xp_logs | She Sells Sea Shells: The Tunnel (Reply)

x-invisiblegirl.livejournal.com posting in

The kids explore the tunnel as Sam and Korvus fall behind.

There was something rather...claustrophobic about the caves. As long as Topaz kept her head down though, it was fine.

Except she kept looking around. There was a faint...almost tickle in the air. It was odd.

Now that they were here, Billy found himself actually excited about the trip. Who would have guessed there were exciting caves to explore in New Jersey, of all places. It was even a proper cave, not at all like he expected. There was just something...fascinating about the place, almost alive, and he found himself peering into every nook as they passed. "Isn't this is so cool?" he asked Topaz as he caught up with her.

"What? Oh - yeah." As long as she didn't think too hard. Which was easier said than done. Topaz looked around again, absentmindedly fiddling with her pendant as she threw caution to the winds and said, "Does somethin' feel...I dunno, a little weird to you? Not necessarily bad, just...different?" Almost like the air was electrified.

Come to think of it, Billy squinted, it did feel a bit strange. He tried to place it a moment, then shrugged. "Yeah, you're right. Now that you mention it, something does feel...off. Kinda like...well, skin crawly but not the bad kind, like you said."

Another moment of walking, and Topaz came to a halt, turning where she stood as she looked around. It wasn't hurting them, so she supposed it didn't matter, really, but it would bug her until she figured it out. "What do you think it is?" She asked, realizing she probably looked like an idiot turning around and around like she was.

"I dunno, it's kind of like..." Billy's eyes widened, and he lowered his voice. "Did you do any magic? Cuz that's what it feels like. Just a bit."

Topaz whipped around to look at him, surprised. He was right. How had she missed that? "Not me, no." She lowered her voice to the same level. "Don't suppose there's any chance you did?"

"Not that I know of," Billy shrugged. Which wasn't exactly a "No" but with him, that might be the best one could hope for.

Well there was nothing falling out of the ceiling or appearing in the corners, so Billy was probably free of the blame too. Which didn't leave many options. "Maybe...it's the place?" Topaz suggested after a moment, turning again to look around.

"It could be," Billy agreed, finally giving up with a frown. "Well, it doesn't seem to be doing anything. Maybe it's just some place where people used to do magic. Amanda might know. Maybe I'll ask when she doesn't seem to be in a 'That would be a good history project' mood."

She'd actually been about to suggest they call their teacher, but Billy was right - it wasn't hurting them, and considering how long it had taken them to even figure out what it was, there was no point in bothering Amanda. "She'd probably think that'd make a good summer project," Topaz said instead. "Keep us outta trouble or whatever."

"Yeah, maybe we'll just keep this one quiet," Billy grinned. "It's not like it's bothering anyone, and people come here like every day. What's the worst that could happen?"

"Cave could collapse on us," Topaz replied without missing a beat. "But as far as the magic goes, I'm sure it'll be fine." She turned to look deeper into the cave. The path ahead was dark, and it made Topaz slightly uncomfortable, but she wrote it off.

There was nothing here that could hurt them.

Place Holder

Frank shoved his hands into his pockets and glanced up at the cave roof, idly wondering what it was made of. "Molly, don't wander off," he called. "Don't want you to get lost."

Molly had her hands in her pockets (they always said 'don't touch anything'), but she was peering at the walls really closely by leaning in. She frowned.

"I'm not."

He had the 'adult' tone of voice.

Frank noticed that himself. Who in God's name thought it would be a good idea to leave him in charge of a kid? "Good. Place used to be a smuggler's cave. Fu-" NO! Bad Frank! "-God knows how long it'd take to find you. Then again, maybe there's treasure still here. That might be cool."

He was rambling. Again. Oh God, he sucked at this.

"I won't get lost," she promised. Sometimes being a kid made the adults and older kids think you'd do dumb things. She was close to being an older kid soon too but no one remembered that. That was okay, though. Cause maybe she could show them she was an older kid somehow.

"A smuggler is like...pirates?"

Frank nodded. "Yeah, like pirates. They used to hide things here so they wouldn't have to pay taxes on them." He thought. If he was honest, Frank hadn't exactly been paying attention.

"How would that stop them from paying taxes?" Molly said, squinting with confusion.

"Cause no-one knew they had stuff to pay taxes on. Most important rule of life- you only get in trouble if you get caught." Let her make of that what she would.

Molly tilted her head thoughtfully. "Oh," she said. That kinda made sense.

