The air was thick with dust and the smell of old books as Atlas and Atria explored the attic of their grandparents’ old house. The recent passing of their grandmother prompted their grandfather to ask for their help sorting through the clutter, searching for things to donate. Though the task should have felt mundane, it was anything but. It was an adventure in its own right- every box, every trinket, every weathered book stirred both excitement and sorrow in them, for each item seemed to hold a piece of their grandmother’s life, her presence just out of reach.
Dust bunnies pranced within the rays of rainbow-colored sunlight streaming in through the roof window, casting a colorful haze across the room. Below them, the wooden floors creaked softly with age as the two rummage through the many boxes stacked haphazardly throughout the attic. Old clothes, faded photographs, and trinkets spilled out from every corner, every item promising a story of its own. Stories the twins would never fully know.
“What do you think this was for?” Atlas asked, holding up a small chest.
“Ooh, let me see!” Atria reached for the box eagerly. She had always loved tiny, mysterious objects like this- things that sparked her wild imagination.
The trinket box was pink, trimmed with gold accents, with celestial patterns etched into its surface. Delicately engraved across the box was a name they had heard a lot recently.
“Stella,” Atria read aloud, her voice soft with recognition. “This was Grannies.”
Atlas tilted his head, “What do you think it is?”
“I don’t know, but let’s find out,” Atria replied, anticipation bubbling up inside her.
She opened the delicate box and inside she found only two things: a piece of rolled parchment paper tied by string and a circular glass that resembled a lens of some sort.
Before Atlas could snatch the box from her, like he often did with her stuff, Atria unraveled the scroll. The paper revealed a picture of a half-moon at the center, surrounded by words that didn’t make sense.
“What is it? What does it say?” Atlas asked impatiently, moving so that he could get a good look at the paper.
Atria tried to think of what it could be, but nothing came to mind so she handed the paper to her brother. He had always been the smarter one of the two, even if she hated to admit it. While she liked going on adventures and reading about mermaids and treasure hunts, he preferred to watch geeky videos and do his homework.
“It just says a bunch of stuff that doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t even look like English.” Disappointment rang clear in Atlas’ voice.
“Wait! I think I seen some dictionaries earlier,” Atria exclaimed.
She quickly crossed the room to an old cherry wood bookshelf piled full of books and papers of all kinds. At least an inch of dust covered the shelves, and the books looked like time had been eating away at them.
She scanned every shelf until she found the area she was looking for. She pulled down several books, but as she did, an avalanche of dusty volumes fell around her. “Achoo!” She sneezed, sending a cloud of dust into the air.
A distant call startled them. “Are y’all alright up there?” Their grandfather must have heard the commotion.
“We’re okay!” Atlas replied, hurrying across the room. He was going to help Atria but also grab the books she was talking about. She tended to be clumsier than him and he didn’t want something to happen to possibly the only answers they had.
Atlas grabbed the books and carefully laid them out on a cleared off tub lid. Together, the twins tried matching the strange text to any language they could find.
Hours had to have passed and still nothing clicked.
“Gosh, what could it possibly be? It’s not Spanish, or German, or French, or- wait, why do they even have all of these for?” Atlas questioned, clearly agitated at their predicament.
Atria shrugged, her shoulders sagging. “I don’t know,” she muttered. She was hoping to have found something special.
“Hold on,” Atlas interjected, “Maybe Pa will know!” Life was back in Atria’s eyes.
The pair quickly grabbed the small trinket box and everything that was in it before climbing down the rickety ladder, so worn down it was a wonder it hadn’t snapped, and sprinted to the kitchen where their grandfather had been cleaning.
“Pa Charles! Can you tell us what this is?” Atria set down the small box, everything back inside it.
He glanced up from the table he was wiping down, a bright smile on his face.
“Oh boy, what have you two gotten into now?” He laughed, eyes crinkling.
He slowly picked it up and inspected the outside of the tiny chest. “I’m not sure kids, your grandmother always had something like this sitting on her desk, but I never thought anything about it. I think it was a jewelry box she’d had since she was little, but I can’t be for sure. This might have been her sister’s, apparently, they were always swapping belongings. It sure is pretty though.” His smile started to fade.
“Her sister’s?” Atlas questioned. He knew she had a sister, but they never met her and had heard very little about her, so he had mostly forgotten that fact, until now that is.
Their grandfather raised his eyebrows, “Oh yes. She had a twin sister.” His vague reply only piqued the twin’s curiosity more.
“Ooh! Wait but-” Atria began, eyes filled with wonder, but Atlas cut her off by grabbing her arm and giving her a look. He could sense that something was wrong with their grandpa.
After a few-second staring contest, Atria decided that Atlas won and sighed, “That’s cool.” Atria vaguely recalled this information now that it had been mentioned, but she wasn’t sure how she could forget something like that.
She had never been as close to their grandma as Atlas had been and though she tried to hide it, it hurt her. She tried to stick with her grandpa, but he was always doing something boring, like gardening, so she was stuck never having that connection. But now, she may know why.
Despite the strange interaction, the twins were still excited that he had at least seen it before. “Well, we were looking at it and found this little paper inside, do you know what it says?” Atlas asked. “We tried using those dictionaries up in the attic, but we couldn’t find a language that matched.”
But their grandfather was no longer paying attention. Rather, he was lost in thought. Taking a trip down memory lane, he said, “She always loved the moon. When I’d come home every night when we first got married, I’d always find her outside looking at the stars. We spent just about every night stargazing.”
Atlas was excited to figure out the mystery, but hearing his grandfather talk about her made him want to stop and listen. “Did you like looking at the stars too?”
He looked out the window as if remembering something from long ago. “Eh, I was mostly there just to spend time with your grandmother. I would always lay back on the roof while she looked through the telescope telling me all sorts of stories. She was always looking for something out there.”
Atria, eager to solve the mystery, said, “Maybe the paper is a clue! Can you help us read it?”
“Sure, hand it over.” He smiled again, his mind back in the present.
After reading the paper, he rubbed his chin. “Hmm. I think it may be Latin. It’s hard to say for sure though. You can check the bookshelf behind the telescope in the study. We have a Latin dictionary somewhere.
“Okay Pa,” Atria said excitedly as the two took off towards the study.
The floor creaked beneath them as they ran, serving as a reminder of the house’s age. They knew it well, each crack in the walls, every bend in the corridor that led to the study. The space around them seemed to hum, though quietly, as though something waited just behind the curtains of time.
Atlas couldn’t help but feel a kind of reverence for this place. The house was old- older than anything he could fully grasp- but it was also alive with the passage of generations, with the whispered memories of those who had walked its halls before him.
The past three summers, every summer since the one before second grade, Atlas and Atria had spent their break living with their grandparents, but this summer was different.
Their grandma was no longer here, and Atlas had never truly gotten to say goodbye. His grandma was his best friend, and to be told that at the age of ten he would never get to see her again devastated him. Atria had seemed to take it better than him, but he thought it was because she was never as close to her as he was.
This note was a way for him to connect with her again. She may not be able to physically hug him or bake his favorite cookies, but she could be speaking to him another way.
The soft light of dusk spilled through the bay window of the study, casting an eerie light across the otherwise dark room as they entered. The telescope in the corner of the room gleamed as the light of the rising moon reflected off of it, shining a light on a certain book.
Atlas flipped on the light as Atria raced to the bookshelf, instantly knowing that that had to be the one. The air around them seemed to shift as she pulled the book out, almost as if the books were aware of their presence, the weight of their forgotten pages pressing down on the room.
There was something about it- something that made the seemingly simple dictionary feel like a key to something extraordinary. Its worn leather cover, soft from years of handling, felt warm in Atria’s hands as she pulled it from the shelf. A strange but comforting stillness fell over her as her fingers brushed its pages.
Together, Atlas and Atria worked through the Latin text, flipping through the pages, their fingers tracing the unfamiliar words as they wrote down each individual word from the message. “Okay,” Atlas said, his finger following the line of text. “It says, ‘Nocte aestiva, vide ad dextrum’ which means . . .” His brow furrowed as he put the translated words in order, “It means, ‘On a summer night, look to the right.’”
Atria squealed, as she often did when she got excited, “Yay! We figured it out! Oh wait, there’s more.” She spoke as she flipped the paper over.
On the back, another line was written in smaller script: “Stellae geminae.”
“That one’s easy!” Atlas said, a ghost of a smile crossed his face. “It means ‘Twin stars.”
Atlas’ heart raced with excitement. “On a summer night, look to the right… Twin stars.” He looked at his sister, his eyes wide.
“It’s a clue! Granny’s telling us to look for twin stars. And on a summer night, we have to find them!” Atria exclaimed.
Atlas looked at the paper again, his excitement matched hers, but he hesitated. “But what does it mean, ‘look to the right’? Does she want us to find something specific?”
“I don’t know, but it’s definitely something! Let’s tell Pa.”
They rush downstairs to find that their grandfather had moved to the living room. They couldn’t wait to share their discovery.
“Pa!” Atlas exclaimed, breathless with excitement. “We figured it out! We translated the message!”
Their grandfather looked at them, a twinkle in his eye. “Oh? And what does it say?” He asked as Atria handed him the paper. He scanned the Latin lines before smiling in amusement. “’On a summer night, look to the right’and on the back of it, it says ‘Twin stars.’” He chuckled softly. “Sounds like a riddle from an old story your Ma would tell.”
