The story continues…
Day 72: The hidden space held nothing more than her childhood diaries.
The hidden space held nothing more than her childhood diaries. They were remnants of her childhood that she couldn’t dispose of when she left to begin her life as an adult. She also didn’t want them out and about where others could find them and perhaps read them. They were her private thoughts and even though she felt she outgrew them, Anna wanted them kept private.
So she hid them. They would have told no one anything but she was pleased they did not appear to be found. At the moment Anna saw no reason to get them out, to add to the chaos that was her apartment. She did find the need to put some of the chaos back in order.
‘It will make my study easier if I do that first,’ Anna decided. She began in the bedroom, knowing that at some point she would need to sleep. With the bed straightened, Anna replaced the garments in the closet, ignoring the holes punched in the walls. When the bedroom was straightened, Anna opened the windows to air the space out and moved to the next room.
Slowly Anna moved around the apartment setting things to rights and reacquainting herself with her former life. Here there was a jar of shells picked up on a vacation to the sea side. There was a book of poetry that had been a birthday present. Small items reminded her of things gone past. Things that had little to do with death and destruction. Seeing them, touching them, setting them back in their place, helped her settle in the apartment, to feel as though it was truly her place.
She didn’t feel completely at home however as she changed in the time she was gone. She was not the person she was when she lived her and no matter what Christopher and Marcus said about her picking up the threads of her old life, things were different now.
Anna felt her belly rumble and she returned to the kitchen. The apartment was tidy now and the fresh breeze blew through the space taking away the stale air that filled it when she returned. She knew she would have to perform a cleansing spell on the space before she felt comfortable taking out any of her books and beginning study or even going to sleep, but for now, the food Marcus brought was calling her.
‘And they won’t learn anything if someone watches me eat.’
The thought that Marcus could have drugged the food crossed her mind. While she knew that now she could do a scan with no tools or special ingredients, it was not a spell she learned until she was on the run. Until she cleansed the apartment completely she could use no new magic.
‘I think there is a scan wand in the drawer,’ she recalled. Anna moved to the kitchen and rummaged until she found a scan wand. Her newer spell would work better but this would let her know if any of the food had been tampered with. Anna took the various containers out of the bags and ran the wand over them. The light remained green, no additions had been made to the food.
Anna looked at the display before her, confident she would take no harm from it. While she missed the higher end foods she was accustomed to when she left, her money going more towards basics than luxuries, for the last few weeks she had been living off travel rations. While filling and nutritious, they tended towards the bland. It made the food Marcus brought seem like an impossible feast.
Not knowing where to start, Anna opened all of the containers and started by taking delicate bites of each. When she was sated, Anna put the food away knowing she would have plenty for the three days Marcus allotted her. She felt revived by the meal and more than ready to cleanse her apartment of any trace of others and begin her research.
Ten til Midnight 