YEAR: 2041
YEAR: 2041-2042
YEAR: 2042
YEAR: 2042
Post by AUSTIN BROOKS on Oct 24, 2021 0:31:42 GMT -5
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| “Where the fuck is it?” The words came out as a low growl, born out of a frustration that was starting to make his blood boil. Austin could feel his patience on the precipice of a great snap, which was something usually reserved for technology and dealing with morons. In theory, he had literally all the time in the world to find the object of his search. It could take him two hundred years and he would have wasted very little of his long, long life. She didn’t have two hundred years, though, and every moment he spent looking for what he’d buried was time with her that was wasted. He could almost hear the clock ticking. Immortality was a bitch. “I’d love to have seen one of these in person.” It was innocuous. A casual comment she had thrown out while reading in his office. She was keeping him company as he finished up some paperwork. She’d held up the book to show him an artist’s rendering of a particularly ornate knife gifted to strategoi at one point in the distant past. Luckily for her (and him, perhaps) it was a past, and knife, with which he had an intimate familiarity. One just like it had been lodged in his chest once, put there by a particularly flummoxed Athenian, and was now somewhere in the dirt beneath his feet. He was pretty sure. “Have you ever seen one?” Austin had glanced at the drawing she held, immediately identifying the object. He made a show of being cavalier about it, with a shrug and a “might have” but, mentally, he was already mapping out where it would be. Maybe it was something in the way she asked this time. Georgie often asked if he’d seen things but he always felt like he didn’t show her enough. Austin had all kinds of goodies buried in his basement, scattered and discarded in ways that would make any other self-respecting archaeologist fall to their knees in anguish. He rarely had exactly what she wanted to see, though. This time he did. This time he could provide. If he could just find the damn thing. Her words were in no way meant to be a challenge. He took them as one. Austin had, thus far, spent the better part of the evening digging holes around what, a few thousand years ago, was a very respectable stone house in the Greek countryside. Now it was just a plot of land that he owned, sans house, that he used occasionally as a relic burial ground. For what? Who can say. Sometimes he was a weird fella. And why did he care so much anyway? What was it about Georgie that made him spend the night getting riled up, digging 20 different holes just to find a rusty old knife? It wasn’t even like she could use the knife. He just wanted her to see everything. Seeing things made Georgie happy and, through her, he was able to look at things that had become blasé with excitement. Every time she got bright eyed when he showed her an artifact, he was then thrilled himself. What if that went away? What if she found someone else who could show her all kinds of thrilling things? Then where would he be? Just some bitter old man drinking alone with his relics once again. Damn. Austin had lived a thousand different lives but Georgies came around so rarely. It was somewhere around the 21st hole that, without warning, thick drops of water fell unceremoniously on his dirt encrusted form. What was once a lovely layer of dry dirt and grass quickly formed slick mud, with Austin’s feet slowly sinking into the ground. He continued to dig, grumbling something about being too old to be acting like this over a girl just because he liked her. It took a minute to process his thoughts, but the realization hit him like a bag of really annoying bricks. He stopped dead. “Hmm,” his back straightened and he stood there, weight resting on his shovel, near soaked to the bone, muddy, and infuriated. Austin looked to the sky and lighting spider-webbed across the clouds. Try as he might, Austin never really outgrew feeling personally slighted by the old Gods. “You dick.” ——————————————————————— Austin slammed his fist against Georgie’s door harder than he’d intended. The whole realization short circuited his inhibitors a bit. He hadn’t bothered to dry off, much less clean himself up, before Apparating to her doorstep. He just stood there, dripping and dirty, with the unearthed knife (finally) in one hand and a look of consternation on his face. Austin was thoroughly inconvenienced by all of this and he had the feeling that whatever happened next would cause even more emotional turmoil. Maybe he still had time to get out. Just zap across the world and live in Laos for the next 80 years. No. He already felt bad enough wasting time looking for the knife. He’d make it roughly 5 hours in Laos before he’d want to text her a picture of a cool looking rock. God dammit.
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