Chapter 14 - Rye Bread

She dragged herself across the polished floorboards, dropped her body into the nearest armchair and let her head fall back with a long, agonising groan.

Flo popped up from behind her blackboard, her cheeks dusted with white chalk. Her face lit up immediately. "Ami! Welcome back!"

"Im tired," Amelia rasped into the ceiling.

"Aww!" Flo leaped over her chair, scurried across the floor and threw her arms around Amelia's neck in a suffocating embrace.

Amelia didn't even have the energy to lift her arms. She just lay there like a corpse being hugged by a golden retriever.

"Fifty, Flo," Amelia whispered, her voice hollow. "Fifty nodes on fifty random rooftops, half of the rooftops had aggressive pigeons. Do you know what a territorial pigeon does when you try to attach a brass cylinder to its favourite chimney?"

"I brought you a reward!" Flo pulled a brightly wrapped bar of dark hazelnut chocolate from her pocket and waved it under Amelia's nose.

Amelia's eyes snapped open. She snatched the chocolate, tore off the foil with her teeth and took a massive bite.

"You are forgiven but only because this is imported."

Flo looked at her for a moment, her eyes suddenly filling with dramatic tears.

Amelia paused mid-chew, looking wary. "What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I'm just..." Flo sniffled, wiping her cheek with a chalk-covered sleeve and leaving a brilliant white streak across her nose. "...I'm just really happy you came back safely. You did fifty nodes for me."

Amelia blinked. "You're crying because I did an errand?"

"It was a very hard errand!" Flo sniffled again, wrapping her arms around Amelia even tighter. "That was my thank you!"

"Most people just say thank you, Flo."

A sharp knock echoed from the Observatory entrance, saving Amelia from further emotional suffocation.

Flo wiped her eyes, trotted over to the main doors and pulled them open. Standing on the threshold was Caecilius, holding two heavy wooden crates filled with safety gear, pastel ink and an orange cat plushie.

He stood with immaculate posture, looking utterly untouched by the afternoon heat. "These were the items we had bought that day we went shopping," he explained neutrally. "I thought it best to give them before our next class."

Flo looked at the crates, then gasped. "Oh! I completely forgot we bought those!"

“Yeah, due to the whole incident," Caecilius replied.

He stepped inside and set the crates neatly on the edge of a side table.

"Well. Good day..."

"Do you want some tea?" Flo interrupted, already darting towards the small kitchenette counter.

Caecilius paused, his hand still resting on the crate. "Tea?"

"Yes! I just made a fresh batch of chamomile, Ami is eating chocolate and Mr.Hugo is here!" Flo didn't wait for an answer. She was already pulling a fourth mismatched porcelain cup from the cupboard. "Sit down!"

Caecilius considered the offered chair, then Amelia, who was currently slouched so low in her seat that her spine seemed to have dissolved and finally Mr.Hugo, who was sitting at his desk wearing two pairs of spectacles at once while reading a map.

"I suppose I can stay for five minutes," Caecilius said cautiously.

He pulled out a wooden chair, adjusted his coat and sat down with rigid, military perfection.

Within three minutes, the five-minute limit was completely destroyed.

Flo set down a tray of tea, sliced sweet bread and a small dish of dried fruit. Almost instantly, Puff scrambled up onto the edge of the table, her bright grey eyes fixed entirely on Mr.Hugo's piece of sweet bread.

"No," Mr.Hugo said firmly, covering his plate with his hand. "Absolutely not. You ate my lunch, cat. You will not take my tea snack."

Puff slowly and deliberately extended one white paw and tapped the back of Mr.Hugo's hand.

"Flo!" Mr.Hugo hollered. "She's touching me!"

Flo giggled, leaning her head on her hand as she sipped her tea. "She just wants to share, Mr.Hugo."

"She doesn't share! She annexes!"

Meanwhile, Cocol drifted aimlessly down through the ceiling boards, floating upside down above the centre of the table. His translucent, faintly glowing blue form flickered lazily as he spun. Then, Cocol drifted straight down through the back of Mr.Hugo's chair and Mr.Hugo shuddered as a wave of ambient cold washed over him.

Caecilius sat entirely still, the shouting researcher and Amelia eating chocolate with the calm detachment of a man observing a completely different species, oblivious to the floating ghost and the scheming cat.

Flo poured him another cup of tea. The four chatted for a while and somehow the conversation steered to Flo asking, "Caecilius, what's the best food to eat while studying late at night?"

Caecilius blinked, caught off guard by the sudden redirection. "What?"

"We were arguing about it before you came," Amelia explained around a mouthful of chocolate. "Flo said pasta because it gives you energy. I said chocolate. Hugo said iced fruit cake."

Caecilius took a measured sip of his tea. "Bread."

The table went entirely quiet.

Amelia stopped chewing. Flo paused with her teacup halfway to her mouth. Even Mr.Hugo stopped glaring at Puff.

"Bread?" Flo repeated.

"Yes," Caecilius answered, perfectly solemn. "Plain rye or wheat. It does not grease your fingers, it does not leave crumbs on important documents and it requires no utensils. It is practical."

Amelia stared at him in utter disbelief. "That might be the most Caecilius answer I have ever heard in my entire life."

"It's not an answer, it's a tragedy," Mr.Hugo muttered. "Bread? Without butter? Without jam? What kind of monster studies like that?"

"A focused one," Caecilius replied smoothly.

Flo burst out laughing, which quickly spiralled into full, tearful laughter that had her clutching her stomach.

