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tattersofthequeen · 4 years ago

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Buried Treasure: A Love Story

Inspired by the true, hilarious, story of Pharaoh Tutankhamen. I kind of ran out of steam near the end but WHATEVER I’M TIRED OF LOOKING AT IT.

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Alisdair Massom wanted to go home.

The wind whined through the trees bordering the oasis. It smelled of baked stone and desiccated plant matter. The desert wasn't all one kind of landscape, instead ranging from stony hills to pure sand. The ground wasn't as pleasant to sit in as one might suppose: since this wasn't dune country, it was hard as rock beneath a layer of sand, dust, and pebbles.

He scrubbed at his nose with his sleeve, trying to stifle another racking sneeze, and only succeeded in smearing more grime across his face. Everything out here was dusty, from the tents to the people, unless it was flooded. His neck itched abominably where it met the collar of his khakis; he suspected he was starting to get a rash.

On paper, the idea had been thrilling: a month-long trip with Cat, excavating the tomb of a long-dead Egyptian king, had set his imagination on fire. He still remembered sneaking into the Cineplex with her as children and huddling in the dark, her warm hand in his, staring wide-eyed up at the midnight showings of The Mummy's Curse, or Antony and Cleopatra. The glow of the screen had made her face look like an illuminated sky.

He wondered if she knew how many of those trips had just been an excuse to spend time with her, braving his worries that somehow they'd be found out. He wondered if they meant as much to her as they had to him.

The fact that their flight left at an unholy hour of the night, and their assigned seats were three rows apart, ought to have tipped him off that the excursion wouldn't measure up quite as well as he hoped. The fact that he had barely been outside of the same area code, much less the country, should have been another. Still, even after the abundance of forms, the interminable waiting for passport clearance, and the mad scramble for the gate (huffing and puffing under the weight of Cat's luggage), his enthusiasm remained undampened. He'd rested his head against the window of the plane for most of the ten-hour flight, picturing golden idols glittering in the dark, his name in the papers over an unprecedented find, Ca'tra flinging herself into his arms in celebration.

The reality -as he discovered almost from the moment their plane hit the tarmac- was less glamorous.

"Having fun yet, bro?" Archi called, his back set nonchalantly against the trunk of a dead tree. He had to shout a little, to be heard over the clinking of chisels and the calls of the archaeologists gathered in the dig site. Unlike Alisdair, he seemed entirely unbothered by the dirt and the relentless heat, idly juggling a handful of dried dates. Not waiting for the answer, he softballed one at Alisdair's face with a jovial cry of 'catch'.

"Oh, yeah." Alisdair rolled his eyes expansively, and tried to fumble the date into his mouth and not the sand. "Between the bugs and the dirt and the saliva, I don't think I'm ever going to want to go back. How are you not dying of heatstroke?"

Archi rolled his head back with a long belly laugh, slapping his hands against his midsection loudly enough to make the camels shift and grumble in complaint. His grin was a half-moon glow of chemical white against dark, tanned skin. "Oh my god, you should have seen your face, man! I don't think I've ever seen that much spit come out of anything!"

Alisdair folded his arms huffily across his midsection, his face warming as he hunched his shoulders. "It's funny when you're not the one who spent all night cleaning mucus out of your hair," he muttered, and cast a baleful eye at the offending camel. It chewed placidly on the missing lower third of his sleeve, and stared unblinkingly back, daring him to provoke a rematch. The blond's frown deepened, and he shuffled another cautious step toward the dig. Just to be safe.

"Have you seen Cat at all?" he asked. Other than shifting the topic away from his recent humiliation, he'd barely seen her at all since they arrived. It seemed like they'd only just gotten through customs before Tenax- before Professor Almaizan had smarmed his way in ahead of him, and chivvied off his 'field assistant' to discuss the itinerary for their trip.

