Origin

EPILOGUE

"It's so dusty in here," Veronica complained as she dragged her fingers over the nightstand next to the bed. She jumped on it and a cloud of dust raised. Alaric and Clell muttered complains as they coughed.

Around spring time, a couple of months after the attack on the beach, we went to Missipy to search for any clues. Alaric, Clell, Holden, Veronica, Hepheos and I had come along this far.

When we'd reached a dead end in our search for the rest of the stones, the air stone is particular, -and by dead end I meant that we hadn't found anything else- we decided to look at Tom's old house. Since he was the previous general of Aedan, he was also partly responsible for the fire stone but also knew about the rest. We wanted to see if he had any leads on the last location of the air stone. That's why we were currently spread around his house looking for any clues.

"When was the last time this place was cleaned?" Veronica kept grumbling about.

"Sixteen years ago, before he died, genius," Hepheos commended.

"Are you making fun of me?" she asked him.

"I wonder what gave you that idea." His sarcastic tone was undeniable. Each day, Hepheos grew more and more comfortable around us and he had become more than a simple familiar. He was one of my companions, my friend. And I wasn't the only one who had frown fond of him. As it had turned out Hepheos liked to provoke Veronica as much as she liked to complain. It looked like she had finally met her match.

My attention caught one of the portrays on the walls of his bedroom. It was a photograph of my godfather, Tom, on a ship, based on the seagull flying on the blue sky on the background. He was wearing a white shirt and a black hat to cover the top of his head and those red locks of his that still managed to show themselves. His happy smile wasn't what got all of my attention.

The island behind him on the background was what amazed me. It wasn't full of green and, instead, had many yellowish trees and bushes covering its lands. And right in the middle of the island were two hills which started from the same spot on the ground and separated towards the end. In the open space created in between was built a village. Small white houses were climbing up to the top of the hills from the spot where they first parted.

That place somehow called to me; it was as if I had seen it before. I remembered an advice Greta once gave me. If I thought I had a serious case of deja-vu, then it was most likely that I had seen it on a vision and I just couldn't remember it.

I took the portray off the wall and held it in my hands. My hands felt something on the back side of the frame. I turned it backwards and stared at a piece of paper taped there. It simple had two symbols; nothing else was drawn or written there. The first one looked like a square filled with a line in the middle and the other was a spiral circle.

"Guys!" I yelled loud enough for my friends outside the bedroom to hear me. Everyone gathered around me and stared at my discovery.

"What is that?" Holden wondered as he took a closer look. Hepheos stole it from my hands and stared at it in wonder.

"That's ancient aedanian," he whispered.

"What?" we screeched.

"That's the old language of Aedan. It was used centuries ago. I didn't think anyone else would remember this dialect," Hepheos murmured with a shy smile.

"What does it say?" Vetta asked the most critical question.

"Air stone."