Caecilius raised an eyebrow. "Did I say something humorous?"

"WAIT," Flo gasped, pointing an accusing chalky finger at him. "YOU MADE A JOKE! THAT WAS DRY HUMOUR!"

"I did not make a joke," Caecilius replied instantly. "I was stating a fact."

"You absolutely did!" Amelia grinned, leaning across the table. "You poked fun at Hugo!"

"Write this down, Flo," Mr.Hugo declared, pointing at her notebook. "A historical event. The stoic prodigy made a joke at 2:15 PM."

Flo immediately reached for her quill and scribbled frantically in the margins of her spatial physics paper:

CAECILIUS MADE A JOKE - 2:15 PM
(HISTORICAL REVISION REQUIRED)

Caecilius looked at the notebook, opened his mouth to protest but then closed it. A tiny, almost imperceptible twitch appeared at the corner of his lips. He took another sip of his tea and looked down, hiding the faint trace of amusement in his eyes.

Flo looked around the table.

There was Mr.Hugo, grumbling as Puff finally managed to hook a piece of crust off his plate. There was Amelia, kicking her feet up onto a spare stool and looking relaxed for the first time all day. There was Caecilius, sitting among them without his usual rigid wall of high-born reserve. Above them, Cocol floated peacefully, turning slowly in the ambient warmth of the room.

Her chest swelled with a warmth that had nothing to do with DayShine magic.

A single tear slipped down Flo's cheek.

Amelia noticed immediately. "Flo. Why are you crying again?"

"I'm fine!" Flo wiped her cheek with her sleeve, adding another smudge of grey soot to the white chalk. "It's just... it's really nice. Having everyone here."

Amelia softened, offering a small, fond smile. Caecilius set his cup down, looking at Flo with a quiet, thoughtful expression. He didn't speak but he didn't pull away either.

"Right, well, as touching as this is, I have advanced tactical training in twenty minutes," Amelia announced, pushing herself up from the chair with a theatrical wince. "If I'm late, our instructor will make me run laps until my legs fall off."

Flo's smile instantly turned into a dramatic pout. "Nooo... stay..."

"I have to go, Flo," Amelia laughed, tossing her cloak back over her shoulders. "You have work too. The nodes are live."

"I know..."

"Then stop looking like a kicked puppy. I'll come back tonight."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

Caecilius stood up as well, smoothing his coat. "I should also return. Thank you for the tea, Flo."

"You're welcome back anytime!" Flo beamed at him. "Next time, I'll buy plain rye bread just for you!"

Caecilius gave a short, polite bow, though his eyes held a subtle spark of warmth. "That will not be necessary."

Within minutes, the door clicked shut. Amelia and Caecilius departed down the cobbled path in opposite directions and the Observatory fell back into a quiet hum of ticking clocks, turning pages and the soft purring of a very full cat.

Flo walked back to her desk, her mood light and refreshed. She sat down, picked up her magnifying lens and began running a diagnostic sweep across the main brass console.

An hour passed. The afternoon sun shifted, throwing long amber shadows across the research floor.

All of a sudden,

PING.

The sound was sharp, crisp and metallic. It echoed through the quiet room like a glass rod striking steel.

Flo stopped mid-motion, her quill suspended a millimetre above the paper. The warmth and playful energy from earlier disappeared in an instant, replaced by razor-sharp focus.

PING. PING.

On the brass console, a small glass sphere connected to Node #34 began pulsing with a dim, rhythmic amber light.

Flo stepped towards the console and leaned over the brass readout plate, reading the mechanical engravings.

GHOST DETECTOR NODE #34: ACTIVE

LOCATION: Street 7 - INDUSTRIAL DISTRICT

SIGNAL STRENGTH: LOW / FLUCTUATING

Flo didn't waste a second. She turned towards her worktable, grabbed her leather satchel and stuffed her leather-bound notebook inside.

"Flo?" Mr.Hugo called, looking up from his ledger. "Was that…"

"Node 34," Flo answered, slinging the strap over her shoulder. "In the Industrial District, a signal just registered."

"Do you want me to call the squad? Amelia's-"

"No," Flo interrupted. "It's low strength. If a squad arrives with active NightGlow weapons, they'll disperse the spectral form before I can analyse its structure. I'm going alone. Also, they must not know about how we found it. We can’t reveal our ghost detectors"

Before Mr.Hugo could argue, Flo was already out the door, her coat flaring behind her.

The Eastern Industrial District was a forgotten corner of Cirnia. Decades ago, it had been a bustling hub for magic tools but as newer, cleaner magic technology took over, the factories were abandoned one by one.

Flo arrived twenty minutes later.

This place was stark. The air was heavy, thick with the smell of rusted iron, damp earth and decaying wood. Towering brick warehouses stood like rotting monoliths against the pale afternoon sky, their windows shattered and their doors hanging from rusted hinges.

Node #34 was mounted high on a wooden beam near the edge of the Old Bell Warehouse.

Flo stopped at the entrance of the massive building. The double iron doors were propped open by a few inches, creating a dark, gaping shadow.

She didn't hesitate. She pushed the heavy iron door open and stepped inside.

The air was freezing.

Unlike Cocol's wild, chaotic energy in the shop, the atmosphere in this warehouse felt suffocatingly heavy. It wasn't violent. It was miserable. It felt like stepping into a room where someone had been depressed for a hundred years.

CREAK.

Suddenly, far in the back corner, a heavy wooden door slowly swung open on its own.