No matter where he turned, it seemed, their chaperone was always there, watching him intently with sharp amber-gold eyes and full lips quirked in what the younger man was sure was contempt. He could barely get a bloody word in edgewise with her, much less an invitation to sit with her at dinner, or maybe to hold her hand- to help her across the street, of course; God knew what these people spent their money on but it clearly wasn't city upkeep. Any time he'd tried to steal his way up to the second floor of the hotel, where the girls were rooming, Tenax had blocked the way with an unctuous smile and a long, elegant, firmly barring leg. "Terms of the contract," Alisdair's ass.

Worse, all she ever seemed to talk about anymore was how excited she was to be working with the creepy old foreign professor, and how much help he'd been with her thesis. She barely even glanced at the blond youth when he'd squawked in pain at the temperature of the Turkish coffee- much less listened to his concerns.

Alisdair kicked at the sand, his lips pursing at the memory. It simply wasn't fair.

Archi shrugged, pulling his attention back to the present as he nodded across the base camp to the foot of the tomb. "Hasn't come out since they started, I guess." He cast a long, sly glance at Alisdair's dissatisfied fidgeting, freeing a tattooed hand to smooth his beard back into shape. "I mean, she's probably having the time of her life, right? Did you know she licks the rocks she digs up?"

"She does not!" Alisdair gasped, scandalized, his eyes wide. He gave the sand pile another kick, for good measure, sending an industrious dung beetle scuttling for cover.

"Oh yeah, bro, she totally does. Rocks. Bones. AND all those little brushes. She just sticks 'em in her mouth." Hand raised, fingers together, Archi moved his chin up and down behind his hand in a slow, wicked nod. "I've seen her do it. Go check if you don't believe me. Bet she's already licked your old man's shaving whisk."

Alisdair thought about the possibility for a moment, toeing at the sand. There was something under there, he thought, shifting under his boot. He hoped it wasn't a scorpion. "Man," he said at last, "it doesn't even matter if she did. It's not like he ever uses it." Despite the gentle nudges he and his mother had given, the senior Kallus' facial topiary continued to grow, and the expensive father's day gift gathered dust in the bathroom cabinet.

"God." Archi's face scrunched like one of the dates he was juggling. "Do you think he's got.... you know, a second sideburn growing on his chest or something? Just.... taking everything over?"

"Oh," Alisdair shuddered, wishing -not for the first time- that his parents had elected to install a second bathroom. "He does, actually. It's a whole thatch. Thanks so much for reminding me."

A date rebounded off his shoulder as Archi missed his toss with a look of horrified glee. "Bro, are you fucking serious? Are there pictures?!" His grin widened until it threatened to eclipse his face, visions of blackmail dancing in his head.

Alisdair rolled his eyes, stooping to retrieve the fruit. It wasn't a conscious decision: years of hearing his mother's vendetta against litter had him moving almost mechanically. He wasn't even sure where to throw it once he had it; it wasn't as if an Egyptian desert had compostables bins lying around. His fingers closed around the date, and brushed against the object he'd felt before, just under the sand.

On a whim, he worked his fingers deeper into the debris. It was hard, flat, and rigid: definitely not a scorpion. It didn't feel like much of anything he recognized.

For a moment -just for a moment- the embers of his fantasy caught light again. He saw himself pulling a jewel-studded length of belt free from the sand, or an ancient scroll containing a map to forgotten treasure. He imagined Cat's eyes widening at the sight of it, her mouth falling open in astonished wonder at his luck and talent, apologizing profusely for not having seen how valuable an addition he was to the team. Yes, that would do nicely.

Rocking back on his heels, he opened his hand, dusting away the last of the grit to discover-

"Izzat a piece of beef jerky?"

Archi leaned over Alisdair's shoulder, squinting down at the object. It was not a Pharaoh's belt. It was not a scroll case, either. Instead, he was holding a coal black, withered stick the length of his hand. His nose crinkled in disappointment and revulsion, hand dropping dejectedly to his side. He nearly dropped the thing into the sand before Archi plucked it away from him, bringing it up to his nose like he might an expensive Cuban cigar.

