“‘The Hermit, alone, passed his words to the Fool

Who shares what he knows with The World.

The Magician goes down the narcissists path

And The Priestess in mourning will show her wrath.’” He took another breath.

“‘She and the Fool will share a truth, much to The Lover’s dismay

Only after the Strength is found, will The Chariot come into play.

Soon The Magician, you’ll finally free, you already have what you need to succeed.

Once you’ve finished, take some rest

For this is only the start of your quest.’” Duncan finished. The orbs around us would occasionally pulse while he spoke. Paisley looked around.

“Is… This about us?” She asked the dust around us, they all began flickering.

“Great, another riddle.” Duncan sounded exasperated.

“At least we know this one will get us somewhere, is the magician supposed to be Sophie?” Lacey asked. More flickering.

“Am I-” Paisley began, but all of the orbs were flickering like crazy, before suddenly speeding away in every direction. Then the room was filled with darkness. Everyone was silent for a long while, I pulled out my phone, and turned on the flashlight setting. A bright white light illuminated everyone’s faces. I wanted to say something but, no words would come. Instead I shined the light onto the pedestal, and picked up one of the keys. Everyone else followed my example until there was one key left. Paisley grabbed it, and held onto it, probably for Sophie.

“I guess there’s nothing left for us here…” Liam said after the long silence. I nodded, and we each stepped away, and returned up the stairs. We slowly made our way back to the library.

“Duncan. Can you write down the riddle on a paper for everyone else to see?” I mumbled eventually.

“Yea, hold on.” As soon as he had it translated we all began moving again. Trying to figure out what everything meant.

“If Sophie is the Magician then who is everyone else?” I asked.

“Well. Why don’t we start from the beginning. Owen, you found this place, and you gave the journals to Duncan. Would that make you the hermit and he’s the fool?” Lacey attempted.

“I don’t think so. I gave him the journals but I can’t understand them at all. He tells me everything he finds. I think that would make him the hermit, and I’d be the fool.” I tried.

“You did end up sharing the information with everyone else… Except Paisley, until she got mad.” Liam reasoned “Maybe the world is referring to all of us.”

“That would mean I’m probably the Priestess, I mourned, then got angry.” Paisley said, to which every one agreed.

“That leaves the chariot, and the lover.” Lacey said.

“Lacey is the lover I’d bet.” Duncan made eyes at his girlfriend, Lacey rolled hers.

“No, I don’t have any dirt on Lacey. I’m supposed to reveal some secret with Owen.” Paisley said.

“I don’t keep secrets.” Lacey shrugged. Paisley suddenly made a face when she looked at Liam. Everyone looked at him too. He looked like he already knew what they were supposed to reveal, judging by the embarrassed look on his face.

“Okay, we figured that out. We can talk about that later. Lacey must be the chariot then.” Liam redirected.

“No I can’t be because I’ve been here the whole time.” She interjected.

“I hate riddles.” Lium was holding his face.

“Lets focus on Sophie then.” I said, then continued. “It says she followed narcissism’s path. What’s that supposed to mean?” We all came up with theories for a while. Till Duncan shouted.

“AAH!” He yelled, “aAAAAAAAAH!” He got up and started running to the door. We all followed.

“Guys I know what it means!” He continued as he ran.

“How? What is it?” Paisley was running up beside him. Then Lacey, and Lium, I was in the back. Finding it difficult to keep going, but I did. Now that things calmed down a bit, my shoulder started hurting again, and the tiredness never left me. We made our way into the garden.

“We are looking for a daffodil, probably white with a yellow center.” He finally said, the sun was out above the trees. I forgot it was morning again.

“How do you know?” Paisley asked again.

“Well, I was thinking about the word narcissism, then I was thinking about narcissus, the guy in greek legends who fell in love with his own reflection. And I was like ‘Sophie is not that guy, she’s just a little sweetheart who loves flowers’ and then it hit me, Narcissus is also the name of a type of daffodil. Which makes sense, because she loves flowers so much.” He explained.

