Comm: Willow and the Lost Temple (Part 5)

Summary: In her adult years, Willow's studying to be an archaeologist, and she's joining her first expedition! She navigates jungles, fords rivers, and meets a furry friend along the way. This is a commissioned piece for Torasque.

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[Story Listing]

[FIRST PART] || [PREVIOUS PART]

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Dear Tara,

I finally made it to base camp! I ended up arriving pretty late, due to a snafu with the plane, so I haven't actually done any fieldwork yet, but I'm really excited to get down and dirty with it! Scientifically.

I'm so glad there was a big river leading up all the way through to camp through the Kiyali Jungle. It was such a relaxing swim! I love swimming, I feel practically weightless. And you get to see such interesting creatures too! A black caiman even tried to get a nip at me, but you know how it goes. Maybe we can go for a swim together one day as a bucket list sort of thing? You can ride on my back, and I'll protect you from the predators! Just an idea.

Don't worry, I took a shower after swimming through the river. I'm not gonna bring home any weird parasites or whatever.

Everyone's really nice at base camp, but I haven't had time to really make any connections yet. I guess it's really hot, working in the day in all this humidity. But I'm cold-blooded, so it suits me just fine! I dunno if I'm gonna get a wink of sleep tonight, between chasing after Frisky and being cooped inside with all this pent up excitement.

And maybe I'm a little anxious too—I was late to my internship, so I gotta make up for it tomorrow. They already put me on kitchen duty...

But anyway, the actual dig site! We're pretty deep in the Kiyali Jungle, so I'm sure we'll find something interesting. I know there are some isolated tribes of people who live out here, so we'll probably find arrowheads along the way. Maybe I'll bring one back to you if I find one? If we find anything super cool I'll include it in my next letter!

Thinking of you a lot! Lots of love,

Willow

P.S.: I slept on it and I don't think I should be smuggling artefacts out of our expedition as personal keepsakes, so I'd need to get it vetted first... probably means no arrowheads, sorry!

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It was a new day, and Willow's first day on a real archeology site. It would be her first experience on the field, and she was very excited to get started. But first she needed to freshen up for what promised to be a hot and humid day.

There were the usual complications: due to her size, fitting into the shower stalls outfitted for the men at camp would definitely be a non-starter, but thankfully there was a big river next to camp that she could use. She anticipated the concern of finding clean water and soap out in the middle of nowhere, and she knew using soap in the river itself was a bad idea (her moms raised her pretty well on that front). It was times like these that she grew to appreciate the lengths Tara would go to help Willow feel more at home—it was no trifling expense to prepare a bathhouse capable of housing Willow.

Another thing Willow was thankful for was her lack of sweat glands. A bucket, a towel and some fresh water would do just fine in scrubbing her down for the most part. A little soap would be nice, but she made sure to stay well away from the river to avoid any environmental disruption.

It took a while to freshen up, but soon enough she was ready to get down in the dirt for a long day of careful excavation procedures. Dressed in her finest archeological getup, she slithered over to the main campsite.

It seems there were a lot of people working already, even in the early hours of the morning. The sun had barely risen, yet the lamps blared into the intricately carved networks. Willow squinted, her irises narrowing as she shielded her eyes.

"Wow, early to rise, huh...?" She muttered to herself. "All the better to beat the heat I guess. Where's Professor Richter.. ah there he is, Professor!"

She called out, slithering over to the moustachioed leader of the bunch. She reared up at attention, which had the unintentional effect of looming over him. This was not lost on the professor, who recoiled slightly in her overbearing presence.

"Uhm!? A-ahem, hackpth, cough, Willow, you're gonna give this man a heart attack... ambushing in the dark, just drive a kukri through my heart while you're at it..." He hunched over, clutching his chest.

"Ah, sorry! I just, I wanted to report for my assignment! It's my first day, really getting into it!" She nodded, her hair snake bobbing. "Is there anyone I ought to report to?"

"Hahh... yes, well, you can touch base with our science manager. Dr. Leslie Winchester, she's over in lot D-4." Richter straightened up slowly, his words slurring a bit as he caught his breath. "You'll do the grunt work for her..."

