Hopefully this version works a little better.
Sophie and Lok were in the library studying. In other words, Sophie was studying. Lok and Cherit were playing catch – with the book Lok was supposed to be reading.
Distracted by the noise, Sophie looked up and snapped, "Lok! What are you doing?" Startled, Lok missed the book, and it landed, open, on his head. He grinned sheepishly, as Cherit flew down to hide behind Lok. "And you!" Sophie rounded on Cherit, "how can you condone let alone participate in such behavior!?"
"Hey Sophie," Lok interrupted before Cherit could respond. "What's this?" He was frowning at a page in the book that had just fallen on his head. Sophie leaned over to look at it, and Cherit flew around to land on the table for a better view. It was a picture of a broken clay tablet with wedge-shaped markings on it. It had no caption.
"Is there anything about it on the page before or after?" Sophie asked, reaching to take the book from Lok.
"Hey! I can't answer your question if you grab the book away before I get a chance to look!"
"Who said I was asking you?" Sophie stared at the picture for a second, and then flipped through the book. "That's strange," she murmured. "It appears to be cuneiform, but this book isn't about Sumer, it's about healing spells. There must be a connection somewhere." She began frantically searching for other books. She paused for second, looked at Lok, and said, "Well? Don't just stand there! Look "
"What's so important about it, Sophie?" Lok asked as he retrieved the book, and returned to the table. "It's just a picture in a book. It doesn't even look like it was originally in the book to begin with."
"What?" Sophie stopped searching, and looked up a Lok, startled.
"You didn't notice? It was pasted in -- a long time ago, by the look of the glue."
Sure enough, there tiny beads of yellow peeping out from the edge of the page. "I wonder what the picture is covering." She stared at the glue pensively. "There must be a spell to remove it."
"SEPARATE!" The power-laced word caused the glue to disappear and the picture to fall away from the page it had been attached to, revealing the words beneath. "Like that?" A smug voice asked.
"Zahlia!" The three occupants of the room cried out all at the same time, with varying degrees of pleasure (or lack thereof) in their tones.
"When did you get back?" Lok asked, surprised but delighted.
"A few minutes ago," Zahlia drawled in her usual "casual" voice. "Is Dante around?"
"Dante's out on an errand," Cherit squeaked from his position on Lok's shoulder.
"Well, I guess I'll just have to wait for him then. What have you got there?" Zahlia directed the question at Sophie, who had been glaring at her ever since she had upstaged Sophie with her timely spell.
"I don't know yet," Sophie snapped. The four of them all leaned in to look at the book. "It's about the Epic of Gilgamesh. The author claims that it actually happened. Or at least a similar event, altered in legend."
"Hey! We had to read that in school didn't we? That was the one with the scorpion-people, and the giant bull. I think. Does he really say the whole thing actually happened? I can't read it from here." Lok frowned at the book.
"The author is talking about Gilgamesh's quest for immortality, the rest of the story is apparently all coded directions. He claims he read the entire story, even the lines that are missing from the standard version. The author must have made it up. The Epic was pieced together from fragments of tablets. There's no way he could actually know what the missing parts said."
"He could have, possibly." Cherit had flown down to the table top to get a better look at the book they were poring over. "One complete set was found, but those were broken right after they were unearthed."
"Maybe someone copied down what they said before they were broken!" Lok looked excited. "Maybe this part of the epic is actually a description of how to find some kind of powerful healing spell or something!"
"Do you know how slim the likely-hood of that happening is, Lok? The idea that a person managed to copy an unknown language accurately in such a short amount of time is ludicrous! The story is divided into eleven tablets!"
"But what if…" Sophie and Lok were so caught up in their argument that they didn't notice a troubled-looking Zahlia sneak out of the room. Cherit looked from Zahlia's retreating back, to Lok and Sophie – who were still arguing— then followed Zahlia out of the room.