It was a calm Saturday afternoon, and a small breeze passed through the forest.
AELITA - Where are you taking me Jeremy ?
JEREMY - To the hermitage. I want to explore it, there might be clues in there.
AELITA - We already did, and we found nothing.
JEREMY - But we haven't explored everything. Also I'm sure you want to explore as well, don't you ?
It is true that the young girl wanted to search through the house. It represented her past. It might contain things that could remind her of it, or even of her parents.
AELITA - Fine, Jeremy. And where have we not been looking ?
JEREMY - The attic. It's not very appealing, but that's the one place we have not been looking at yet.
AELITA - I don't know what you expect to find there, but let's try.
Jeremy did not expect to find anything. In fact he did not want to look there to find something, he wanted to look for something Aelita would like in there. It was the house she grew up in, the house that was owned by her father, there had to be something. Especially in a place like the attic.
The other three were not available, but it was better like that. Jeremy liked the idea of doing this alone with Aelita, just to spend some time with her. Odd was punished by Jim because he was caught throwing food at Sissi's table. Ulrich and Yumi were training together. And William was still under XANA's control. It would be just the two of them.
Aelita pushed the large gate on which one could read 'hermitage'. In front of them was Aelita's house. It was a bit old, and in a mess, mainly because the house appeared to have been searched after Aelita ran away with her dad. Any document left would have been taken away.
After a bit of searching, they finally found a was to access the attic. There was a small rope hanging, attached to a piece of furniture. Once they had freed the rope, they could use it to open a small trap in the ceiling, from which a ladder was hanging.
JEREMY - You want to go first ?
AELITA - I'm fine, go ahead.
The truth is, Aelita was a bit scared.
After Jeremy climbed the ladder, Aelita followed suit. The attic was very dark, so they had to use their phone's lamps to look around. After a bit of looking around, they found a switch.
They finally could see around. The room was very small, but was surprisingly clean. The two teenagers took the boxes down to inspect their contents.
There were 3 boxes, and a bit of junk left, with an old television and a few books that were not stored in the boxes.
The first box they opened contained what looked like Aelita's older clothes. The ones she wore when she was a little kid. Aelita blushed.
AELITA - Don't look at that.
JEREMY - I'm not looking.
The boy had obviously seen everything, and was very amused to see Aelita embarrassed by it.
The second box they opened was filled with books. What was particularly interesting was there were two kinds of books. The first ones were books about quantum physics and computer science. The second type were children books. And the best part is, they all seemed handmade. All of them. Jeremy had his hands on books written by Franz Hopper himself. He could not believe it.
Aelita, at the same time, could recognised the children books, as a few memories came back. These books had been written and illustrated by her parents.
JEREMY - Are you OK Aelita ?
AELITA - Yes, it's just so emotional.
JEREMY - You want to open the last one ?
AELITA - Yes, but I'm already so happy about just these books.
JEREMY - Glad to hear it.
After they opened the last box, Aelita started crying.
The last box was filled with photos of the family. There was a picture of her mom and her dad, when her mom was still pregnant, in front of a chalet. An other picture was taken of her hugging her mother and her father when she was still a little kid. There were a myriad of other pictures.
AELITA - I can't take them to Kadic, that's too dangerous, but can we come back from time to time so that I can look at these ?
JEREMY - You can probably take that one with you.
Jeremy showed her a picture of her and her mom, playing in the snow.
Aelita smiled. Nothing else could have made her day more than that.
Jeremy was happy, not only about the books, but also about how happy her friend was.
They decided to put everything back in place for the time being, but they moved the box with the pictures to Aelita's room, as she would probably come here from time to time.
As they came back to Kadic, night was already falling, so they rushed back to meet up with the rest of the group.
