we will seek my buried inheritance

[self_composed]

Bella fixes French toast for breakfast to salvage stale bread, and, having seen Charlie off to work, hops in her own car and makes for Alice's house. She arrives at nine-thirty, and goes up to the doorbell and rings it.

Comments

[edgeofyourseat]

Alice laughs again. "That's awesome."

[self_composed]

"I haven't played any video games in a long time. I never had my own system - had to go over to people's houses to play. But I'm pretty sure that's how it works." She slows down her pace a bit. "I wonder how many coinmakers there are in the world. And who they are."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Betcha we could find out."

[self_composed]

"By magic?" Bella asks. "Or by looking?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"By taking over the world and seeing who squawks? But those too."

[self_composed]

"But," Bella says, "if there are a bunch - and Elias knew like five individuals and one little cabal and they all lived on this continent - why hasn't one of them taken over the world yet?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"Didn't think of it," he suggests. "Didn't wanna put the work in. Too busy smacking each other around. Never hurt themselves enough to get a good stash going. Who knows?"

[self_composed]

"Or, one of them has," Bella says. "And is running the world in secret." She cocks her head. "If so they are doing a terrible job and I must depose them."

[edgeofyourseat]

"...I love you," says Alice.

[self_composed]

"Aww," says Bella.

Walk-walk-walk. "Are we going the right way?" She looks at the sun, and checks the time on her phone. "I think this is south. South-southwest maybe."

[edgeofyourseat]

He checks.

"Yeah, looks about right."

[self_composed]

"I wonder how far we've come. I should have checked the time when we started out from the car. Does fifteen minutes sound right to you?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"Just about, yeah. So, any bright ideas for how to find this thing once we're in the right square mile of forest?"

[self_composed]

"Well, if we're lucky, then to me it'll look like it's got a great big neon sign on it. If we're not lucky, I start chucking squares at the problem."

[edgeofyourseat]

"And I sit down and hope you don't fall down any holes," he says. "Okay."

[self_composed]

"Well, if there's no neon sign, then you can help, you just look for - markers, or anything that resembles some odd word choice from the cipher, or something out of place that most likely got there by magic."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Okay," he repeats, a little more brightly.

[self_composed]

Walk-walk-walk. "Does your map have any useful landmarks?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"Yeah, actually. See any fuck-off huge rocks?"

[self_composed]

"I don't. Are we meant to be approaching one about now?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"Soonish," he says.

[self_composed]

"All right."

Walk and walk and -

"Is that one sufficiently immense?" Bella asks, pointing.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Definitely."

[self_composed]

"Well," she says. "If the stash doesn't have any hexes, on the way back I will consider trying to climb it."

[edgeofyourseat]

"You know, it seems kind of backwards that you'd rather fall off something than ask somebody to break your leg for you, since you're so keen on personal safety and all."