Her face was contorted in a confused scowl, and her silver eyes squinted as she peered at the ancient scroll. This simply doesn’t make sense, she thought. Lailah looked up at the tree, then back down at the page. “Hmm,” she grunted. “Hey, Deszi, can you come look at this?” she called.
Deszi got out of her blanket by the fire and sulked over to where Lailah was standing. “What,” she said. Not a question, a simple, unhappy statement.
“This tree is wrong. It should look like this,” Lailah gestured to the page, “but it looks like that,” she pointed at the tree.
“Let me see.” Deszi snatched the parchment from Lailah’s long, thin hands. She also could not tell what was up with the tree. “Ugh, I hate doing this,” she mumbled. Deszi pinned the page to the tree and pressed her hands against it, saying something that sounded like incantations.
Lailah stared at Deszi, puzzled. What the heck is she doing? she thought.
“It’s that tree,” Deszi said, handing the page back to Lailah. “Dig there.”