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((LOL!!

@Castele and Lyra--whoah!! That was a really long post O.O))

Aura jumped up at Lee's chastisement, hitting the coffee table and spilling the juice over Lee's pants. "What?! What happened? Is everyone ok?!"

She yelped at the juice-puddle and quickly mopped it up with napkins and towels. "Goodness. Sorry sorry," she apologized profusely. "You gave me quite a shock."

"Something wrong?" Elias asked Karin as Elisa helped Aura mop up the juice that had not spilled on Lee's pants. She was laughing merrily, as if everything were fine and they were all safe.

So. What is he up to now? Elisa thought. She too had noticed that he had gone a different way than Mark and Alex, which was not concurrent with his proposal of following them. Then again he had said he was going to see if the door to the garden was unlocked and that door would be more quickly reached by going the way he had. But what's all this about seeing if it's unlocked? We both know that we have master keys...well, maybe he didn't want anyone else to find out. Grandfather didn't tell anyone; he told us not to tell anyone either. So Elias is just preserving a secret. ...That still doesn't explain why he decided to go mope around the garden at this time. Huh.

Elisa turned around to grab another cookie but was disappointed. "Aura, why don't you come with me to get more snacks? And I'm sure Lee would like more juice." She grinned, telling her friend in their subtle sign language that she would be happy to fetch as much juice as she had to if she was free to spill it on him after. Oh Elisa, that's not nice. She sighed mentally to quell the thought and added, "We could go get you new pants as well, Lee!"

((If there are no objections could I will look for an opening where I can introduce a new character then?

smile ))
~Tris

"Oh..." Elisa said sadly. "I'm sorry! Please! I'm sure there's some clothes around here that'll fit." She gazed helplessly after him and finished mopping. The damp napkins she tossed into the trash can and then sat miserably by. She could tell Lee did not wish to be followed but she also knew it was unsafe to wander around.

"It's not safe to travel around alone," she muttered dismally.

"Follow him then? You and Aura?" Elias asked quietly.

"Stalking is unkind."

"Ellasyn..."

Elisa glared at him and stood with a huff. This was quickly replaced by her usual cheeriness though. "Come on Aura, we might as well get him pants and deliver them. We really did annoy him!"

She told Elias over her shoulder, "If Karin wants to check out the Uncle Ryan's room, you show her."

"Ryan's?"

"Yea. Uncle Cheesecake?"

"No, I know who, but where?"

"Don't you know?"

"Well...I remember about enough about here to get from kitchen to my room and back..."

"You suck. It's the room with the bed strung up by chains and the three couches. Model city?... That room next to that statue!"

"Very informative, Elisa. Good job. I totally know which room you're talking about."

"The--you--agh! Oh forget it! We won't take that long anyway. I'm sorry Karin; my brother's a real dolt sometimes." She stuck her tongue out at him and her rolled his eyes nonchalantly.

Elisa strung her arm through Aura's and after checking to make sure her daggers were securely strapped to her wrists before skipping out of the area, humming softly.
~Tris

"Why lonely and cold?" Mark asked as he walked with her around the house.

Alex shrugged. "You left."

(tell me if this is okay for me to do? I know it's a bit unfair since we didn't really cover what happened outside very well- what with why they couldn't escape, and why we ended up staying just within the house. I'll fix it immediately if there's a problem.)

Fingering the steel wire still threaded so firmly between his fingers that they left imprints, Lee made his way down the hall slowly. He felt a prickling at the back of his neck and, feeling paranoid, slipped his other hand into his pocket to grasp at the small handgun he'd stashed earlier. He looked around and saw no one.

Ever since they'd found that the entire mansion was surrounded and enclosed, the group had been wandering the interior of the mansion and had never ventured outside since. They were sure that the kidnappers were the ones who knew the way out, after all, and said kidnappers were most likely within the mansion and had Mr. Gilfax with them, too.

Lee located the door to the mansion gardens, pushed it open and closed it behind himself silently. They were as green as he'd remembered them to be in the magazine pictures, lush and vibrant in a paradise that seemed to exist solely outside of the world of fear and insecurity Lee and the group had been experiencing up until this point.

He finally neared the koi pond in the back garden he'd sighted from the mansion window. Kneeling by the edge, he watched the brightly-colored fish dart away from him frantically, sending ripples across the clear, cool water. The sunlight shone through the water and reflected off a tiny, silvery object buried in the mud.

"What's this?"

Lee rolled up his sleeves and reached.


All was still, except for the sound of the koi thrashing and frothing the water, all was quiet. The garden was empty.

EDIT below:

Footprints left in the dirt trailed back to the house, made clear by a sense of purpose.

((Silver key, silver object...Lyrica and ePhyllis are making subtle puns about my username. tsktsk. (joking, sorry) ))

"I don't see him," Aura said, sighing. "Shall we hunt around for clues? Continue looking for Lee? Look for Alex and Mark? Go back? Is the garden open?"

She sniffed softly from frustration and sadness, her thoughts still running berserk within her mind.

Elisa was oddly silent as they picked out pants for Lee and resumed searching for other people.

"I was thinking about the last lines in the poems we found--something like: 'in ink unseen another clue/ lies beneath an unclean shoe'. So invisible ink under dirty shoes? Or what? And who is leaving these clues for us? None of these clues are the ones I left...the one in the raven's mouth--that wasn't the one I gave to Karin to put in it before the party. Someone else is leaving us clues.

"The other poem: 'ignore the symbol on her head/ suffer by the floating bed'. Karin was reading about Athens...Athena. She's the goddess of knowledge, right? I don't get the part about her head, but don't the stories say she came out of Zeus's head? And then somehow we get Uncle Ryan connected....

"This is what I was thinking about: In the hall near Uncle Ryan's room is a portrait of Zeus. I was thinking of going over there and checking out if we could maybe find anything on his shoe that might help us. Or something. And I'm sure the floating bed means the bed in Uncle Ryan's room. I want to go check it out, but I think we should get back to Karin first. She would know about this better than anyone else, given her training in the Spy Academy."

Elisa inhaled and exhaled, finished with her rant just as they arrived near the living room. "Elias? Where did Karin go?"

"She said she wanted to look at something by herself. Like you said, stalking's not nice so I didn't follow."

"...It's not safe either."

"Well, no one's exactly safe," Elias scowled, standing. "I think I know where she went. She was musing on the second poem, so maybe the shoe rack?"

"We passed that on our way here. No one."

"Where else then?"

"You're impossible," Elisa retorted and whirled away to search for someone else. Elias followed grimly, wondering what he was supposed to do about his assignment.

((Dude. I hate it when my sisters think of long posts and I have to type. I should become a secretary. Major in "Qwerty Keyboard Layout". XP

@Silver--Totally. ePhyllis and I were fishing for conspiracies and a pun on your username was the best one we could think of. How do you like it? (Kidding as well, obviously)

@ePhyllis--Great, thanks! smile ))
~C.