The next morning those two would find themselves in a shy mess, or maybe it was perhaps just Maka and Soul was just watching her far too closely with those drowsy eyes.
Regardless, last night became unspoken of as they make their way down the hallway to the main room. The only trace of the cuddling was they walked a bit closer, but that could always be brushed off as a meister and weapon thing. Soul's drowsiness wears off pretty quickly as the once very formal living room and connected dining hall looked like a far worse case in daylight of what was vandalized last night by the kishin. However, this was not made Soul feel awful, his family was loaded; yet no form of money could get what they experienced last night out of their memories.
The rope marks, where it was rough on the skin of their wrists, were still red. Still visible. This is what makes him decide to not sit at the table for breakfast, but to grab a plate and head into the trashed living room to examine the pillars.
Maka in close pursuit, a piece of bacon unceremoniously hanging halfway out of her mouth.
The quicker all this shit and ruckus went away the better, and Soul would vow to never see the faces of his family again unless they get in more trouble like this. As he asks Maka to write down what she sees on the pillar closest to the window, he shovels in a mouthful of bread and then writes down various things he sees.
Maka's paper looked like a Latin assignment.
Soul's paper looked like Latin on acid, with bonus cave man figures.
"Soul what the hell are you looking at?" Maka questions, her assignment complete.
Soul appears almost startled from the question but glances at her then focuses to his paper, "Okay, I can't explain," he points to a very caveman like section of the paper, "This, but," His long finger slides up to the chicken scratch, "That's cuneiform. This was prior to the use of the Roman alphabet going wayyy back."
Maka nods before continuing, "Do you understand what its saying?"
Soul stares at it, chewing on his lower lip and Maka finds it all the more harder to move her line of sight away from his face as he concludes, "I have no idea. I don't understand the different forms and styles either. I don't think some of these are even Latin, just a bunch of obsolete languages."
The mind cog wheels of Maka's mind begin to turn. She looks at the structure of his paper before realizing each different change in font or shape of the languages were progressing from pictures at the bottom of the page, to the more familiar looking Roman alphabet at the very top. The fact fully processing in her head she blurts out,
"It's a time line Soul."
He cocks his head to the side, indicating for her to explain.
"Don't look at the words for their meaning, just stand back and look at them. Each form of writing must come from a different time period, ne?" She questions and he nods.
She goes on to explain her thoughts about how these might be forms of marking when something occurred, perhaps the wavelength reviving in the ruins.
"If my hypothesis is correct, it's like a Rosetta stone and a Google calendar just starting four thousand years ago on the most reliable thing they had—stone. Each of these languages probably has similar, almost exact instructions, just different dates."
Soul read some of what he could understand, and was surprised to see dates of,
* "M. Messala et M. Pisone consilibus."
There were several like this, and Soul created some quick translations for Maka with the more complicated grammatical structures. Luckily Soul hasn't fainted yet from looking at these, but his balance still wavered. Soul had to lean against Maka as a result from said balance issues, making some of the family members begin to think "meister" was code word for his "puella."
Aka his girl(friend.)
As this goes on, Maka is mindlessly staring at the translation. In truth she was actually trying to make sense of how his balance is being effected. Broca's Area and Wernicke's Area are the regions of the brain that deal with writing and comprehension. Now, according to her college studies, those areas are no where fucking close to regions that control balance. She then takes into the consideration the oddity of her partner.
His genes don't make sense either, from the color of hair, to color of eyes, to what his eyes can actually see, to something interconnected with him on a spiritual level none of it makes no fucking sense to her.
She thought through science and math formulas, and smacked her head into texts books if she couldn't.
The pigtailed beauty watches as her very handsome and grown partner sits criss-cross applesauce on the ground, translating out more of what she wrote not even five minutes ago. She would've done it herself: the words looked all pretty familiar at the part he was at, yet she was still under the watchful eye of the Evans family. The same family which was still unaware of her understanding with Latin. Her thoughts come to a halt as Soul's eyebrows crease together. This action is followed by a head scratch and he speaks,
"This is poetry... okay, maybe a song, but these are lyrics at the very least, and not cords or notes like I need."
