Legacies of light

Arc 1.01: Lux Arc

It’s morning, I think to myself as I wake up, or evening, or night, in all honesty, I have no idea which it is, but no time for that. It’s a new day for me, time to explore. So I put on the clothes I have claimed as my own, say good morning with a kiss to my darling and set out first; I check the kid’s door.

The snow has yet to return to the child’s door, so I open it and see that it’s very much a kid’s room. On the bed in the room, I go up close and see the kid sleeping. After getting a good look at the kid, I concluded it couldn’t be any older than five or six years. Its hair is also white again. I should also check its gender; however, I don’t want to strip a kid. Hence, I decide to leave before the kid wakes up and gets an even worse opinion of me. Closing the door of the kid’s room, I go to look around.

On the second floor, I found a lot of empty rooms with nothing in them, though they all looked well-kept. I found a study and what I believe is a walk-in closet with many female and a few male garments. Does this mean that a couple lived here? Would the child be theirs? But I should not get ahead of myself, so I press on.

The enormous room on the second floor was a storage area. It had lots of miscellaneous things, so I can’t draw any conclusions from it. I also recognised that the hall and the rooms where the kid and I were had a lot of decorations and accessories from the Dā empire, but when I look at their designs, they look dated. They are nothing recent. I have no idea how old they are, but they are all very high-end; you can tell by the materials, which is the rather strange. Everything I saw looks new, like it was just made. It barely deteriorated at all, so when was it made?

But the weirdest thing I found was a bathroom. It was spotless. The taps from the bath and sink were all still functional, as was the toilet. I was amazed, “Does Fimbulwinter have a sewage system?” I wanted to take the bathroom apart to check, but I didn’t feel like shitting outside.

I also tried to see if the taps ran hot water so I could defrost my stuff, but it was to no avail. All the water lacked any form of temperature. It wasn’t hot or cold; I didn’t even know that was possible. Now onto the first floor

When I get to the first floor, I go to the kitchen. It’s still a mess after I ransacked it yesterday, so I take time to clean it and take note of a few things while at it.

First, most of the cooking equipment still functions and is very clean; none of it has deteriorated at all. I also found a spices cabinet which was unnecessarily large and had a ridiculous amount of spices and seasonings “Thank god; now I might be able to make those fruits somewhat palatable. I’ll try that out later.” The taps here also run water. Somehow, the water here also lacked temperature, not cold or hot, just water.

Next, attached to the kitchen, there was a dining room which was also very fancy. The decorations are from the Dā Empire as well. It was also quite large, but the dining table had only two chairs directly facing each other. After pondering over the dining room, I went to see what else I could find, but then and directly across from the kitchen and dining room, I saw another door, and I decided to go there next. “Thank god!”

It’s a library. It’s almost as big as the kitchen and dining room put together “This is impossible” I haven’t ever seen any of these books before; how exciting.

“You can tell a lot about a person by their books, so maybe if I look around, I might figure something out about whoever owns this house because it isn’t that little kid for sure,” I say with no ulterior motives. It’s not like I want to read these books or anything. This is solely for research “Well, I guess I should get started,” I say with a grind.

-Break-

“Crap, I only meant to read a few books. How. I ended up reading one hundred and eighty-two,” I say as I lie on the floor surrounded by the books I read. From reading all these books, I have found out a bit.

First, most of them are not written in the trinity languages but in the lesser ones, some of which I understood, but others I have yet to learn. I know most of the spoken languages, so what the books are written in must be dead languages.

About 50 books were just records rather than stories, like many books are information on dated ways of medical care, agriculture, construction, etc. While other recorded poems.

History can ruffly be separated into three cycles of history: the first, second, and third cycles, with the third being the most current. Due to this, I have been able to figure out how old this house is, because the trinity languages were popularised around the end of the second cycle of history, and used throughout the third cycle of history.

Second, there are many languages in the books that haven’t been recorded anywhere else in the world, which means they must be languages lost during the second cycle because, in the first cycle, they only spoke one language, so all these books are from some point in the second cycle.

Third, the trinity languages are still used in some of these books. Even while being a more traditional version, they are still used.

