[fic] Seek (Dreamers, Chapter 1)
Jan. 23rd, 2009 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jenioctaviaTitle: Seek
Setting: Dreamers (Myst-verse)
Warnings: None so far
Summary: Ana's trips to Ireland were predictable, even if they were for business, and nothing out of the ordinary ever happened. At least until the old grounds keeper told her of the whispered rumors about town...
Spring was pleasantly warm in Ireland, with the sweet scent of blooming flowers and greenery lending a heavy, relaxing aroma to the air that lifted and fell with the breezes. Even as Ana took in the beauty and wonder of it from the stone bench in the expansive and well maintained garden, she couldn't find it in her aching heart to enjoy it as she so often did on her visits.
'I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth it to hold onto this place...' she wrote in her hard backed journal, pen moving swiftly across the green tinted pages, 'I do feel an obligation to my family of both past and present to keep the linage true, but the fact that my greedy cousins, Heather especially, continue to dispute my right to ownership has become a long and draining battle.
The longer I spend away from Rory and my extended family back home in the states, the more I ache for them and their warm embraces. Ireland is a beautiful, magnificent country, but any place, no matter the splendor is cold and barren without them at my side.
And bringing them here is just not an option right now, not as long as Heather continues to harass me. Seamus would welcome them with open arms, but the rest of them only want to see castle and it's property on their side of the family. What makes me, one actually born with the Naismith name, less of a Naismith than cousins who aren't even of the same name? They claim themselves as the 'true' lineage just because they happen to still live here. How can they make such ridiculous claims? I don't understand it at all.
I suppose it's this that keeps me going. My family died, lost their lives, but left me alive, and in that it is my responsibility... no, my duty and honor to defend what remains.'
A wary sigh dropped her shoulders low, and she rested the pen upon the last page, finding herself out of words to write.
The grounds keeper, a stooped old man who was surprisingly efficient for his age and condition, shuffled over into Ana's line of sight, resting heavily on an old wooden back hoe.
"What's got you looking so dour, Lady Naismith? Seems you've got the whole weight of the big blue world on your tiny shoulders," he drawled in a thick brogue.
Ana smiled faintly, though it was difficult to hide the ache that shone in her green eyes.
"Just the weight of our castle and it's fate..." she said softly.
"Aye. That insufferable Heather is still after you for ownership..." the man commented bitterly, fuzzy brows pinching together worriedly. "You're not giving up, are you lass?"
"I'm... I'm not sure," she admitted with a slow, uncertain shake of her head. "I know I shouldn't, but she's doing a wonderful job of wearing me down at last."
A surge of anger welled up inside, causing her to slam the journal closed with a snap as her thin fingers clutched at the spine hard enough to cause small indentations.
"I don't get it! All the talk of keeping the property with 'true' Irish and claiming themselves at the proper inheritance... none of it makes any sense! I don't understand why this place is that important to her! Seamus is the only one who doesn't want anything to do with the whole mess, but has put himself on the line just to try and help me. What's the real reason? What could Heather possibly want?"
A chill wind lifted strands of red from Ana's shoulders and ruffled her long, floral patterned skirt about her legs, leaving the near-breathless rant to linger in the following stillness. The grounds keeper had become seemingly distracted, distant, his head turned instead to the sprawling stone structure of the castle.
"She could be telling you the truth, from her perspective, that she truly just wants the property to be hers with no other ultimatum. Or, perhaps..."
"Perhaps?" Ana pressed curiously.
"Maybe it's just the ramblings of an old man, but every once in a while these old ears will hear rumors of something valuable hidden beneath that castle."
"...valuable?" Ana echoed. "The only thing of value is the castle itself. Anything else was put into my inheritance ages ago," she informed him with a confused frown.
'Something of value', besides the land and structure, couldn't have been anything real. If it was nothing more than a rumor, than what use would Heather possibly want with the castle?
To her vocal comment, the grounds keeper only shrugged.
"It's just some whispers in the town. Talk of artifacts, hidden things, things of a civilization that no longer exists. One that the government doesn't want anyone to know about."
Slowly Ana's eyebrow raised, lips parting in a silent show of her confusion and concern. The man turned, fixing the young woman with an odd stare that slipped into an even odder, haunting smile.
