The Raven and the Serpent: The Final Journey ~ON HOLD~

Hello Elizabeth

     
       Lenore's POV

       The only word that came out of my mouth after that was, "What?"

       "Your grandmother wasn't devoured by the head councilman. He killed her, but her body was rescued. If Elizabeth Mata was devoured, then the omen of the raven would be apart of Remeur," explained Nessie with a weak smile.

       "So...I have to see my grandmother's memories?" I asked, sneaking a glance at Aunt Regina. She looked calm for some reason, despite the talk of her dead mother. Maybe it was because she never met her.

       "Yes. In order to truly know what happened between the past generation Nakhanshan and the Omeo Council, we need you to see through her memories," stated Saki with a bit of plead in her usual calm tone. I sighed and asked, "Where is she?"

"She's in Pod E. I organize the dead who haven't been cremated in alphabetical order. Everyone in Pod E has a first name that starts with e," answered Aunt Regina with a smile, proud of herself for her organization system. And with that, she beckoned the four of us to follow her as she began walking away.

      "ACHOO!" Tadaaki sneezed, probably from the ridiculous amount of dust down here. We followed Aunt Regina through the catacombs, passing old cellar doors labeled from A to D. She stopped in front of the door labeled with the letter E, causing the four of us to stop. Aunt Regina tapped her fist against the door, causing it to open. She then beckoned us inside.

     "Woah," we stated in shock. All five of us were standing in a humongous, dusty, old room with a extremely high-rise ceiling. It looked like a gigantic library with a numerous amount of...filing cabinets? What the hell?

      "Uh Aunt Regina...what's with the filing cabinets?" I asked my aunt confusedly. She let out a sweet chuckle and answered, "The filing cabinets contain the bodies! Just give me a moment to find Mot- I mean Elizabeth!"

      Aunt Regina then took a deep breath and jumped into the air. She did a front flip and transformed into a crow, like Miss. Peregrine did in Miss. Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children. One of my favorite book series, by the way. Aunt...I mean Crow Regina then flew around the room before landing in front of a large filing cabinet labeled, 'El'. To everyone's surprise, Crow Regina opened up one of the sections with her beak.

      "You have a pretty cool aunt," stated Tadaaki and Nessie in unison. Saki, also, nodded in agreement with Tadaaki and Nessie. Before I could respond, Crow Regina flew down and transformed back into her human form. Aunt Regina then told us, "You four need to stand back. Safety concerns!"

       Tadaaki, Nessie, Saki, and I did what she ask of us and took a few steps back. With another deep breath, Aunt Regina held out her hands. They began to glow a dark blue, presumably Aunt Regina was summoning some of her omeo.

      "I wish I had omeo," I heard Saki mumble sadly to herself. In the corner of my eye, I saw Nessie pat her on the back and gave her a toothy grin. The section she opened also began to glow and a casket floated out of it and slowly to Aunt Regina. Carefully, she directed her omeo to place the casket on the ground.

      "Tadaaki, can you pass me that rod?" Aunt Regina asked, pointing to a rod-like staff in the corner of the area. He nodded and jogged over to the staff before picking it up and jogging back to Aunt Regina. Tadaaki then handed it to her and walked back to us.

      "բաց արկղիկ, ես պատուիրեմ!" Aunt Regina exclaimed in a foreign tongue before hitting the casket with the rod-staff. I realized that it was Armenian, the language of the ancestral Matas. The casket immediately popped open, revealing the body of a young woman. She was preserved perfectly, not a year aged.

      "Is this...this Elizabeth?" I asked Aunt Regina in a hush voice. She nodded, yes, and stated, "Omen-bearing undertakers have the ability to preserve corpses without them rotting out aging. Her body is still twenty nine years old."

      I took a moment to examine my...grandmother. Despite being...well dead, she was beautiful and bared an uncanny resemblance to me. Her hair was jet black like the night. It was very long, stopping at the hip. Grandmother had snow white skin and her eyes were closed, preventing me from knowing her eye color. This was Elizabeth Mata.