Night watch was nearly in effect, and those due for duty trickled towards the temple. Cassidy spotted Cheryl alone, and hastened to catch up with her. “Hey.”
“Oh, hey Cassie.” Cheryl seemed in a good mood, and glad enough to see Cassidy.
“I just wanted to fill you in a bit about drama. I know I was a little convoluted.” Cassidy said.
“Kay...”
“Well, I just wanted to say that of all the little junk floating around, none of it’s negative. Like no backstabbing, or fighting, or spiteful garbage, y’know? Not that I’ve seen, at any rate. Keeping in mind I’m pretty new here too.”
Cheryl shrugged. “Good to know, I guess.. so.. what kind of stuff is it?”
Cassidy sighed. Was the sunset making Cheryl look so good, or was it the other way around? “Well, some good, some funny, some awkward, some sad… “ She sighed, debating telling her more. Maybe a well concealed example that would let her vent a little.
“I see.” Cheryl said in a relaxed, but cheerful way. That was all she needed. That was enough for now.
Cassidy looked forward, and could make out Jim waiting by their south doorway, the previous shift still on guard. “I have a little bit of sad drama to take part in tonight.”
Cheryl saw where Cassidy was looking, and read Jim’s body language. “Uh…. What, are you breaking up with him or something?”
Cassidy chuckled a little. Well, it seemed that she wasn’t the only lesbian around with zero gaydar. “No, no, we’re definitely not each other’s types. I’d explain, but…. It’s not really my place to say.”
“Gotcha. Well, whatever it is, good luck, I guess…!” With that, Cheryl parted paths towards the other south door, where she was assigned tonight. Cassidy waved to her, and climbed the stairs towards Jim and the previous shift. Ohhh kay. Here we go.
Jim and Cassidy engaged people with idle conversion until the shift change was complete. They then stood for a bit, silently. Jim’s tension was visible, and he finally brought up the impending topic.
“So.” He huffed a sort of sigh. “I saw you dragged Karl away. Did you get to info-digging?”
“Yeah.” Cassidy lowered her head. She’d said enough.
Jim clenched his jaw, and turned his head to look out across the ruins. A more frustrated sigh escaped him, then after a moment, he snapped to himself. “Damn it!”
Cassidy could see his grip on his spear trembling. “Just relax, Jim. He doesn’t even know. At least you can still be friends.”
This seeped into Jim’s thoughts, but didn’t help much. “It’s not fucking fair.” He spoke very softly, but with anger. “Not fucking fair. We connect, y’know?” He turned his head to look at Cassidy with an expression that seemed to be searching for a better answer.
“Yeah. Yeah, I know. I’ve been there.” Cassidy watched Jim shift uncomfortably. It made her wish she’d saved the info for the end of the shift, but that would have been torture. She also wished there was a bar nearby. She could get him drunk, maybe get it out of his system. Ehh, that never really works. “It’s crap like this... why I kind of have my guidelines… not crushing on someone before I know if it’s a valid … uh... option.”
“Does it work?” Jim sounded like he was ready to prescribe to a new methodology.
Cassidy thought about her situation with Cheryl. Not exactly a textbook case for her policy, since Cassidy wasn’t looking for a relationship right now. “Meh. It’s… a far from perfect system.”
Jim managed a smirk. “Aw, hell.”
“Yup.”
Jim took a deep breath, still looking sorrowful. “No cookies for Jim this time, huh?”
“Guess not. But you know, there’s a lotta guys here, y’know? Statistically, ten percent of em are going to be gay.”
Jim smirked. “Well, there’s one gay guy I know for sure, who’s really nice..”
Cassidy tilted her head. “And..?”
“He’s about fifteen years older than me, and married.”
“Ah.”
“The thing is, I wasn’t just out looking for ‘someone’… I fell for Karl.”
“Ah. Well... I got an idea that might help you get over him.”
“Eh?”
“Every time you think of him, just graphically imagine a hot karl.”
“Gawwd, Cass!”
“You’ll never be able to look at him the same anyway, so why not picture him as a ridiculous turn-off?”
