text: The rain thundered outside, echoing loudly off of the tin roof. A steady dripping sound came from the hole in the ceiling, the drops pinging as they hit the bucket. I bundled myself tighter inside my blankets, my flashlight brightening up the blank pages of a book. I had been staring at it for two hours and flipped through every page, but there wasn’t a single word inside. The rain picked up, hammering twice as hard against the battered windows. But as quickly as it had picked up, the rain had died down. I stood up and stretched my sore legs. Running blindly through the rain hadn’t been part of the plan. He knew I couldn’t run to save my life. I turned out my flashlight since I wasn’t staring at the blank book anymore. I took a step towards the window as something collided with it. Just rain , I hoped. They didn’t know where I was. Then again, the fact that I couldn’t see anything when I was running didn’t mean that they couldn’t. Again, there was a thud as something hit the window. I couldn’t mistake it this time. There was something or someone out there. Timidly, I approached the window. Nothing. Just the hazy outlines of treetops and raindrops falling to the ground far below. Suddenly a face appeared, grinning wildly. I screamed and stumbled backwards, flailing my arms madly in some pathetic attempt of protecting myself from the person in the window. Once I pulled myself together, I hastily threw the blank book under the pile of blankets, hiding it from sight. “Oh, it’s you,” I grumbled, wanting to smack myself in the face. Griffon pulled open the window and clambered inside, dripping wet and laughing. “I know I make the girls go crazy, but you shoulda seen yourself!” he said, cracking up all over again as he imitated my freak out. I chucked a towel at his face. “Dry off. You’re getting the place wet.” “No, ‘Oh Griffon, I missed you so much’ or ‘I’m so happy you’re alive!’” Griffon teased. I sighed. “Well, I’m glad you weren’t caught, but next time you come do you think you could try using the door? It’s what a normal person would do,” I added, crossing my arms. “Oh but Marah, we know I’m everything but normal!” he said, levitating a few inches off the ground to prove his point. “It’s Amarah, and does everything have to be a joke with you? I got the stupid book for you. What’s so important about it anyways? It’s totally blank,” I pointed out, fishing the book out of the stack of blankets. “Well then Uh-marah,” he said, emphasizing the start of my name, “The day I stop joking is when I’m dead-,” “Which is going to be sooner than you’d like if we don’t take this seriously,” I finished, finally wiping that stupid grin off his face. “Also, you said the book is blank? This might be a problem,” he said, pausing to think. “Yup, not a single word,” I said, opening it to show him the blank pages. “Ahh! Close it! Close it!,” he exclaimed, shutting his eyes. “What? Are you afraid of a little reading?” I teased. “It’s part of the Cursed Pages ! You should know by now that Perpetuals like me can’t see cursed objects! Or else we become mortals!” he exclaimed, still terrified to open his eyes. “Oh! Sorry!” I said, immediately shutting the book again and shoving it back under the blankets. “It’s safe to look now.” Gingerly, Griffon peeled his eyes open. He let his levitating body dip back down to the floor. “Geez woman, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to kill me!” “Jokes aside, what’s so important about this book if we can’t even read it?” “It belongs to Pliith, but was stolen. I had to get it back. Problem is, Pliith is currently in suspended enlightenment.” he said frowning, looking to me for an answer. I stared back, waiting for him to continue. “What? I don’t know what suspended enlightenment is.” Now Griffon looked like the one who wanted to smack himself in the face. “Suspended enlightenment is... complicated. It’s something only Perpetuals can do. It’s kinda like sleeping, but you can only be woken up by a spell from our own cursed object,” he explained. “Then why do it in the first place?” “It’s a safe haven for Perpetuals, and when we come out, we can gain power. Pliith went in to hide from them. Now they’re onto me, but I don’t think they suspect you,” Griffon said, giving me an encouraging smile. “Yeah, about that...” “They didn’t see you, did they? Were you followed? We need to move.” “Chill out, it’s gonna be fine. Right now, we should try and figure out how to read this so we can get it back to Pliith and get ourselves out of this mess. This is the last time I’m making a deal with you.” I declared. “Er- fine. What have you tried on it? I can’t look at it, so this will be all you.” “I’ve only flipped through every page, twice, and tested for invisible ink.” “And that’s supposed to help us, how?” “Right, magic. What do I need to do to read the book?” I looked up expectantly. “Let’s see. I think we need to try Pliith’s chant. Stand on one leg, your arms need to be in a ‘T’ pose. The whole time you need to be saying ‘kish winkle jaquwey’.” “Okay then,” I agreed. Hesitantly, I lifted my arms up into a ‘T’, and raised one of my legs. “Um... kish winkle jaquwey kish winkle jaquwey kish winkle-” I stopped when I looked at Griffon to see if I was doing it right. Griffon looked ready to explode trying so hard to not laugh. “That was hilarious! I should’ve told you to hop too!” I gave him the death stare. “What do I actually do, because I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not spend the rest of eternity stuck in