The plates wobbled dangerously as the waiter struggled to neatly place all our dishes on the small wooden table we were sitting at.
"Finally!" Dihana exclaimed cheerfully, as she immediately began cutting into her pancakes. They were glazed in a golden syrup and served with juicy strawberries that looked like they'd been picked only minutes ago.
Elani sipped her cappuccino pensively.
"Ok, we need to come up with a game plan," she said.
"Shhhh!" Dihana lifted a finger, cautioning Elani.
"First food!"
I agreed wholeheartedly. We had come to this small café early in the morning. Dihana called it her secret spot. Hidden in a narrow street away from the main roads, this picturesque little café didn't get many customers, but Dihana swore their breakfast was the best. I couldn't deny or confirm that, but I chewed happily, enjoying every bite of my crêpe.
"Anyways," Elani continued, causing Dihana to roll her eyes. "We should scout out the location," she took a sip, "the location of that museum, so we know our way around the premises."
"Are you trying to steal something?" I eyed her cautiously.
"Maybe," she shrugged.
A loud sound of metal hitting porcelain echoed through the street.
"Excuse me?" Dihana coughed loudly, probably choking on her pancakes.
"This is a serious situation," Elani reminded us, looking at me sternly. "And to be fair I don't care too much about your earthly possessions."
Dihana ignored the smug remark. Instead, she simply said, "I won't condone stealing. I'll take you to the museum and help you look around, but if it comes to a crime, I'm out!"
That was a surprisingly generous offer. To be honest I was shocked she still wanted to help us. Personally, I would've considered reporting us to the authorities if I was in her position.
Elani finally convinced us that stealing something from the museum was a last resort and that we would only do it in a case of emergency, whatever that meant.
We decided that, plans of theft aside, heading to the museum at peak visiting hours would be best. We were going to be searching through the exhibition carefully and probably staring at items for long periods of time. There was no way that wouldn't be suspicious. And for two people in a different dimension staying under the radar was very important.
Since there was plenty of time to kill, Dihana decided to take us sight-seeing. I would have loved to see the old, artistic, baroque architecture and to have walked through the massive doors of one of the many churches and admired the interior design, full of golden ornaments with fluid harmonic shapes, but Dihana's idea of sight-seeing was shopping. Though in this situation, she was absolutely right. Neither Elani nor I had any other clothes to wear and the groceries Dihana had at home definitely wouldn't last more than a day with us here.
"This would suit you so well!" Dihana exclaimed, handing me a knitted burgundy turtleneck.
I considered it for a moment before shaking my head. "I don't have any money."
"But it's so cheap! Don't worry, I got you."
As we finally left the store with as many bags as we could carry, I began worrying about Dihana's financial situation, but she assured us that there was nothing to worry about.
I couldn't tell if she was just being way too generous or if she was secretly some sort of millionaire.
As the sun reached its peak in the blue spring sky, the streets began to fill. The people had finished their brunches for the day and had decided that now was the time to go on excursions. The newly opened exhibition had drawn a lot of attention from locals and foreign visitors, so we were in no way surprised when we got there. The museum was packed.
"Perfect," Elani said with a wicked grin.
Since Dihana had thought ahead and already bought our tickets online last evening, we were able to skip the long wait and enter the museum immediately. The people were visibly annoyed as we walked by the line. It was incredibly long, about 50m if I had to guess. One elderly man, red in the face, threw a tantrum and accused us of cutting the line but we quickly ignored him and hurried away. Maybe he should've thought of buying a ticket beforehand as well.
A cool wind from the air conditioning unit blew through my hair as we walked through the door. I let out an audible gasp, as I laid eyes on the interior.
"This is massive!" I exclaimed gesturing towards the huge hall, lined with a variety of items that were going to be shown off to curious eyes.
"I thought this was going to be significantly smaller," Dihana murmered.
"5000 square meters of mystical thrill and adventure," Elani was observing the map of the exhibition attentively. "This is going to take a while, but I think we could cut down the time a lot with a structured search of the place."
"Are you a cop?" I asked.
