The seer Chronicles

Chapter Three Mist Hunter

Destiny tapped up the last box for her room to be officially packed. There had been no sign of the intruder since they invaded the house two months ago. The police had yet to receive any news regarding the stolen journal. Although she suspected, despite the detective's good intentions, the police had not even started looking for it.

She headed downstairs, finding her dad in the living room. "I've finished with my room, dad.'
'Good job. I need to get some more boxes from the attic,' Dad said standing, his bones popped at the joints and his shoulders slumped. He seemed so defeated after the intruder.

"Dad, let me get them. My legs could use a little exercise, anyway."
'But the ladder...'
'It's fine, I got it.' Destiny rolled her eyes and sprinted off before her dad could stop her. She climbed the ladder; the movement starched the tendons in the back of her legs.
She enjoyed the chance to snoop around the cluttered, dusty space. The house was full of secrets, most of which Destiny had yet to learn. But one time she found a magic wand in a cupboard. It was dead. Another time, there was a set of knucklebones behind the wood panelling, when she accidentally tripped and broken it.
'Oh boy, Selina had been mad about that one.' Destiny tried to feel bad, but the knucklebones had been so interesting she was kind of glad it happened. But today she wanted to see if she could find her father's field guide.

The first place she thought of looking was in the shoebox that was hidden away behind the dusty old paintings. In her mind, she could vividly picture the exact moment she stumbled upon the shoebox. Destiny had turned eight and had stolen cheder from the fridge, wanting to feed the tiny mouse family living in the attic.

With a careless move, she knocked over a stack of boxes with her butt. Knocking over the red shoebox covered in a thick layer of dust.
'How long has this been up here?
She opened the lid, photographs laid inside and nothing else. Destiny smiled. She had been a clumsy kid and not much had changed.

The aging photos were from when her father was younger. They all showed him to a young woman. Destiny had looked at the photos many times, wondering if the woman was her mother, but she had never dared bring the subject up. She carefully lifted the photos out of the box. Nothing underneath except old letters written in code. She'd long since given up trying to decipher them.

She replaced the photos and pushed the box back behind the paintings. While gathering the moving boxes, she accidentally stepped on a rotten floorboard, exposing a hidden wooden chest underneath. They made the chest of an unfamiliar dark wood, with a phoenix carved into the lid.

Destiny pulled up the surrounding floorboards and prepared to use all her strength to haul the chest out from its hiding place. To her surprise, she found it weighed nothing. Destiny attempted to open the lid, but she found it locked. Her dad might know where the key is, she would tell him later. She hid the chest near the paintings. She returned to the job at hand and gathered the storage boxes together, hauling them down to the kitchen.

'Thank you, Destiny. Take some to your father, would you?' Selina said, barely looking up. She spread the contents of the kitchen cupboards all over the table, the countertops, and the floor.

'Selina, I doubt you can fit all this in the moving van!' Destiny commented.

'I suppose I should part with some things,' Selina sighed wearily. Destiny placed the boxes in the doorway, not wanting to enter the cluttered kitchen, then headed to her father's study with more boxes. Alaric Morgan sat at his desk, going through his papers.
'Ah, just place the boxes in the space under my desk, sweetheart,' Alaric said.

He looked distracted. He finished going through the pile of papers and turned his attention to the books on the weathered bookcase at the back of the room.