Irene Vaughn and the Eternal Captive

Appearing texts

After the attack of the Manticore, the day ended quickly. 

I'm still looking forward to our visit to the National Library. Aside from the fact that I love books, my dyslexia always made things hard. I need to look for books that has pictures so that I'll understand even pieces of the story. Now that we're in Greece, I was thinking that if I could find a book that has entertaining contents and at the same time written in Greek letters, It would be a nice day to spend a day exploring the history of Greece. Maybe I could even collect more knowledge on the gods and goddesses, then it would be easier to locate the other three demigods. 

I slept comfortably until my dreams started bothering me.

Once again I am standing in front of the door. I held the key up to the hole. It fitted perfectly. The door opened slightly until I felt breathless. I can't breath. I woke up immediately. 

The twins, Christine and Christina, are looking straight at me. They are already prepared to go to the library. 

"We've been waking you since this morning", they said.

I asked them what the time is and found out it's already 12 noon. "I slept that long?", I asked in surprise. 

"Yup", Adri said walking to our direction, "You should really get ready".

I grabbed my towel and did all the preparation I could do within the time. We ate lunch and proceeded to my dream land. 

The place is incredibly awesome. I looked for a book and found a good one right away.

I understood the letters, which is practically obvious since I stated the fact a while ago. I went to look for the others. We parted ways to explore. I found the twins since they're not far from where I sat a while ago.  

They are reading some random book. I turned to look around for a bit. I spotted a book on learning french. Naturally, there are words written in French. I don't know what they mean. I brought the book to the twins' table. 

"Hey guys, can you read this?", I requested pointing on a word, "What does it mean?"

They didn't just translate the word, but the whole sentence. 

Wow, I thought. 

I sat across them and asked, "When did you learn French?"

"We don't know", Christine said.

"We just found out that we are capable of understanding the language.", Christina explained. 

"Oh...", I said in deep thoughts. These two people across me know a language without learning it. The same way I learned Greek, "I'll see you in a bit. I'm gonna look for the others to see what they're doing". 

I walked around while looking at some book titles when something caught my eye. Something was producing light behind a stack of books. I got curious so I reached for it with my hand and felt a thick book. I grabbed it. Maybe it hasn't been opened in a few years since it's covered in a bit of dust but I don't think it's an accident to be there. What if it's being kept there for a long time and forgotten. "How could a useful book be forgotten?", I thought. I've been looking for it since we arrived. Another mystery (I thought I'm the only mystery?!) is that how could it reflect light if it's not shiny? A book can't produce light, can't it? 

I pulled a chair and scanned the book for my needed data. There is an alphabetical list of Greek gods and goddesses and information about each. I scanned further until I reached a part of the book that was completely blank. There are lots of blank pages, even more than the ones with writing. 

I saw a pattern that some of the upper right corners of a clean page has an imprint of a symbol of a god or a goddess. Not all blank pages have a mark on the corner. I reached a page with no symbol. I brushed my fingers across the part where a symbol should be on. When I removed my fingers off the paper, a mark suddenly streaked on the corner. The emblem shows a wheel. 

It looks familiar but I don't know who's symbol it is. I recalled a dream when I was little. I haven't thought about it for a long time until I saw this symbol again. It was a small pendant for the necklace I'm wearing in that dream. It was given by a woman in dark robes. 

Follows the symbol appearing on the corner are texts on the blank pages. Full length paragraphs filled the blank paper but not all of them, only three. The pages with other symbols remained blank and the remaining ones stayed the same. The words, just like from the other sheets, are written in Greek. On the first leaf are paragraphs about demigods in general. The second leaf contains information about half-bloods who are capable of performing magic and controlling the mist. The last leaf stated a prophecy but before I could read it, someone surprised me from behind. "Boo!", the twins said in unison as they almost pushed me off my seat. "Keep it down you two", I whispered, "We're in a library and we're not supposed to be making too much noise". 

"Whatcha' readin'?", Christine asked.

I quickly closed the book, not giving them a chance to take a glance of the text written. "Nothing, just a random book.", I said. 

"Let me see!", Christina grabbed the book as I tried to snatch it back. 

"Give it back!", I said in a hush tone to avoid too much sound to disturb others.

Christina passed it to Christine. I still tried to get it back but they begged me that they wanted to read it. "Fine, but I don't think you can understand Greek", I said. 

We opened the book on the table. They only scanned it until we got to the part where the pages are blank. The text that appeared a while ago are once again gone, but the mark remained. Christine turned another leaf and then a mark appeared,  different one but in the same place and size.

Texts also appeared. This time, only 2 pages are filled with paragraphs. 

The first page has writings about demigods in general. The second one is about the capabilities of the children of a certain goddess, though they didn't state the name. The same thing happened when a different set of paragraphs popped up. In my case, the name of a goddess also wasn't mentioned. 

I was reading what is written in Greek. Then I asked them, "You can understand Greek?".

"We dunno", Christine said.

"These words are French", Christina said. 

"What?", I asked surprised. 

I looked at the book once more,the words are Greek but the twins see French. Weird, I thought.

I just let it pass for now. Even though I tried to think more about it, I know I won't get anything but stress and confusion.