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Natch!41Chapter 4: Squirreled AwayFate and Destiny had been secluded in the Way Back WhenArchives for most of the morning. So few souls had been born inthe Far South interior for so long that most of the records%u2014everything but the coastline series%u2014had long ago been moved tothe Annex. Rather than cart them over%u2014a cumbersome task thatwould only have to be repeated after the two completed theirresearch%u2014Keeper had suggested that Fate and Destiny sortthrough them over there. He kept an Annex processing officethat they could use for the duration. It was unlikely that anyoneelse would need to access the records. Also, the Annex office hadthe only working Itzibitz Reader, which would be necessary forexamining many of the older documents. The Itzibitz had longago been replaced when Deenah went digitalic, but many of theFar South documents predated the change and had never beenupdated. Fate was initially cool to the suggestion, but they gavein to Destiny%u2019s pleading. Destiny was keen to get behind theantique Itzibitz. She viewed it as a kind of magical window intoan undiscovered world. %u201cWho knows what we%u2019ll unearth?%u201d shespouted with a wide smile and sparkling zeal in her eyes. Fateconsented, perhaps still exhaling from her narrow escape fromthe reconnoiter.The Annex was staffed almost entirely by squirrels and goldenretrievers. The squirrels brought energy and a natural propensityfor storing things away. The retrievers brought their noses andthe natural inclination to, well, retrieve. The two had workedtogether in complementary harmony for eons.Fate wasn%u2019t nuts about being around all those squirrels, butthey had to admit, those furry nutjobs kept the place runningsmoothly. They climbed and leapt from one shelf to another tolocate requested materials, and then dropped them down to