With the ropes quickly secured, Xaiden took a careful step onto the floor. It felt solid, so he continued a bit more confidently. Still, he paused with each forward step, listening, feeling, and ready to shift his weight back to his other foot at a moment's notice. They'd found it safer to stay close to the walls, so he felt along the edges of the room as he peered around the inside with his flashlight. This part of the house was mostly intact. There was a small window on one of the walls, but it let very little light in at this time of day, especially with all the trees growing so closely.
Near the window was a small desk with a chair knocked over beside it, the rest of the room consisted of a decaying mattress haphazardly placed in a corner, a lantern knocked over next to an old backpack that was barely recognizable with most of it's contents spilling out from every seam, everything covered in a thick film of pollen and dust.
Xaiden decided to explore the desk first, packs like that often contained spoiled cans of food and other essential items. He was looking for something more sentimental, stories from times past tucked away in drawers and bookcases, carefully placed by their previous owners who were sure they'd be around to treasure them for many more years than they were given.
The desk was covered in the same thick and sticky film they'd come to expect from these places. There was an old radio that Jax would probably be excited to look at and a bunch of papers on the desk with notes. Xaiden ignored it all and opened the top drawer of the desk, hoping to find a journal. No luck, it was empty except for some pens, pencils and erasers. He checked for secret compartments, but this desk looked pretty straightforward, simple drawers that revealed their secrets without locks or complexity. The next drawer was much more promising, a stack of books inside covered a wide range of topics. They each had a yellowing and peeling sticker that made it clear they had been once borrowed from a library older than this home itself.
"Ha!" Xaiden exclaimed. "I bet the Archive was not pleased to be missing these. The fine on this account must be astronomical!" He scanned the covers again, wondering if he'd ever seen them in the historical section of the Archive during his many school trips over the years. "A Brief History of Time, Outer Space Exploration, Portals and the Price of Connectivity, and Science on the Air," Xaiden read aloud, "Wow. Eliana can have these."
He left them on the desk and checked the bottom drawer. It was filled with scientific magazines and papers, more material that suited Eliana than Xaiden. Am I really striking out today? he wondered to himself. He preferred journals that explored day-to-day life, or works of fiction and literature. These inspired him to create more interesting and complicated works of his own, and he saved the dry academic papers for when he needed to research something in particular. For that, he could just use his imprint and have it read to him while he did something more interesting.