• After eating dinner with her parents Silanis returned to her room, her ferret kicking up a little bit of a racket. Taking her food bowl and filling it, Silanis cooed to her ferret, Libra, and scratched under her chin just a little. Libra licked at her fingers, and then ravenously dug into her food. Silanis giggled softly before going into her bag to grab the small box she had found on her way home. Upon further inspection it looked mechanical, like some of the safes and jewelry boxes she had seen when she had visited the market at Lakshûr to the South when she was younger. This meant that the three buttons on the top were probably some sort of code, which meant there were only so many combinations to try before she got the sequence correct. Turning it over, she took another peek at the inscription. It seemed inconsequential, trifling. One son comes around; millions cannot stand to his power. Maybe it meant something, and maybe it didn’t. She thought on it quietly, trying to decide its usefulness in opening the box, but it made no sense.

    Turning the box over and over to study it, she considered what her options were. Then, while she was about to give up, she noted the buttons were colored and something in her mind clicked. One son… Son… Sun! Of course! Her mind raced as she made the connection, and she scarce knew what she was doing before she pressed the yellow button. Hoping she was right, she held her breath and watched. Nothing happened, and her heart sank as she had felt for sure that she had figured it out.

    When she turned the box back over to look at the inscription again and ponder it, however, her eyes widened and her breath hitched in her throat. With a choked yelp she dropped it. The words had changed somehow, and as far as she knew, there was no technology for something like that. Libra looked up from her food lazily, sniffed the air, and went back to her bowl with what seemed like a shrug.

    Tentatively, Silanis picked the box back up and looked at the inscription to be sure her eyes hadn’t been playing tricks on her. There it was, defiantly staring back at her as if it had every right to say something different, and she couldn’t explain the feelings that evoked in her. There was no way, no conceivable way, that those words could have possibly changed when she pressed the button; she had never heard of anything like that.

    But it was another useless sentence that seemed of little consequence, and Silanis was almost certain now that this was some sort of game of riddles, despite none of them being actual questions. Considering this new sentence carefully she remembered back to her childhood, visiting the fair in Grenview to the West. To the riddling competition that took place. They took the game very seriously, it was one of the most ancient, and she remembered hearing somewhere that riddles had been used for everything from a test of wits to making a wager to save your life. What could this one mean, then, by stating quite uselessly “see shells on the beach, and gulls in the sky?” The sheer irrelevance of it was nigh infuriating, and she was, in spite of the shock of it, rather displeased with how this box seemed to be working. Reason dictated that she shouldn’t hit a random button, for fear of what might happen were she to get the answer wrong, but yet she could not guess on her own just yet as to the correct answer. It only made sense that you would see shells on a beach and gulls in the sky, and yet the incontrovertible sentence seemed to manage a manner of ambiguity to it, which even still eluded her.

    Silanis moved to take a break, shuffling through an old book of riddles to see if there were any of these sorts. As she flipped through the pages, lounging back on her bed with the box next to her, she didn’t seem to find anything of importance. This line still befuddled her, and she was growing impatient with it fast. What did it mean? She was tempted to throw the box at her large pile of stuffed dolls in the corner, but held back, fearing her aim not so good. In a huff she opened a dresser drawer and aimlessly started to ruffle through her clothing. She came upon a bathing suit at the bottom, and remembered the times her mom had taken her to the port at the tip of the peninsula, Port Canchâs, and she had gone swimming at the beach. Then it clicked in, and it took her a moment to realize she now had the answer. It was water that was what had been eluding her. She pushed the blue button and quickly turned it over to see what new riddle had taken its place in the inscription.

    The words that awaited her confused her even more than the previous. It said, “The blade is not sharp, but can be very long.” This infuriated Silanis, because she knew nothing of weaponry, and there was no way she could ever figure out the answer to this question. Regardless, she began to list off all the weapons she could remember in reference to the word blade. Her list was terribly short, and not long after she realized none of what she had come up with corresponded with a color anyway. In a huff she sat upon her bed with her arms around her knees.

    Why did the riddle have to be about weapons, she wondered, when that was one of the things she knew nothing of? She wanted desperately to see what would be on the inside at the end of it all, but of this she had no clue. What kind blade made sense with a color, and was not sharp? It couldn’t be blue again, but there was no silver or gray to push, and none of the colors would mix to make it. She closed here eyes, feeling very silly, and tried to clear her mind. Who did she know that she could ask about such things? Unfortunately there was no one whom she was able to think of off the top of her head.

    But of course there had to be some simple answer to this, and she was just thinking much too hard on it. This couldn’t really be so impossible as it was making itself out to be, and she would surely be able to think of an answer on her own in time. She heaved a sigh, getting up to change into her pajama’s, and going through her own nightly ritual of bidding goodnight to the moon and stars. Perhaps she would be able to think more clearly in the morning, after breakfast and a quick run to wake herself up.