Page 55 of Stealing the Star Stone
“Give me the bag.”
She hesitated but did so.“This was too easy.”
He hummed in agreement while he dug for the brown-leather notebook that held the alphabet.
“We don’t have time for this, not when Orien’s men could—”
“We need a direction to go.If there’s a slim chance it’s telling us to head left, we have to unravel this.”He handed her the book while he readied the pen to paper.“Come on, let’s start.”
He wrote down each letter as she translated it, his ears primed for any danger.Fragments were easy to make out, but the message was long.His hand had cramped by the time they reach the final symbol.
“What you seek is not here.Look to each other for the source,” he read off.
“That’s no fucking help.”She huffed.“I should’ve expected that from an alien moon with body-swapping geology.”
“It’s a riddle, right?”
“The first part isn’t.It’s pretty clear.”She rested her hands on her hips.“And the rest is some mumbo-jumbo any idiot could make up.”
“If we set aside the frustration, what could it mean?”
She glared at him.“I’d rather we hadn’t found this silly message and figured out where to go on our own.”
He hid a smile.‘Look to each other for the source’ might mean choose a direction.She was right.It was nonsense.He folded the paper in half and shoved it into his pocket.“Okay, where to?”
She studied the message.“Left.”
He pinched his lips to swallow a chuckle.“Guessing’s not helpful either.”
She pointed at the symbols.“The ‘h’ has an arrow in it.Maybe it’s a design feature, the author being exuberant.Then why does the ‘o’ and ‘n’ have the same squiggle?”
He laughed.“Left it is.”Scooping up the bag, he tossed the leather-bound book in and set off along the shore.The lights dwindled when the sand narrowed until they came to a point where only water awaited them.“Maybe they meant right?”
“Give me the torch.”
He dug in the bag and took out the lantern-shaped torch.“It’s probably not charged.”
She grimaced, smacked it a few times, then handed it back.
“We could use my ass…”
She smirked.“I doubt the tattoo’s bright enough.”She spun on a heel and stomped back, marching past the message.The shore curved around a pillar of rock.
“Wait,” he whispered, pointing at a standalone symbol.“Isn’t that an arrow?”He ran his fingers over the ‘o.’
She whooped.“Yes, we’ve got this.”
A garbled scream snapped his gaze up.The bottom half of a man hit the ground, blood and innards spilling across the sand.Riddling parts of him were hundreds of bite marks—similar to those along Eli’s arm.Many vines must’ve latched onto this man and torn him in half.
Her eyes were wide when she said, “We better hurry.”
Panic gripped him, and he froze.Again, not his emotion, but something external lashed at him.
“Nova, breathe.”He cupped her shoulders and forced her to inhale and exhale, trying to test if that unknown anxiety would subside.When it faded, he bit his tongue.Now wasn’t the time to tell her he was sensing impossible things.No way could heshareher emotions.It would be all kinds of stupid to even consider that possible.
She pulled away.“Okay, I’m good.”She hurried along the shore, dodging incoming waves that thankfully washed away their passing.
“It could be me,” he said, “but doesn’t the moon affect water like this?I mean, why would it have waves?”