Jim grimaced. “I’ll take that into consideration.”
~~~~~
:::C /15
~~~~~
Days passed like sand in the lightest of breeze. Constant, quiet, bringing changes, but ultimately unchanging.
That’s the way it normally was, at least. But now a decided change was coming, and rumors filtered around the base until they were confirmed.
“Splendid.” Cassidy sarcastically speculated, during yet another idle chat in the barracks. “Isn’t that exactly what we all wanted? Overweight men in Hawaiian shirts and speedos?”
“Oh, it won’t be that bad,” Cheryl joked soothingly, “We’ll enforce a dress code. Minimum khaki shorts, just above the knee, or lower.” It slipped her attention that her own off-duty shorts violated her proposed mandate by a considerable length. No one complained, least of all Cassidy.
“As long as the topic of tourism has come up,” Cipriana said, closing her book, “Marcus has asked me to see if anyone would want to volunteer for tour guide duty. The aim is to have no one having to do more than one tour a day. This might change in time, depending on how things go, but at this point, it’s hard to say.”
Cassidy didn’t much like the sounds of it, but Cheryl, Wanda, Maxine, and a couple of the others in the room seemed very attentive. Cipriana continued.
“We’re thinking a tour group would have a leader, who would have notes, and talk about the various sights, and a rear guard who would stick to the back and make sure no tourists wander off, or get left behind. That aside, the usual guard watch stations will of course be manned as always. Marcus is not surprisingly first in line to be a tour leader.“ That stood to reason. Another chance to spin the yarn of the statue’s ghost.
“Can I be one too?” Cheryl chirped up with a raised hand. “I know I’m the rookie, but I think I’m kind of a people person.. and if I have notes anyway, like you said… it sounds easy and fun!”
“Certainly.” Cipriana said, scribbling a note.
Bah. “I guess I can be one of those rear guards, if there’s no public speaking or lecturing involved.” Cassidy’s voice made it unintentionally clear that she was less than wild about it.
“Very well.” Cipriana jotted it down. “Would you like to be Cheryl’s partner?”
Cassidy examined Cipriana’s expression for any double-meaning. She couldn’t tell, but the implication of ‘Cheryl’s partner’ had driven Wanda to bite her lips, and stare innocently at the ceiling. Cassidy made a mental note to stick an elbow in her ribs later.
Cassidy responded. “Sure, Cip, that’s cool.”
Unnoticed by most, Wanda made a comic little face that seemed to say “Oh, I bet that’s cool, Cass!” Yeah. Maybe Wanda needed a kick to the shin instead.
There were also changes in the landscaping between the helipad and the temple. Tasteful wooden signs were planted along the paths with directions, and little write-ups about the desert, some of the more prominent buildings, and the ever-humble aeki. - With a cute illustration, too.
One afternoon, the grapevine told of something big being installed in the ground. Cassidy idly followed the other lookie-loos and ended up at a large, round junction in the ruins’ streets. The junction was smaller than the square that Wanda exercised in, but not by much.
The new addition was a tree. Well, no. A stump. With all its roots being carefully planted in the ground. The two metre wide stump was carved into a likeness of the temple statue’s head. It was very well done. Not nearly as detailed (nor as big) as the statue itself, but st
ill remarkable. To discourage tourists from touching, a half-metre high ‘barricade’ was also to be arranged in a circle around the stump, made from natural stones.
“Hey, I think I’ve seen this before..” Cassidy mumbled to herself.
Wanda popped up as an informed Aguei, raised by a traditionalist mother. “Beast of Yute. It’s like a hundred and fifty years old. It’s been retouched and preserved, and was the masterpiece of… uh, I forget his name now. It was in a museum on the west coast for like the last forty years, and Armil decided it could be moved here for the tourists.”
The Beast of Yute was probably the best known Aguei stump. It was carved to look just like the statue’s head.