"Perhaps treasure... or perhaps nothing more than the rambling of a old man..."
Soft, nearly lost to the wind, a chuckle shook his narrow, hunched shoulders and he hefted the hoe back over one, wandering away with a far too jaunty song being hummed. The mood he left behind did nothing to reflect the tune he carried away with him, and Ana couldn't shake the chill that worked down her spine in its wake.
***
The words had wormed and dug their way into Ana's brain, planting seeds of doubt and frightening curiosity while raking claws through all she thought she knew about the situation she'd been battling with since she'd turned eighteen.
That night she shared a quiet dinner with Seamus, too distracted to keep up decent conversation. Though concerned for his young cousin, Seamus could tell there was a deep reluctance in her to talk about what was on her mind. It was upsetting to think that his family would turn against one of their own over something so petty. He helped as much as he possibly could, much to the protests of his brothers and sister, but like her he was beginning to feel wary and powerless against their persistence.
"We're fighting a difficult battle here, Ana," he said to her as they sat outside his house in her rental car. "What if it's all in vain? She could still win."
Ana sighed, long and deep, feeling nothing cathartic in the action, all the weight remaining invisible on her shoulders as it had been for so long. Tiredly she smiled to him and patted his hand.
"That's not an option I can accept."
"What about your family back home? Don't you miss them terribly, having to be here all the time?"
"Of course I do, Seamus. It aches like you couldn't even imagine. But... you said it yourself. They're as much my family as you are, as much as the family I lost still is. This is something I want to share with them, but Heather is making so damn certain I'll never get that chance. If she could just see how much I want us all to get along, I would be more than happy to share this with everyone, Naismith or not. It's part of our history, our heritage, but she treats it like a material possession to be fought over..."
A burning, sharp and sudden, found her eyes. She blinked rapidly to will the few unbidden tears away, scrubbing at one side of her face roughly.
"If Matthias had survived, none of this would been happening..." she added, voice choked and words soft.
Carefully, Seamus drew the smaller girl into his arms, speaking into her shoulder with a gentle tone.
"We can't dwell in the past forever, Ana. They would have wanted you to be happy, and I know you have people who love you dearly back there who are waiting for you to come home and be happy with them. Maybe that's something you need to consider before this really does go too far..."
Quietly, Ana drew back, giving no indication if she agreed or disagreed with his statement, instead returning her saddened smile with a barely spoken 'thank you'. He longed to say more to her, to encourage the one he cared about so much to become aware of how much she was hurting herself in the long run, but it would be something she'd have to realize on her own. There was no forcing it on her.
They bid each other goodnight, and Ana drove away with nothing but the sound of the tires rolling along and her racing mind to keep her company.
***
Sleep was not to be had. Her thoughts were simply too loud, too insistent, and the ceiling of the hotel provided no answers to her wordless questions. Shortly after midnight, the scratchy, overly starched blankets were tossed to the side. Some digging in the mess of her suitcase located the one pair of jeans and plain t-shirt she'd packed along, and once changed she drew her hair up into a thick pony tail, placing as much of the mass of red as she could out of her face.
An extra back pack, large and mostly used for camping trips, had been brought along as a 'just in case' that she'd felt with an odd notion she might need it. She was running on an uncertain but driving sense of autopilot, something about the late hour combined with another truly unknown force pulling her this way and that with no true sense of being in control of her own actions. A few bottles of water from the mini fridge were gathered along with some packages of the sweets stored in there. An added afterthought had her packing another change of clothes, her journal, a few pens, and her cell phone.
Whatever was tugging her along, the invisible string tied to her wrist to keep her moving with forces far beyond her comprehension and will power; Ana couldn't fight it, and before she knew it she was already out at her car, driving into town to find any place that may have been open twenty-four hours. Eventually a store was found, little more than the local equivalent of a 7-11, but it provided her with a Maglite and the proper batteries for it along with a couple more water bottles and packages of dried fruit. Items purchased, the clerk seeming almost bored with her presence despite the selection, she left and headed out, far beyond the main roads of the city, into the rolling fields turned faded gray by the lightless night, along winding roads that worked and climbed their way past silent farms and sleeping homes.