Now she's the one who cocks her head to the side, and pulls her notebook back over to herself. She reads what he wrote, and maybe it's second nature for him to comprehend it, but as she looks at his translation its very rugged, some of the words didn't make sense. Give or take that the pillars are worn so she could have and probably did, write an incorrect word. Yet she had a strange feeling it didn't matter. If it was poetry, she has been trained for years to do a quick analysis of the structure of poems.
As she marks out where the stressed and unstressed syllable are, she hums the pattern.
Meanwhile as Soul stares at her making strange symbols over certain letters on the paper and writing words like, "symbolism" next to certain words he all of a sudden hears... himself? He had no other way to describe it, and he had no idea what it was coming from. He just felt his existence, his whole being being represented in something he was hearing. He voices this to Maka and just like it started, it stopped out of the blue.
"It stopped!" he exclaims, posture straight and alert.
"Well yeah, I stopped humming if that's what you were getting at." She responds, looking up from her work to a very bewildered Soul who further questions,
"What did you just hum? ...Can you recall that?"
She holds up the notebook, and points to the marks she's making over some points in the poem, explaining she was just humming the rhythm of each line. Soul honestly could not understand a single thing on that page that she added. He did not show up for English often, even in college, so he just made her hum it again—although her face was a bit flushed—and he created his own scribbled sheet music.
Wes shows up behind the two on he floor, and mentions that the tune is very odd but he liked it a lot. More voices of approval occurs from otherwise nearby, although many state its not their usual taste. Maka and Soul take turns explaining how they figured it out, before a question from Wes arises about how they would use it in the runes.
They explain last night's adventure into the ruins, and Wes had an odd understanding of what Soul was talking about from Maka's perspective. Everyone was fairly interested within the room, yet Wes was the only one who could shoot questions back at Soul. She learns a bit later they both explored the ruins as children together.
the two brothers in their conversation made sense of some of the mystery on how to get to the heart of the mountain. There are six rooms one would have to go through to get to such a place, and that one main room is probably where majority of the activity is occurring and where they close it.
"Brother can you translate the rest of the pillars as Maka and I get ready?" Soul asks after a short silence falls between them.
"Of course." The taller replica replies.
Soul and Maka only take a short period of time to dress into their usual combat attire, and by that time Wes has finished with the pillars. He translated much more than he had to, he included the dates and what not, and did the analysis that Maka did then turned the pattern into sheet music for Soul. Yet for an unknown reason, Soul elects to only open one dome at a time.
So Soul only grabs one sheet they translated and intended unlock the first room then come back to grab another.
A short flight, and a couple of kishin kills later they are wandering to the same room as last night. Soul halts Maka before the entrance, and instructs for him to be the only one to go in. She braces herself as she catches his body while the glowing purple inscriptions on the walls brighten for just a moment. The same piano as before forms in the room.
Soul's black room piano, but cracked with gold and Latin inscriptions covering it entirely.
She hears the melody, but nothing happens.
She hears a piece of Soul's personal improvised music, similar to last night, and nothing happens again.
Maka makes a poor move of choice, as her mind convinces her if she also stepped into the room she could help. As a second body falls to the floor, it's in vain as neither didn't translate the other poems so they couldn't recall any of them. Maka blacks out for a few seconds before waking up in the Soul's black room. No demon present, and the curtains that usually frame the pitch black infinity of Soul's mind, it frames the walls of the room. The checkered floor remains the only part of the familiar landscape unaltered.
Soul is present at the piano, not wearing his usual tux, hands on his head, and body tense.
"Maka don't tell me you came in here. I better be speaking to no one."
"I had the sudden urge to, don't blame me."
* "M. Messala et M. Pisone consilibus." Romans dated years by which two people were consuls that year. Consuls are basically two presidents, and they are elected every year. This is often translated as, "in the consulship of M. Messala and M. Piso," aka 61 BCE. :D