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Apologies for the blatantly ripped-off title! 😉
————————————Deep in the Amazonian jungle, a lone archaeologist muttered to herself. Dr. Florida Crane was cutting a path through the dense foliage with a machete.
"Jerks," she said. "I know I'm right. I just know it." She walked on for a couple more minutes, hacking things out of her way, stepping over tree roots and keeping a sharp look-out for snakes. Then Dr. Crane found a clearing and stopped. She wiped the sweat from her forehead, brushed a loose hair out of her face and set her backpack on the ground.
Say "female archaeologist" these days and most people think of Lara Croft, the stick-thin balloon-breasted heroine of the Tomb Raider videogames. 26-year-old Florida Crane is almost the exact opposite. She stands at a modest five feet tall, with straggly, greasy black hair tied in a short ponytail. Her eyes are brown and obscured by thick glasses, which she constantly has to push up her small nose. This isn't her first work in the field; she has a 'working' level of fitness but is nothing like the lithe Amazon of Tomb Raider: there are pockets of fat in various places on her body. Despite this, her breasts are A-cups. At the moment, she's wearing a sweat-soaked white T-shirt and khaki trousers. The outfit is not designed to blend into the background but she is at least cooler than she would have been in proper camouflage.
Dr. Crane leaned over her backpack, rummaging around inside it for water and her map. She remembered that getting to a clearing meant she was close but couldn't remember how to proceed. The young woman pulled a water bottle out and started to drain it. She reasoned that the more she drank, the lighter her backpack would be, so gulped the last of the water and put the bottle back. The young archaeologist then brought out her map. She pushed her glasses up her nose and peered at the markings on the paper. She found the clearing she was in.
"Turn to the north and walk forward forty paces. You will find what you are looking for," she read and then sighed. The translation of the document that her fellow academics had dismissed as a "comic-book treasure map" had taken up the last six years of her life. There was no way that Florida Crane was going to leave the expedition to anyone else. With the money left from her research grant, she had paid for a small team of undergraduates to join her. However, it soon became apparent that they were only in it for money and prestige. They had abandoned their professor a day ago. She had taken the necessary supplies, left the rest for her 'team' to get back to civilisation and carried on alone.
Sighing once more, Florida put the map back in her backpack and drew out a compass. She found north, picked up her backpack and began counting paces. Her mood changed from one of sullen anger to mounting hope. She even began to smile. "… twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five…" She strode more and more confidently towards her goal, whatever it was. The weather-beaten and visibly ancient scroll she had translated ended with those enigmatic words: "You will find what you are looking for." They had haunted Florida's dreams ever since and now she was so close! "… thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-thOWWWWW!" Deep in the Amazonian jungle, Dr. Florida Crane screamed. The snake slithered away and Florida fell to the ground in pain. The stricken woman cursed her luck. So damn close she had let her guard down! "Moron!" she hissed, clutching her already-swelling ankle.
Although Florida knew that moving was a bad idea, her curiosity got the better of her. She crawled forward, looking for the goal of her expedition. Pain immediately shot out in all directions from her foot. The archaeologist winced but carried on. She pulled herself forward a couple of feet before needing a rest to stop the stars exploding in front of her eyes. Slowly, carefully, Florida looked around. The jungle didn't look any more pleasant from the ground. She scanned the undergrowth for a clue as to her destination: there was nothing unusual anywhere. Unconsciousness was about to settle the issue of how Florida would manage her pain when, for no reason that she could ever recall, the young archaeologist reached out and grabbed a tree root that had burst through the ground.
Despite her hard panting, Florida could now hear a powerful rumbling deep underground. The noise grew louder until the ground itself shook. Florida felt the vibrations rock her beaten body. Her ears wanted to shut down. Then a different noise joined in the general cacophony: the sound of ground being torn up and not simply shaking. Florida raised her head slowly and was rewarded with an astounding sight: a temple was rising out of the dirt in front of her! Fighting against her own weak body, the young woman stared at the incredible event unfolding ahead. The emerging temple looked like a pyramid made out of Lego. The rumbling got closer and closer to Florida until she was lifted from the floor on one of the pyramid's layers of rock. Curiously, as soon as the rock touched her, the pain tearing her body into pieces disappeared.
Dazed, she lay still until the disorienting, deafening sounds subsided. Then, very carefully, the young archaeologist got up. The pyramid looked like four sets of stairs, all leading up in the same direction and narrowing. First, intellectual curiosity getting the better of her, Dr. Crane descended to the bottom of the pyramid and walked all around its perimeter. During the walk, the professor checked on her injury. The snakebite had vanished from her skin. In fact, she felt better than when she had started the trip. Excitement stopped her worrying too much about it. The joy of success washed her pain and fear away. The pyramid's perimeter was about a kilometre; it took Florida about twenty minutes to walk around it. Occasionally she paused to take some photos of it with her digital camera.
Halfway around the third side, Florida found the entrance. It was a large passageway, simply left to the open air. It was flanked by two statues. Florida took plenty of pictures of them: they were made from gold and depicted two identical women, both impossibly muscular and clad only in loincloths. Their naked breasts were larger than the biggest melons Florida had ever seen. They each held a spear that was about their own height. Florida chuckled to herself that she might like to have some of that strength, or better yet, cleavage, on her side. Instead of entering, Florida completed her circuit of the temple.
"Hmmm," Dr. Crane mused to herself. "Should I go up to the top or go inside?" Florida did what she always did in such situations and flipped a coin. "OK, heads for the top of the temple, tails for going inside." The coin arced into the humid air and fell into her palm. Heads. "Temple top it is!" she said. As climbing the temple would expose her to the full glare of the sun, Florida put sunblock on before starting and drank a bottle of water. Then she started her ascent.
It was nowhere near as arduous as Florida had feared. She was almost skipping up the side of the harsh grey rock. Florida climbed onto the last step with a grunt of triumph. She began a thorough search of the pyramid's top floor. There were markings on the floor: she frowned and crouched to get a better view of them. They were written in the language of the Amazons! Part of the reason Florida's research had been rejected was that she had proposed the existence of this whole new language. This would have caused a century of well-established research to be thrown out, so Florida had toiled alone. She translated the engraving out loud: "Find the blue stone inside and you will be rewarded." She stood again. "Guess that means I'm going inside!"
— To Be Continued —Also… post 100! Yay!
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