When I put all of this together, I believe this house is from the end of the second cycle, so just over 2000 years ago, which matches since Fimbulwinter formed around the end of the second cycle, and this fits.

“Well, I have lost track of time yet again, but a least I gained something from this,” I say as I leave the room, but as I start to open the door, I hear a scream and running, and when I open the door, I see the kid running from the entrance to hide being the stand of a vase.

Was this child, with its big white puffy hair like a cloud of snow, looking at me through the cracks of the door? I would go up and scare the kid, but I don’t intend to make the child’s impression of me any worse, so I’ll go on looking at things but outside of the kitchen and the library, there is only one other door I could find on the first floor directly in between the two circular staircases, so I go up to it and open the door.

“It’s huge” was all I could say when I opened the door. Inside was a large area with rows of showcases like a museum. Behind me, I hear a scream of excitement. It seems the kid followed me.

When I turned around to look, the kid had a surprised face like it was the first time it had seen this, and now, for some reason, the kid’s hair was green. I thought occurred; was this child’s hair colour changing according to its emotions?

While I was lost in thought over its hair, the kid noticed I was looking at it and ran behind the door to hide, slightly peeking out. I saw the hair colour from green to yellow, which confirms my suspicion, so let’s say yellow means fear, green means excitement, and white is the standard hair colour. I think I will go with that. I want to ask this kid questions so bad, but I will leave that for future Captivant. Right now, I am going to focus on this storage area.

So, I go around this vast museum-like area, looking around with the kid following me from behind. It’s trying to be sneaky, but I can see the kid. But regardless, I continue, and I notice something on one of the showcases has writing on it, saying.

Property of Mabel and Gabi

Now I have two names. Good, I have gained some vital information. While walking, I noticed this museum has trinkets like bracelets, pictures, and sculptures, all the way to a giant bell and what I think is a significant human-made made of paper, but in each showcase, either Mabel's or Gabi’s names are written on a nameplate. But on a showcase with a teddy, the nameplate said

Property of the family of Lux

The way it’s written is annoying since maybe it’s the last name of a family, or it could refer to the children of a person named Lux, regardless, I don’t know. Moving on, I continued to look and check nameplates, but there was nothing different as far as I could see. At the same time, the kid was still following me and admiring the museum. At this point, the exhibit so mesmerises it that it’s stopped trying to be stealthy.

While looking around, I see in my peripheral vision I see something familiar. Walking up close to get a better look, I see an astral feather in a showcase “With this, I should finally be able to tell time.”

GROOOOOWL. I hear like an echo through the room. Turning around, I see the kid behind me rushing out. Ahh, I see it must be hungry. Wait, crap, to be honest, I don’t even know if this kid lives here. Does it even know where to get food? I should check on it.

It seems the kid ran from here to outside the house “Damn is it going to run into the snow again” I now run to give chase of it. Still, I don’t see it running into the snow as I exit the house, so I check the area around the house, and as I approach the back of the house, I hear munching, so I start to slow down.

I see that the kid does know where the fruits were, and is cramming one of the disgusting oversized gourd-shaped fruits into his mouth. “Damn, this kid can eat,” one of those fruits can do me an entire day, and it’s devouring it whole.

But then the kid fell on its back “Ahh, the aftertaste probably kicked in.” I went up to check on the kid, and it was passed out. “I can’t leave it outside, so I’ll take it inside,” so I picked the child up and decided to bring it to its bed.

After that, I went back to the museum to see if I could find anything else of note. I couldn’t find anything else. I also checked the feathers in two colours to determine the time of day and month. It seems I am still in early (January) Aquarius, so when I passed out the first time, at most, 2 to 4 days passed, but it also could have only been one and right now, it seems to be early in the night. It’s probably 10 pm.

So now that I’ve been around this whole house, I can say there were no traces of a third person; I have no idea who brought us to the beds when we first got here. After today, I’m not sure whether or not the kid lives here. It has never been to the museum. It seems freaked out by me, but is watching me like I’m some new creature. Has this kid ever seen another human before, but adult male and female clothes are here? I need answers from the kid, but I need a way to warm up to me since he’s so scared of “What to do”.