Most traditional carved stumps stay in the ground where the tree had grown, but some become popular enough to be dug up (very carefully), and put on display elsewhere, always planted wherever they went with more care than one would expect for even a living tree. Most carved stumps are based on animals portrayed as realistically as the artist is able, but in recent decades, less traditional designs have become acceptable as well.
Cassidy studied the stump for a moment, comparing it in her mind to the statue. The statue’s head was bigger, but this was no small stump; about a two metres across. “Yeah, yeah, I think I saw it in a documentary or something. Well, you seem to know a lot about it, Wanda.”
“Well of course. I read the sign they’re going to install here later. It’s laying on the ground over there.”
Cassidy levied a dull glare at Wanda. “Dork.”
“What?”
~~~
Jim wandered into the mess looking for a snack before night shift. The mess was in one of the day’s regular lulls, a while after dinner cleanup. It wasn’t a shock to see someone else there, but it was a bit of a belly drop to find Karl.
Jim would have loved a chance for a quiet talk with Karl before. But now it was just depressing. “Hey, Karl.” Stay cool, don’t be a freak.
“Oh! Hey Jim.” Karl turned around, chomping down on a cookie. “Say, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you when I got a chance away from the others…”
Jim’s mind went wild. Something Karl wanted to talk about alone? Analyze the way he said it! It was casual, so it can’t be bad. Stop thinking and say something.
Jim attempted to speak in a tone that would fit ‘calm-casual’ or ‘take me now’. “Oh…? Ask away.”
Karl smirked. “I finally found out it was you or your little buddy Cass, who’s to blame for me reliving my high-school nightmare.”
“High-school n…” Jim sighed, hung his head in shame, and muttered, “Hot Karl.”
“Hot Karl!! Yes indeed. I get dumb jokes made at me at least three times a week now, and I finally traced it back to you two.”
“Aw, shit man, I’m sorry.”
Karl signed. “Please don’t say 'shit'.”
“It was Cass. She described you as ‘hot’ in the sexy way, and she accidentally stumbled on ‘hot Karl’ without knowing what it was, and then things… well, alright, it was both our fault, I guess. Yay teamwork.”
“Wait a second, Cassidy said I was hot? She’s gay! Well, I guess that doesn’t mean she can’t have an opinion on a guy’s hot-ness…”
Jim sighed, and leaned against the fridge, staring at the floor. “It’s pointless now, but… I may as well come clean.”
“This better not be leading to a shit joke, Jim.”
Jim let out a tired sigh, and slid down until he was sitting on the floor. “Dude, seriously. This isn’t easy, I…”
“Dude!” Karl interrupted to stop Jim. He smirked sadly and shook his head. “Jim, I know. I’ve known for a long time.”
“Really?” Jim chuckled at himself. “Am I that transparent?”
“I guess so.”
“And you’re not…?”
Karl started walking into the hall. “Not even slightly. Women. Yum.”
“Hrm.” Jim sighed, “So… what… are we cool?”
Unseen down the hall, Karl’s voice came back. “Hey man, we’re bros!”
Jim leaned against the fridge, looking at the ground again. He swallowed hard, whispered, “Jerk.” and loved Karl all the more.
~~~
Cheryl was grinning like a child. Marcus has led the first tour a couple days ago, but now it was her turn, and the excitement was threatening to turn her outright giddy.
The large civilian grade passenger helicopter was settling onto the pad. “Cheryl, you’re bouncing.” Cassidy said just loud enough to be heard over the chopper.
“Am not!” She said, bouncing slightly. Only then did she realize that Cassidy was right, so she stopped and turned to look at Cassidy. “Like I said, I am not.”
“Mmhm.”
The thirty member tour group was known to be mostly children, between the ages of five and ten. Apparently, that was Cheryl’s idea of a party.
The chopper powered down. Adults might not mind being blown around by the chopper’s wake turbulence, but the little ones might not do so well, especially in the strong wake of such a big, dual-rotor chopper. As it was, Cassidy and Cheryl had to stand further back than they normally would.
A little face pressed up against one of the windows, and the little boy waved. That was too much for Cheryl to contain. She hopped a few times, waving back. Moments later, most of the windows were filled with little faces.
