Scavenger Hunt

The Prophecy and The Plan

The next morning, I woke to find Priestess cooking eggs in her normal, motherly way. She showed no signs of disappointment, or anything I would expect of one who had just experienced such a terrible blow to what she believed in. I walked into the kitchen and sat down at the little table in front of our big window. You could see everything from there, the hills, the sea, even the mountains way far off in the distance.

 “Morning! Want some eggs?” She asked, sounding  frighteningly chipper. In a way, her lack of emotions was even more upsetting than if she had been bawling.

“Priestess, are you okay?” I asked slowly, as if I were talking to an injured animal. She scraped a load of eggs onto my plate then added buttered toast and a cup of tea, and set it all down in front of me.

“Of course! Why wouldn’t I be?” She responded in such a tone that was so reassuring that I almost believed her, but that couldn’t possibly be right. Shouldn’t she be sad? Crushed? Devastated? Any of the above?

“Because of what happened last night, I mean, Heranasi’s amulet was stolen. Aren’t you even a little upset?” She put her plate down next to mine and stared out of the window for a long while. I took this opportunity to devour my eggs, seeing as I was starving.  

When I was done, she turned around and looked at me, as if choosing her words so carefully that if she misspoke I would fall apart and die.“It will all turn out alright Mikayla, I’m sure of it. It was prophesized long ago that the Amulet sacred to our temple would be stolen. But the prophecy also said that a team of three would go on a great quest to save it. I believe deep in my heart that this prophecy is happening now. Which means that everything will be fine. In fact, I want you to see the prophecy. Go get ready and I’ll take you to it.” She got up, swiftly cleaned my plate and put it in the sink, then hustled me out of the room. I ran to get ready, and we walked off down the road, through the square, up the great steps and into Heranasi’s temple.

I’ll admit it, I love the temple. When I was a baby, I was dropped off here in a basket. Priestess found me and took me in as her own. I owe the temple my life. Not to mention I spent much of my early years playing in here with the guards and other children. Normally, the temple was a busy place full of friendly people calling out a greeting or stopping to chat. But not today. Today senshu were milling around the building, questioning people and hunting for clues. When Priestess saw the state of things, her smile wavered a bit, but was immediately adjusted.

We walked up the marble stairs, up and up to the third level, and turned left. After a long walk down many confusing halls, we finally came to a room with large, wooden doors that I had never been in before. I knew the room, as it had always bothered me that I’d never been allowed inside. Two guards stood outside the room at their posts as always, and seemed rather surprised that we were here, but they regained their composure and respectfully parted to allow us access. I was excited and nervous all at the same time.

As I stood before the open door, I didn’t know what to expect. Would it be filled with jewels and lavish furniture? Or would it be filled with extraordinary equipment and technology? The possibilities were endless. Finally, I could stand it no more and walked into the room.

And was thoroughly disappointed. It looked like any other room in the temple, except when I looked closer, I noticed two things that made it different. The first weird thing was the walls. Every inch of them was covered in carvings looked as if some bored schoolchild had doodled everywhere. The second was that the room was empty except for a sturdy marble table and an enormous bookshelf that covered an entire wall. It was filled with books of every color all around one giant blue book in the middle of the shelf.

Stepping closer to inspect it, I saw that all of the regular books had something to do with the history of the five islands. They contained just about anything you could possibly need to know about all of them. Being a huge book lover, I was dying to read them all right then and there, but heroically restrained myself. There was a prophecy to read and I was going to read it. I looked over at Priestess. She had taken the giant book off of it’s gold stand and laid it on the marble table. There, she was gently flipping the pages, which looked incredibly ancient and fragile. It was beautifully preserved for a piece of literature that old, and each page was filled with slightly messy handwriting. Finally, Priestess found the page she was looking for and stepped aside for me to read it.