"...not that I'm advocating you put that into practice," Frank added, abruptly realizing what he just said. "That would be a bad- you know what? Let's move on."

Covering her mouth, Molly held back a giggle. "Okay," she said. His face got all spooked all of a sudden. It was funny.

"I wish I would've wore my pirate hat. Then maybe I could think all piratey and we could find the treasure!"

Frank pondered this for a moment. "Well, do you have to have the hat to think all piratey?" he asked cautiously. "I mean... it's the same head that'd be thinking, right?"

"But it makes me FEEL piratey," Molly insisted with a absolutely certain nod. "And if I FEEL piratey then I can think piratey. Y'know? I'm the sun right now," she said, pointing to the sun hat.

"And the sun is shiny and I'm in a cave so it's dark and that's why I need my pirate hat."

It made sense to her.

Frank considered Molly's sun hat for a moment, and decided to just go with it. "So.. what does your sun hat make you feel like? Sunny?"

Molly grinned broadly. "Mmmhmm!" she said.

"And bright. But outside bright. Not cave bright. Cause I need a pirate hat to think like a pirate." She paused.

"I think."

"So... what does the sun hat help you think of?" Astrophysics? No. Bad Frank. No teasing.

"Sunny thoughts. And the beach. And swimming. And maybe deserts. But hopefully not," Molly said.

"Hey, man, deserts need love too!" Frank grinned. "I mean, without them, where'd all the cacti go?"

Molly thought about it. "Yeah....what's the point?" she said, then giggled madly at the pun.

"Come on! Let's catch up to the others!"

Tandy stopped walking as she looked at the doorway. [b]"Hey Sue, does this look like a Hobbit hole to you? Just bigger?"

Sue shook her head at her friend as she hurried to catch up, "Why would some oldtime smuggler people decide that what our hideyhole needs is a..." the younger blonde fell silent as she came around the corner and got her first look at the door, "That's pretty big...and round." she offered with a wry smile.

"I wonder why the needed a big and round doorway like this. Or was this just for style?"

"Who doesn't need a big round doorway like this? It's so useful," Sue noted with a grin.

"But why? It makes no sense? Did they have like large boulders? Or maybe large heads?"

"I don't know," Sue admitted, "But there must have been some reason, I mean look at it," as she spoke the girl poked the edge of the doorframe with a finger, "It's completely smooth, it must have taken them forever to carve it out."

Tandy started to giggle, "Oh my god Sue. What have we become if we have taken an interest in the shape of a door frame. Smooth huh?"

Sue winked at Tandy, "It obviously means we take history and studying seriously, thinking so hard about ancient doors during our holidays." Sue grinned at Tandy as she continued with a laugh, and such eloquent phrases, Mr Guthrie and KGibz would be so proud."

"Shhh we cannot let them know that I am starting to take my class work seriously. They would like have a heart attack or something."

The caves were really pretty cool. Clint's visual acuity was such that, while he couldn't appreciate the many varied colors of the shells, he could see the shells in sharp detail. There were some that were darker than others, of course, and he found himself standing beside Maddie, head tilted back and slightly to the side as he looked up at the wall in front of them.

"I wish you could see this, Clint." The pale colors glimmered against the dark walls in the low light inside the cavern. Thousands of years of sediment deposited and worn away by water had come together to form the sight before her. Maddie's fingers traced over the shapes of the shells, admiring the way they fit together so perfectly in a mosaic of natural beauty that rivaled any of stained-glass masterpiece. She sighed in contentment. "It's beautiful."

"I kinda wish I could see it, too," Clint said. It wasn't often the expressed any sort of dissatisfaction with his eyesight, but sometimes he really wished he could see in colors. Particularly in situations like this - or when looking through astronomy texts. They always talked about the colors of particular things in space. "Are these different kinds of shells, though?" He stepped closer to the wall, hand hovering over a couple shells. "See how these kind of look like triangles and the other ones are more rounded? These round ones - are they darker than the other ones? They kind of look darker, but y'know - cave."

Venturing back to where her friend was standing, fingers trailing over the wall, Maddie shot a glance at the shells he was referring to and leaned in to garner a closer look. "Yeah," she concluded following a few moments of silence. Clint's low-light vision may have been stellar, but differentiating shades, she knew, was infinitely more difficult. "I mean, there are a bunch of different types of shells in here, but these," she motioned to the perfectly round shells, "these are definitely darker." Shrug. "I'm not a shellologist or anything though, so I have no idea what they're called or what kind of animal uses them."

