Introduction
If you listen closely, beyond the sleepy hum of the highway flowing like an unseen river at the edge of the neighborhood, you will hear the silence of Littlepace. It is a gentle silence, smelling of mown grass and afternoon rain. But if you turn past the earth-colored houses and walk parallel to Hunters Run, you’ll reach a street where shadows seem to have a life of their own.
Welcome to Ether Drive.
At number 3, in a sturdy brown-brick house, lives a man who resides more within his books than in his own living room. His name is Anemo Gale. Anemo is a crime novelist, but he is so absent-minded that he sometimes searches for his glasses while they are perched right on his nose.
"Where has the plot vanished to?" he often sighs, staring blankly into the refrigerator—which he has, of course, left wide open. What Anemo doesn’t know is that the "plot" of his stories isn’t lost. It wanders right under his nose, on four velvet paws or on a belly sliding through the dust beneath the bookshelf.
In this house, the wind doesn't just knock at the window; it has a name and a personality. There is Mistral, the sleek black tomcat who fancies himself a lost prince from the boulevards of Paris. There is Sirocco, the ginger kitten who landed in this world like a tiny sandstorm, not yet knowing the meaning of "yesterday" or why humans use forks instead of claws.
And, above all, there is Aeolus.
Aeolus is not the god of winds, though his name might suggest it. He is a bookmouse—a tiny scholar who proudly wears Anemo’s "lost" glasses. Or rather, he makes use of the multitude of spectacles our writer has scattered throughout the house (to an outsider, it might look like a nursery or a breeding ground for glasses). He is the one standing watch between the rows of encyclopedias, ready to explain to every stray crumb why the world is so complicated.
On Ether Drive, hunting is a discreet art. Here, the hunter and the prey never meet to quarrel, but to solve mysteries. For, you see, in the brown-brick house, the greatest adventures begin when Anemo Gale accidentally puts salt instead of sugar in his morning coffee.
"Sirocco, pay attention!" Aeolus whispers from behind a thick history volume. "The story begins. This is a historic moment!"
Sirocco stops chasing a piece of lint, ears pricked:
"His-what? Is it something that wants to play with me?"
Aeolus adjusts the lens he has strategically positioned himself behind and smiles:
"Historic, little one, means something that is about to happen right now, in this very instant. Something that will remain the birth certificate of our chronicles. The first page of a book currently being written."
The Mystery of the Silver Spoon
The morning silence on Ether Drive was interrupted only by the rhythmic purr of the highway on the horizon and the metallic clinking of a teaspoon hitting a porcelain mug. Anemo Gale stood in his kitchen, which smelled of old paper, staring intently into the cutlery drawer.
"It’s an inexplicable disappearance!" he exclaimed, dropping a box of tea.
Sirocco, the ginger ball of energy, tumbled from under the table, believing "dis-ap-pear-ance" was a new kind of ball.
"Where is it? I’ll catch it!" he meowed, attacking a tassel on the rug.
Above, on the brown refrigerator, Mistral cleaned a black paw with the slow, deliberate grace of a Parisian milliner.
Aeolus, watching everything through his magic lens from the shelter of a napkin holder, felt the need to intervene. Sirocco looked at him with wide, amber eyes, waiting for the translation.
"Sirocco, listen," the mouse whispered. "Anemo said it’s a disappearance. That means a thing that was here is now gone. Like when you think you have one more kibble in your bowl, but you’ve already eaten it."
Sirocco flicked his tail sadly: "Oh... disappearance is bad. I want the spoon back now!"
"And Mistral said Anemo is being dramatic," Aeolus continued, ignoring the black cat’s huff. "Dramatic means someone is making a big scene out of a small thing. Like when Mistral pretends to faint because he found a speck of dust on his silk pillow."
Anemo Gale didn’t hear them. He was already searching under the fridge, leaving its door wide open.
"If I don’t find the stirring spoon, I can’t finish the chapter on 'The Shadow Thief'! Without it, I have no inspiration!"
Sirocco froze.
"Aeolus... what is in-spi-ra-tion? Is it something you steal? Who is the Shadow Thief? Is he here?"
"Shhh," the mouse hushed him. "Inspiration means having ideas that help you create. Let’s not disturb the Creator!"
Anemo Gale was crawling on his stomach through the kitchen, one knee on the cold tiles and a small flashlight in hand.
"It’s impossible!" he cried, as the flashlight beam danced across the brick walls. "Aunt Agatha’s wooden spoon has vanished without a trace! It’s a mysterious misappropriation!"
Sirocco, the ginger kitten, was two inches from Anemo’s nose, trying to hunt the flashlight beam.
"Mis-ap-pro-pri-ate?" he meowed, jumping over the writer's fingers. "Is it something that runs fast? Is it a red mouse?"
Aeolus, perched on the edge of the biscuit tin, adjusted his glasses with a tiny paw. He felt it was time to shed some light on the little kitten's mind.
"No, Sirocco. A misappropriation means someone took something that doesn't belong to them, sneakily. Like when you 'misappropriated' Anemo’s left shoe and took it to the laundry basket."
Mistral, sitting on the granite countertop like a black porcelain sphinx, yawned boredly, showing his perfect white fangs.
"Oh, please, Anemo. Is your silver spoon made of wood now? This search is utterly inefficient. You’re crawling like a snail without a compass."
Sirocco stopped hunting the light and looked at Aeolus, eyes round:
"In-ef-fi-cient? Is it a disease? Will my whiskers fall out?"
Aeolus sighed, amused by the kitten's fear:
"No, little one. Inefficient means someone is working hard but getting no results. Like when you try to catch your own tail for an hour, but it always spins away with you."
"Then..." Sirocco said, putting his snout to the ground, "I must be efficient! I must find this spoon... yesterday?"
The ginger kitten stuck his head under the open refrigerator, where the noise of the highway outside sounded like a dragon’s grumble. There, in the darkness, he saw something long and brownish.
"I found it! I found the mis-ap-pro-pri-ation!"
But when he pulled the mysterious object out with his claws, it wasn't the spoon that came to light, but an old blue pencil, chewed at the end. Anemo Gale let out a desperate sigh.
"That’s the pencil I used to write 'The Mystery of Littlepace'! But the spoon... where is the spoon?"
Mistral twitched a single whisker, looking toward the window facing Hunters Run.
"Perhaps our 'hunter' forgot he used the spoon as a sword last night, while mimicking the duel from Chapter 4," he meowed suggestively.
On Ether Drive, the air was thick with mystery (or perhaps it was just the dust from Anemo’s encyclopedias). Mistral, the household dandy, had grown tired of seeing Anemo Gale on all fours on the tiles. With the movement of an Opera ballerina, the black cat extended an impeccable paw and knocked a thick book off the edge of the shelf.
Thump! The book fell right next to Sirocco’s nose.
"Oops!" Mistral meowed, pretending it was an accident. "What an unfortunate incident!"
Sirocco jumped back, his ginger fur bristling as if he’d been electrocuted by the highway.
"In-ci-dent?" he shouted. "Is it a monster falling from above? Is it dangerous? Is it soft?"
Aeolus, who was monitoring everything through his magic lens, quickly scrambled down a thread from the "History of Winds" shelf.
"Calm down, Sirocco! An incident is just an unexpected event, usually something small that ruins plans. Like when Anemo spills tea on a manuscript. It’s not a monster, it’s just Mistral trying to—"
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