"There's a thing that had been doing odd magic around the city," Ronja continued.
"Yeah."
"It's not human, but it is bipedal. And small and black. And has a tail."
"Mm-hm."
"And Marqués was onto it, so it started to blackmail him into quitting."
"That's about right."
"I can't believe it," Ronja said simply.
"Yeah, I know, it's crazy..." Alaia started, but Ronja cut her off.
"No, I literally can't believe it," she clarified. "There's no way that's true. Things like that don't exist. Marqués is playing you."
"And why would he do that?" Alaia asked.
"Because he doesn't want to tell whatever the truth is," Ronja told her, as if that was obvious.
"He was genuinely scared when I showed him the paper," Alaia reminded her. "You might not have understood what we were saying, but you did see his body language. Why else would he be scared to see the paper with the incidences?"
"Because of a million possible reasons that don't involve creatures that don't exist. Maybe he really is blackmailed by someone related to the oddities, but that does not mean it was some creature doing it. Or maybe he was completely faking it. Tove has been looking into the exact same cases, and no one has started blackmailing her. Maybe he looked scared not because someone else was onto him but because we were. He realised he was as good as caught, so he had to come up with something, and that happened to be the first thing that came to his mind."
"You have to admit," Alaia countered, "that it's not a very good lie at all. It sounds too unbelievable. If he was lying he would have come up with something we'd believe more easily."
"Maybe he panicked, and that was literally the only thing that he could come up with," Ronja tried.
"The telescope though," Alaia decided to change tactic. "I've seen it, and I'm telling you, there is something odd about it. And I know something about telescopes."
"And how convenient is it that he happens to have the exact one thing that can reveal the tiny black man with a tail? Not just that, but he happened to get it for himself right around the time this all was beginning." Ronja still wasn't convinced. "A thing, might I add, that only he can see?"
"Coincidence?" Alaia hated that it came out as a question. "And it's not just him. He said he thinks anyone who knows about it can see it."
"He thinks. So that tells us nothing. Besides, why would an object exists whose function would be to reveal things like that, if no one in the world knows they exist?"
"Maybe..." Alaia started, then paused to think for a moment. "Those creatures are actually all around us, and some people knew about them and made an instrument that would reveal them?" She could hear the thinness of her own argument. "Or maybe the telescope is just an odd-looking telescope, and the creature can be seen through any glass that magnifies enough."
That wouldn't convince even herself.
"Seriously?" Ronja asked. "You have to face it. It's way more likely Marqués lied to you."
"Ronja," Alaia said sharply. She stared at the table for a short moment before lifting her eyes to Ronja. "This is the only thing that even vaguely counts as a lead that could help us find Tove."
There was pleading in her voice. She didn't care. She just wanted to find Tove.
~X~
They tried to come up with what to do next, and failed. Ronja still had work to do, and Alaia couldn't come up with anything else that might help, so she headed back to the office too, to see if she could after all find something in Tove's notes that could help, but she wasn't hopeful. Really, they didn't even know if her disappearance had anything to do with this case. It was just a feeling Alaia had.
Just as they entered the building Alaia saw something vague in the air in front of her. She stopped, and looked at it closer. It looked kind of like mist, but then took a human shape. A Tove-like shape. Tove looked to somewhere in the corner.
"Can she see me now?" she asked someone. The voice was misty too, but clearly Tove. The misty figure turned to Alaia. "Alaia?" it asked.
Alaia just stared.
"I think I have officially become mad," Alaia said quietly to Ronja, who had stopped next to her. She didn't take her eyes off the mist-figure. "I'm hallucinating Tove now, here in the hallway."
"I don't think you're hallucinating," Ronja answered. "Unless we're sharing that hallucination."
Alaia glanced at her, and she was staring right at the mist-figure too.
"No, listen, I'm really here," the mist-Tove said. "And I don't have much time. So listen. when I was leaving your place, I sensed the magic, and I saw this dog-sized human-like black thing with a tail sprinting away, and I followed it into what is apparently another plane of existence or something. That thing is what's been causing the weird things happening."
Alaia turned to Ronja.
"You still think Marqués was lying, and we're both going crazy?"
Ronja simply kept staring at the mist-Tove in front of them.
________________________________________________
I have a headache and a sore throat and I'm so tired, so that's all I've got for you today. And besides, Tove's timeline needs time to catch up a bit. Or maybe time is weird and it doesn't.
Either way.
The topic for tomorrow is Facade.
Speaking of which, I am now realising I didn't use todays topic even a little bit here. But because of the aforementioned reasons, I'm not going to go and change something so that it fits. Sorry about that.
~matu
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