. Right as the woman was rounding a corner, she had very quickly summoned and unsummoned this.” The older woman handed us another picture. This one showed a group of tourists of all ages, and in that crowd circled in red link was a dark skinned woman, with a bush of curly hair on her head. She was wearing casual clothes, and I could see a netrix weapon in her hand. This one looked like a whip with a very sharp point at the end. “She slashed the woman’s leg and in just the right place for it to look like she cut herself on a nearby exhibit, she even broke part of it to make it look that way. We sadly didn’t notice the truth until much later.”
Emily followed up her question by saying. “Do you have a picture of this stone tablet that you found?” She placed a hand on my head and ruffled it just a tiny bit. “This little one has a gift, she can read and speak nearly every language on earth. Even dead ones.”
Dr. Silva’s eyes widened as she turned her gaze to me. “That is an impressive gift indeed, do all jepei users have that kind of ability? I only so much about your race that seems to stretch far beyond the world.”
“Not all of us,” I answered. “We all get things from our animal spirits, I just got bless with this one.”
Dr. Silva stood from her desk and walked over to a nearby safe. With my amazing vision and nearly perfect memory I watched her put in the code. 985732. There was a small clicking noise and she opened it up revealing one more locked door. One that she needed to use a key around her neck for. Instead was what looked to be a stack of papers, each with a different colored posted note on it. She pulled out one marked with red and came back sitting it in front of us. “Do you have any idea what this might be?”
My mind looked over the odd mix of carved letters. According to the notes on this picture, the stone table was about a foot long and seven inches wide. It had curved edges, a few cracks were on it and judging from where it was found, it was missing one more piece of it. The bottom third of it to be precise. The text was written in the same old Hebrew that was found by the council alongside that piece of the Behemoth. I reached into my backpack where I kept a copy of it just to try and compare them really quickly. Whether that one was written in old hebrew and pieces of this tongues language that Emily understood. This one was written in hebrew. My eyes sparkled as decoding this message was as easy as pie, I didn’t even get a headache this time.
151Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡE9um0fpd4h
In the time of my father and his father before him. He told me a story of a monster that came, one that them from their home far past the blue waters, it took him from his father and mother, from his sisters and brothers. A curse, but he saw it as a blessing, he was given something, something that I have sworn to protect with my life. He called this mighty beast, a behemoth for it was larger than any living beast or giant that walked the earth. A beast that only the creator could make. My father told me this creator's name, told me the name that his father had been given to describe this mighty creation. This God of ancients. Jehovah Jireh. He made this beast, and he made our home, a piece of a mighty tower that he called babel. My grandfather told me before he died, where this thing was hidden, this mighty hammer that could rebuild and destroy. Broken it was but it could and will be fixed, when someone is ready to piece the world back together. The Hammer of Dawn, I am his chosen-
I finished reading it outloud and felt excitement growing in my stomach. We were on the right path, another piece of this puzzle. However I did have one question, one that I didn’t know but maybe Emily would. “What is The Hammer of Dawn?”
“I was w-wondering the same thing, and this behemoth can’t possibly be referring to the beast of burden that is written in the book of Job, correct?” I looked at Dr. Silva who had been writing everything down. “Can you maybe repeat that last part, did that stone give a name of who wrote it?”
I did as I was told before answering. “No name, and I think you are missing a piece of it.” I said pointing to where it cracked off near the bottom. “That last piece might help us find out more about what this thing is.”
“As for The Behemoth,” Emily began. “The answer is actually yes.” Dr. Silva leaned back in her chair a bit. “For jepei users, the three great beast of our culture are known as The Behemoth, The Leviathan and The Phoenix. The most basic of these names are The Queen of the Skies, The Lord of the Land and The king of the Beasts. As for this hammer of dawn,” Emily shrugged her shoulders. “This is the first I am hearing of it.”
Unique spoke up next. “In the legends I have read back home, each of the trinity of beasts has made one weapon that they gave to their user. The Phoenix’s blades one that could erupt in bright red flames that could heal and the other dark black flames that could destroy. The Leviathan’s was a trident but up until now we had no information what The Behemoth’s was.”
I whispered up to Emily. “Did we actually find something that we can send back to the council?” Emily’s joyful smile made me smile as we actually completed something of our job. New information that we can send back to add to the library. I felt so giddy that I could do a dance right there if I wanted too.
“Do you mind if we take a picture of this paper so we can send it back to our home? Any information that you may have on jepei users would be appreciated, especially a find like this.” Emily questioned.
“Normally I wouldn’t but you have helped me very much, so I believe I can do that, in fact. I will make you a copy for you to have if you would like.”
“And if it is not too much of a hassle, if you are planning another exhibition to where you found this first slab. We would very much like to join you.” Emily said. “It would mean a lot to us if we could join your team and serve you in your search both for this last piece of this slab and maybe even find the woman and retrieve what she took from you.”
Dr. Silva let out a laugh at that. “It seems the father above has sent me three little angels at just the right time. We are actually planning another dive in a few days' time. We want to go and see if there is maybe a copy or the rest of this stone slab is somewhere in the depths. We would love more help, especially if you can see things that maybe human eyes can’t see.”
