Pandora's Box

Chapter twenty-three

"I'm so grateful for you June!" Toni exclaims as June writes down the coordinates for their destination. She did this within seconds of seeing the inscription.

Each corner of the 'map' has a coordinate attached indicating where the element's symbol would be found. Unfortunately, reading the coordinates wasn't so easy since they were in another language.

"I'm so grateful I stuck to my roots." June responds, congratulating the decision she made when she was young to learn Thai as a connection to her Asian heritage.

Sonii and Milo can only stare at their clue because neither know it's translated.
"All I can tell is that it's Latin." Milo turns his head to the side as if it'll help.

On the other end, Lilli and Kai have the same problem.
"I thought you would've been able to translate this." Lilli sighs and hangs her head low.
"I'm sorry. I only look Korean, I can't speak it." He puts his hand on her shoulder to emphasize his apology.

"You guys are idiots. I swear Jane kept translation books for literally every language." Toni sings and speed walks towards the broken shelf of books to search for what they need.
"Are we really going to ignore the fact that he can remember that but not that it's called a dictionary." Milo sits up, leans his back against the wall and rubs his fingers over his temple.

"Sol, you sorted?" Sonii gets up and walks towards her brother, who is still sitting in the middle and hasn't even looked in his corner. He gestures for her to go over instead.

"Ah hah! Thank god I can speak Gujarati! Actually thank you Sol for making me learn our language." She exclaims with energy. This gives her the push she needs to keep going since she's been lagging with her corner's translation.

She doesn't move here eyes from the coordinate. Her face is curious and it's obvious something seems off to her.
"June...where's the book you two were looking through last night? The one that lead to to the map." She asks, she doesn't look away. Her voice sounds as if she's completely lost.

"In the passageway I think, let me check." June runs and retrieves the book just as Toni enters holding the dictionaries which he hands over to Milo and Kai. He then walks towards June who is standing over Sonii. Sonii sits on her knees beside the marking while rapidly turning the pages of a book.

"This isn't right." She looks to June when she finally finds the right page.
"Sol's coordinate is right here." She finally says.
"That can't be right." June says and kneels down beside Sonii and studies the page.

"No, it is." Sol finally speaks. He looks towards them then adds, " My key, which is the earth key, is already here." He points to the green crystal embedded in the center.

"How do you know it's the Earth key?" Toni questions which much energy.
Sol crawls over to each end like a child that's only started crawling.
"Each corner has three elements, right? Each represents a different element. The element that isn't included in mine is Earth so that's what I had to find." He explains and stops at Sonii's.

"Since Virgo is earth and Libra is air, I'm assuming you could be looking for the fire key." He adds before speed crawling over to Kai, who he reveals will be searching for the air key. This leaves June and Toni to look out for the water key.

"Done!" Milo cries, it's obvious that he wasn't paying attention to what Sol was saying since he's been translating the numbers in his corner. He grabs the atlas like it's food and he's been starving.

"Sonii, looks like we're heading to Egypt." He says with a smile. Sonii responds with a squeal of excitement since she's always dreamed of visiting Egypt.

"And we're freezing our butts off in Greenland." Toni announces but he isn't happy. His tone is somber which is a complete 360 turn from his joyous attitude a few seconds ago.

"This leaves Kai and I visiting the English countryside." Lilli finally adds and is met with a high five from Kai, who can't wait to get out of here.

"Perfect! While you're gone, I'm researching what we need to do once we put all the keys in place. Oh, and what might happen afterwards." Sol adds and starts flipping through pages frantically.

"First, you need to sleep." Sonii states and drags her brother away from the map and towards the passageway where she leaves him next to his unused sleeping bag.

"Anyone know how we're paying for all this?" Kai asks, ruining the vacation mood.