Soon the castle loomed in the dark distance, little more than a blot on the featureless horizon. Gate unlocked by a quick detour out of the car to unlatch the chain around it provided entrance, and she came to a halt at the wide stairway that led to the yawning wooden double doors, staring at them through the haze of night with one hand still resting on the steering wheel.
Slowly her gaze shifted to the backpack in the passenger seat, heart leaping in an unexpected skip. Logic and years of past experiences with the place told her, willed her to believe that she would find nothing of interest inside. There would be no artifacts, no lost civilization waiting to be discovered. She would spend a sleepless night searching only to come out of it tired, sore, and all the more irritated for ever listening to the old man.
But her hand found the strap of the bag, other hand going for the door handle, and her feet touched gravel driveway in a sharp crunch.
Her stride was determined, swift up the stone steps to the doors. Once inside, she groped about, blind but drawn by memory to the large light switch panel on the wall. The clunky, old-fashioned switches were lit with loud snaps that resonated down the long corridor as the overhead lights crackled and clicked to life one by one, bathing the area in a tired yellow glow. Ana's footsteps sounded hollow and distant as she walked forward, wondering where she should even start. It may not have been as impressive as some castles in size, and a great deal of the extended buildings that once made up the full manor had crumbled in to rubble long ago, but she was still searching alone with nothing but her own two feet and a sense of intuition to guide her. It was not exactly a promising endeavor, and yet she carried on, knowing rest wouldn't come until she could locate the source of her distress. The invisible string was still attached to her wrist, still tugging her along, and she simply couldn't ignore it.
Hours slipped away from her, her search meticulous, hands and flashlight checking over every crack and corner. Walls knocked on, beds crawled beneath, dressers moved, and nothing stood out, nothing called her attention the way she hoped it would. Eventually she came to rest in the nearly empty old library, tired, dirty, throat scratchy from too much exposure to dust and body aching from so much activity in such a short period of time. Taking a seat in a velvet lined chair that had been left behind like so many of the artifacts and items there, she sifted about in her pack for a bottle of water and her cell phone. The digital face of it declared it to be just shortly after three in the morning. Time had truly escaped her in her frantic searching, but she downed nearly half the bottle in one massive gulp and contemplated her next move. Something was amiss in her mind, that gnawing, scratching at the back of it like she was forgetting something important, but it all seemed to be obscured by the constant buzz of her continuing desire to search, move, look, find.
With a heavy sigh, Ana set her phone on the arm rest of the chair and let her head lean against the plush backing of the chair, wincing when lump of her pulled back hair dug in to her overly sensitive scalp and caused the slowly building ache there to blossom in to a full on migraine. Even the dimness of the time-yellowed lights hurt her eyes, and she could only close them with an irritated, not entirely coherent grumble for a moment. Sleep begged her to fall in to it's warm embrace from the edges of her mind, but the desire to find whatever it was in that castle that had pulled her there in the first place canceled everything reasonable out with its continuing mental noise.
Annoyed, she decided to give it another go, hoping that a second fruitless search would finally put that wary feeling to rest that there really was nothing in the castle of interest, but the short rest had already brought a great weight to her sore limbs and a dizziness to her vision, causing her to nearly tumble when her knees refused to straighten. She caught herself on the arm of the chair, but in turn the frantic motion sent her cell phone falling instead, the object skittering across the floor until it vanished through a gap beneath a book case.
"Oh, damn..."
Ire quickly rising at the continuing ridiculousness of her situation, Ana yanked the maglite out of her bag and stooped on sore knees to try and locate the fallen device, shining the light beneath the gap. Its shiny surface reflected back, but the small space still required her to lie flat on her belly and scramble about until her fingers could grip it. Upon lifting her hand, the back of it brushed across something smooth and all together out of place for the bookshelf, but before she could properly register what it had been, a soft click sounded above her head, and something began grinding loudly.
She was given but a pause to think about it before the bookshelf actually began moving to the left and she was forced to yank her hand out quickly before it was overtaken. Sitting up on her knees, clutching said hand to her chest with the cell phone clutched tightly in her fingers, she watched in muted awe as the shelf slid across the one next to it, revealing a darkened passage beyond, stone steps leading down in to it's depths.