"Or a robber," Dihana had also started looking at the map closely. "How about this?" she asked, pointing to a specific position. "'Magic slumbering in the depths'. Sounds fascinating!"
She smirked.
"Very funny!" Elani frowned. "For the final time! Magic isn't real! It's fiction!"
I nodded in agreement.
Dihana still suggested we check it out and we finally agreed to, but only after we'd seen the locations Elani had suggested.
The first exhibit was called 'The Secret Path between the Dimensions', very promising. However, it turned out to be absolutely useless.
"What's astral projection?" I asked the others, who were hidden behind a pile of books rummaging through the different titles. "Something about your soul traveling the world," Dihana shrugged and kept reading.
"Well, I would like my whole body to travel," Elani joked.
"People don't think this is real?" I was confused, "but this is so basic, though. Even children can explore worlds and even dimensions in soul form."
Dihana laughed, unsure if I was joking or not.
In any case, it was time to head to the next exhibit.
However, no matter where we looked, we couldn't find anything useful.
"So, earth people desire to lay curses upon their partners after an act of infidelity?" Elani was engrossed in a very sketchy looking book. It seemed to be about dark magic and cursing people with the help of demons. "This is so funny," Elani burst out laughing. "Curses, ooooh! Demons, wow!" She closed the book and put it away. "So, we got nothing, huh?"
Dihana smiled. "Does that mean," she gestured across the hall to another exhibit, "it's time?"
"Do we have to?" I asked with a pleading expression.
But Dihana was already sauntering through the crowds to a much less popular exhibit. Maybe the title wasn't interesting enough, but barely anyone seemed to care about the magic that 'slumbered in the depths'. What depths even?
"Come on! You promised!" I heard a yell from across the hall.
"Fine," I sighed and began walking with Elani following close behind me. We were both disheartened by this total waste of time. We had found not even a scrap of relevance in this enormous area.
When we finally approached, Dihana waved two books at us. They looked old enough to fall apart, the faint traces of cursive gold letters remaining on the worn-out cover.
Elani reluctantly took one of the books and started flipping through it carefully. Her frown slowly turned into bewilderment.
"Ria, come here! Read this!" She handed me the book.
"You know I can't read this langu-," I started but Elani interrupted.
"Yes you can! Look!"
I gazed closely at the faded letters covering the pages, stained yellow with age. Wait, what? This wasn't the local language, nor was it Latin, a language we shared with the people of Earth. This was-
"This is our language! Our native tongue!" Elani was flabbergasted and so was I.
I continued reading, eager to absorb whatever knowledge was hidden in this book. Pages upon pages of records of the times gods walked the earth and taught humans about their inner power. This seemed identical to what we had been taught in our own world.
"What's a book like this doing here?" I asked loudly in amazement.
As we frantically kept flipping through all the books of the section and discussing if the contents could somehow help us, I noticed a security guard eyeing us suspiciously.
He had every reason to be wary of us, as we had been spending a very long while huddled in this section, inspecting every item a bit too closely.
"Check out this one," Dihana suggested, handing Elani a particularly thick book with a leather binding. "It's full of maps!"
"Maps?" We exclaimed in unison.
Elani struggled to open the book and opened it randomly to a page in the middle.
A loud squeal escaped her.
The security guard began striding towards us.
"Excuse me, Miss!" he called.
Elani looked me deep in the eyes with a serious expression. She blinked.
I blinked. Then I gulped and nodded.
"Run!" Elani yelled and grabbed Dihana's wrist. She started running, dragging a very confused Dihana behind her.
The security guard had also burst into a sprint, gaining on us at a rapid pace.
We slipped into a crowd of people that were looking at a very popular exhibit. The old man from the line yelled furiously, as I almost toppled him, sending his cap flying. Elani handed me the book. It was incredibly heavy.
"I've already got enough baggage," she said half-jokingly, looking at Dihana.
A large group of people walked by, completely blocking the guard's path. He yelled loudly urging the visitors to make way, but they couldn't be bothered to move. Elani used this opportunity to slip away with Dihana, sprinting towards what looked like a side exit.
