The Ravaged Pie and the Monogram
After the door slammed behind Mrs. Gale, a strange silence settled over the house, interrupted only by the ticking of the grandfather clock and the divine scent wafting from the writing desk. The package wrapped in brown paper seemed to pulse with heat.
Anemo Gale stood lost in thought for a moment, with only one slipper on, but a new idea about the "Glove Thief" flooded his mind. He sat at the typewriter and began to type at a dizzying speed, completely forgetting his hunger. He was in a state of possession difficult to explain in words.
But someone was not indifferent at all. Mistral, the black cat, climbed down from the bookshelf with the movement of a ballerina. He approached the pie package and, through a swaying dance, began to scratch the rustling wrapper. Scritch, scratch... the sound was hypnotic.
The younger and "unripe" Sirocco took a running start and, with one leap, landed with his claws right on the pie. In perfect sync with the stylish Mistral, he tore the noisy paper apart. The tempting pie, with its crispy pastry, was now ravaged all over the table.
Anemo stood up abruptly, right next to the massacre under his nose. He had the habit of pacing the room whenever he wanted to organize his own swarm of thoughts. He took off his shoe and began to measure the floor with sparse steps. Just as he passed the pile of crumbs, the hem of his robe caught the torn packaging.
Ping!
Something metallic rolled out of the meat remains and stopped right between Anemo's toes. The writer froze. He bent down slowly and picked up the object with two fingers, raising it to eye level with the rigor of a numismatist who has found a rare coin in the dirt.
It wasn't an ingredient. It was a silver button, heavy and cold, shining defiantly under the lamp. Anemo narrowed his eyes, studying the domed surface. There, crafted with incredible finesse, an intertwined monogram could be discerned: an elegant D and Q that seemed to suffocate each other.
— Eol... look, Anemo whispered, rotating the button to catch the correct reflection of the lamp. — It’s a monogram. Two letters that seem to have a name I have on the tip of my tongue, but that refuses to come to light.
Eol, perched on the edge of the inkwell, adjusted his glasses, stunned:
— Anemo, this is no longer a dinner. It’s a piece of evidence looking for an owner! And those letters... they seem to look at us with reproach.
Anemo remained there, barefoot, with the button between his fingers, while in his mind, the glove thief began to take, little by little, a new shape... or perhaps several shapes?
Without noticing the feast taking place right under his nose on the writing desk, and without listening to his increasingly noisy stomach, the scatterbrained writer put on whatever footwear he could find at random, tossed his house robe somewhere—also at random—and rushed out like a Captain Whirlwind, leaving the front door ajar.
That was Anemo Gale, a dreamer completely possessed by the fever of creation.
But, in his haste to conquer the world with his new discovery, Anemo forgot the most important thing: the button. The silver object remained on the corner of the table, shining dangerously next to a piece of greasy pastry.
Mistral looked at it with some indifference, being too busy cleaning sauce off his whiskers. Only Sirocco, the unripe kitten, couldn't take his eyes off the mysterious little "coin."
— Finally, a moment of privacy! Mistral meowed. — Without dizzy writers to ruin our reputation.
Even though his bead-like eyes were fixed on the button that had appeared so mysteriously in the House of Winds, Sirocco asked in a whisper, as if an unexpected noise could scare the "prey."
— Eol... what is pri-va-cy? Is it something you eat or hunt? You know, I think I could be a good hunter; have you noticed how good I am at stalking? And what is re-pu-ta-tion? Did Mistral lose it under the sofa?
Eol stepped out from behind the leg of the grandfather clock, trying to position himself behind a pair of Anemo's glasses. The whole house was peppered with pairs of glasses, as if it were a breeding farm for spectacles for the nearsighted and forgetful.
— Privacy, Sirocco, means being just you and your friends in a quiet place. And reputation is what others think of you. Mistral fears the neighbors will think we are unkempt cats if Anemo walks around with ink on his collar.
Mistral huffed, looking at the button with royal disdain.
— Sirocco, instead of asking questions all the time, you’d better do something useful. That button is a burden to my clean carpet. Make it disappear!
Sirocco took the silver button in his mouth. It was cold and tasted of metal and meat pie. With a quick movement, he ran toward the bronze grandfather clock. Taking advantage of the fact that the access door was slightly cracked, the ginger kitten pushed the button inside.
Clink!
The object fell somewhere into the bronze mechanism.
— Eol... I made an archive! Sirocco shouted happily. — The button is in a safe place. No ghost will steal it now! I put it for safekeeping in the belly of time!
Eol, from the edge of the inkwell, felt a shiver of dismay.
— No, Sirocco! It’s a monogram, meaning the letters of someone's name, intertwined like a dance. It’s an important piece of evidence! If we lose it, Anemo will be a detective without a compass!
— But it’s not lost... I-I did good, didn't I? the house's ginger stammered, his eyes moving in rhythm with the pendulum—now slightly jammed—from Mistral to Eol.
— You’ve made a right "scârț" (mess), Mistral grumbled boredly.
— Scârț? What is a scârț? I thought I made a... a... a deposit. I deposited a... what do you call it?
— Eol, be so kind as to explain to this young... uh... kitten, that after lunch follows the siesta.
Eol cleared his tiny voice, sighed deeply, and then, looking at Sirocco through the nearest lens, addressed him in a tone that aimed to be fatherly:
— It will be fine, kiddo; don't worry, we'll find a way out of this!
Meanwhile, Anemo Gale was galloping unevenly on the sidewalk: clonk-fâș, clonk-fâș, because in his muddle, he had put on a total mismatch: a white sneaker with, obviously, the laces loose for easy slipping on, and a brown plush house slipper shaped like a dog with its tongue sticking out. He passed the pastry shop and stopped right in front of the pharmacy, the place where the smell of menthol and cleanliness seemed to calm his whirlwind of thoughts. He stood in line with the look of a serious detective, convinced he had "Evidence No. 1" in his pocket.
In fact, there was nothing there but a few bent paperclips, which he fidgeted with obsessively between his fingers. He was in a state of total confusion, and if the pharmacy staff hadn't known him, someone would probably have called that short emergency number.
When he reached the counter, his gaze collided with the electric blue eyes of the pharmacist—a charming girl, as Mrs. Gale would say, with thick, coppery hair barely tamed by a wide navy-blue headband.
— Mr. Gale, would you like something for your memory? she asked him with a mischievous smile, seeing him pull only metal paperclips out of his pockets instead of a wallet. — I just spoke with the lady, your mother.
Anemo stammered something in a language known only to him and left sighing, but with a silly grin that stretched from ear to ear.
The second stop: the hair salon, where several respectable ladies were debating the latest episode of "Women Cannot Be Tamed."
— Oh, sorry! Pardon me! he stammered, catching sight of the ladies who looked at him like a character from a comedy.
Only when he stepped back onto the street and stopped in front of a shop window did his gaze drop to the asphalt. There, in the light of day, the crude truth shone: his right foot was casual in a white sneaker, and his left even more casual in that brown thing with its tongue sticking out.
— Oh, no! he whispered. — I am a walking disaster! And now the rain is coming, too! If only I don't run into my mother...
Ce întorsătură! Acum că nasturele cu monograma D.Q. este blocat în „burta timpului” (pendulul), iar Anemo este pe stradă încălțat cu un cățel de pluș, situația devine critică.
Vrei să aflu cine ar putea fi posesorul monogramei D.Q. sau preferi să vedem cum încearcă Eol și Sirocco să scoată nasturele din mecanismul ceasului înainte să se strice de tot?
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