RESOLUTIONS

Emma wasn't sure of her reaction to the contents of the letter addressed to someone unknown to her which was written many decades ago when she was still a little girl and she had been barely nine years old when her father wrote the letter. She was lost for words to find out that some strange illness had been the true cause of her father's death which had deepened its toxins into his bones till he could no longer move freely as he did before and had to be placed on a wheelchair to be mobile around his old house the entire time she grew up with him, up to the time she graduated out of college and eventually got her present job. Deep down inside of her, she knew that what her father told her including the doctors who came around to treat him, concerning the cause of his incurable sickness was completely different from what he had scribbled on the content of rough notes. And she wanted to find something comforting to prevent eyes from gathering tears which had impaired part of her makeup but none came to her in the darkness to chase away the thought of being kept from a dark secret all these years she had tried her best be at her dad's side irrespective of the circumstances he suffered at that time and to see that her father's sickness doesn't kill him though the doctors told her that it would eventually and there was no tonic to the toxins inside his bones which made her feel a lot helpless at that time before the inevitable happened. Her mind began to raise numerous perplexed questions about her entire childhood missing a whole part of something far deeper and darker than she could possibly imagine which almost made her doubt the credibility of the note to be written by her dad but she undoubtedly recognized the handwriting of the writer to unmistakably match that of her father's, even his name was scribbled before a familiar signature that she knew too well to be her father's one and only signature. Moreover, she could not deny the fact that it has always been peculiar to her that he often signs his personal letters at the concluding part of every letter he had written when he was still alive after inscribing his name like he did here in the old note many years ago contrary to what most people she had come across, from the time of her childhood till now, do each time they wanted to end the letter as a complimentary close to the contents of the letter. Right there in her heart, she resolved firmly to find out all the questions plaguing her but she soon became emotionally depressed with the thought of her late parents whose deaths weren't naturally inclined and could no longer stop the tears that she desperately fighting hard had suppressing, from coming out of her tear duct and began sobbing alone in the quiet darkness present in the room with the old note crumpled inside her fingers against her bosom. After a few moments of wallowing in her own tears, she wiped her wet tears clean off her damp cheeks recalling that she still had the pouch yet to be opened as well as the little leather material right in her left hand leaving the leather scroll lying on the ground next to her knees.

Then she sniffed, stifling a tear as she slowly opened her left palm and untied the drawstring of the pouch till the it became loose and wide open, enough for her to dig her two fingers into it. Her fingers took out a piece of metal in the shape of coin with a hole in middle but it was missing a whole another piece to complete the same similar image engraved on the pendant she had kept in the tight pocket of her pajamas. The object glittered brightly in the dark right in her left index finger as she kept peering at the object with the help of the flashlight which aid her in observing some of the symbolic inscription engraved around the edge of the circular metal but in an archaic language that she couldn't comprehend despite her persistence in getting a good look at some of tiny weird drawings of little human beings clung to the heels of the other in a circumference around the Image centered on the object though the hole seemed to have taken much of the middle region of the crafted image skillfully crafted to fit another piece that wasn't there in the pouch when her fingers tried to find the rest part of it. She felt frustrated with the little she could find from the wooden container after getting more curious than she was before at the time she found the cylindrical container inside the carton and felt even more helpless when she found out that the little leather material wrapped in the form of a little scroll which in fact, she concluded must have been the actual map to where her father including the so mentioned professor in his letter, had discovered the corroded remains of the dead King of Raza, only appeared to be incomplete just like the metal object lay on her fingers with a probable meaning she couldn't decode and was missing a vital part to the actual location of the tomb where the two men had excavated long before she was born somewhere in the world she would never know if she doesn't find possible leads to help her understand the contents of the letter more better than her own little discovery.

She felt dissatisfied with her little discovery and scoured the carton if there could be more clues relating to what she had found not long ago but there was nothing else relevant amongst the scanty pile of old pictures and papers for her to find inside the carton from whence she had found the queer container. Having searched the carton to her heart contents, profound sleep began to make her feel drowsy and giddy with fatigue rolling down heavily upon her eyelids as the hour clock trickled slowly towards ten pm very much late in the night. A lot of things were plaguing her mind and she wasn't ready to give in to sleep just yet but her body was taunting her with its vulnerability against sleep especially her eyes which she wriggled twice with her fingers to keep her wide awake regardless of the brightness of the flashlight pinching her eyes in the dark since the light was reflecting on her face including her eyes that wasn't helping her to prevent sleep from taking control of her mind. A further effort to find something in the carton after finding nothing, dampened her hopes of ever getting some more hints like she had thought she would if she ransacked the carton a second time and reluctantly gave up, allowing her dwindling strength to take charge of her will to stay awake instead of going to bed like she often did at the exact same odd hour of the night. She decided to start with the her dad's secret wooden vessel and kept the metal objects into the pouch including the pendant she kept in pocket while keeping the old piece of paper and the leather material back inside the cylindrical container neatly after yawning twice before she tied it up the furry cloth against the container with the binding ropes. After she was done bounding up the wooden vessel, she kept back all the things she removed from the carton that she left on the ground beside it during her fruitless second search and used the flashlight to neatly arrange the irrelevant old pieces of papers and pictures back into the carton, one after the other in descending order and she didn't include the wooden vessel but rather, she set it aside and placed it on the floorboard below her knees soon after she was done with the arrangements that got her sweating a little bit in the room despite the refreshing night air ventilating the tight space room through the opened window. Realizing that she had spent a lot of time in the attic, she stood up to stretch her knees and took the carton from the ground before returning it back to the open old closet amidst the other hefty cartons leaving the bounded container lying helplessly on the floor but she quickly returned to pick it up after she was done shutting the old closet tight.

Afterwards, she left the attic taking the wooden vessel with her while feeling a lot tired and drowsy with much sleep weighing down on her eyes and trudged her way down the stairs to her bedroom carrying along the fatigued weight of her body to her bedroom where she kept the vessel inside one of the drawers next to her bed. Along the way, she had turned off the television and switched off the lights before heading further to her furnished bedchamber. Then she slid herself silently into the bed after pulling off her slippers beside the bed and covered her body with the warm thick blanket as she dimpled and rested the wavy hair on her head softly against the pillow in a comfortable position to go into deep slumber but she wasn't ready to sleep just yet. An idea to find out facts concerning the letter had struck her and had kept her mind busy despite the weariness she felt being alone in the attic and had laid the back of her head against the soft pillow facing the ceiling without surrendering totally to the tantalizing effects of sleep. She thought of a better way of getting the answers she needed and it was obvious to her that she needed to search for the whereabouts of the addressee of the letter who might possibly be dead or not living in this part of the world but whatever the case may be, she figured she had to find him for some reasons best known to her in what will be for her best interest if what she was thinking her father actually did in the past years that wasn't recognized by public organizations. But then, that will have to be tomorrow's problem for her to solve, so she thought as sleep slowly began to take control of her mind, sedating her eyelids with its dizzy charm till it engulfed her completely into profound slumber.