Emily reached across the table and shook the woman’s hand. “It would be a pleasure and an honor to serve with you.”
“Good, I would need one thing from the three of you, and that is written verbal or written permission from a parent or guardian. Just in case something was to go wrong. I have a feeling that you three might be a bit young to be doing all of this.”
“That can be arranged.” Emily answered.
“I am glad.” Dr. Silva stood up. “Now that that is done.” She turned her gaze onto me. “I have seven new penguin chicks that I think would love to meet a new friend.”
151Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUxihRk9i28
151Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡp4ItzYktEC
151Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmbSVhE7q7S
After a very fun day of making new animal friends. Most of them being penguins but I also have a few sealion friends now. We had found a cozy little restaurant a block away from our hotel. We had a delicious dinner before returning to our hotel room to hopefully have time to get onto a call with Lady Hearthstone about our latest discovery. Aunty Hearthstone was very proud of us for gathering information like this, and we sent over copies of the stone tablet they found, as well as the pictures of the site we were gonna be exploring in the next few days. “You three are doing quite well so far.” Lady Hearthstone praised again, “I also have word from the others as well. They have reached Sparta safely and are currently making preparations for a dive of their own. They believe they found the wreckage of a ship that Adonis’s daughter was making an escape on. A wreckage that holds more of his hidden information.”
“Did they look well?” I asked, hoping that they looked okay.
Lady Heartstone smiled at me, one that chased away any fears that I might have. “I assure you that they looked quite well, even Daniel has seemed to gain some color back to his eyes.” I heard Unique mumble a word of thanks for that. She was just as worried about Daniel as i was about Xaiver. The woman was wearing an elegant white robe and her hair was tied up, she was even wearing small reading glasses. Not looking like a leader of a county but like my momma when she was getting ready for bed. Her smile did fade a bit as she added something that made my heart skip a beat. “However, I should also ask you all. Have you heard or seen anything involving members of the dark order in that county?”
“W-Why do you ask?” I said, not bothering to try and hide how scared I was. Everyone feared the dark order, even the adults they just wanted to stay strong for us.
“From what my daughter has told me, they have sighted in the area. They seem to be after whatever a colleague of their a Dr. Drakos’s has found. They destroyed a site that his granddaughter found by accident. I am just asking so we can perhaps make preparations.”
I looked over at Emily in surprise as she said. “I think that there is a member of the dark order here as well. I think that she stole the stone tablet that has gone missing. In fact we felt a pressure that reminded me of the dark order aura last night. However, it seems to be just one of them, and i don;t think they know that we are here.”
A lot of pieces started to make sense now. The woman in the picture how she stole that tablet, I just assumed that maybe she was a thief or something, but how quickly she was willing to injure someone. I felt chills starting to run down my spin and my breathing picked up just a tiny bit. I had history with those mean people, both on the island when they invaded and back when I lost Xaiver for a while. He told me he had been forced to be a child soldier for a few yeasr until his mommy and daddy saved him.
I never told him what happened to me.
I was a weapon for other things.
I shook those thoughts out of my head. “Stay little in the present, not grow up in the past.” I mumbled under my breath before slapping my cheeks a bit. “I am sure we are gonna be just fine.” I said mostly to myself.
“Let us know if things get bad,” Lady Hearthstone said firmly. “You are all doing us a great surface, don’t think we aren’t ready to protect you all with our lives. Say the word and I will have one of the personal guardians of the temple come to act as a guard. Stay safe, I love you all.”
“Bye Bye,” I said with a small wave.
The camera turned off and I leaned back into Emily who I had been using as a chair for this meeting. The older girl ran a hand through my hair, a calming gesture that I was really starting to love. I could see why Esther always seemed to melt in Emily’s hands. “It’s okay,” Emily whispered softly. “Whomever this woman is, regardless of what she might try or do. I am gonna be here to fight and fight some more to keep you safe and sound. I know Unique is gonna have our back as well.” Emily reached out with her hand and rested it on Unique’s head.
“See it as a little game,” Unique stated. “We just have to get whatever we are looking for before this woman and we win.”
“Y-Yeah,” I answered with a small smile of my own. “I just wonder what is the hammer of dawn, that that guy spoke of and if it really is the first weapon of the behemoth. Maybe that is what Aunty Hearthstone really wants.”
“And it is probably what this woman is after.” Emily concluded. “Regardless, we need to get some rest, I know we are still a little jet lagged, and I have three little ones that are still on punishment.” My cheeks flushed pink as I forced myself to look away from a chuckling Emily. “Come on,” she said, taking my hand. “I will help you get in your pajamas, and maybe Unique will grace us with her lovely singing voice tonight.”
I was fine with that, I liked being babied, I liked being little. Cause wounds hurt less if I pretend that they happened. However, for the first time in a long time, the big me, the real me anted to come out, to study and learn. To find the answer to this world and the languages that help path its foundations.
Stay little and in peace?
Or grow up and face my pain?
Why are questions like that so hard?
Why can’t everything just stay the same?
Why?
151Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYcZYhQvqhe
