You tried to understand how this could be possible, even came up with the idea that one of the older archaeologists were playing a prank on you since this was your very first expedition. But it just could not explain the book down to its minute details, especially that coffee stain!
You dig through the satchel you carry with you that has said journal and number of tools, and kits and that trinket Billy got you before departing at the airport a few days ago. You find the journal buried under a roll of paper that is already dusted from the broken charcoal sticks that had fallen out of the smaller pouch beside it. Carefully you extract the journal, turn away to blow off the black ash into the arid desert before opening it up to the last entry.
“3, November 2063”… it read across the top in your unique handwriting of neatly written block letters and numbers. “We finally found the entrance to the queen’s burial chamber…”
You look over the short entry and then at the skeleton that had your book. The stain was on the leather and if it was exactly just like the one you held, then it would have been made of natural leather and leafed with pressed paper. You had an affinity for old style books since you were a child, having bound a dozen or so long before you were interested in digging up history. The older you got and the more you did, you learned old techniques that helped preserve the paper and ink so it would at least explain why the book had survived six thousand years in a moisture-sealed chamber.
You kneel down and wonder how you could safely extract the journal from the skeleton without destroying it. Even after six thousand years, the book would be brittle and the risk of it turning to dust now that it was exposed to atmosphere again, was extremely high. With a frown you decide to leave it alone for now until you can come up with a safe method, instead you look for other evidence that might identify who this person was.
You don’t want to entertain the idea that it might be you. The thought was absurd and so far fetched it sounded like it would have come straight out of one of those old sci-fi shows from the late twentieth to early twenty-first centuries.
But as you search the site, your heart plummets as you recognize what was left of Billy’s goodbye trinket. It had been a stupid keychain that welcomed travelers to the city they were arriving in. A tourist’s piece of junk to remember their time there. Billy had given it to you to remember them by instead.
It now rested underneath the right femur, its colored print lost to time but the deformed plastic shape was clear even to you. The metal chain and key ring wasn’t attached any longer but another minute of searching and you find it only a few inches away, half buried in the rock and completely corroded.
A single touch would cause, at least the chainlink, to break into a million pieces.
Again you do nothing and sit back on your hunches, staring ahead at the burial chamber down the corridor. You cannot understand how this could have happened or what it meant. Your scholarly brain refuses to acknowledge the impossible and yet, all evidence was pointing to the probability of it being true.
Somehow you ended up six thousand years in the past and buried alive in a queen’s burial chamber.
Quietly you reach into your satchel again and pick up the keychain Billy had given you. Suddenly you want to go home and be with them, tell them how much they mean to you and apologize for anything you may or may not have done in the past simply because you want to unburden it all and start a new with them.
If you are destined to die this way, every little petty nuance in your life was meaningless now and there was no point holding on.
You close your eyes and squeeze your hand around the trinket and take a deep breath.
Alright so you are going to end up in the past. You don’t know how and suspect it is something you cannot avoid or prevent. What you could do is find out what had happened to you and avoid dying in this chamber. With another deep breath to calm yourself further, you get up to go find the professor to help you extract the journal safely.
If you can read what had been written after today, you feel confident you can prepare yourself for what was to come. You just need to convince the old man that you did not plant this here and it was genuinely real.
You will survive and find a way back to Billy or die trying.
amandla
pixelskylines
2087
stormborns
