Chapter Thirty-seven

Taking a very deep breathe, Dawn pushed open her father's old study with Stephan right behind her. Their mouths and noses covered with their bandanas to fight against the dust that was in the room still. Mark and Amber wanted to help them with this room, but they wanted to do this as just them together.

Stephan stopped just a few steps inside the door and looked up at the balcony of the second level in the study. His eyes seeing only the remains of a rope tied to one of the spindles. His heart squeezing in his chest just being this close to that rope.

Dawn put her hand in his. "You okay?" Her own voice crackling and thick with emotion.

"This is where he did it. Right here."

Her eyes watered. "Will you tell me about it?"

He nodded as he pulled her into his arms. Needing her strength to even speak. "I only saw some of the photos from the police." Stephan looked down at his sister. Now feeling all his years since he left. "Our beloved father had hung himself..." He looked again to the rope. "Right there. I was told that it wasn't murder, that he really did it himself."

She frowned at him. "You asked whether someone had killed dad?"

He nodded. "With Nicholas getting everything in the will, I had to ask."

Dawn tugged her brother over to the worn leather couch and threw off the cloth before pulling Stephan down with her. She tucked her head on his shoulder and cuddled him like she used to with their father. The father she had grown up with and loved with all her heart. The man she will always think of him as and not the man Nicholas made him into. The man who couldn't live after everyone was gone.

Stephan sighed. "My daughter does this with me sometimes when she visits. Always when I was looking at a picture of you up in one of the citrus trees." He looked down at his sister. "She is so much like you that it was like you were still with me."

Dawn looked up at him. "Tell me more about everything."

He tucked her head under his chin and just held her. His arms wrapping tightly around her shoulders. "Mom was never the same without you around. She didn't bake or even cooked so much. Most days, she just sat in the kitchen looking out at the citrus trees.

"Whenever I saw our father try to touch her, to comfort her, she would turn her head away and seemed to collapse in on herself. He would always bow his head and walked away to his study. For as long as I had stayed here after that, father was always in this room."

"How did mom pass?"

Stephan laid his cheek on top of Dawn's head. "She had stopped eating and died from grief. The doctor said that she just gave up living." He smiled. "I placed a few dried lemon skins in her casket."

"She would have loved that."