this tree house with you trying to read a blank book.” “Fair enough. There actually is a chant that I need to perform, but first, you’ve got to spit on it so you can read me the chant.” “What? You’re kidding.” “For once, I’m not. Say ‘I desire that Pliith be free’ then spit on the book.” “Sure, what do I actually have to do?” “I swear that’s it!” he said, sounded offended. I glared at him, but did what he said. Eventually the book would wield words. With Griffon’s crazy chants or without. “I desire that Pliith be free,” I declared, with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. Griffon closed his eyes as I opened the book, and spit in one of its ancient pages. The effect was instantaneous. Five words appeared on the page in jet black, scribbled ink. As soon as I read them however, they caught on fire setting the book ablaze. “Ahhh! What do I do!” I shouted, the whole book now a flaming mess. I frantically ran around the tiny room looking for something to quench the flames. All that came to mind was the pouring rain outside. When nothing else came to mind, I pried open the window and thrust the book outside into the heavy drizzle outside. “What’s going on? What happened?” Griffon asked, opening his eyes.. “It caught on fire!” I exclaimed, exasperated. I pulled the book back into the room, charred and soggy. Griffon looked thoughtful. “Probably should have warned you that would happen... oh well.” “You knew it would catch on fire!?” I shouted, sounding more and more incredulous. “It was a possibility but-” “But what?” “Nothing, you saw what it said, right?” he asked, concern creeping into his normally teasing voice. I racked my brains to remember what the ink had spelled before it caught fire. I tried turning to the page where the words had been, but as I expected, the page was entirely black, the edges burnt away. “I think it said ‘water, stone, frostbite, moonshine, heartshine’” I recited, scouring my brain for any recollection of other words. “Marah-” “Amarah,” I interjected. “Uh-marah, are you sure?” He asked for clarification. “Yup. I don’t know what else it could have said.” “Okay then, it’s a recipe.” “What do you mean?” “Kinda like a potion. We have to gather all the ingredients, put them together and then we can recall Pliith back,” I blew out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “You make it sound easy,” I remarked. He grinned. “I make everything look easy.” I rolled my eyes. “We don’t happen to have any frostbite lying around, do we?” he asked, looking hopefully in my direction. “This is your place, you’d know better than I would,” I pointed out, glancing around at the nearly empty room. The only furniture present was a couch buried under the pile of blankets that had been my hiding spot for the book. There were two square windows, positioned opposite of each other, and trapdoor in the floor that opened up to a ladder that took you to the base of the tree. A tree house. “We’ve got water, stone, moonshine probably means we have to expose it to the moon, heartshine and frostbite might be more difficult, but I’m sure we can manage,” Griffon noted, though he was mostly talking to himself. “I guess we’re off to the Arctic circle to get some frostbite from Diamanda.” “How are we going to get there?” I asked, not able to think of a quick way to get to the arctic. “Teleporting,” Griffon replied like this was common knowledge. “Grab my hands,and hold on tight. I don’t know what happens to mortals if they get lost in teleportation, but let's try not to find out.” “Thanks for those reassuring words,” I said sarcastically. I picked up the sodden book, and tightly held onto Griffon’s hands. Griffon closed his eyes and muttered a few incomprehensible words. Suddenly I felt like I had been tossed into a washing machine on a spin cycle. The world tumbled around me with a dizzying effect, but as soon as it had started, it stopped. I stood in a frozen, icy tundra with nothing but snow whipping past me. Griffon was already walking away. I jogged up to him. “Took you long enough. I thought you were gonna puke on me!” he exclaimed. “Yeah, remind me to never teleport again.” Griffon’s hair looked white in the flurry of snow. He grabbed my hand and went barreling into a snowbank in front of us. He winked at me right before he dove into the frigid powder. With no time to argue, or even scream at him, he had yanked me through the wall of snow and into an open, icy cavern. After many near-death experiences with Perpetuals, I don’t even know why I’m surprised by these things anymore. The inside wasn’t just a cavern. It seemed to be crudely sculpted into a kind of foyer-like room. “Excuse me? This palace was sculpted to perfection!” a high pitched, feminine voice screeched, echoing through the ice cavern. Griffon rolled his eyes and shouted back, “Diamanda! We come in peace. We only-” “What to rob me of my frostbite? Well I can tell you, the only way you’re getting it is if I personally shove it up your-” “We get it!” Griffon exclaimed. “But, can we at least try to negotiate something?” Diamanda sniffed in indignation. “What are you planning to cheat me out of this time? I can already see you scheming. And you keep saying ‘we’. What poor mortal have you dragged into this mess? I sense another mind, who?” Griffon looked alarmed. “I didn’t know you could read Perpetual's minds, I thought it was just mortals,” Griffon casually pointed out. “Enhanced enlightenment will do that,” Diamanda’s voice declared. “You never said she could read