It's A Twin Thing | j. clarke [1]

twenty

 -:- House of Time / House of Aliens -:-

"Did you hear that little earthquake yesterday evening?" Trudy asked, pouring Patricia a glass of orange juice.

"That was no earthquake," Alfie refuted. "It was definitely an alien mothership taking off."

Trudy gave Alfie a pat on the head before she returned to the kitchen, the rest of the table giving Alfie a skeptical look.

"Patricia believes me," he defended. "Don't you, Patricia?"

"Sure," she said in a high voice.

Alfie nodded, not picking up on Patricia's tone as he left the room. Once he was gone, it was just Sibuna left at the table. Fabian leaned in to whisper to Nina and me.

"So I've been thinking about the fourth puzzle piece and how Sarah's numbers opened it—"

"Woah," Amber halted in applying her lip gloss to glare at Fabian. "Rewind, you've opened another puzzle piece?"

Nina shushed her, returning to Fabian to hear what he was saying.

"Without me?" Amber continued. "So rude."

We were all so shaken by the earthquake last night that we'd neglected to fill Amber in on what happened.

"Sorry Amber," I offered. "It was a spontaneous thing."

"I can't believe you did that without telling me," she looked us over. "Rude, again."

"As I was saying," Fabian disregarded Amber's comments. "The fifth puzzle piece looks exactly the same, so are we assuming Sarah's numbers open that one too?"

"Maybe we shouldn't try it," Patricia said. "Those noises terrified me."

"Hang on, noises?" Amber questioned. "So it wasn't an Earth tremor?"

"No, they weren't," I answered her. "And they might get worse if we open the other one."

"What did you do with the riddle?" Fabian asked Nina suddenly.

"Riddle, what riddle?" Amber asked. "We have another riddle?"

Before I could tell her what we'd found after opening the piece last night, Patricia's voice sounded from the other end of the table.

"Amber, will you stop repeating everything?" She whined.

"Well no one tells me anything apparently," she bit back.

During their exchange, Nina handed Fabian the crumpled piece of paper.

"'My father's father stands tall,'" he started. "'His face and hands together turn circles around Isis and Osiris and Horus the son reveals me.' I thought these things were getting easier."