"Collecting samples!? For analysis??" Willow's eyes lit up with excitement, and she was already on her way over. Richter ruffled his moustache in annoyance, shaking his head.

"Yeaaah, the doctor's a goner..."

Navigating the designated sections of the dig site was a challenge, as Willow wasn't particularly familiar, but she was lucky that this particular one was out on the perimeter. The scaffolding for the walkways bridging over the holes in the ground didn't look built for her physique. She peered inside the large hole in the ground, looking for telltale signs of life.

She spotted a young woman... about her age, maybe a couple years older. The light from the spotlights illuminating the dig site reflected off her thick bifocals. She had considerable bags under her eyes, and her skin was tanned from sun exposure, and speckled with dirt streaks. How long had she been up?

"Dr. Winchester??" Willow waved politely, unable to contain her giddy smile. Though that smile looked a touch more menacing than intended with Willow's canines flashing so eagerly...

...Not that Dr. Winchester seemed to notice. She raised a single pointed finger skywards.

"Shush. Dirt sediment excavation. Very touchy." The woman muttered in a monotone deadpan, before continuing to scrape along. Willow blinked, and stared for several more seconds as the woman focused her attention towards her work.

...This was taking a while. Willow cocked her head to the side.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Willow asked. "I was sent to help with-"

"You're the help they sent?" Dr. Winchester furrowed her brow, glancing up so that her bifocals reflected the rising sun. She stared, pursing her lips. Willow, inundated by the sudden, judgmental eye contact, tried to meet her gaze... except she was the first to awkwardly glance aside.

"Quite the skin condition." The woman muttered.

"I-it's genetic." Willow responded, sheepishly. Her tail twitched behind her, attracting further consternation from the studious professor. "A-anyway, I wanted to introduce myself! Willow Connelly-Hutchins, I'm interning at this digsite."

"Ah, hm, well-met. While I support inclusive hiring initiatives... How exactly do you plan on fitting into my sector here? It's a touch cramped." The woman adjusted her glasses.

"Ah, it's no problem! Just gotta... crunch my abs a bit here...":

Willow was determined to not let her massive size be a hindrance to the excavation, but this would take some finesse. She reared up higher, balancing on her tail as her torso rose another five or so feet from the ground. The muscles in her abs crunch as she bent forward, the thickest part of her tail raised off the ground and arcing in a gentle curve.

Her upper body, almost upside down, lowered over the ledge and down into the work area, with her arms in reach of the ground and the tools in the area. It was a strange sight to see her bend like this, the rest of her tail staying above ground as she seemed to be frozen in a half-dive, but the powerful muscles in her upper body and at the base of her tail were doing a good job holding her awkward position.

"Ah, there we go!" Willow chimed in, waving cheerily to the professor. "This'll work, I can work from here!~"

"...Is that not dreadfully uncomfortable?" The woman's eyebrow perked up.

"Not really! I'm pretty flexible... and I, uh, actually worked this out back in university, during the mock excavations." She shrugged. "Those were pretty cramped too."

The woman analysed Willow's expression for any sign of discomfort. Willow didn't seem all that stressed out, at a cursory glance, so she turned back to her work.

"Well, you ought to know the procedures then, so get to it." The doctor muttered. "We got a lot of layers to get through."

"Did you find anything so far?" Willow asked, reaching for a toolbox. There were a number of flat shovels suitable for scraping; she passed half a dozen of them to her hair snakes one by one.

"Nothing too exciting. Seed shells and some arrowheads." The doctor clarified. "Which makes sense, considering the area."

"Ohhh, that makes sense. I read about isolated tribes living out in settlements outside of the major cities..." Willow took out a pen and paper, preparing to take notes as her hair snakes went to work scraping along the ground with their tools, their flexible bodies coiling around the handles. "Those tribes are out here too?"

"Apparently." Dr. Winchester was too focused on a particular patch of dirt to look up. "They'd pack up and move around every couple of generations, so finding some relics behind isn't that surprising."

"Oh yes! The land here's pretty fertile!" Willow nodded slightly. "Certain tribes will raise crops on a patch of land until the soil was exhausted... then they'll pack up and move elsewhere for a generation or two. And nature reclaims the old land and, um, re-enriches it!"

