Crack Of Dawn

Chapter 10

Adya yelled. "What on this planet are you doing in here?"

***

There was the guest of the day for whom the whole house had been cleaned creating commotions. 

Dikshita called her in, "Namrata! Come in."

She kneeled down and hugged Srishti. "My child."

Ayush walked in. "Make yourself at home after all you have travelled a long way from the village at the valley to here just to meet your childhood friend."

She rolled her eyes at Ayush. "Why would not I travel when I have heard of my friend settling back in the village with his little girl whom I had never met?"

"How is everything?" Dikshita gave her a glass of juice.

"Good. Does my girl also love to hear about magic?" She enquired looking at Srishti.

Ayush nodded, "Of course."

Dikshita took her to the guest room while Srishti followed her father to his study. He looked at his daughter who ran her fingers across his journals for which he had been preparing the covers. "Do you want to go there too?"

The girl smiled.

"Then you will have to solve a riddle, from what I know, will you do that?"

She seemed determined, "You will help me, right?"

"Of course, I will be there for you."

"Thank you, my guide."

He chuckled with his daughter.

***

Srishti stood up to see Ishaan with her eyes widened in amusement, "Why are you here? How did you come in here?"

Ishaan was shocked in their response. "I asked you whether I could take you to a place, right? This is it."

"How did you find out about this woods when you are new here?" Srishti scratched her chin.

"Who does not know about the woods that lived in myths as the gateway to the lost lands?" He raised his eyebrows at the girls who blinked at him as if he was an alien.

"Do not tell me you are searching for that invisible gate to get back home." Adya commented, drumming her fingers on the trunk of a tree. "You are suspicious."

"Am I?" He wrinkled his forehead until Srishti enquired. "Why doesn't the tribe attack him, he is an outsider, right?"

"Don't you know about the rules of the Scarlet Woods?" Srishti was rude for a reason.

He dipped his head. "I apologies for trespassing but I am the very person who likes to have only one rule to abide."

"And that is?" Adya questioned like a interviewer.

"Follow no rules."

They suddenly reversed to see the Quokkas seeing through the box lying half - open on the ground and Adya suddenly took it into her hands and the animals ran away. Srishti peeped in and for a moment she regretted having the locket.

The hope she had once abandoned was slowing emerging in her.

'-The guide.'

Inside the courier was a book that her father had penned. The journal with the calligraphy cover made by her father with the title she had given to him. The immediate urge in her was to find the woman who had handed them this parcel to know about her father who had never returned.