The Collar of the Two Skies chapter 5

 Chapter 5

During the summer, the night is never too dark on the island, especially if the sky is clear, and even more so for the eyes of our furry friends. Remi, newly turned into Bise, was just discovering how suddenly familiar she was with all the feline antics—Sirocco’s playfulness, Mistral’s aristocratic laziness, and the hunting of shadows, balls, slippers, or pencils chewed on by Aeolus or even Anemo during his feverish creative moods. All of this, and so much more combined, meant a unique, extraordinary, and fantastic experience for her. However, on the night I am telling you about, the plans were quite different, and the furry crew had to act with perfect, textbook synchronization.

"Psst, Aeolus, take the helm!" the white cat called out in a whispered voice. But Sirocco, being Sirocco, got instantly excited, as if they were about to board a ship straight out of the movies.

"Are we going on a ship like pirates?"

"Not quite, little one," Mistral calmed him down. "Aeolus, watch what you read to the ginger, he’s already dreaming of going to sea."

"Yeah, yeah, sure, two, zero, twooo, six, tooo, one. Done! What are we looking for first? I say we visit the museum one more time..." 

Aeolus’s paws, tail, and rodent-like snout all seemed uniquely trained for the gymnastics of navigating a phone screen.

"We’re in, we made it, look at it in all its glory: The Collar of the Two Skies."

"Let me see too, boys... Incredible! It looks exactly like the collar around my neck! What does it say there?"

"Exhibit No. 1420: The Electrum Collar of the Priestess of Bastet (Original). The centerpiece is a unique spherical bead, chromatically divided: the daytime register, a solar turquoise enamel featuring a gold disc, and the nighttime register, made of a mysterious, glossy navy blue, upon which floats a silver crescent moon. In ancient times, it was believed that this object granted the wearer the power to transcend human form, turning her into a free spirit. The object is considered priceless and is under permanent guard." ... 

"Is that all? Come on, let’s keep looking!"

"Agent 003.5 at your service, Bise! What are we looking for?"

"Information about the Collar of the Two Skies, obviously."

"Right away, boss! I've got the search engines running!" Aeolus announced, his paws tapping rapidly across the screen, casting a dim glow into the darkness of the room. "I found some old, scanned notes from an archaeology journal. Listen to this:

'Legend has it that the Collar of the Two Skies was not just a ritual ornament, but a key. The Priestess of Bastet used it to pass from the physical world into the spirit world during...' It’s blurry here, part of the text is missing."

"Quelle déception!" Mistral whispered in disappointment.

"It also says this: '...blends with the night light... the spherical bead reverses its polarity. The turquoise enamel and the glossy navy blue begin to pulse in sync.'"

"Pulse? Like a laser toy?" Sirocco asked, his eyes wide with fascination.

"More than that, little one," Mistral intervened, elegantly lifting his head from his paws. "The text states that the museum's permanent guard includes not just motion sensors, but also an infrared laser alarm system. The museum's blueprint shows that exhibit 1420 is placed right in the middle of the Central Rotunda."

"Exactly!" Aeolus confirmed, zooming in on an image on the screen.

 "Look at the security system. The alarm goes off at the slightest change in pressure on the display case, or if a shadow breaks the invisible beams... Aha! I found a deleted fragment saved in the cache of an ancient mysticism forum!" he cried out, wagging his tail excitedly. All their snouts drew even closer to the glowing screen. The lines, hastily translated by Aeolus, described exactly what they were looking for, but in an agonizingly mysterious way:'

The transition between forms is not an illusion, but an opening in the fabric of time. This occurs only through the resonance between twins...' "And below that, there's a map or something, but it's pretty blurry."

"My... my brain hurts, Mistral! Poor Miss Remi!"

"Calm down, little guy... Try not to learn so much day by day," the black cat teased.Aeolus kept reading, completely captivated by the mystery they were now all caught up in: 

"Four portals a year..." he whispered, narrowing his eyes as he analyzed the text. 

"The summer solstice has already passed, so that must be when you made the jump, Bise. Look at this, it's an astrological chart."

"But what about the rest of the page?" Mistral cut in again. "Aeolus, scroll down! What does it say about reversing the process? How do we turn back... I mean, how does she return to her human form?"

 Aeolus tapped the screen desperately with his paw.

"Nothing! The page is corrupted! The next paragraph is full of system errors and weird symbols... 'Geometric synchronizationrequires...' and from there, it’s just deleted code. We aren't getting anything clear on how the portal works or where exactly it opens!"

"I think we need to tell Anemo or the professor, boys. They are the only ones who will be able to help me get back."

"Do you really think so, ma chérie?"

"Maybe I'll have to go to Egypt... Who knows?"

"Don't despair, Bise! Don't despair, maybe we'll find something in the backpack of replicas left by the professor. Anemo didn't even have the curiosity to open it, he just abandoned it on the coat hanger, and we, like the pirates we are, must rescue it from there... Or should we kidnap it?"