Wait a minute; an idea just hit me “I’m a genius.”

I need to check something, so I head to the garden behind the house. After examining the fruit, the kid ate, I found what I was looking for: seeds. Now I can continue with my plan. Starting tomorrow, I will begin the “Woo the child with good-tasting food plan!”

Captivate's log of the house

Type: Mansion

Size: Medium

Floors: Two

Structure

First Floor: Upon entering the front door, there is a hallway to the stairs. As you walk forward to your left and right, there are two large sections. The left has the kitchen and dining rooms. The right has the library. The museum area is directly between the two curving staircases to the second floor.

Second floor: Upon climbing the stairs, you will see two-door, one to the right and one to the left side. The right door leads to the child’s bedroom, and the left leads to the bathroom. On the second floor, there are multiple rooms with nothing inside. Then at the back of the second floor, there is the master bedroom (the one where I awoke). It has a balcony and drawers with mainly male clothes. Other rooms of note are the study, the storage room, and the walk-in closet.

Outside: The mansion has green pastures, and the snowstorm rages around a dome-like area of the house. Behind the house, a small garden grows giant gourd-shaped fruits.

One month later

Comfy, this bed is heavenly, I think to myself as I awake. So I got up and put on my third set of clothes; I was able to find more after going through the closet and told my wife in the jar beside me, “Good morning”. Then I say, “Time to start my daily routine”, as I exit the bedroom.

After leaving the room, I go to the toilet like I always thought it was weird not having to brush my teeth since, for some reason, the giant food particles don’t stay in my mouth, and I doubt any bacteria could survive in this extreme cold, so no plague can form. After that, I go downstairs to read thirty books, the daily limit I set to continue my plan.

Then amaze the kid with my fantastic food plan. So now I go to the back garden where the fruits have been planted, grab one, then bring it to the kitchen, and I continue trying to cook the fruits, trying to find some way to make it taste good.

The fruits are in a gourd shape, and the bottom compartment of the fruit has a giant sack of water in it. It's enough water to do me for an entire day. They also defrost exceptionally quickly, which has helped me quite a bit.

The kitchen had no food in it but lots of seasoning and spices, so for the last month, I have been trying to find some combination to make this food taste good, but it has been to no avail. But today shall be a new day.

So, after trying a new combination, “It’s now time to taste it,” after taking a bite, all I can feel is disgust “crap, it didn’t work this time,” is what I say before passing out due to the taste.

When I awake, I see the kid’s face rather close, but then it screams and runs away in fear. It seems it came up to get a good look at myself when I passed out. It’s been doing that a lot since I have been passing out constantly for the last month, so it’s been watching me always cooking, though it hasn’t come close to me when I’m conscious, yet.

“Well, I should just try again,” I say as I get up; I still have a few tries left before the day is over since I usually get knocked out for two hours when the aftertaste kicks in, which I was able to find out by checking the feather before and after tasting it. It usually takes me two hours for my daily reading, about 1 hour for the cooking, and 8 hours of sleep and the rest of my time is spent unconscious due to the taste. Due to this, I taste about six to seven dishes a day.

-Break-

“That's the sixth dish today,” I say as I get up from the floor “So, another six failures today.” Well, now to end my day. Since the fruits, after being removed from the ground, spoil relatively quickly, I take the leftovers and refrigerate them later, since the fridge works.

But after I do that, I take the seed from the fruit I ate today and plant it in the garden behind the house. Surprisingly, it only takes three weeks for one of these giant fruits to grow, but they spoil very quickly, and they all only come with one seed, so there is a trade-off to everything.

I have noticed that none of the fruits has gone missing, which has bothered me since there should be a third person here. Does this mean that whoever brought us here has left?

Then I usually take the kid passed out behind the house after eating one of the fruits to be,d and then get ready to go. “I might’ve failed today, but I still have a good bit of time. I’ll try again tomorrow,” I say as I kiss my special jar goodnight.

Ten months later

“Do we only exist to fail and suffer?”