Mirai

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I landed in an alley in Toronto with dumpsters surrounding me. The coven's area was located fairly close to Toronto, and me and Mom had gone there on occasions for different reasons. It had been the first place that had popped into my head. The only place that had. Apart from the coven's area, Toronto was the only place I had ever been.

I leaned against the wall and sank to the ground. I breathed heavily from my run and my legs needed resting. But as my body calmed down from the sprint, it got worked up over the situation I was in.

I was alone, with no money and no place to go. I needed to find the woman, but I had no idea where to even start. There hadn't been any clues as to where she was in the vision. Hell, I still didn't even know what her face looked like. She could walk by me on the street and I would have no idea. The only type of clue I had was the tattoo. The snake coming out of a pomegranate. Not much of a clue.

My body was numb and my mind stood still. I didn't know where to start or what to do. Usually, in cases like this, I would ask Richmond and Redmond or Mom for help. But that was out of the question. I only had myself to rely on and what good was I? None.

But if I didn't find her, we would both die.

I wiped my eyes. Wiped away the tears that were on their way to spill out. I couldn't break down because this wasn't only about me. It was about her as well. I needed to find her for her sake, if not for my own.

My legs shook as I stood up, but I forced myself out of the alley. I wasn't sure what time it was, but there was a fair amount of people bustling about on the streets.

A group of smartly dressed women walked in my direction. I turned to them.

"Excuse me," I said and made them halt. They all looked at me with wide eyes that traveled down my body and then up. I looked down as well. My pants had grass and mud stains and a hole. My arms had some scratch marks that I wasn't sure when I'd gotten, and though it was a relatively warm day for the time of year, it was far from warm enough for not wearing a jacket.

"Do you... do you need help with something?" one of the women asked and gave me a gentle smile.

"Yeah. Where's the closest library?"

She frowned and the other women all exchanged looks. "Li... Library?"

"Yeah. Library. Where's the closest one?" I repeated the question.

"You don't need..." She looked at her companions and I had an inkling what was going through her head. In my current state, I probably looked like I was in need of a lot of things, but a library was nowhere near that list.

"Really. All I need to know is where the closest library is," I assured her and smiled in the hopes of making her calm.

She nodded and gave me directions. When she was done, I thanked her and hurried off. I knew I would later need help with the type of things she had thought I needed help with. Food, clothes, shower, a place to stay. Money. But in that moment, getting to a library and try to find any information that could help me find the woman felt so much more important.

The library was in red brick and when I got inside, I was slightly dumbfounded by the vastness of it. There were several floors, all that you could look up and into from the open space in the middle of it. Like several rings stacked on top of each other.

It was so big that I felt lost. On what shelves should I start looking for answers? I barely even knew what to search for. Without an idea of what the mark might refer to, it would be impossible to find anything among the massive number of books.

I resorted to finding the helpdesk. The man there gave me a similar look as the women had, only that his ended with a scrunched-up nose.

"Hey, so I want to find information about a mark," I told him.

He narrowed his eyes. Pursed his lips. But didn't say anything.

"It's of a serpent coming out of a pomegranate. You... you wouldn't happen to know where I could start looking for information?"

His eyes traveled down and up me again. Then he pointed towards a room at the side.

"Try the computers," he said and then looked away from me and to the computer in front of him.

I looked in the direction of the room and swallowed. Of course, I knew of computers. The Priestess had one that she used occasionally. And Redmond and Richmond had a computer they shared which I had watched them use. But I had never touched one myself.

"Ehm... I don't know how to use one," I mumbled and felt the heat in my cheeks, but I kept my gaze calm and steady on the man. I knew he would find me odd, but that mattered little. My own embarrassment had no right dictating my decisions.

He scoffed and rolled his eyes, but thankfully he turned the screen of his for me to see.

"See this symbol?" he asked and pointed at a blue E with a yellow ring over it. I nodded. "Click on it. Then up here you write www dot google dot com. Then here you just type whatever you want to search for and hit enter."

"Blue E, then... What did you say I should write?"

He sighed and took a note on which he wrote it down for me. I took a careful hold of it.

"Thank you!" I exclaimed, and then hurried off.

I got on the computer and did the steps he had shown me. When I was about to enter what to search for, I stopped though. What to search? Without any better idea, I ended up writing "serpent and pomegranate mark".

I hit the enter key and my eyes widened as the screen changed and text showed up. There were just lots of different things, none of which gave much information. It more looked like snippets of information than complete texts. I frowned at it, but before I had time to look at it more carefully, the hairs on my neck stood on end.