He nodded as they both fell into silence. They just laid there comforting each other. This time was what they really needed more than to clean this room. Dawn needed to know what happened to her parents and needed comfort while comforting her brother all the same.

~~~

"What should we make this room?"

Dawn looked over at her brother. "I want to keep it a study. A study for all our family to use. We can add books and change the look a bit, but I love having this as a study."

She dusted over a statue and smiled at it. "Did dad ever tell you about this statue of an owl wearing a greek helmet and shield?"

Stephan came over and looked at the owl. "He said it represented our patron goddess. Athena."

Dawn nodded reaching up to touch the helmet. As her finger slid down the nose plate, the thin plane turned as if it were a sliding mechanism. They both took a step back when the shelves next to the one that held the statue shifted backwards and then sideways.

A small room opened up with a beam of light shining down. The light revealed a spiral staircase that lead somewhere below the house. Glancing at each other, Stephan let Dawn go first being the gentleman he was. Neither knowing the house had a basement except for the wine cellar and pantry.

When they reached the bottom, Stephan and Dawn felt around for the light switch. It was Dawn who found it. But neither of them were prepared for the room that she illuminated. They couldn't even fathom having a room this large hidden under the house all this time.

It wasn't just any room. This was a work room of some kind. There were scientific tubes and beakers along one wall. Papers spread out along another table nearby.

They split up and wandered around. "What do you think father did in here?"

Dawn shook her head. "I have no clue. Father was a business man, not a scientist."

"Or mad scientist." Dawn smiled over to her brother because that was a cute joke.

Then her hand came to an odd device. One that was oddly shaped and it was strange looking. Oval in appearance. There were tiny oval feet on three corners to support it off the wooden workbench. At first glance, it looked completely solid with an aqua tint to the metallic piece. It was also very old which added to its strangeness.

As she took her hand away, strange symbols lit up in a yellow and blue mixed light. The symbols looked oddly Greek though several were different from Greek letters. She recognized several as actual Greek letters, but that was it.

Three rings in the center started to spin and all Dawn could do was gasp jumping backwards quickly as they lifted up and seemed to move independently from the device. Stephan put his hands on her shoulders and she placed her hands over his. Both looking at this strange and fantastical device.

The rings shifted and took up the space that Dawn had been in moments before. The same yellow and blue mixed light appeared in the center of each ring before consuming the rings. They both took another step back when the rings started a pattern that increased in speed the longer the rings moved till all but a solid beam of light was before them.

Both stiffened when that light changed into a solid form. A woman looking right at Dawn. Stephan sucking in a sharp breathe as he stared at a near replica of his own beloved sister. But this woman was different too. Her skin itself looked like a pure crystal. One that was living on a real human being. No, not human. This woman spoke of something far greater.

Then the woman smiled placing a fisted hand over her heart and bowed her head. "Greetings descendant." Her words sounded a bit funny to Dawn's ear with the accent in her voice.

Stephan frowned. "What language is that you think?"

Dawn looked away from the woman and to her brother. "But she spoke English." Then her eyes went back to the woman as her forehead scrunched. "Didn't she?"

His eyebrows shot to the ceiling. "Wait, you understood what she said?" Dawn just nodded as she puzzled over what that meant. The woman smiling more now showing her pearl like teeth.

"Fear not my darling. If you understand my words, that means you are ready for the truth of your ancestry." The woman moved her hands and then she held a shield with an owl on it. The shield shimmered and then the owl moved away revealing a mirror like surface that rippled.

"Shall I start with who I am." Dawn's eyes went down to the shield as the mirror like surface changed and showed her looking like the Greek goddess Athena. "My name is Athenea also known as Athena to the original inhabitants of this world." The projection's head snapped up and she smiled even as Dawn paled.

"Wait!" Stephan stepped forward gawking at Athenea. "Did she just show us she's the goddess Athena?"

"Apparently she was Athena to ancient Greek people."

"I am one of twelve of my kind to descend from the stars to this world in search of a new home." The woman smiled. "They called us gods because of our advanced technology, but we still aged however slowly compared to the inhabitants here."

Dawn slowly walked backwards before she sank heavily onto a stool. "They were aliens." Her hand gripped the wooden work bench behind her feeling like she was shaken to her core. "We're descended from a race from a different world."

Stephan himself paled as he too had to find a seat. The woman just staring at Dawn as if she was the only in the room. Maybe because she was the one to touch the device. Dawn just didn't know what to really think.

The woman put her hands together making the shield disappear. Her face looking at Dawn with concern. Her smile gone for the moment. "Is it your wish I continue?"

In that second, both Stephan and Dawn we taken aback. "Did she just address you as if she were real?"

The woman smiled at Dawn. "I am aware of your current state and if you need, we'll continue this another time." Dawn gave the smallest nod and the woman made larger nod. "When you're ready, all you need to do is touch the device. Your genetic markers is all it needs to activate." With that, Athenea fisted her heart and bowed her head as the light that made her up died into the three rings that retracted back into the device.

Stephan looked at Dawn. "How could you understand what she was saying?"

"I don't know." Her eyes went down to her hands. "She said something about genetic markers. Maybe it's because I touched the device activating it." She shook her head. "There could be any number of reasons." With a sigh, she looked to her brother. "I think for now, we should leave."

He nodded. "How about we get to that cleaning to get our minds off this shocking discovery?" With her nod, he rose and went over to her pulling her off the stool she found refuge on. His arms folding around her petit body knowing she needed comfort more than he did.

After a few moments like that, Dawn lightly pushed him away. Wiping just under her eyes at the ghost tears that never came out, she tried to compose herself. "Let's get back up stairs to the study."