"You're going on like this is something I don't know already." Dr. Winchester frowned. "You know. Me. The science manager."

"...O-oh, um..." Willow stirred sheepishly. "I-I just get a little excited and I get... carried away."

"I can see that. Don't get carried away with those tools." She waved her hand in the direction of the snakes. "You sure you got a handle on those things?"

"Yes ma'am! Well, as well of a handle as I can... I-I got this!" Willow leaned a little closer, her forked tongue sticking out as she scraped away at the dirt. There wasn't anything... particularly exciting about this sort of work, but it was important for preserving anything that lay beneath. So it was likely to be an all-day thing...

Willow opted to strike up a bit of conversation.

"So, uh... what're you excited to find on this expedition?" Willow asked cheerily.

"Aliens." Dr. Winchester answered without missing a beat.

"...Aliens?" Willow blinked, her scraping slowing to a halt.

"Or evidence of aliens. That'd be fun." Dr. Winchester gave a slight, affirmative nod.

What's with the alien fixation people have around here?? Willow thought to herself with a bemused expression, but thought better of it. Dr. Winchester was her superior.

"I, um, dunno if we'll find anything like that..." Willow muttered.

"You didn't ask what I expected to find, you asked what I was excited for." Dr. Winchester sideeyed Willow. "And it would be pretty exciting."

"I... I guess." Willow blinked. "But I think I'd be excited for just about anything we find. Old ruins, tools and crafts... ooh, human remains~" Willow beamed.

"Yeah I've been on a lot of different treks over the years." Dr. Winchester. "Ended up digging up pretty much all of that somewhere. But proof of alien encroachment... hasn't happened yet."

"M-maybe it's because they... don't exist." Willow cleared her throat.

"...Bit ironic innit..." Dr. Winchester muttered under her breath.

"Eh?" Willow perked her head up. She had very good hearing and caught every word, but she didn't really get it. She wasn't no alien, no sir.

"You don't have to believe in aliens to be a little romantic about the idea," Dr. Winchester pointed out. "Statistically speaking, there's probably some form of intelligent life out there, somewhere."

"Mm, I guess." Willow's tail stirred slightly. "Thought that doesn't mean they're here. And I... don't really like a lot of the theories around them."

"Theories?" Dr. Winchester asked.

"W-Well, they're more conspiratorial than they are any bit academic, just really dumb stuff like... crop circle hoaxes, crystal skulls... more than a couple about aliens teaching cultures about building whole societies. That last one leaves a real bitter taste in my mouth." Willow grumbled. "It's just really reductive, insulting, and... well, kinda racist..."

"Mm. You're not wrong." Dr. Winchester shrugged. "Maybe they're just tourists."

"T... tourists?" Willow blinked.

"Well think about it. You get your hands on a spacecraft capable of interstellar travel, what would you use it for? I'd bet it'd be sightseeing." Dr. Winchester pointed out. "Curiosity is the great motivator of the sciences."

"Oh! Well, when you put it like that..." Willow cocked her head to the side. "That's a cute idea. I can dig it! In the, uh, absence of physical evidence..."

Dr. Winchester groaned. "Did you seriously make a dig site pun...?"

Willow paused, and recalled her words. She didn't mean to, but...

"...Huh. Hehe, I guess I did!~" Willow giggled.

She happily scraped away at the surface with her arsenal of shovels.

"Getting away from the aliens business, I'm interested in finding anything about the Xpocan people. Professor Rousseau thinks we'll find the Temple of Emperor Epacatuan somewhere around here..."

"No hidden temples yet... just various bits and pieces of ancient crafts." Professor Winchester sighed. "Maybe ceremonies were spread pretty far out."

"If we're finding so much stuff like that, we can't be too far off!" Willow chimed in encouragingly. "If I recall correctly, accounts described him as a pretty bloody despot..."

"Yeaaaah not a lot of confirmed accounts there." Dr. Winchester sighed. "Even if we seem to be on the right track, it raises a lot of questions as to why his centre of power would be in the middle of a dense jungle."

