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Destiny City is hosting an annual scavenger hunt during the Star Festival to encourage people to get out and explore their city. The prize for turning in a completed scavenger hunt is a coupon booklet and a few free tickets to upcoming city events. Even if you aren’t interested in the prize, the scavenger hunt is specifically designed to take you through the city to showcase a few historic buildings, some art installations, and some of the city’s greatest accomplishments. While many of the places are familiar, during your explorations you come across a building you’ve never seen before--something that feels out of time. You’ve been in the area countless times before, so how did you miss this place? When you lay eyes on the building, you feel a strange timelessness and have the distinct sensation of being a part of something bigger. Briefly, you may see flashes of some distant past--a flickering memory that you can’t quite place or fully form. It’s hard to make out, but at some point in time you have the distinct impression of a faded figure taking your hand and telling you to do something. They sound hopeful and encouraging, like they really believe in you. By the time you blink, the visions are gone, the building is gone. The only thing that remains is a beautiful little garden and a plaque so faded that you can’t make out the inscription.
The scavenger hunt was going well. The last location had been a beautiful art display, bright murals on an out-of-the-way wall, and the volunteers been handing out pretty little star charms to anyone that found it. Gigi had grabbed a gold one, and now it chinked against her phone as she walked briskly towards what she hoped would be the next tick towards a little booklet with at least one free coffee coupon. Maybe two, if she was lucky. And some other stuff, of course. But she was nothing if not predictable.
It was nice to be back in Destiny City, and the Star Festival was fun so far. There were so many people out and about, most smiling, and apparently without a care for terrorists or monsters. Some of the shops she knew had moved or closed down. Others were the same as they’d been since she was a Meadowview kid.
Gigi cut though a side street, past a row of tiny indie shops, with competing starry garlands in the windows. If she remembered right, it should shortcut past the busiest shopping strip and get her to – oh. Not here. She paused, biting her lip. A two-storey brick building stood just across the road, one she didn’t recognise at all. It looked old. Or at least old-fashioned. Something about it seemed strangely out of time. Maybe it was the large arched windows, or the decorative brickwork around the doorway. It even had columns. As Gigi gazed up at it, something like vertigo came over her, and she felt as if she belonged to the building, and it to her. Dreamlike, people bustled behind the windows, and outside the doors, in and out, and she was with them, belonged with them, part of the hum of whatever was going on there. Nothing was clear, but everything was bright.
Amongst the half-seen flickers, something moved beside her, and Gigi turned to find an indistinct figure at her side. She couldn’t see the face or hear the words, but as a hand took hers, she understood that there was something she was supposed to do. It wasn’t a command, or a demand. More like encouragement. The kind of support she’d expect from her dad or her best friend when she told them her harebrained plans. The figure sounded so hopeful, so certain that whatever it was, Gigi could do it. But the phantom crowds around the building filled the air with murmurs, footsteps, all kinds of little indistinguishable sounds of life. Gigi leaned in, trying to hear, trying to understand what she was supposed to do.
Abruptly, the vision was gone, the figure, the people – the whole building disappeared. There was nothing left but a little park, barely more than a public garden with a path through it. Well-kept roses bloomed where bricks had towered, and smaller plants lined the edges, a colourful array in the patch of sunlight between other, more modern buildings.
Gigi followed the path, but all it led to was a little brick plinth, with a bronze plaque installed on the top. She ran her hand over the faded lettering, but it was so far gone, she couldn’t even tell what language it was in, let alone read it.
When she finally made it to the next checkpoint in the scavenger hunt, Gigi asked a volunteer about the old building and the tiny memorial garden, but the old woman had no answers for her. It was just one of the city’s many lovely parks, the woman told her. And another one of the city’s many strange mysteries, Gigi concluded.
(601 words)