“Alright. Let’s look then.”

Everyone split up to search the garden, except for Paisley, who stuck with me. When we were a bit of ways away from everyone else she started talking quietly.

“So, I was wondering.” She began. “How do you feel about Liam?”

“Uh… What?” I wasn’t expecting that, at all. “I mean… He’s cool, I guess…” I said vaguely.

“ … you like him.” She said it like a fact. I slumped my shoulders and ducked my head, there wasn’t really any denying it.

“Sorry, I’ll stay out of your way.” I told her reluctantly.

“Wait, what?” She said abruptly. Duncan happened by as she spoke. “Do you… Think I like him?”

“Ohhh, are we doing this now?” Duncan interrupted. He’s known my feelings for Liam for a while now.

“What? Doing what?” I worried. Duncan flat out ignored me.

“Liam! Come here a sec.” I heard Liam respond in the distance, I looked to Paisley for help, but she gave me a stern face in response.

“Yes Duncan, it’s happening now.” Was all she said. Then Liam was there too, I had a bad feeling about whatever was about to happen.

“Liam, mind telling me what we were talking about on text the other day?” She asked, “And just about every other time we talked before then?” She added.

“I- What?” he suddenly had a scared look on his face.

“No? Okay, I can probably remember on my own.” She had a smile on her face, but it was anything but kind.

“Pais, is this really the time to-” She cut him off. Duncan watched from the side with a big grin on his face, I kind of wanted to punch him.

“You’ve been asking me for advice, haven’t you?” She began, he opened his mouth but she wouldn’t let him speak. “Be quiet, let me talk.” Normally I’d find that hilarious, she contradicted herself, but this was about me too, and I had a feeling this was about to go in a whole other direction. I could see Lacey watching all of this happen from afar.

“It started out because you wanted to get to know him, then you wanted me to tell you if he was into guys, then you asked me for advice. Did you listen to my advice? No, if you did we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Then you just ranted to me, complaining about how you were afraid of messing up something you didn’t even start in the first place. That all sound familiar?” She listed. “You’re practically in love with him, and you haven’t even taken him on a date yet. Which is makes you the Lover.” I watched on, eyes wide while Liam deflated before me. He was beyond bashful, sheepish, and embarrassed, he looked as if he were about to melt into a puddle. Neither of us could say anything, she never said my name but it was easy to assume she was talking about me. The silence didn’t last long.

“Wow okay, that was great. I think it’s my turn now.” Duncan started, and a look of utter betrayal crossed my face. “So like, that first day we met I noticed something was up and all that. But not too long after, Owen couldn’t really keep it in anymore and he would just go on and on about how pretty this new guy was, and yada yada yada for ages. I kept telling him to talk to him but he’d be like ‘Noo I’m pretty sure he likes someone else waah’ and ‘I dont wanna ruin our friendship over a stupid boy crush boo hoo’ and honestly it was really annoying so I’m glad we were finally able to talk about this.” Duncan ranted. It was my turn to be blushing now. I didn’t dare look at Liam. I stood there in silence for a moment, took a deep breath, and walked away.

“Oops we made him angry.” I heard Duncan say, “You should probably go talk to him.”

I ignored them. I didn’t have time for this, we needed to find Sophie and not talk about feelings. I told myself I wasn’t running from the situation. I said I wasn’t running from anything, even as I stomped over to the cobblestone areas in the yard. I heard footsteps approach from behind, and I braced myself.

“Owen…” Liam tried to find the words. “Was any of that true?”

“Yes.” I couldn’t lie about this, not right now. “I want to talk about this, really, but…” I hesitated.

“I think we should focus on finding my little sister.” I finished. Somewhat afraid he’d be upset by this.

“I understand. That’s probably a good idea.” He responded without hesitation. I turned around. He gave me a reassuring smile, it reminded me of the night we met. I smiled back. The exchange was short though, as he started staring behind me, he squinted his eyes.

“Uh, we’re looking for a white daffodil with a yellow center, right?” He asked.