"W... what the..." she uttered breathlessly, rising to her trembling legs awkwardly, arm lifting to shine the jittering light in to the passage. It illuminated the stairs, showing her that they only went down a few feet until leveling in to a narrow, dusty pathway that eventually came to a halt at an archway of some sort. Beyond that her light couldn't reach, and with a renewed sigh she knew the only way to find out what it was would be to trek down there herself.
Though she had half a mind to contact her cousin, but she was loathe to wake him at such an hour with something as insane as 'I had a weird feeling and went to the castle and I found a secret passage way'. He wouldn't be any happier about it as she was to be there in the first place, and would likely tell her to wait until a decent hour to go throwing herself in to strange hidden tunnels.
'A decent hour' was refusing to wait for her, though, and she found her feet moving forward in spite of her heavy indecision. Bag slung back over her shoulder once more, cell phone still absently in one hand with the flashlight in the other, Ana went forward, feet uncertain on the worn, crumbling steps until she reached the solid base of the path. It didn't take long for her to arrive at the archway, and when she swept the light over it and the heavy wooden door attached to it, she couldn't help but let out a soft gasp.
Intricate designs lined the outer rim of the door, symbols that were either a language or merely decoration carved deeply in to the wood and lacquered with something dark that almost shimmered in the dull light shone on it. Nothing resembled a door handle on it, but a small panel had been carved and set inlaid in to the wood where one might be, and when Ana cautiously ran her fingers over it, it shifted and lowered with a gentle click, causing the door to swing open. Though heavy, and clearly old, it gave none of the telltale squeaks or groans of an out of use, forgotten entry way, leading her to wonder if perhaps it had been maintained some how in her family's absence.
The space beyond was just as pitch as the rest of the passage way, so she continued to push the door open until she could shine the light in further, illuminating a simple stone room beyond with nothing but a solitary pedestal standing center. Remaining cautious, she stepped in slowly, watching for any uneven stone that might send her sprawling. Nothing tripped her or caught her feet, and her attention finally came to rest on the pedestal. Resting on it's clean surface was a heavy, thick leather bound book, color faded by time but in otherwise pristine condition.
"... that's a lot of trouble to go through just to put a book here," Ana muttered thoughtfully, setting her cell phone down as she glanced around the chamber and back out the door, but it all seemed so plain in comparison. If there truly was something physical that she needed to be looking for, the book had to be the only logical explanation. Well, logical for what she was going through.
"Right. So. A book. This all makes perfect sense."
Finding it difficult to reign in her irritation but having nothing tangible to take it out on, Ana gave a miffed sigh and reached forward, opening the book slowly to the first page. No words greeted her, though something else that was entirely unexpected did. A picture, rectangular and only taking up a little less than half of the page, depicted a sprawling desert beneath a clear blue sky. She squinted, leaned forward, trying to understand what she was seeing, realizing after a few seconds that the picture wasn't stationary - it was moving, giving a sweeping bird's-eye view of the desert, much like a television screen had been built in to the book some how.
"Now that's just odd," she mumbled again, scratching at her chin as she began inspecting the book closer, flipping the pages only to find that the rest of the book, though written in the same scrawling script as what had been on the door, was otherwise normal. There was no possible explanation as to why the picture on the first page would be moving as it was, and to make things worse, whatever had pulled her to that very spot was showing nothing in the way of further clues.
Okay, fine, she reasoned mentally with a scowl, Obviously this wasn't what I was meant to find. Forget it. I'll drag Seamus here tomorrow afternoon. I just want a shower and some sleep in a halfway decent bed.
A new sigh, tight with her exhaustion left her parted lips, and Ana brushed her hand across the page, intending to close the book. Something entirely unexpected happened, though, when her fingers began to tingle, the sensation working up her arm when her confusion brought her hand fully down upon the moving picture. An eerie sensation tugged at her belly, her heart raced in a panic, but she couldn't pull away. The tingling worked up through her shoulders and down her body, a sudden brightness nearly blinding the edges of her vision. The view of the desert in the picture came closer, became far more real, and in an instant it was almost like she was flying towards it.
"H-hey, what-!"
Her voice cried out and silenced all in a matter of seconds, leaving nothing but an echo of the sound and an empty chamber, her cell phone left behind on the pedestal next to the open book.
Setting: Dreamers (Myst-verse)
Warnings: None so far
Summary: Ana's trips to Ireland were predictable, even if they were for business, and nothing out of the ordinary ever happened. At least until the old grounds keeper told her of the whispered rumors about town...
Spring was pleasantly warm in Ireland, with the sweet scent of blooming flowers and greenery lending a heavy, relaxing aroma to the air that lifted and fell with the breezes. Even as Ana took in the beauty and wonder of it from the stone bench in the expansive and well maintained garden, she couldn't find it in her aching heart to enjoy it as she so often did on her visits.
'I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth it to hold onto this place...' she wrote in her hard backed journal, pen moving swiftly across the green tinted pages, 'I do feel an obligation to my family of both past and present to keep the linage true, but the fact that my greedy cousins, Heather especially, continue to dispute my right to ownership has become a long and draining battle.
The longer I spend away from Rory and my extended family back home in the states, the more I ache for them and their warm embraces. Ireland is a beautiful, magnificent country, but any place, no matter the splendor is cold and barren without them at my side.
And bringing them here is just not an option right now, not as long as Heather continues to harass me. Seamus would welcome them with open arms, but the rest of them only want to see castle and it's property on their side of the family. What makes me, one actually born with the Naismith name, less of a Naismith than cousins who aren't even of the same name? They claim themselves as the 'true' lineage just because they happen to still live here. How can they make such ridiculous claims? I don't understand it at all.
I suppose it's this that keeps me going. My family died, lost their lives, but left me alive, and in that it is my responsibility... no, my duty and honor to defend what remains.'
A wary sigh dropped her shoulders low, and she rested the pen upon the last page, finding herself out of words to write.
The grounds keeper, a stooped old man who was surprisingly efficient for his age and condition, shuffled over into Ana's line of sight, resting heavily on an old wooden back hoe.
"What's got you looking so dour, Lady Naismith? Seems you've got the whole weight of the big blue world on your tiny shoulders," he drawled in a thick brogue.
Ana smiled faintly, though it was difficult to hide the ache that shone in her green eyes.
"Just the weight of our castle and it's fate..." she said softly.
"Aye. That insufferable Heather is still after you for ownership..." the man commented bitterly, fuzzy brows pinching together worriedly. "You're not giving up, are you lass?"
"I'm... I'm not sure," she admitted with a slow, uncertain shake of her head. "I know I shouldn't, but she's doing a wonderful job of wearing me down at last."
A surge of anger welled up inside, causing her to slam the journal closed with a snap as her thin fingers clutched at the spine hard enough to cause small indentations.
"I don't get it! All the talk of keeping the property with 'true' Irish and claiming themselves at the proper inheritance... none of it makes any sense! I don't understand why this place is that important to her! Seamus is the only one who doesn't want anything to do with the whole mess, but has put himself on the line just to try and help me. What's the real reason? What could Heather possibly want?"
A chill wind lifted strands of red from Ana's shoulders and ruffled her long, floral patterned skirt about her legs, leaving the near-breathless rant to linger in the following stillness. The grounds keeper had become seemingly distracted, distant, his head turned instead to the sprawling stone structure of the castle.
"She could be telling you the truth, from her perspective, that she truly just wants the property to be hers with no other ultimatum. Or, perhaps..."
"Perhaps?" Ana pressed curiously.
"Maybe it's just the ramblings of an old man, but every once in a while these old ears will hear rumors of something valuable hidden beneath that castle."
"...valuable?" Ana echoed. "The only thing of value is the castle itself. Anything else was put into my inheritance ages ago," she informed him with a confused frown.
'Something of value', besides the land and structure, couldn't have been anything real. If it was nothing more than a rumor, than what use would Heather possibly want with the castle?
To her vocal comment, the grounds keeper only shrugged.
"It's just some whispers in the town. Talk of artifacts, hidden things, things of a civilization that no longer exists. One that the government doesn't want anyone to know about."
Slowly Ana's eyebrow raised, lips parting in a silent show of her confusion and concern. The man turned, fixing the young woman with an odd stare that slipped into an even odder, haunting smile.
"Perhaps treasure... or perhaps nothing more than the rambling of a old man..."
Soft, nearly lost to the wind, a chuckle shook his narrow, hunched shoulders and he hefted the hoe back over one, wandering away with a far too jaunty song being hummed. The mood he left behind did nothing to reflect the tune he carried away with him, and Ana couldn't shake the chill that worked down her spine in its wake.
***
The words had wormed and dug their way into Ana's brain, planting seeds of doubt and frightening curiosity while raking claws through all she thought she knew about the situation she'd been battling with since she'd turned eighteen.
That night she shared a quiet dinner with Seamus, too distracted to keep up decent conversation. Though concerned for his young cousin, Seamus could tell there was a deep reluctance in her to talk about what was on her mind. It was upsetting to think that his family would turn against one of their own over something so petty. He helped as much as he possibly could, much to the protests of his brothers and sister, but like her he was beginning to feel wary and powerless against their persistence.
"We're fighting a difficult battle here, Ana," he said to her as they sat outside his house in her rental car. "What if it's all in vain? She could still win."
Ana sighed, long and deep, feeling nothing cathartic in the action, all the weight remaining invisible on her shoulders as it had been for so long. Tiredly she smiled to him and patted his hand.
"That's not an option I can accept."
"What about your family back home? Don't you miss them terribly, having to be here all the time?"
"Of course I do, Seamus. It aches like you couldn't even imagine. But... you said it yourself. They're as much my family as you are, as much as the family I lost still is. This is something I want to share with them, but Heather is making so damn certain I'll never get that chance. If she could just see how much I want us all to get along, I would be more than happy to share this with everyone, Naismith or not. It's part of our history, our heritage, but she treats it like a material possession to be fought over..."
A burning, sharp and sudden, found her eyes. She blinked rapidly to will the few unbidden tears away, scrubbing at one side of her face roughly.
"If Matthias had survived, none of this would been happening..." she added, voice choked and words soft.
Carefully, Seamus drew the smaller girl into his arms, speaking into her shoulder with a gentle tone.
"We can't dwell in the past forever, Ana. They would have wanted you to be happy, and I know you have people who love you dearly back there who are waiting for you to come home and be happy with them. Maybe that's something you need to consider before this really does go too far..."
Quietly, Ana drew back, giving no indication if she agreed or disagreed with his statement, instead returning her saddened smile with a barely spoken 'thank you'. He longed to say more to her, to encourage the one he cared about so much to become aware of how much she was hurting herself in the long run, but it would be something she'd have to realize on her own. There was no forcing it on her.
They bid each other goodnight, and Ana drove away with nothing but the sound of the tires rolling along and her racing mind to keep her company.
***
Sleep was not to be had. Her thoughts were simply too loud, too insistent, and the ceiling of the hotel provided no answers to her wordless questions. Shortly after midnight, the scratchy, overly starched blankets were tossed to the side. Some digging in the mess of her suitcase located the one pair of jeans and plain t-shirt she'd packed along, and once changed she drew her hair up into a thick pony tail, placing as much of the mass of red as she could out of her face.
An extra back pack, large and mostly used for camping trips, had been brought along as a 'just in case' that she'd felt with an odd notion she might need it. She was running on an uncertain but driving sense of autopilot, something about the late hour combined with another truly unknown force pulling her this way and that with no true sense of being in control of her own actions. A few bottles of water from the mini fridge were gathered along with some packages of the sweets stored in there. An added afterthought had her packing another change of clothes, her journal, a few pens, and her cell phone.
Whatever was tugging her along, the invisible string tied to her wrist to keep her moving with forces far beyond her comprehension and will power; Ana couldn't fight it, and before she knew it she was already out at her car, driving into town to find any place that may have been open twenty-four hours. Eventually a store was found, little more than the local equivalent of a 7-11, but it provided her with a Maglite and the proper batteries for it along with a couple more water bottles and packages of dried fruit. Items purchased, the clerk seeming almost bored with her presence despite the selection, she left and headed out, far beyond the main roads of the city, into the rolling fields turned faded gray by the lightless night, along winding roads that worked and climbed their way past silent farms and sleeping homes.
Soon the castle loomed in the dark distance, little more than a blot on the featureless horizon. Gate unlocked by a quick detour out of the car to unlatch the chain around it provided entrance, and she came to a halt at the wide stairway that led to the yawning wooden double doors, staring at them through the haze of night with one hand still resting on the steering wheel.
Slowly her gaze shifted to the backpack in the passenger seat, heart leaping in an unexpected skip. Logic and years of past experiences with the place told her, willed her to believe that she would find nothing of interest inside. There would be no artifacts, no lost civilization waiting to be discovered. She would spend a sleepless night searching only to come out of it tired, sore, and all the more irritated for ever listening to the old man.
But her hand found the strap of the bag, other hand going for the door handle, and her feet touched gravel driveway in a sharp crunch.
Her stride was determined, swift up the stone steps to the doors. Once inside, she groped about, blind but drawn by memory to the large light switch panel on the wall. The clunky, old-fashioned switches were lit with loud snaps that resonated down the long corridor as the overhead lights crackled and clicked to life one by one, bathing the area in a tired yellow glow. Ana's footsteps sounded hollow and distant as she walked forward, wondering where she should even start. It may not have been as impressive as some castles in size, and a great deal of the extended buildings that once made up the full manor had crumbled in to rubble long ago, but she was still searching alone with nothing but her own two feet and a sense of intuition to guide her. It was not exactly a promising endeavor, and yet she carried on, knowing rest wouldn't come until she could locate the source of her distress. The invisible string was still attached to her wrist, still tugging her along, and she simply couldn't ignore it.
Hours slipped away from her, her search meticulous, hands and flashlight checking over every crack and corner. Walls knocked on, beds crawled beneath, dressers moved, and nothing stood out, nothing called her attention the way she hoped it would. Eventually she came to rest in the nearly empty old library, tired, dirty, throat scratchy from too much exposure to dust and body aching from so much activity in such a short period of time. Taking a seat in a velvet lined chair that had been left behind like so many of the artifacts and items there, she sifted about in her pack for a bottle of water and her cell phone. The digital face of it declared it to be just shortly after three in the morning. Time had truly escaped her in her frantic searching, but she downed nearly half the bottle in one massive gulp and contemplated her next move. Something was amiss in her mind, that gnawing, scratching at the back of it like she was forgetting something important, but it all seemed to be obscured by the constant buzz of her continuing desire to search, move, look, find.
With a heavy sigh, Ana set her phone on the arm rest of the chair and let her head lean against the plush backing of the chair, wincing when lump of her pulled back hair dug in to her overly sensitive scalp and caused the slowly building ache there to blossom in to a full on migraine. Even the dimness of the time-yellowed lights hurt her eyes, and she could only close them with an irritated, not entirely coherent grumble for a moment. Sleep begged her to fall in to it's warm embrace from the edges of her mind, but the desire to find whatever it was in that castle that had pulled her there in the first place canceled everything reasonable out with its continuing mental noise.
Annoyed, she decided to give it another go, hoping that a second fruitless search would finally put that wary feeling to rest that there really was nothing in the castle of interest, but the short rest had already brought a great weight to her sore limbs and a dizziness to her vision, causing her to nearly tumble when her knees refused to straighten. She caught herself on the arm of the chair, but in turn the frantic motion sent her cell phone falling instead, the object skittering across the floor until it vanished through a gap beneath a book case.
"Oh, damn..."
Ire quickly rising at the continuing ridiculousness of her situation, Ana yanked the maglite out of her bag and stooped on sore knees to try and locate the fallen device, shining the light beneath the gap. Its shiny surface reflected back, but the small space still required her to lie flat on her belly and scramble about until her fingers could grip it. Upon lifting her hand, the back of it brushed across something smooth and all together out of place for the bookshelf, but before she could properly register what it had been, a soft click sounded above her head, and something began grinding loudly.
She was given but a pause to think about it before the bookshelf actually began moving to the left and she was forced to yank her hand out quickly before it was overtaken. Sitting up on her knees, clutching said hand to her chest with the cell phone clutched tightly in her fingers, she watched in muted awe as the shelf slid across the one next to it, revealing a darkened passage beyond, stone steps leading down in to it's depths.
