Vuela

Chapter 3

By the time The Admiral's Palace closes for the evening, Vuela can't be any more relieved to be free from responsibility. Having the girl walk a semi-empty store most of the day is like having brain cells surgically plucked out of her as she stands awake. It doesn't please her to know that more books come into the store than go out of it. The whole day, Vuela is only fetched to shelve three books and take down one.

But what continues to bother her is the plate she found slipping out of the book the weird old man brought in this morning. She ponders on what it can be, but of all the possibilities that come to mind, they can't be right. This metal plate's markings are too strange to be from any Germanic or Romantic source of media.

While upstairs, Vuela has the plate photo-scanned by the personal computer that also once belonged to her journalist father. Its small arm sucks the plate into the scanning box. No results come up for what technical language the plate's engraved. The box opens up again, and the arm pops out, returning the plate to Vuela. She's seen weird language media in school, but nothing like this has come across her way before.

"What even is this?"

Maxime calls Vuela downstairs for dinner. It takes two more shouts for the little sister to finally hear him and come down as ordered. "That's a new record for how many times I have to get your attention."

The girl scoffs.

"What were you doing up there?" he asks.

"Sorry, Max," she responds. "I was watching something."

"On that old desk computer? What could be so interesting?"

"You'd be surprised, Maxime Hawkins."

He cocks his eyebrows. "Try me."

Vuela slyly grinned. "Trying looking up how filmatic book pages work." Though it's a lie, that is something that the girl has done in the past.

Max puckers his lips. "Oh. Well, how is that interesting? Didn't you do that for a project in school?"

"I had to give them clips, Max. Not make a page myself."

"Right. So how do you make a page?"

"I didn't get into that part yet."

"Why?"

"Because you called me down for dinner."

Instead of responding, Max continues eating.

Vuela waits, dressed in her casual attire, until her brother goes to sleep to think of sneaking out of the house. Maxime always goes to bed at late times. He isn't good at making his brain quit for him to pass out without worrying about what tomorrow will bring. As Vuela listens to him pace in his bedroom, which is next to hers, she stares down at the mysterious plate.

She playfully traces the engraved letters with the tip of her fingernail. How such a language someone can create. Is this made from a solo inventor or from a genius collective? To have something so cleanly engraved, it has to be a group effort. At least that's Vuela's best guess. She can't go back in time and find out for herself. If she can, she and Max would not be living in almost poverty.

She plans on taking the plate to a street professional. It's too late to be going into labs, and libraries are restricting when it comes to minors using their professional machines. There are a couple people downtown who have ways of finding some research. They require a slightly heavy price depending on how much information she's looking for, so she has to sacrifice a metal banded pack of twenties to figure out what's up with her new-found object.