I instinctively stayed behind, keeping my eyes on the guard. When he finally emerged from between the people, I waved at him with the book and grinned before running away.
My plan worked flawlessly. The guard was so furious, that he completely forgot Dihana or Elani even existed and came straight at me. He was yelling something into his walkie talkie, so I assumed he was calling back-up.
Shit! This would be interesting.
I skilfully weaved through the museum's visitors and was finally mere meters from the door.
So close!
"But yet so far," I thought as three tall men with muscular builds barricaded the exit. Back-up had arrived and it seemed like they were intent on capturing me, but I had no intention of giving them that opportunity.
"Today's the day I become a criminal," I thought.
I quickened my pace, running at the men at full speed. They looked at each other in bewilderment for a second, then grinned.
But I would have the last laugh. Bracing myself for impact, I rammed straight into one of the security guards. He hadn't expected this much force from my small frame and the strength of the impact knocked him straight off his feet. For a few seconds, he lay there on his back like a helpless turtle.
"Yeet!" a small child yelled from across the street before being dragged off by his mother.
The other two guards tried to grab me. One of the men dove at my legs trying to knock me over but I jumped to evade him. The other grabbed my wrist, pulling me towards him. I swiftly twisted my hand around his and he winced as his grip on me loosened. I shoved him firmly, before turning around and running.
The chase was now on!
Behind me I heard loud yelling as the guards tried to get help from the onlookers, but no one was interested in stopping me. I made a sharp turn into a small street.
There were barely any people here, meaning I was in plain sight. I cursed at myself for having such poor judgement. I continued running, when out of nowhere a guard lunged at me, bringing me down with him.
Apparently, there was even more back-up.
A dull pain spread through the back of my head as it made contact with the ground. I felt dizzy but managed to procure enough strength to kick the guard in his stomach. He collapsed to his knees, retching, as I struggled to get up.
Being in this energy-less world was taking its toll on me. Under normal circumstances I could have dealt with these men in a matter of seconds. However, I didn't want to rely on the use of my own natural energy just yet; for one because of the consequences Elani had mentioned and also because I did not want to draw too much attention to myself. Though, that wasn't going very well at the moment.
The other guards were gaining on me. I saw that the first guard from the museum had joined them. There was no time to stand around here. My ears were ringing, and I was very wobbly on my feet, but I kept running, clutching the book like a precious treasure.
The chase continued. I kept running through narrow streets, switching my direction often to confuse my chasers. But as time went by, the ringing in my head became increasingly difficult to deal with. My pace was slowing down considerably, and the guards were inching closer and closer.
I prayed that Elani and Dihana were safe; especially Dihana because I didn't know if she could fight off any guards. I felt sorry for having dragged her into this tricky situation.
As I ran into a small dark alley on my left, I once again reprimanded myself for my poor decision-making.
This was a dead end. As I approached the wall at the end of the alley, I heard yells from the guards. It seemed they had seen my predicament and were keen on finally catching me.
I looked around in panic. Wall, fence, fence, wall! No hidden alleys, nowhere to escape. I thought that perhaps I'd be able to climb the wall. I began scaling the wall, but about half-way up I felt a stinging pain in my head. I winced as I dropped, falling to the ground ungracefully.
Was this the end?
The guards were about 50 meters away. I hid behind a large garbage container, knowing that it was futile.
The guards laughed. They had stopped running and were walking towards me very slowly, like a pack of hyenas stalking their prey. They knew I couldn't escape and were savouring this moment. The moment they finally caught the girl, that had been causing them so much trouble. The look in their eyes was menacing, blood-thirsty even. I prepared myself for the worst. The thudding in my head became more intense with every step they took. I began losing strength in my limbs rapidly and started fading in and out of consciousness.
This situation was gloriously fucked!
Suddenly, I heard the wooden boards of the fence behind me creaking. Or was it just my imagination?
I felt a hand grab me and yank me through an opening in the fence. The opening shut behind me just as the guards arrived at my hiding spot.
I turned my head weakly to look at the person behind me but before I could see them, my vision went black.