Aliatio

Chapter 15 - The Plan

          Miss Jasmine Beron had to resist organizing the mess. She had a task to do and couldn't fail the kids. Even with how experienced Jasmine was with skimming papers, this was far too much for her. She took a moment to think about where the information she was looking for might be. Jasmine determined that the individual sheets of paper seemed to have nothing of interest. After ten minutes of browsing through the mess, she sighed. The amount of paper overwhelmed her, but Jasmine couldn't give up, and they knew that. So, Jasmine took a break to compose herself, so she would not make any stupid mistakes.

          She stepped outside and took a moment to herself. Jasmine stared at the autumn colors for a peaceful moment. "I wonder how Misty's doing. I hope she's not too injured," she sighed. Jasmine always worried about the kids they cared for, especially if they left before they were mature. Jasmine chuckled, remembering when she asked Zach every time he came from Misty's how she was doing. Jasmine wished it was that simple right now. Maybe she should have stopped them from coming, but then Euca would've suffered. They let out a sigh, hoping that everyone would be alright by the end of this chaos. She took both her hands and slapped her face cheeks together. "You need to focus. If you want us all safe, you should get back to work. Okay! Time to work, Jasmine." 

        With newfound motivation, Jasmine re-entered the mess and started to speed read through the books scattered around the house. Mostly all of them were on topics of elves. Jasmine noted they might be helpful for later use. So, she started browsing the books for the ones with the most notation, assuming that'd have the most information. Upon her investigation, she noticed a pattern in almost every book. On all of them, pages zero, five, and nine all had the same annotation. Page zero held annotations saying, tree of disinformation and forward-thinking, at least which was odd. However, the annotations were easy to overlook when she first browsed them. Page five all had common writing that read wrong in black ink. Page nine also contained writing that a section was technically not wrong in black ink. Finally, page one hundred had hector written onto it.  

           The odd patterns made Jasmine think that perhaps it was some message. She pondered on the idea for a little while, talking to herself to work through it. "Well, okay. The only similarities are the page numbers and the wording of the annotations. So, what could that mean for us?" she asked herself. Jasmine started flipping through the pages as she brainstormed. She focused on the phrase 'technically right' since right is a direction. "Wait a second. Left is the opposite of right, but wrong is also the opposite. Maybe they're giving directions to the place. But, no idea where the directions start from."  

            Jasmine decided she might as well purpose the idea since she didn't find anything else, and she was supposed to meet up with everyone in less than five minutes. So, she packed up all the things she thought were of import, plus some extra material she hadn't gotten through. Then she started walking to the meet-up spot.

           She knew she locked the doors. She also knew that she avoided any risk that someone would follow her. But, her heart couldn't help but stress over if she was one hundred percent sure of it. At this point, she knew to ignore it since going back would only increase the chance of someone finding it. Jasmine sighed as she continued her walk, trying to relax for the rest of it. 

          They were almost to the meeting spot and with some time to spare at that. So, Jasmine took a moment to listen to the sounds of the city. After all, she only had one more left turn to make. She suddenly stopped and just let her ears fill with the sounds around the city. There weren't many cars around since the fair was still active. She was grateful for that because she could now hear the birds singing and the sound of sneakers walking closer. After realizing that sound, she snapped around to see no one was there. Jasmine didn't hesitate, speeding up her walk, turning right at the next corner. They then jogged until they turned the next corner, at which she spun on her heel to face the way she came. Jasmine waited there for the person following to round the corner too. And sure enough, they did.