“Yea, why?”

“Because I see one right there.” He pointed in the direction he was staring in. I turned, and my eyes widened.

“Go get the others.” and then he was off, running back while I went the other direction to look at them, they were on the edge of the forest. It was a random patch of tall grass, with a few narcissus flowers peeking out of it. I hovered around it until everyone came by. We didn’t know what to do with it, when suddenly Paisley shouted out that she saw more in the distance. When we reached those ones, we saw more even further ahead. We realized it was basically a literal path of narcissism. We kept going, further and further into the forest until at last we came across a cave of sorts, surrounded by the flowers. Well, it was more of a hole than a cave, it wasn’t a very big opening. I thought I saw horrible movement in the dark, but I realized after a moment that it was my mind beginning to dream. I was still hallucinating from lack of sleep. I turned my attention into figuring this cave out, and we weren’t sure where to go to from there. Until Paisley leaned down and shouted into the opening. We heard an echo, and then…

“Paisley?” A small voice answered. Paisley and I immediately began crying in relief. We put one of our phones flashlights into the hole, and there she was, way at the bottom. It was a surprisingly long way down.

“Oh gosh it’s really you! It was really lonely and dark down here. I’m tired. I wanna go home.” She started whining from below.

“It’s okay honey we are gonna find a way to get you out just hang tight!” Paisley shouted back. First we had to find out how to get her out. We thought of several ideas, eventually just deciding to pull her out with a rope. A few of us managed to bring one back, but she wasn’t strong enough to get a firm grip. One of us would have to go down.

“No, no. I can’t do that.” Lacey said. She was the smallest out of all of us, the only one who’d fit in the tight space. But she was incredibly claustrophobic, and mildly afraid of heights. Duncan was trying to reassure her.

“You can do this, I know you can. You’re strong, you’re determined. I believe you can do it.” He was saying quietly.

“No, no I can’t I’m not strong enough, she’s gonna slip out of my hands or I’m going to fall or I’m going to get stuck, I’m just not strong enough.” She repeated. Suddenly it clicked.

“Of course you are.” I said, almost casually. “In the riddle, it said we had to find strength. I think that’s supposed to be you. You are strength, and I think you can do it.” She gradually stopped freaking out, and looked over to Paisley who was talking to Sophie through the hole. Suddenly, Duncan put his hands on his head.

“Oh! I’m so stupid!” He yelled at himself, shocked by his outburst, we all turned to him.

“It’s tarot.” He said. “All the codenames in the riddle are actually tarot cards, and they all mean specific things. I’m so mad at myself I didn’t think of it sooner UGH.” He complained.

“Duncan, we can figure that out later, we need to get Sophie out first.” Liam reminded, then turned to Lacey. “If you can’t do it that’s okay, we can figure something else out.”

“No. I’ll do it.” She collected herself. We gave her some time to hype herself up. We managed to tie a makeshift harness that went under her arms and behind her knees, so she’d go down like a cradle. She took a few more breaths while she sat on the edge of the cave, and began to lower herself inside, tears falling down her face as she did so. Despite the tears and the rapid breathing, she never lost the determined expression on her face, it was admirable. She sunk into the darkness, and eventually called out to stop. There was some tugs and movement, then she commanded for us to pull up. Neither of them were heavy, but after being awake for two days (three, in my case) it took all of us to pull her up. Except for Paisley, who was waiting by the mouth of the cave to pull Sophie out and make room for Lacey. The pain in my shoulder was searing as we pulled on the rope, but I couldn’t stop. Not until Sophie was safe again, then I’d be able to allow myself to relax.

Surely enough, after a lot of effort, and three days worth of searching. Sophie was out, and in Paisley’s arms. Everyone was surrounding them, happy, and hugging. It was a perfect reunion. I landed on shaky knees, smiling at the sight; despite the swirling shadows everywhere. The last thing I could remember thinking before the darkness set in was, ‘did I take off my glasses? Everything’s blurry.’ and then, nothing.