James hadn’t been sure what he was expecting when Gweli popped back out of the skull, but a box was certainly not something he would have thought the skull would be hiding. He watched Ayal deal with the box, turning it over but never opening it. It appeared too challenging at the moment. Perhaps warmer hands and proper lighting would do the tick, but James could not say. Maybe it was just another mystery from the monastery, a trick no one had ever solved, a trick that maybe could never be solved.
The younger keeper was pulled from his thoughts by Ayal. The keeper tried to sound happy, and James had to admire his effort. Now was not a time for smiles and laughter, even with great discoveries. One book and one box did little to fill the ever-growing hole inside of James’s chest, and he was willing to guess that Ayal was feeling much the same. On top of that, the cold was brutal and nipping. Ciess shook out her main then pressed herself against James as if to block him from the wind.
Still half in the skull, Gweli gave a small chirp. With one last look, the otterling dove back down through the eye and into the darkness of the skull. While Gweli was taking her time looking for whatever else was left, James took the box from the other keeper. He was surprised at its weight and heft, which only made him wonder how Gweli had managed to lift it up in the first place. He turned it over slowly, studying the sides and the writing. A puzzle box for sure, but also… was there something inside? It was impossible to tell, and impossible to open. “I think a clear mind and some good light will be needed to crack this mystery,” James said after a pause.
He let his pack slip from his shoulder to store the box away for a later time, then turned to the skull just as Gweli returned from its depths. The otterling held one last little booklet that looked more like a notepad or a small leather journal than an actual book. James took it from her, and the otterling clambered out of the skull. She bounded back onto Ciess, and James would have missed the last object if it wasn’t for the silver light of the twin moons. Tucked between Gweli’s split tails was a shimmering coin. James couldn’t see what was on its face without drawing near. He held out his hand, but the otterling only bounded up his arm to perch on his shoulder. She never handed over the coin. He took that as a sign that he would not be looking at it anytime soon and turned to the book in hand.
It was old, its cover worn. Something had once been written on it, but the letters were so faded that they looked like the shadows of spirits or ghosts. He flipped to the first page and stopped. It was written in a script James had never seen before. The young man had studied different languages even before becoming a Keeper. He’d done lots of traveling with his father and picked up many a dialect and many a scroll of a different language but this was something else. “I have never seen these symbols before,” James said to the man beside him. “Could it be a lost language?”
He passed off the book just as another wind swept in and nipped at his nose and cheeks. The young man found himself looking over the snow covered ruins and sighed. As interesting as the skull was there was more work to be done, they could not ignore it, as much as James almost wanted to. The question became, to finish all of this tonight or to wait until morning. It would be warmer during the day, more pleasant, but that would almost make the horrors bellow the rubble easier to more real. After everything that he’d seen, James couldn’t imagine the sun rising over such an empty mountainside.
Watching a gust of wind pick up some snow and spin it around, James asked, “What is our next course of action?”