Atria’s face lit up. “So, it’s a clue, right? There’s something out there, Pa. We have to figure it out!”
Their grandfather laughed, shaking his head fondly. “You two have quite the imagination. Well, when it gets dark, you can use the telescope to look for those twin stars.”
“Thanks, Pa! We will!”
The twins couldn’t contain their excitement as they carefully grabbed their grandmother’s old telescope from the study.
Once they made it outside, they hauled the telescope up onto a flat part of the roof using a ladder that was thankfully already set up. Atlas knew that they should probably wait for their grandpa to get out there, but he was too excited to interrupt their adventure.
The air had grown cooler outside, and the stars started to make their quiet appearance. The roof was a little worn, but the view was perfect- a clear expanse of sky stretching endlessly above them.
“Ready?” Atlas asked, setting up the telescope.
“Ready,” Atria replied, her voice full of anticipation.
They adjusted the telescope to the right, just as the message had instructed them. There was something almost magical about the moment- the air was filled with a quiet kind of expectancy, like the world itself was waiting for them to discover something special.
Then, just as they were about to peer through the lens, they heard a creak from the ladder. Their grandfather was climbing up to join them.
“Pa! What are you doing? You might fall!” Atria exclaimed, worried.
Their grandfather grinned, pausing on the ladder. “Oh, don’t worry about me, I’ve climbed this roof more times than I can count. Besides, I want to see this mystery unfold too.” He reached the top with a chuckle.
“You know,” he began, making his way beside them, “your grandmother and I used to come up here every summer. We’d lie on the roof for hours, watching the stars.”
Atria and Atlas looked at each other, wanting to know more.
“What was it like?” Atlas asked.
Their grandfather smiled softly, a nostalgic glint in his eyes. “She always had a story to tell. We’d lie back on the shingles, looking up, and she’d tell me about her favorite constellation or sometimes about her twin sister. They were inseparable when they were young, always in mischief together. She’d tell me about how they would dream up wild adventures and search for stars in the sky, just like you two are doing now.”
The twins listened intently; their hearts full as their grandfather spoke of their grandmother.
“Her stories were mostly funny.” Their grandfather continued, voice tinged with affection. “She was always the one with a wild imagination, and her sister kept her grounded. Those two,” he laughed, “From the stories I heard, they couldn’t have been more different than the sun and the moon. But they completed each other.”
“Where is Grandma’s sister?” Atria asked, suddenly unable to help her curiosity.
After a moment of silence, their grandpa spoke, his voice taking on a different tone as he watched the sky. “I never got the chance to meet her. She went missing when your grandma was young, maybe a little older than you two,” his voice cracked. “I think that’s why she was always looking at the sky, trying to find her sister in them.”
Atlas’ heart panged. He and his sister may argue every day, but he couldn’t imagine living without her and he knows Atria felt the same.
“You know,” their grandpa softly spoke, gaze falling on Atlas, “I think you reminded her of her sister. From what she told me, she was just like you.”
Atria’s heart swelled. It made sense that her grandma would be closer to Atlas if he reminded her of her twin sister, she would probably be the same way if he went missing.
A sudden realization dawned on her. “Wait, the twin stars! That must be them! They must be up there together watching us!”
The twins quickly made their way to the telescope. “Wait just a moment. I think you two forgot something,” their grandpa said as he pulled something out of his pocket.
“A lens! That’s what was in the box with the note.” Atlas said, taking the glass object from his grandpa and carefully attaching it to the telescope.
The twins took turns peering through the lens, stars twinkling with a special kind of magic above them. Then, as if night itself was holding its breath, Atria gasped.
“There!” she said, pointing. “Twin stars!”
Atlas looked through the telescope and saw them- two stars, side by side, shining brighter than the rest. They were nestled among a cluster of other stars, their light shimmering, as if beckoning them closer. “It really is them!”
A mixture of awe and nostalgia rolled over them.
For a moment, time seemed to stand still. The stars twinkled above them, and it felt as if the laughter of their grandmother and grandaunt echoed through the air, just out of reach but comforting at the same time.
“It’s like she’s here with us,” Atlas whispered.
“Yeah,” Atria agreed, her voice soft. “Like she’s watching us from up there, telling us to keep looking.”
The twins sat together on the roof; their eyes fixed on the stars. It was as if the universe had opened up to them, offering a glimpse of something timeless, something their grandmother had always believed in.
For the first time since her passing, they didn’t feel sadness. Instead, they felt her presence and understood her love for the stars, because just like how she found her sister in them, they found her.