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 Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2022 3:04 pm
Leander did a lot of research online. A lot. He regularly spent a few hours a day researching, or writing his findings, or making plans or getting jobs. Finding strange things in the dark corners of the internet was pretty common, but what he hadn’t expected to find was a strange looking creature that looked very much like one of the things he’d seen in Helena’s book.
He’d messaged her immediately, asking to meet up–even before he’d finished all of his research. He figured she’d need time to get back to him and plan something out, and that gave him all the time he needed to dig around for answers.
Not that there had been many; he found that the picture was a drawing from an old book found in some archeological dig overseas, and that they hadn’t been able to translate anything from it. He couldn’t tell if it was in a private collection or a museum, but he’d found a few more pictures from it online and saved them to his phone. Either someone had a good imagination–normal–or maybe someone had a similar book to Helena’s.
Maybe she got scammed, maybe it was legit–he didn’t know. But he made sure she knew to bring the book back to the place they’d first met.
Arnica arrived early, excited and eager to make sure she knew he wasn’t standing her up or anything, and was sitting on the bench and tapping his heel against the ground. One arm was thrown over the back of the bench and the other rested on the armrest.
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Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2022 4:52 pm
Helena teleported to Arnica, appearing by the bench with a grin and pulling the book out of subspace with a flourish. “You think you found something good? I’m excited! Meeting you has been so great for my interest in the spooky~” Plopping down next to Arnica on the bench, she thrust the book into his hands. “Tell me about what you found! Do you think that this book could be from Earth and that the merchant lied to me, or do you think that whatever found was an alien? Do you think that most of the cryptids on Earth could just be aliens? It would make sense, wouldn’t it?”
She chewed her bottom lip, and hummed softly. “If that’s the case, it makes them much less spooky, but at the same time…if they ended up here…do you think maybe they were senshi? Wouldn’t that be insane? If mothman was just some long lost senshi, searching for family that they’ll never find again?”
Oh. The possibilities that such a thought opened up. Bigfoot too, wouldn't that just be…insane?
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Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2022 5:59 pm
“Ah! I forgot you could teleport. So lucky, even my mirrors aren’t that precise.”
He reached for the book even as she sat down next to him, and flipped through the pages with deliberate intent. “I don’t know,” he admitted, “But I like thinking about things like that. I mean, would it really be so different if the creature came from the depths of Hell or if it’s the last species of a long lost world? Could be fascinating, you know? I mean, if you really wanted to know where this book came from, I’m sure you’ve got a cat that could do a test or something, right? Scan this text and see if it appeared anywhere else? I don’t know what resources you guys have but–oh! Here, yeah. Look.”
He pulled out his phone–his personal phone, that he’d tucked away, and drew up the picture.
It was a small creature, and though they were obviously different pictures, it looked almost identical in shape and appearance to the one in her book.
“I can’t zoom in enough to get a good look at the text, but this is from an old book I found online. They’re different pictures. I have a few more that I saved, I wanted to see if the other creatures were in your book. I mean, it could just be coincidence! But I think it’s a lot less coincidental if your book has more than one of the creatures from that book, yeah?”
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Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2022 6:10 pm
Helena’s eyes had grown wide and she nodded vaguely at the mention of cats. She could find one, it wouldn’t be too much of an issue, but the picture he had…oh that was…that was interesting.
“Is this book for sale? Is it something common or is this just from something you found by accident? Arnica, this is an amazing find! Perhaps this other book is some relic from some other planet, wouldn't that be something? If we can get our hands on it, we could have the cat check on that too, perhaps this is some kind of a galactic almanac rather than something that was concentrated to Helena alone…I…will admit. The few times I went to my planet before I corrupted. All I saw was my library and…I was rather busy doing…other activities rather than looking at the books. And I saw nothing outside of it.”
She wished she had now though. If there were answers…answers to questions that she didn’t even know she had but…
Ah now the questions were bubbling out.
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Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2022 8:00 pm
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’d like to get my hands on it, but I found it online. Overseas. Can’t tell who the owner is, and I can’t get more information. But I’ll email you these pictures, and the link, so you can see if there’s anything you can do with them. But you have to promise to tell me what you find. At this point, I’m just curious. I love all this stuff.”
He flipped through a few more pages, glancing quickly.
“Here’s another one,” he said, and turned the book towards her just before finding the slightly blurry picture on his phone. “Kinda looks similar, yeah? Maybe it’s just wishful thinking. But I saw it and thought of you. If this is from Helena–maybe it just means you had something going on with Earth? Or maybe the books were popular. I don’t know, it’s a different style. But it’s neat–it means that it’s probably not just someone making something up, right? Two people don’t just have the same idea multiple times. So they could be real. What a wild thought, though. I mean–whole worlds, with their own lore, their own superstitions, their own cultures. What I wouldn’t give to be able to read this book.”
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Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2022 8:07 pm
Helena squished closer to Arnica, nodding eagerly and sighing, feeling even more excited. If she could find a way to get her hands on the other book. “Send me all of the links, Arnica. Send me all of the links and I’ll see what I can do! Also I promised to let you borrow this one, so take it and make whatever copies that you want, as for reading it…I mean. If you could cross reference any other languages maybe we could find some clues? It’s most likely not going to be an earth language, but it would still be fun to see if there’s anything that’s…”
She hesitated. “Try old languages! Like Hebrew or…or anything that’s been around for a long time. Obviously it wouldn’t be English but…oh s**t. What a crazy discovery this could be? I’ll see if I can find that man again, the one I got the book from, if I can maybe he could find other books for us or maybe he could even read it!”
Jumping up, Helena began to pace and withdrew some candy from her subspace pocket, beginning to pop M&M’s into her mouth as though they would help her think. Help her concentrate. “I work at a bookstore, it’s filled with a lot of supernatural lore, you should visit sometime. I’ll see about figuring out if I can cross reference anything in some of those books with all of this…that.”
Her eyes were bright, excited. “I’m going to go now. I’ll send you my number in an email, we need to hang out again soon, I…I can’t even deal with this right now!” And for the best of reasons. Her brain was buzzing and with a little wave, she hesitated, slipping Arnica the half eaten bag of M&M’s and grinned. “Take care of the book! And send me all the links for the other! I need to talk to Mirzam!”
And then she was gone.
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