I wondered why you mentioned Hindsight, and then I realised that you solemnly promised to get to it within a week... you might have a few hours left still :-D
Finding a fit There were new scratch marks in the administration building, as I'd decided to call it in my head, and while I might have ignored them myself Ben saw them too and insisted that we check them out. A sense of foreboding settled on me, and when Jimmy noted that we seemed to be heading to the sealed up door I just nodded wishing that I hadn't been expecting it. The floor outside the sealed door was torn up. Not just scratched, but practically ploughed; the stone had deep parallel grooves in it, deeper than the second knuckle on my middle finger and there was rock crumbs and dust everywhere. The grooves stretched the length of a man's height either side of the door, and further out the grooves were shallower but criss-crossed. "Were they digging?" asked Jimmy, standing away from the door and staring at the floor like he'd never seen one before. "More like dancing," said Ben in a gruff voice, and despite my sense of dread I laughed at that. "They haven't touched the door itself though." He was right, the door was unscathed and unscratched, and even when I went and got the key for it and opened it up again the stone on the other side was undamaged as well. I locked the door firmly and wondered if it wouldn't be sensible to drop the key off the docks and into the river and let it be washed away to somewhere where no-one could know what it was used for. "Let's go find a fit for this key," I said firmly, holding up the new one. "There's nothing here but more mysteries." I didn't add it, but I thought it: I really wanted to get out of this place. To my mind, there was only us left to be hunted now, and I'd just seen what the results of such a hunt was. For the first time in a little while a surge of anger rose up that the people of Elizabethtown had tricked Jimmy and us into coming here, presumably to distract these hooting creatures while they looted Eldorado. And then I wondered how many times in the past they'd done this. The key-room was quiet and well-lit and when we looked out of the windows we saw why; though the clouds were still gathering and looking blacker and blacker the sun was shining through a narrowing gap in them and the gold-plated buildings of the city were glowing as they reflected the sunlight back. It was actually beautiful and for a moment I wondered why we didn't do more of this. And then I remembered that there would always be people who would peel the gold off and sell it. There were three spaces on the map that didn't seem to have a key associated with them, though I noticed again that some hooks held more than one key. After a moment I decided to ignore that: if the Elizabethtown folk had taken one key they'd have taken them all in order to keep their looting orderly and to keep track of where they'd been. At least, that's what I would have done. "There's a key here, too," said Jimmy. I didn't look up as I was trying to see if there were any clues in the three gaps as to which key I had. It didn't seem hopeful. "I suppose that means it was built before things went bad," said Ben. That sounded ominous, so I looked up. The pair of them were examining the darkest part of the map, the section where we thought the hooting creatures were nesting, or lived, or whatever.
2 comments:
I wondered why you mentioned Hindsight, and then I realised that you solemnly promised to get to it within a week... you might have a few hours left still :-D
Finding a fit
There were new scratch marks in the administration building, as I'd decided to call it in my head, and while I might have ignored them myself Ben saw them too and insisted that we check them out. A sense of foreboding settled on me, and when Jimmy noted that we seemed to be heading to the sealed up door I just nodded wishing that I hadn't been expecting it.
The floor outside the sealed door was torn up. Not just scratched, but practically ploughed; the stone had deep parallel grooves in it, deeper than the second knuckle on my middle finger and there was rock crumbs and dust everywhere. The grooves stretched the length of a man's height either side of the door, and further out the grooves were shallower but criss-crossed.
"Were they digging?" asked Jimmy, standing away from the door and staring at the floor like he'd never seen one before.
"More like dancing," said Ben in a gruff voice, and despite my sense of dread I laughed at that. "They haven't touched the door itself though."
He was right, the door was unscathed and unscratched, and even when I went and got the key for it and opened it up again the stone on the other side was undamaged as well. I locked the door firmly and wondered if it wouldn't be sensible to drop the key off the docks and into the river and let it be washed away to somewhere where no-one could know what it was used for.
"Let's go find a fit for this key," I said firmly, holding up the new one. "There's nothing here but more mysteries." I didn't add it, but I thought it: I really wanted to get out of this place. To my mind, there was only us left to be hunted now, and I'd just seen what the results of such a hunt was. For the first time in a little while a surge of anger rose up that the people of Elizabethtown had tricked Jimmy and us into coming here, presumably to distract these hooting creatures while they looted Eldorado. And then I wondered how many times in the past they'd done this.
The key-room was quiet and well-lit and when we looked out of the windows we saw why; though the clouds were still gathering and looking blacker and blacker the sun was shining through a narrowing gap in them and the gold-plated buildings of the city were glowing as they reflected the sunlight back. It was actually beautiful and for a moment I wondered why we didn't do more of this. And then I remembered that there would always be people who would peel the gold off and sell it.
There were three spaces on the map that didn't seem to have a key associated with them, though I noticed again that some hooks held more than one key. After a moment I decided to ignore that: if the Elizabethtown folk had taken one key they'd have taken them all in order to keep their looting orderly and to keep track of where they'd been. At least, that's what I would have done.
"There's a key here, too," said Jimmy. I didn't look up as I was trying to see if there were any clues in the three gaps as to which key I had. It didn't seem hopeful.
"I suppose that means it was built before things went bad," said Ben. That sounded ominous, so I looked up. The pair of them were examining the darkest part of the map, the section where we thought the hooting creatures were nesting, or lived, or whatever.
Greg - er, yeah. About that within the week thing... *cough*
That sealed door, huh? I wonder if we'll ever discover what waits behind it. Best we don't, obviously, but still hard to let go of the curiosity.
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