Aliatio

Chapter 8 - The Cafe

               Misty slowly opened the door. She saw the piles of papers scattered around, "How are we going to sift through all of this?" Misty groaned, feeling overwhelmed. 

               "Haha, yeah. I forgot how many there were," Zach said, nervously.   

             "Well, we only have to find some leads, so hopefully we won't have to look through all this," Misty said.

               "Unless it's the last one we look at," Zach chuckled.

              "I'd never get to see the outside again," Misty said.

               "Well, we should go ahead and get started now," Zach suggested.

               "I'll look through the stuff in my brother's room and you can start chipping away the mess down here," Misty said. 

               "Sounds like a plan," Zach agreed. They walked in, locking the door behind them, and maneuvering around the papers. Misty walked upstairs as Zach picked up a random paper and started reading. She entered the room feeling as if it had gotten messier since she left. 

                Letting out a reluctant sigh, she got to work. She filtered through papers for what felt like an eternity, writing whatever she could down in the journal. "This isn't very effective," Misty groaned, scanning over her notes, "All I got is that he really liked writing 'completely and utterly wrong' on paper. Along with pointy ears and apparently, they don't live much longer than humans." 

                 "Hey, Misty come down here!" Zach yelled from the first floor.  Did he find something? Misty wondered, walking out of the room and down the stairs. Zach was carefully stepping over to her on the few spaces that weren't covered in paper stacks, he was holding a blue book. "I think this might be something." Zach handed her the book. It was titled, The Elusive Elf Realm, and had a sticky note on it saying, 99% utter fiction but 1% right. 

                 "Hmm, I'll keep it just in case," Misty said, placing the book in her bag. Misty wrote down a note in her journal, The Elusive Elf Realm 1% true? Read Later, Record findings. "Anything else?" 

                   "Not from what I found," Zach reported. 

                  "I wish this just made more sense," Misty complained. 

                  "I'm sure it will, we are just missing a key component. Like a motherboard and as soon as we get that and connect it all, the screen will light up and things will just make sense, ya know?" Zach said with a goofy grin. 

                  "Alright, let's find that motherboard then," Misty smiled, feeling uplifted, "So let's get to it." 

                  "Wait, that means more reading this nonsense?" Zach asked painfully. 

                 "I guess we could go get an early lunch," Misty reluctantly stated. 

                 "Yes! I'll make sure they put extra cheese on yours," Zach grinned. 

                 "Really?!" Misty asked excitedly. Zach pulled out a map. 

                "There's actually a cafe nearby according to this map," Zach said. 

                 "Let's go try it then," Misty said. They left the house, locking the door behind them, and walked to the cafe. 

                   They followed the map arriving right on the outskirts of the town where the suburbs meet the forest. The cafe looked mostly like an ordinary house except it was painted an oaky brown and had a verdant green roof. The house had a porch with railings and its own roof along with two tables. A sizable sign hung from the porch's roof reading, The Calming Canopy.