The Purple Eyed Girl

56. The bane of my existence

Letters and words were scribbled in every direction, crossing through each other at times. Some words were written upside down, others were written backwards. The languages varied and so did the tenses. Every page was a puzzle in itself, the whole folder was an enigma. Very few words were written normally and even if they were it was of no use. They were useless without the context they belonged in. Trying to figure this out was going to take weeks, if not months, and time was running out.

After all this time I had finally decided to open my father's casefile. Time and time again I had postponed it, but I couldn't avoid it any longer. During my time in the kingdoms I became wiser, but not in the way I needed to. Dilemma was constantly on my mind and I needed an answer, but it meant opening and diving into the very dept of the sorrow I had shut off.

The opened file in front of me was the starting point of everything that went down since that Indiana Jones marathon with my father. It represented the bane of my existence and loss. I hated it. So much in fact, I wanted to rip it to pieces and set it ablaze, but that was out of the question for two simple reasons. One, it was necessary to figure out who was responsible for the murders which in turn helped me choose a kingdom to annihilate. Two, it belonged to my father, so as much as I despised the thing, my love for him was deeper.

My head rested on my fists while my eyebrows lowered as I stared at the first page in front of me. I sunk down in my seat and massaged my forehead, letting out a groan. My father had taught me to write things down like him, but the problem was that only the person who wrote it down in this particular way could understand it. When looking it at they would remember why they wrote it down like this, causing them to be able to follow it. Since my father only knew what he put down on paper, this task was pretty much impossible.

The conclusion wasn't even in here as 'No Conclusion' was written at the bottom of the last page. He had told me that he figured it out, and he had repeated multiple times that I wasn't going to find his conclusion in here, but maybe I could figure out the information and form my own.

So far, I didn't have any luck, though.

Frustrated, I moved on to the next page, revealing the exact same scribbling. Eventually I came across the pictures I had seen when Foxglove locked me up in his office, but figuring out what my father wrote after it proved to be impossible.

A faint light shone through the windows, it was close to the afternoon and I had been going over it since last night. With a frustrated groan, I pushed myself and the chair I was sitting on away from the desk.

Pacing back and forth, I tapped a pen against my hand. "C'mon dad, help me out here."

Going over every training he ever gave me, I tried to look for a sign, something that could help me figure it out. He had unusual approaches to his investigations, always looking for alternative meanings behind actions and words. Maybe I had to try an unusual approach as well, not thinking like myself, but getting into his head instead. 

What would he have done? What thoughts would have popped up? 

Was that territory I dared to tread?

I was still holding on to everything that was dead and gone, scared of staining his belongings with my touch and thoughts. But while I was still holding on to it, it had a hold on me as well. It was a thin thread to walk on and normally he would've been there for me, giving me some much needed advise and comfort. What was I supposed to do now that he was gone?

He wouldn't have told me to get over it or let it go, because that wasn't a command of his to give, since everyone grieved in different ways and timelines. But he would have told me to put it aside for the time being and channel those emotions into the task at hand without letting them control me, controlling them instead.