"Blech! It smells like my Uncle Rau's attic!" His friend jerked his head back, expression curdling, and leaned close to shove the object near Alisdair's face. "I mean, I'd still eat it, though. Bet me twenty bucks?"

"Archi, I don't want your-" Alisdair had only just managed to get his feet underneath him before his nostrils were assaulted by something both acrid and faintly herbal. He retched, slapping his hands over his nose, then retched again as he realized the smell was clinging to his palms. "Oh, god, that's VILE!"

"I know, right?! About that bet...."

Alisdair swiped the jerky from his hand, dropping it into a pocket of his khakis, not so much because he actually wanted the disgusting thing anywhere near him as wanting to keep his friend from following through on the threat. "I'm going to go find Cat before you find anything else to shove into your mouth."

Turning sharply on his heel, ignoring Archi's braying laughter, he lengthened his stride across the hard-packed earth toward the dig. He tried to think of Cat's bright blue eyes, her dark curls flecked with glittering dust, and not early memories of his father or the possibility that Archi's little sister had graduated from licking rocks to sampling the shaving cream.

At one point -back when it was first built, Alisdair supposed- the tomb must have been truly magnificent. Sandstone pillars lined the front entrance, still standing firm despite their age, each section painstakingly hand-shaped and still sporting the chisel marks of the artisans who'd sculpted them.

Cat had tried explaining, over the groaning of the camels, the particular types of pigments that would have once decorated them- but he'd been too focused on keeping the constant sway of the animal beneath him from upsetting the contents of his stomach to listen. Now they were the color of dust, the same as everything else in this wasteland.

Most of the structure was still intact, but the section Professor Almaizan had them working in had been dug out in the past year. The pillars near the opening listed slightly, either displaced during the previous excavations or by age. It made them resemble the bones of some ancient, long dead beast, or the nave of a ruined church, open to the moon. Here and there, colored thread was strung out in careful grids, marking off grids for the researchers to work. Near the northern corner, he could just about glimpse the lean figure of Professor Tenax Almaizan as he inspected their work, his dark shalwar kameez billowing in the hot, dry wind.

Steps had been carved into the excavated stone, or cobbled together from what wood they'd managed to cut, leading down into the guts of the structure perhaps some twenty (steep, gritty) feet. If there was any consolation, he supposed, it was that at least there was shade below the first level. Sweat cooled on his forehead as he passed out of the scorching midmorning sun. The shade smelled of hot bricks and chalk dust.

Steadying himself against the wall with a hand, he tried to picture what it would be like to be the first person to set foot in the burial chamber: torchlight glittering off ancient golden idols, gems the size of his hand, his archaeologist companion pressed close for protection as the withered old pharaoh began to stir-

A hand clamped down on his ankle.

Alisdair's undignified squawk echoed from the walls as gravel crunched under his feet, boots skidding on sand. The attempt to correct his balance, far from serving its intended purpose, nearly sent him over the edge and into the excavation pit. Hands flailing, he grabbed for the scaffolding and dug his heels in, a flush of embarrassment and adrenaline flooding his already heat-blotched face. "Ca'tra," he gasped, voice several octaves higher than he'd intended. "Don't grab me like that!"

Ca'tra Akaata (graduate student, aspiring archaeologist, current leading cause of premature heart attacks) was exactly where Archi had said she'd be: sat in the dirt, having the time of her life. One leg braced beneath her, she stretched the other out as far as it would go, marking her place with her toes as she arched up to grin at him. "Hi, Alisdair! Don't come down, I'm still finishing this section." Her voice was oddly muffled.

Lips twisted into a pout at her clear and total lack of remorse, Alisdair ignored her admonition, edging down the last set of steps- though, as a concession, he was careful to avoid the dig points marked out around her.

