Morning arrived and it was time for the others to meet with us and formulate a search plan. Luna and I were in the middle of eating breakfast that we found stashed away in the kitchen cupboards, drawers, and fridge. I chowed my breakfast down ravenously like some sort of starved beast, while Luna ate her's generously and with manner.
“I just love this food!” I bursted out after swallowing a bite.
“Yeah, something besides one meal of meat for a change,” Luna replied. At that moment there was a knock at our door.
“Come in, it's open!” I shouted to whomever was at the door. The door opened and Sieve, Riku, and Nero walked in. Riku and Sieve greeted us with the casual 'good morning', but Nero's greeting was something quite different.
“Good morning beautiful. How was your night? Mine was great with you in my dreams,” he said, taking a moment to stare at Luna.
“Too bad I couldn’t make those dreams nightmares,” Luna mumbled to herself as she looked at her breakfast.
“And you look lovely as always,” Nero said as if he didn’t hear Luna's mumbled words to him.
“Alrighty,” Riku said while clapping his hands once to call everyone’s attention. “Now that we're all here, I think its time for a good debate.”
“Agreed,”Luna said as she got up and threw her unfinished breakfast into the trash.
“Wasteful!” I sang to her. She ignored my comment and turned to the others.
“So now that you've all had a night to sleep over the subject, what've you got?”
“You could retrace your steps back to your village,” Sieve replied,” there's bound to be some clues there.”
“Interesting,” Luna said as she thought over the idea, slightly bewildered she hadn’t thought of something so simple herself. “Are there any more ideas or is that the one we'll go with?” There was a moment of silence as we racked our brains for something, but with nothing of an answer revealing itself. “Good, then its settled. Leanne and I will head out at nightfall to search for clues in Himitsu.”
And so there it was, our plan was decided in only a matter of minutes. It took longer to get to Soule and reunite than it did to come up with a plan, but as long as we had one it didn’t really matter so much.
“Mind if I tag along? I don’t think its safe for you to travel alone after what happened with the cat incident,” Riku said.
“Fine,” was Luna's reply.
“I'll come along as well. To protect you and to see Himitsu's current condition,” Sieve volunteered herself for the expedition.
“I wanna come too! To make sure no one in particular gets hurt,” chimed Nero.
“Yeah, if you came along I wouldn’t be in any danger at all,” Luna said sarcastically. Oh! But I know you'll save me if we're ambushed by a group of cats and they try to kill us. Wont you, my brave wolf?” She said mockingly.
“U-uh...um..” Nero replied shakingly, slightly dumbfounded at the thought of an attack from cats. Then he gathered up his confidence and knelt in front of her with his arms open and said, “of course! I shall always be there to protect you my love!
“Oh yeah, my knight in shaking armor,” Luna mumbled sarcastically, and then pushed him over with a kick of her foot into his face. She then turned her attention toward the rest of us with a more serious look. “Okay, so we're all going then,” Luna confirmed.
“The more the merrier!” I sang.
“We'll meet you at the entrance of Soule. See you tonight,” Sieve said and then all three of our friends headed for the door.
• • •
It became dark outside as night began to settle in. Luna and I headed out of our room, exited the sleeping quarters and made it in front of Soule's entrance tunnel. We shifted and crawled through the passageway, emerging outside into the darkness. Riku, Nero, and Sieve were already waiting there in their wolf forms. Since they were all white wolves, it was difficult to tell them apart, especially Riku and Nero. Sieve was distinguishable because she was a bit larger in proportion and had lighter colored eyes than the other two. The twins however, looked exactly alike. And with that observation, we headed off to Himitsu.
• • •
We made it to Himitsu in record time, all five of us out of breath from our sprint, and shifted back into humans. The sight of Himitsu must have been shocking for the others. Every house was inevitably burnt down, and the ones that weren't were charred. The luscious grass that had once covered the village was gone, and surrounding trees were burnt, broken, and fallen. Himitsu was a perfect example of why fires were especially dangerous in forests.
“Where shall we begin?” Luna asked the others.
“How about searching your house?” replied Sieve.
“Haha! Yeah, whatever's left of it!” Nero laughed, pointing at one of the burnt down houses.
“Be quiet!” I yelled at him, smacking him on the head.
“Okay Leanne, lets go,” Luna said, preventing me from doing further harm to Nero as if she enjoyed, and I wouldn’t doubt, doing it herself, as she walked toward our ramshackled house. I ran after her and we stopped at the door. Luna grasped the door handle and turned it. The door, weak from the fire, fell straight off of its hinges, leaving Luna to quickly grab it and set it aside gently on the house.
“Luna, stop breaking our house!” I told her.
