Project cosmos: The Golden Ring

We Meet a Talking Bird

At this point, it's almost night. We're all tired from our journey, so we decide to stay at a motel for the night.
We walk in and are greeted by an old lady sitting at the front desk, asleep.
"Um... Hello?" Latona asked, putting her hand softly on the desk.
No response. Just snoring, occasionally interrupted by random words muttered in her sleep.
"I don't think we're gonna have any luck waking her up... Why don't we look somewhere else?" I sighed.
"It's too late for that. It's already the middle of the night. If you guys go out now, the monsters will sense you," Sandy yawned. Then she looked over at the lady at the desk. "Grab a key. We're getting a room whether or not she knows,"
"What? That's stealing! We could get arrested for that! Not only that, but we'd technically be breaking and entering! That's illegal too!" Latona yelled, but stayed quiet enough not to wake the lady up.
"Does it look like I care?"
"If we get arrested, we won't be able to finish our quest!"
"Guys, why don't we just sleep in here?" I suggested and sat down on a nearby chair.
"Fine," Sandy sighed.
Mark sat down on the chair next to me.
"Good night," he said and closed his eyes.
"Good night," I said back and closed my eyes as well.


THE NEXT MORNING...
"Isabelle? It's time to wake up," Latona said, putting her hand on my shoulder.
I woke up and looked around. For a second, I forgot where I was.
"We're leaving soon. We need to get back on track," she explained.
I nodded and stood up. The second me feet touched the cold, stone floors, I realized that my socks were missing.
"What happened to my socks?" I asked.
"I'm not sure. My are gone too," Mark said as he walked into the room. "I looked all the way through my bag and I can't find anything,"
"Weird..."
In the corner of the room, I saw Travis, emptying his bag. I guess he was looking for socks too.
Then I saw something that I would never had imagined. In the windowsill, there was a small, bright yellow bird. In its mouth, were my socks.
"Latona? Why does that bird have my socks?" I asked.
"I have no idea..." Latona was as awestruck as I was.
Then it got even weirder. The bird turned into a cat and ran off down the street. I put my shoes on as fast as I could and ran after it. I was NOT going to lose my last pair of clean socks to a shape-shifting bird, or was it a cat? I don't know...
As I ran down the street, Latona and Mark were running after me.
"Stupid bird!" I yelled. People were looking at me weird. Maybe it was because I was a teenage girl running down the road in shoes, but no socks, or it was because I was calling a cat a stupid bird.
I chased the cat all the way into an alleyway. The cat was cornered now.
"Ha! Got you now, stupid bird-cat-thing!" I yelled. The cat dropped my socks, then made this situation even worse. It turned into a teenage girl, about my age.
"Isabelle? What's going on?" I heard Mark say as he walked up behind me.
"That's a Henka Suru. A shape-shifter," Latona explained.
"Who are you and what do you want?" I asked the girl.
"My name is Adria Harlan. I was told to help you on your quest," the girl said.
"By stealing my socks?"
"I was also told to bring you here. I was not, however, told to bring those two," Adria explained.
"By who?"
She paused. It was like she didn't want to tell me.
"Your mother, Ivory,"
"Wait, what?"
"I'm supposed to help you find the Miena. Your mother told me where to find it, but not its exact location,"
I didn't know what to say. I've never even met my mother, and yet she's still helping me.
"The Miena is the Golden Ring, right? The one that supposedly lets people turn invisible?"
"The one and only,"
"Wow,"
"And after you finish your quest I was ordered to follow you to the camp, and live there..."
Adria said that like she was either scared to go or just disgusted that she was being sent to a summer camp.
"You're a demigod?" Latona asked.
"Ya... My mother Rodina, goddess of nature. Her children generally tend to be shape-shifters,"
"Cool," I said. I grabbed Adria's hand and we ran back to the motel.