As she came into clearer focus, he realized her brother had been correct on another point: The horsehair shaving brush WAS in her mouth. Lengthwise, to be specific, teeth clamped firmly on the mahogany handle. He suppressed a wince at a fleeting image of his father, mouth downturned in a perplexed grimace as he loudly asked where the indentations had come from. Turning her head, she casually spat it into her hand, wiped it clean on a corner of her brightly patterned head scarf, and set it back down in the toolkit. "If you step on anything," she warned, "I won't be held responsible for what the Professor does to you."

Tossing his hair, Alisdair let out what he hoped was a sufficiently dismissive snort. "Oh, what do I care what that musty old pedant says? I was just making sure you didn't need to be rescued from traps or flesh-eating scarabs." Cat blinked at him for a second in mute astonishment, then threw back her head and laughed, dimples forming at the corners of her mouth. The movement revealed a stray, coal-black curl escaping the confines of her hijab. His hand twitched, resisting the urge to tuck it back into place.

"Scarabs don't eat people, Alisdair," she said, once her ebullience had faded enough to talk. "That's just the movies." Her teeth flashed, lower lip pinned in concentration as she picked dirt from a tiny clay figurine. "Then again, they might make an exception for you. Skittering around in the dark, hankering for your succulent flesh." She wiggled her fingers at him. "Skitter skitter."

Alisdair swallowed, hard, and stood up on his toes, shuffling a little further away from the nearby hole in the wall. Not that he believed her teasing, of course, just that he had heard that. Snakes. Liked to hide in holes in the wall. That was it. Just to be safe.

"You are so mean," he huffed. "At least tell me you found old Pharaoh What's His Nuts so we can go back to the hotel and celebrate."

The young archaeologist hummed, gently blowing the last of the dirt free of her figurine, and glanced up at Alisdair with arched brows. "I hate to disappoint you, but old Pharaoh What's His Nuts was excavated years ago, as I told you repeatedly on the way over.” She paused, and hummed thoughtfully, in the back of her throat. “Most of him, anyway."

"What?!" Alisdair gaped down at her. His knees sagged, back dragging over the rough stone as he dropped into an undignified squat at the edge of her workspace. "But I- but you said-" The champagne and press conferences he'd envisioned evaporated like a heat mirage, leaving him suddenly very aware of how hot and dusty and tired he was. "I thought you said this was exclusive!"

Cat rocked back on her heels, resting her forearms on her knees, and gave him a look that might have been pity. "It is exclusive, Alisdair. This is one of the most important digs of the decade. It's a miracle it hasn't been stripped completely bare by looters, or other archaeological teams. It's an amazing opportunity to get hands on experience in the field. I don't know how the Professor pulled it off."

"I think I've had quite enough experience in the field for one lifetime, thank you. I honestly don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't scorpions, or heat rashes, or all this sand. I don't like sand, Ca'tra."

Cat put the toothbrush back down with rather more force than was strictly necessary. "It's a desert, Alisdair. It's going to have sand. If you weren't prepared for some rough conditions, you could have just stayed at the hotel."

"I wanted to come with you!" Alisdair's voice rose, threatening to become a whine. "I know Professor Musty thinks I'm just a glorified pack mule, but I didn't think you agreed with him."

She sighed, expansively, rubbing at the bridge of her nose. "I know you don't like him, but he's really taking a chance with me on this expedition. It's not my fault someone got here before us."

Alisdair knew he couldn't really argue with her reasoning, but it didn't quell the bitter disappointment pooling in his gut. It threatened to rise into his throat and choke him. He stared down at the toes of his boots, hands fisting at his sides, and tried to convince himself the stinging in his eyes was just from heat.

"Oh, your professor's so great all right," he snapped. "He's so great that you've been ignoring me this entire trip and dragged me out here where there are scorpions and snakes and heatstroke and spit, and you and your professor'll go on to become rich and famous, and I'll probably die from the curse and all I found out here was a piece of ancient beef jerky!" Without thinking, he plunged his hand into his pocket, flinging the leather down in the midst of her carefully plotted workspace.

Cat's face flushed with anger, her eyes seeming even more intensely blue against the darkening of her cheeks. Snatching the object from among her grid stakes, she pulled her arm back, clearly intending to hurl it right back at him.