“Hey, the fire did this, not me,” she replied, giving me a quick glance. “And our house is already broken anyway!”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you should break it more!” I yelled back. Which was a very true statement. The house had a roughly charred look to it and had caved in in some parts where we failed to save them in time. Simple contact with the door had made it collapse completely, so we decided to travel inside carefully and cautiously.
“Riku and I are going to explore. Nero will stand guard around your house to make sure nothing bad happens while you're in there,” Sieve called to us as she saw us walk into our house.
“Huh? Why me?” I heard Nero whine. We continued stepping deeper into the house.
“Don’t touch anything,” Luna warned me, “You wouldn’t want the roof to collapse on us and be buried alive, would you?” I swallowed hard, picturing the result of a mistake that would cost us our lives. We kept moving, seeing the familiar rooms and items of our household. They were all either shattered, burned, or broken in some way that made them unable to re-acquire into our possession. The floor creaked as we traveled upon it, moaning in pain as we crushed its wooden planks. Some rooms were completely inaccessible due to roof cave-ins and rubble.
We went into our parents room and saw that the ceiling had collapsed onto the bed where they had once slept. We stared at the debris on the bed, knowing what lay underneath, and shivered in response.
“This place gives me the creeps. Lets hurry up and find something already,” Luna said. She investigated the near side of the room while I walked over to the far side and spotted a nightstand next to the bed. The nightstand had a drawer, but a few pieces of the roof had slightly crushed the top of it, distorting the drawer. I knelt by it and grasped the drawer's knob, attempting to pull it open. Unfortunately it wouldn’t budge an inch for me.
“Hey Luna! Come open this using your brute strength!” I called over to her on the other side of the room.
“Found something?” She rushed over to me. And in realizing what else I had said, responded,” and what do you mean by 'brute strength'?!”
“Just open it,” I said with a bit of a glare. Luna grabbed the knob and pulled. She managed to get it open, but in the process, the rest of the stand collapsed and the knob broke off, leaving the drawer to fall to the ground. Luna held the knob that used to be attached to the drawer, and I looked up at her and opened my mouth to say something, but she cut me off by holding up her hand and shaking her head in a way that said 'don't even say it'. Luna set the knob down and moved the even more broken drawer aside, revealing what lay underneath, a small book.
“I better handle this one,” I said, picking the book up before she had a chance to. It seemed to be pretty old, most likely more than twenty years. The cover was a beige color, but one could tell when looked at closely enough that it used to be a shining white. On the front of the cover was our mother's name, Lumina, printed in calligraphy letters. Our mother most certainly wrote her name on it herself, for she was known to have such perfect calligraphy writing. I opened it up and a page it turned to had a date on it in the upper left hand corner.
“Look Luna, this page is dated a few weeks before we were born,” I said happily, pointing at the page. I turned the page and on the upper right hand corner was a slightly worn out date, the only reason for its visibility was that it was written in black ink, just as the name on the front cover was.
“This has to be our mother's diary,” I concluded.
“Hah! What a surprise.”
“What, that we found it?”
“No, that mom even had one. Pfft,” Luna replied. I scanned through the page and began reading aloud, finding a good paragraph. Though it was difficult to do, because just about every other word was faded.
“Just a few more weeks to go and my darlings Leanne and Luna will be in my arms....I hope....be unharmed.”
“Is she talking about us being 'unharmed'? This seems interesting, keep reading,” Luna commanded me. I did as she said, not because she told me to do so, but also because I too was curious.
“...hopefully all of those tests....affect them in a bad way as he said they might...”
“Hm. Tests? And who is this 'he' she is talking of? Certainly not our father I would think,” Luna commented. “Turn back a few pages, I want to see the whole story on this.” I turned a few pages and looked at the date of the diary entry. What I saw didn't really make sense. The last entry I had read was dated a month later than this one. Why would our mother have stopped writing for a month when she appeared to write daily? I scanned through the page and found my answer, reading aloud.
“I cant believe it...of all things...strolling along in the woods......human, of all creatures, who spotted and captured me.....I told him I was conceived with children....slightest care in mind. His interest in me was far too great for such a concern....took me to a 'lab' where he said he would experiment.....scientist said his name....Seth Lowell........I think he had drugged me for....woke up with a different feeling inside me. With his 'experimenting'......pray that he didn’t harm my babies. Seth asked......I told him their names. The following month......awfully stressful.....awaiting to find out if he harmed them.” I stopped reading and closed the diary slowly, shocked by what I read.
“Our mom was caught by a human scientist...named Seth Lowell, who discovered her while she was taking a walk in Argonne, and performed tests on her?” Luna clarified with uncertain shock.
“No,” I shook my head. “Not on her,” I looked up at Luna,” on us.”
