What's Old Is New Again

[Fromikeable]

Alas, more iron. Rase couldn’t believe how much of the stuff had been utilized by this clan given the locale. Certainly the buildings had been built prior to the harnessing of the planet’s natural lightning storms, but even people then had understood that tall objects made of iron tended not to last long. It must have been an interesting age, actually; it was just at the right time for the old ideas of thunder gods smiting objects that got too close was beginning to wane, and the curiosity most sentient species had was beginning to take route.

Of course, it still happened too late for this building. The dig had confirmed that it hadn’t just collapsed; it had flat-out burned down.

Pulling the bandana out from his pocket and lifting his hat, Rase wiped his forehead of equal parts dirt and sweat. The workers around him worked diligently, though perhaps a bit more callously than he’d like. As he ascended via a ladder to the top of his particular dig, he could see a few talking, another taking a break of his own, and still another examining some remains, using the trademark power that Kiffars beheld.

“You there!” Halfway up the ladder, the Zeltron pointed at the practitioner, who jumped slightly, looking up confusedly. “Are you here to practice archeology or psychosis? We record samples, not invade them.” Official Vorta clan policy, and he wasn’t about to get the dig shut down because of one snooping digger. The Kiffar, to his credit, nodded quickly before setting the remains down and beginning to measure them, clearly taking more caution this time.

Nevermind the reliance on psychic powers. History was very clear on how that tended to work out for most civilizations.

Exiting the dig, Rase began to walk past the others, small rope bridges and wooden platforms bridging large, square, shallow excavations and small, narrow, deep ones. They’d found Mount Rai’s famous clocktower almost the moment they arrived, and just as the old letter had said, despite the legends that it had been struck when it tolled 6:66, it had actually stopped at 11:56. That implied much, but nothing specifically; a shame, given how much there was going to be to sort through.

But getting the Vorta clan to agree to let him run the dig had been trivial. After all, the daughter of the clanleader was rather infatuated with him.

Arriving at his tent and grabbing a bottle of water, Rase would look back out over the digs before glancing at the sky. Clear, as had been forecasted, but as the planets were beginning to draw near to one another again, he knew it wouldn’t hold.

He needed to find whatever it was he was looking for and finish this dig sooner rather than later.

[Alaska!]

It was hot. That had to be an understatement. Maura glanced over the wall of the hover trailer. The breeze hit Maura in the face and alleviated the discomfort. With a heavy sigh, she draped her arms over the edge and rested her red cheeks against the top of the wall. She'd been laying at the bottom of the trailer for most of the ride to the excavation site. The cramped floor was shared with extra tools and another crate of water. Unfortunately, Maura hadn't arrived in time to catch Dr. Rase Jones Hyul and was forced to get a ride from one of the clansmen tasked with getting more supplies. Oddly enough, the woman had been eager to make the journey so long as she could make herself fit in with the cargo. Maura had made a long but tight space for herself along the edge of the hover trailer.

For a long while the view had been the same. In hindsight Maura wish she'd of brought something entertaining to do for the trip. Her mind was too focused on finding the doctor to play games or take in the desert landscape. It was almost physically painful to wait to see him. Dr. Hyul had been the last person her mother had spoken to from what Maura could tell. All of their correspondence had been academic in nature and at times dense in lexicon. Perhaps he'd spoken to her since leaving Alderaan or better yet had better insight as to where Nora and her husband might be.

Maura's head perked up when she saw the excavation site come into view. Finally! It took all of Maura's self control to not leap out of the trailer right then and continue the journey on foot. Eagerly, she gathered up her backpack and rearranged everything quickly. The moment that the speeder slowed down to a safe speed she leapt over the edge, landing hard on her feet. Her left foot tingled painfully at the sudden impact but she ignored it. As she made her way towards the dig, she scooped up some sort of tool. One thing that the young woman had learned from her father was if one acts as if they belonged somewhere, one could usually get away with just about anything. Her eyes moved around the site, looking into each part for the dig, searching for the Zeltron man. He wasn't there, or not that she could see. As panic set in, the confidence that had gotten Maura this far into the site began to fade. Desperate to find him, she approached one of the workers.
"Did you see where Dr. Hyul went?" she asked, desperately trying to hide her lisp. "There's something he out to look at." The worker seemed disinterested in Maura as he didn't even look up at her and instead waved with his hand towards the tent away from the dig. "Thank you!"

Did one need to knock on a tent? She stood outside the tent,staring at it with a puzzled expression. Shrugging, she opted to knock at the cloth gingerly. Though, on further consideration that probably wasn't the best option seeing as how she'd never know if he'd beckoned her in or not.
"Dr. Hyul?" she said before stepping into the tent with or without an invitation. Once in, she put down the tool she'd taken and signed as she spoke, "I'm sorry to intrude but I really need to speak to you. It's important." Maura nervously pushed a hand over her now disheveled braid. The journey had pulled bits of her dark hair free from the braid she normally kept it in. Her cheeks were a dusty red now from the sun and dirt from the journey. Maybe she should have cleaned up before meeting with the doctor. Either way it was too late now.

[Fromikeable]

His ears perked at a female voice. Feminine presence on dig sites like these tended to be somewhat sparse; the workforce was overwhelmingly male, and aside from himself, the management staff was fairly few. The only people for miles who didn’t carry testosterone or some variant were a few graduate students, three of the representatives from the Vorta clan, or the occasional academic.

Given that he’d seen few of the first two, he was prone to assume the third. When he turned around to see a short human woman, he studied her, as if trying to tell at a glance.

“Aren’t so many things?” Grinning a bit, he’d lean back on his small desk, folding his arms and holding his chin. His vibrant green eyes scanned her head to toe, not sizing up her attractiveness so much as her general physique, appearance, and presentation. She looked a bit battered and sweaty; however she’d gotten here, it clearly hadn’t been very luxurious.

He was sure, at least, that he hadn’t seen her before.

“Before you explain precisely who you are, what you might ask of me, or why in the galaxy you look as though you just crawled out of a shipping crate…” He offered up the bottle of water to her, lithe fingers offering it freely. How much did she know about him? How experienced was she? How trusting?

You could tell a lot about a person by how quickly they accepted a gift.