"W... what the..." she uttered breathlessly, rising to her trembling legs awkwardly, arm lifting to shine the jittering light in to the passage. It illuminated the stairs, showing her that they only went down a few feet until leveling in to a narrow, dusty pathway that eventually came to a halt at an archway of some sort. Beyond that her light couldn't reach, and with a renewed sigh she knew the only way to find out what it was would be to trek down there herself.
Though she had half a mind to contact her cousin, but she was loathe to wake him at such an hour with something as insane as 'I had a weird feeling and went to the castle and I found a secret passage way'. He wouldn't be any happier about it as she was to be there in the first place, and would likely tell her to wait until a decent hour to go throwing herself in to strange hidden tunnels.
'A decent hour' was refusing to wait for her, though, and she found her feet moving forward in spite of her heavy indecision. Bag slung back over her shoulder once more, cell phone still absently in one hand with the flashlight in the other, Ana went forward, feet uncertain on the worn, crumbling steps until she reached the solid base of the path. It didn't take long for her to arrive at the archway, and when she swept the light over it and the heavy wooden door attached to it, she couldn't help but let out a soft gasp.
Intricate designs lined the outer rim of the door, symbols that were either a language or merely decoration carved deeply in to the wood and lacquered with something dark that almost shimmered in the dull light shone on it. Nothing resembled a door handle on it, but a small panel had been carved and set inlaid in to the wood where one might be, and when Ana cautiously ran her fingers over it, it shifted and lowered with a gentle click, causing the door to swing open. Though heavy, and clearly old, it gave none of the telltale squeaks or groans of an out of use, forgotten entry way, leading her to wonder if perhaps it had been maintained some how in her family's absence.
The space beyond was just as pitch as the rest of the passage way, so she continued to push the door open until she could shine the light in further, illuminating a simple stone room beyond with nothing but a solitary pedestal standing center. Remaining cautious, she stepped in slowly, watching for any uneven stone that might send her sprawling. Nothing tripped her or caught her feet, and her attention finally came to rest on the pedestal. Resting on it's clean surface was a heavy, thick leather bound book, color faded by time but in otherwise pristine condition.
"... that's a lot of trouble to go through just to put a book here," Ana muttered thoughtfully, setting her cell phone down as she glanced around the chamber and back out the door, but it all seemed so plain in comparison. If there truly was something physical that she needed to be looking for, the book had to be the only logical explanation. Well, logical for what she was going through.
"Right. So. A book. This all makes perfect sense."
Finding it difficult to reign in her irritation but having nothing tangible to take it out on, Ana gave a miffed sigh and reached forward, opening the book slowly to the first page. No words greeted her, though something else that was entirely unexpected did. A picture, rectangular and only taking up a little less than half of the page, depicted a sprawling desert beneath a clear blue sky. She squinted, leaned forward, trying to understand what she was seeing, realizing after a few seconds that the picture wasn't stationary - it was moving, giving a sweeping bird's-eye view of the desert, much like a television screen had been built in to the book some how.
"Now that's just odd," she mumbled again, scratching at her chin as she began inspecting the book closer, flipping the pages only to find that the rest of the book, though written in the same scrawling script as what had been on the door, was otherwise normal. There was no possible explanation as to why the picture on the first page would be moving as it was, and to make things worse, whatever had pulled her to that very spot was showing nothing in the way of further clues.
Okay, fine, she reasoned mentally with a scowl, Obviously this wasn't what I was meant to find. Forget it. I'll drag Seamus here tomorrow afternoon. I just want a shower and some sleep in a halfway decent bed.
A new sigh, tight with her exhaustion left her parted lips, and Ana brushed her hand across the page, intending to close the book. Something entirely unexpected happened, though, when her fingers began to tingle, the sensation working up her arm when her confusion brought her hand fully down upon the moving picture. An eerie sensation tugged at her belly, her heart raced in a panic, but she couldn't pull away. The tingling worked up through her shoulders and down her body, a sudden brightness nearly blinding the edges of her vision. The view of the desert in the picture came closer, became far more real, and in an instant it was almost like she was flying towards it.
"H-hey, what-!"
Her voice cried out and silenced all in a matter of seconds, leaving nothing but an echo of the sound and an empty chamber, her cell phone left behind on the pedestal next to the open book.