"I remember the few accounts talking about his sacrifices towards Tholua, their deity of the sun..." Willow scratched her cheek. "If he was such a bad guy, you'd think there'd at least be a monument, or a memorial to the victims."

"Their history was mostly oral, so not many records to parse." Dr. Winchester noted. "They didn't have paper or papyrus—any book-keeping they did was primarily through little stonework contraptions, sort of like abacuses. We got bits and pieces in one of the tents."

"Mm... and that gets muddied a bit further with the ruins that dot this region." Willow tilted her head. "So many fallen cities... there must've been an awful lot of fighting."

"Actually, no." Dr. Winchester pointed out. "I've been in this neck of the woods for a couple excavations, and apart from Emperor Epacatuan, there are very few signs of conflict at most dig sites... I guess sometimes there's a nasty domestic dispute left behind."

"Oh, really?" Willow blinked. "I remember reading about cities buried beneath cities. It made it sound like there were a ton of warring factions."

"The prevailing theory is a matter of cultural viewpoint." Dr. Winchester gestured. "The Xpocan's were a very present-minded people, very industrious. We're not really sure how they built the structures they did, but it was clear that they were content to disassemble structures that no longer served a purpose. Urban sprawl wasn't really a thing then..."

"Oh, I think I remember a thesis like that!" Willow's eyes lit up. "The components of their buildings were very uniform... kinda like big building blocks, so they could expand a building, or take it apart... I remember seeing photos, it seemed really cool!"

"A couple more layers of dirt and maybe we'll find some big bricks like that." Dr. Winchester glanced down. "Not that anyone's really sure how they moved such big blocks around."

"They must've had some very clever architects..." Willow tilted her head.

"Definitely not aliens." Dr. Winchester scoffed. The aside got a chuckle out of Willow. It was nice having someone to talk archeology with—even if the facts were things that were probably well-known to the both of them, it was comforting in a way. Willow felt like she was among her own...

BANG! BANG!

...A pleasant feeling that was violently roused as the sounds of gunshots reverberated through the camp. Willow tensed up, rearing up to scan the perimeter.

"What was that??" Willow glanced around, her hairsnakes rearing up with her—with 360 degree vision, she scanned the camp.

"Willow! Get your head down, there's a firefight for Goddess' sakes!" The professor shuffled over to tug forcefully at Willow's arm, urging her to retreat to cover.

"N-no, it's fine! Stay there Professor, I'll check it out!" Willow detected movement and the billowing of grey smoke eastwards, and hurriedly slithered in that direction. The acrid stench of gunpowder assaulted her senses as she hurried...

She squinted, trying to make out whatever that section was. The professor actually gestured in that direction earlier, during their talk. It was the tent where they were keeping the artefacts from the dig site!

Willow hurried to the scene of the fracas. It was hard to tell through the gunpowder smokescreen, but she could make out the sound of rustling bushes, and she caught the sight of several tattooed persons, garbed in tribal beads, plant leaves, and feathers, with armfuls of pottery in hand.

"Omigosh! Are they... are they stealing the artifacts!?" Willow gasped. This was outrageous! Those were crucial findings, and were ripe for study, they couldn't be allowed to just disappear!

As gunsman took up positions, reloading their guns after firing, one of the aboriginals lobbed one of the pots through the air towards one of the men!

"Oh no! Watch out!" Willow leapt forward between the gunsman, reaching out to catch the pot before it could break against one of the men. She cradled it in her arms, turning to one of the men.

"That was close... you could've got a concussion!" Willow handed the pot to one of the men, who dropped his gun in the process at the sight of Willow. She turned towards the foliage, making out the faint sights of the aboriginal interlopers.

"They're getting away!!" Willow's eyes narrowed. "It's okay, I'll get our rarities back!"

"Wh-what!?" The man cradling the pot blustered. "But that's our-"

"It's okay! Please guard the tent!" Willow nodded. "I'll be back in a jiffy!"

Without hesitation, Willow dove into the bushes to pursue the thieves... the two gunsman exchanged quizzical glances, and mutually decided that, perhaps, it would be better to report to Professor Rousseau...

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