minds!” I whispered. “She can,” Diamanda said as she entered the icy foyer. Her stark white hair was frozen in tight icy curls, her pouty lips were a bruise blue and she had a long, pale face. “Ice to see you again Diamanda,” Griffon teased. She frowned at this. “Who’s this with you? Of course I already know, but I’d rather have an introduction,” “Irrelevant, she’s just-” Griffon didn’t seem to know where he was going. “Amarah is more important to you than you’re letting on,” Diamanda said in a sing-song voice. Griffon looked like he was trying his absolute hardest to not lose his cool “Get out of his head!” I shouted at the ice witch. However, my head was still spinning with what Diamanda had meant. “How sweet!” she said, squealing. “Wait! Griffon! Don’t!” she shrieked, before collapsing on the ground. I turned back to Griffon. He seemed to be glitching in and out of sight. “Griffon!” I whispered. “Griffon! What’s happening! Are you alright?” “Yup! Got the frostbite, now let's scram.” Griffon said, smirking and holding up a glowing snowflake the size of a grape. Then he frowned. “It’s not her I’m worried about though. They’re here.” “Wait! What even happened? How’d you get the frostbite?” I asked, my thoughts jumbled from the quickest encounter I’d ever had with a hostile Perpetual. “It’s been a while since we’ve worked together. Since then, I now have super-speed. What about you?” he asked, grabbing my hands. “Real quick though, we should go somewhere else,” he added, before he threw me back into the spin cycle that was the world around me. When I regained my balance, I inspected my surroundings. It looked like we were in the middle of a wheat field, muddy puddles of clouded water covering the ground.. Off in the distance there seemed to be a run-down barn, but other than that, it was wheat as far as the eye could see. The sun was dipping below the horizon, turning the clouds cotton candy shades of pink. “You were wondering what happened?” Griffon asked. “Yes! We can’t just storm into a Perpetual’s home and then leave right after they collapse for no apparent reason!” “Fair point. Diamanda kept her frostbite on a necklace. She would be temporarily weakened without it. With my epic skills, I stole it from her, and we escaped. I couldn’t tell you the plan because then I’d be thinking of it, then Diamanda would know the plan, so I had to do something irrational and without thought.” “Isn’t that what you would normally do?” I teased. “No...” he said, looking away. We both laughed. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy my adventures with Griffon, even when most of them are life-or-death scenarios. “Now we just need heartshine,” I said after a while. “Easy. It’s just a confession of the soul. So all you have to do is pour your heart out to me,” he said slyly. Then, mocking my voice he added, “Oh Griffon! I’ve always loved you!” “Oh shut up. We need to get working,” I stated. “The moon is out, the sun is down, let’s get this over with.” In one of the puddles of water in direct moonlight, we placed a stone and the frostbite. “Confession time!” Griffon said, doing sarcastic jazz hands. “I guess I’ll start-” I didn’t want to ruin anything between us by a stupid confession. I didn’t even know what I’d confess. “Is it really necessary to wake up Pliith?” I asked gingerly. “Yes! What are you hiding from me, I wonder,” Griffon said smirking. “Fine! You go first.” “Amarah, ever since I met you on our first adventure, I knew you were a special mortal.” I wanted to roll my eyes, but for once he sounded serious about what he was saying. “Marah, you mean a lot to me, more than I can put into words,” My face felt like it was flaming. I had absolutely no clue what to say to that. “I-uh- wow. Griffon-” “Alright! Enough of the lovey-dovey stuff!” a voice demanded, and it wasn’t Griffon’s. “Pliith has returned!” Standing in the wheat was a glowing man, maybe ten feet tall. “Thank you Griffon for bringing me back. You have done well. Take your girlfriend here somewhere else. If she’s mortal, they won’t be able to find her. Griffon however, you’ll be on the run for some time. You better get moving. I sense an unfriendly presence nearby.” Griffon looked awestruck. I’m pretty sure Pliith was really big in the world of Perpetuals. “Okay, I’ll uh, do that,” Griffon stammered. Before we left, I handed the soggy, charred book back to Pliith. “What in the blazes did you do to it?” he roared. “Just what Griffon said,” I mumbled, looking down. “Hey! Don’t put all the blame on me!” Griffon exclaimed, raising his hands in surrender. “Relax, I’m kidding. I’m surprised the book is still intact. Thank you,” “No problem. We’ll go now,” Pliith nodded, giving Griffon a thumbs-up. He grasped onto my hands as we teleported back to my small town on the outskirts of the forest we had been hiding in at the start. Griffon looked elated. “We did it! Quick recap of our awesomeness: We stole a book back from some people who are now hunting us down as we speak, set that book on fire to get a magical recipe, took frostbite from the ice queen herself, and summoned the coolest Perpetual back to Earth! Thanks Marah,” he said, waving to me as he walked off into the forest. “And don’t worry about me! Those Perpetual hunters couldn’t find me if I glowed neon green!” “I don’t doubt it,” I smiled and waved goodbye, my heart pounding inside me for more reasons than one. I walked down the sidewalk, pulling my house keys out of my pocket and slipping them into the keyhole. It was good to be home.