Cassidy had been standing there with her spear, but she couldn’t just ignore all the little ones. She cracked a bit of a smile and waved with her free hand.
The turbulence was almost gone; the rotors were considerably slowed. Cassidy waved at the pilot and gave a thumbs up. Soon, the door opened, and an adult member of the group began herding out the kids, and a few other adults came out as well. The head of the group was evidently the class teacher, and lined the kids up for a headcount. Cassidy wondered what kind of rich school sent a class on a field trip that involved a huge chopper. Despite the turbulence being all but gone, everyone got a light dusting of sand anyway. It seemed to be an inescapable part of arrival.
“Now you all listen to what your guides tell you, alright?” The teacher turned to Cheryl and Cassidy, and gestured that it was their turn.
Cheryl popped into action. “Hey kids!” She waved again, getting a battery of little return waves. “Was the helicopter ride fun?”
“Yeah!” was the general gist of the shouts that came back.
“Were you being good for your teacher?” Cheryl asked.
“Yeaaah.”
“I was!”
“Frankie picked his nose and w-“
“Did not!”
“Okay, Okay, is it safe to say you were good enough?”
“Yup!”
“Yeah.”
“Mostly.”
“-wiped it on the seat.”
“Well, you mostly good kids, first let me welcome you to the Yute desert! My name is Cheryl, and my friend with the spear here is Cassidy.”
“Hey.” Cassidy said with an obligatory but minimalistic wave.
“Alright gang, lets head for our first stop, and we’re going to end up at the big temple you can see over there. If there’s any questions, feel free to ask!” Cheryl headed down the path, and Cassidy waved everyone along. “After you... after you…”
One little boy with dark sunken eyes, like you see in little boys sometimes, walked up to Cassidy and looked her up and down. “You kill people with that stick?”
“Wha?” Cassidy looked up at the spear head. “Heh, no. It would be possible though, it’s plenty sharp.”
“Can I see?”
“Cody…!” One of the adults stepped in. “I’m sorry about him, miss. Curiosity and all that.”
“Nah, nah,” Cassidy said, “curiosity’s a good thing.” She looked back towards Cody. “But I probably shouldn’t let you play with it. Like I said, it is sharp.”
“What if I just-“
“Codyyy….”
“Oh, ok, fine.�
� Cody and the adult tagged onto the tail of the group, and Cassidy took up the rear guard. Maybe Cheryl had it right, this could be fun after all. Up ahead, she could hear Cheryl laughing and talking with a couple kids.
As they walked, Cassidy got almost as many comments and questions as Cheryl.
“I saw an aeki! Are you sure they don’t bite?”
“I’ve held them in my hand many times, I’ve never been bitten.”
“Hm. An iguana bit me once.”
“Well, aeki aren’t iguanas.”
“I think an iguana could beat up an aeki.”
“Maybe, but the aeki could run up a wall and get away.”
“Really?”
“Yup.”
“Can iguanas run up walls?”
“I think they’re a bit heavy for that. I dunno for sure, kid.”
“I’ll look it up later.”
“Good idea.”
“Then I’ll email you so you know too.”
“Good.”
“And if they can, then you can warn the aeki.”
“Right.”
“These rocks used to be a building?”
“Yep, a long, long time ago.”
“Like before I was born?!”
“Like before I was born! Hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of years ago!”
“Oh my god, how old ARE you?!”
Yup, this was officially fun. Cassidy hoped all the tour groups to come would be as entertaining.
The Aeki bulletin sign was interesting to them, and there was an actual aeki sighting as well, but the ruins themselves weren’t too interesting to the kids on the whole. Then they came to the stump.
“What do you think he eats?” Cheryl asked the group after reading the standard notes.
The kids mumbled among themselves, and one piped up. “It used to be a tree. It eats dirt and sunlight.” Smart alec.
Another child who was more in the spirit Cheryl intended stood as close as she could without stepping onto the rock border. She peered at the two metre wide beast’s head. “I think…I could be wrong.. but I think I could fit in its mouth. Does it eat kids?”
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