Lagoon, Laguna
In today's internet culture, pirated meant taken without permission and Arthur had to admit the description fitted the circumstance quite well. After all, he did "steal" Miss S' voice without her knowing. If she had an inkling what was happening, why didn't she say anything?
Arthur couldn't help ponder the possibility that this might deplete the Siren's Song of its power. He wanted to try it out on someone but there was no one around and he wasn't comfortable with the idea of hypnotizing a random stranger against their will.
Other than that, there was the question of the other three voices gaining the pirated tag. Those were changed after the Whispering added the Siren's Song to its roster. Therefore, the question became, did the Siren's Song add the pirated tag to them or they already had the tag to begin with and the fourth voice only caused them to surface?
There were way too many questions to be answered and even though it was dubbed the tome that contained all the knowledge in the known universes, the Book of Thoth was of no help to Arthur.
The young man complained out of frustration, "Looks like I've received the abridged version. This particular Book of Thoth doesn't care about anything that is not pertinent to the Midnight Emporium and why must it limit its stream of information based on some sort of unknown progression? Giving me all the information upfront would have help greatly in completing these petitions and collecting the treasures." Arthur turned to the Book of Thoth like it could comprehend what he was saying, "Isn't that what you want? So by helping me, you're only helping yourself!"
Arthur expected some sort of response or perhaps thunder smiting him where he stood but there was nothing. If anything, after gaining some perspective, the young man felt dumb for yelling at an inanimate object. Of course, it was not going to answer him. What was he expecting?
In any case, Arthur did feel better after that short vent. He turned back to the task at hand, which was to locate Miss S' horse, which went by the name of K.
The first thing Arthur needed to do was to pinpoint where to start. The world was so big so he needed to narrow down the scope of operation before he could proceed to the next course of action.
Miss S. did not provide him with tons of information but this crucial piece of tit bit Arthur did manage to get from her. The client did say the last place she saw K was at a lagoon and that was also the location where her horse could normally be found.
This presented a problem to Arthur because to his knowledge, the city he resided in had no famous lagoon. To confirm that, Arthur went online and looked up the map of his city, Armana.
Armana was a coastal city and therefore had the possibility of being close to a lagoon but according to Arthur's online research there was none in his vicinity. Perhaps there was one that no one knew about and that would explain why he couldn't come up with any hits online, but if that was the case, how was he going to locate this lagoon?
The nearest known lagoon was a swamp preservation three cities away. Even though Arthur was not 100 percent sure, he doubted the assignment would send him so far away. Furthermore, he didn't have the money to afford the transportation fee if it was true.
Arthur turned his attention back to Armana. His instinct told him the assignment venue could not have been so far away. He pulled up the satellite picture of the city and he looked through them square feet by square feet.
It did not take long for the young man's eyes to get tired from the glare. He was focusing on a small screen surrounded by a dim environment. That was a surefire way to ruin his eye sight.
Speaking of which, Arthur wished the Book of Thoth came with a manual to run this Midnight Emporium but similar to the lagoon situation, it was of no help. It was silent to all of Arthur's inquiries. The young man had to rely on himself to complete this petition.
Arthur realized he would have gone blind before he managed to locate this elusive lagoon if he continued the method of meticulously combing through the satellite map. Therefore, he had to opt for a change in tactic.
The young man thought about it and decided to use the term, lagoon itself as an opening. Arthur was quite surprised at how wide the definition of the word was. Even the scientific community had a difficulty coming to a consensus.
In general, a lagoon is a body of water separated from a larger body of water by a natural barrier. The point of contention was regarding the size of the body of water and its geographical location.
For the first point, the argument was how big the area must be for it to be considered a lagoon; while for the second point, some scientists held the argument that only salt-water body of water could be considered a lagoon but others claimed that lagoons could carry freshwater as well.
Even if Arthur could get a clear definition, it wouldn't have been useful because the scientists' definition of lagoon could be different from how Miss S. would define one.
Arthur sighed at the complexity of it all. He scrolled down the internet article and something caught his attention. It was its etymology or the history of the word.
Lagoon was derived from the Italian term, laguna and laguna could refer to either pond or lake.
'Wait, could this be what Miss S. means? Because I do remember Armana having a lake in its vicinity.' Arthur exited the article and swapped out the keywords he used in the internet searches. Instead of looking for lagoon around Armana, now he was checking for lakes.