Then, abruptly, she stopped dead. Her arm was still poised, fist wrapped around the leather in preparation to send it back in his face. Slowly, she lowered her hand, staring down at the stick in utter bewilderment. "Beef jerky?" she repeated. Before he could stop her, she raised her hand to her face. He had a nightmarish vision then, of her tongue flicking out, flicking out to taste-

"CAT, NO!" He lunged at her, nearly ploughing into her dig, feet skidding as she shot him a murderous look. He teetered at the edge of the colored twine as she brought her hand up to her face again, sniffing once, and then again, more deeply. The flush faded from her cheeks as her eyes went wide.

"Alisdair," Cat said, her tone slow and deliberate. "Where did you find this?"

His brow furrowed in confusion as she held it out to him. "Lying in the sand, who cares, Cat, it's just a piece of jerky. I was going to throw it away."

"Alisdair." Her expression sharp, she leaned forward across her workspace to lock eyes with him. Her hair had slipped even further from the hijab, shading her eyebrow; he took the jerky from her in bewilderment. "Where EXACTLY. Did you find this."

"The entrance to the tomb, I guess?" Alisdair glanced down at the sad piece of leather and wrinkled his nose in renewed disappointment. "It’s hardly the royal jewels, isn’t it?"

But Ca'tra was looking at him now with an expression of astonishment that didn't look like it was born out of mockery, eyes flicking back and forth at some internal dialogue. "No," she breathed, the hints of a smile beginning to grow on her face. "It's so easy. Oh, my god, that's so stupid, I don't believe it."

"Cat?" Alisdair eyed her, warily, his hand still poised in front of herself. He nearly jumped as she lurched to her feet, crossing the dig in one long bound and reached out to grab his shoulders. Silently, she shook him, her face breaking into a grin to rival Archi's. It scared him more than her anger had. "What are you talking about?"

Cat shook Alisdair again, and grabbed his wrist in excitement, her expression very nearly gleeful. "It's been a mystery for years, Alisdair, ever since the Pharaoh was moved from the burial chamber. All those theories! And it was right here the entire time, I could kiss you!"

Alisdair felt his face heat, his anger and frustration leaving him in a rush. His palms prickled as she threw her arms around his shoulders, almost knocking the jerky from his hand. "Oh, well. Um. You're welcome," he mumbled. "What... um. What is it, then?"

"I said they found most of Pharaoh Khem-Adas. Most of him." Cat pulled back, holding him at arm's length, her eyes twinkling. "You said it yourself, Alisdair. The royal jewels! The royal jewels of Old Pharaoh What's His Nuts!" An hysterical laugh bubbled in the back of her throat. "The embalming, the composition, its size- stay right here, I'm going to go find the professor!"

For an instant, still suffused in rosy warmth as he was, the words failed to sink in. Repeating them back to himself, however, Alisdair felt a trickle of dread coil up his spine. He stared down at the mummified leather in his hand, small and roundish and not altogether unlike the treats he sometimes gave Mrs. Almaizan's pomeranian.

Treats that were made of.... of....

"Cat!" His voice cracked slightly, as his flush was replaced with a sickly greenish pallor. He could feel bile rising in his throat. "Are you saying this is.... that I'm holding a-"

“Don’t worry, Alisdair!” She grinned at him, wide and wild, pausing with her hand on the scaffolding. “I’ll make sure you get your picture in the papers! PROFESSOR ALMAIZAN, GET THE CAMERA!"

For such a small woman, Cat's voice echoed across the tomb- across the entire base camp as her feet pounded up the rest of the steps to the upper levels. As his vision began to tunnel, Alisdair thought they could probably hear her all the way back in Cairo.

"ALISDAIR FOUND PHARAOH KHEM-ADAS' MISSING PENIS!”

#metro writes #not nano 2020 #character: Alisdair Massom #character: Ca'tra #character: Archi Akaata #their banter is so much fun to write

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