"Hm..." Clint stood back from the wall, head tilted to the side. He trailed his fingers through the air, tracing over odd patterns he thought he saw. "If you look at them, at the darker shells - does it. Does it look like letters? Cyrillic only not quite?"

"Hm..." Maddie joined him in an identical pose, lips pursed together, deep in thought, surveying the wall. It did kinda look like letters, she guessed, now that he mentioned it. Some of the groups of shells repeated throughout the cavern, but not in any easily recognizable pattern. No "circle, square, triangle, circle, square, triangle..." It may have been some sort of code. "I don't know; it's all Greek to me."

"Come on, let's go find the others. I don't want to get lost in here and have to resort to cannibalism to stay alive until someone comes to rescue me."

"Yeah, cause you could totally just make me sit still while you gnawed off my arm or whatever," Clint said, slinging an arm around Maddie's shoulders. "Which would suck. Could you turn off my pain receptors or something?"
The gesture was reciprocated with Maddie's arm finding it's way around Clint's waist as the two teenagers' stepped fell in sync. "Don't worry," she assured him soberly, eyes kept forward toward the source of light and exit of the cavern. "I won't let you feel any pain."

"I'll kill you before I eat you."

"Oh wow..." Hope suddenly stopped as she caught sight of something on the walls. Stepping closer she saw the wall was covered in shells. But it was not just that... it seemed like the natural color variations were used to made a pattern. "Have you seen this, your highness? This certainly lends credence to the theory these caves are somehow man made..."

When Namor had agreed to go on this excursion to the beach, this certainly was not what he had in mind.

The bus full of school children he could handle; barely, but he could live with it, tune them out with earplugs. Especially when at the end the ride was a sandy beach filled with bikini clad women sunbathing, playing volleyball, swimming. This image was the one thing that was going to make this whole ordeal of waking up early (for him at least) and being surrounded by little kids (never mind the fact that he was only a few years older than the youngest of them, he was a prince, and a university student, he should be going to clubs not being forced to hold his buddy's hand as they crossed the street) worth it.

Once again, however, he had been lied to. And instead of lounging and working on his tan, Namor was being forced to explore some dirty cave. He was not dressed for this. His Ferragamo loafers were not made for this sort of activity, so he was forced to carry them, and every few steps he would wince in pain as a pebble dug itself into his bare feet.

This what not what he had imagined. Not in the least.

At least this girl seemed to have proper respect for his position.

"Yes," he replied, feigning interest behind the sunglasses he still wore despite the light being dim. "It is quite lovely. But there are many other natural wonders that seem at first glance to be impossible."

"Shall we continue?"

"Just one more moment, please." Hope studied the shell patterns for a few more moments, before stepping away from the wall, pausing for another moment as she considered the figure already slowly heading up the gently curving path. Her mother had been exited when Hope mentioned he would be visiting and it had not been hard to convince her mother a visit home would be better planned at another date.

Even if had come with several exhortations to make herself agreeable to him.

Leaving her musings behind for the moment, she trotted just a moment to catch up with the Attilan nobleman. He had been fairly taciturn from what she had seen of him so far, but it would not hurt to attempt to engage him at least some. "May I ask of which natural wonders you were speaking, sir? Have you visited any in person?"

Namor continued down the path, leaving the girl to prattle on to herself. She may have acknowledged his royal title, but she was far too familiar, continuing to talk without being invited, and truth be told, Namor had no interest in anything that she was saying. The saying "better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt" instantly came to mind as he considered, briefly, this young girl he had been stuck with. Simpering fool. He was used to people trying to cultivate his favor by trying to act engaging and interesting that Namor was instantly able to pick up on such attempts and completely tune them out.

He had no intentions of feeding this silly young girl's desire to be the next Kate Middleton.

No, that was unfair. Kate was special, a diamond discovered within a coal mine, and while she had not been born royal, she certainly was born to be royal. This child was more of a Wallis Simpson, and he was certainly not Edward VIII nor would he be.

How far had they gone? Namor had been so lost in his thoughts regarding this girl's feeble attempts to be charming and then to Kate that he lost track of distance, having been roused from his contemplation by a noticeable darkening of the area around him. When he pushed his sunglasses up to rest upon his head his suspicions were confirmed; they had wandered farther than he intended. He turned back toward the way they came, noticing for the first time the perceptible (yet not obviously so) tilt. That had to be it. The fact that the floor tilted downward had to be the reason why it was easy walking; gravity had to be helping them along.

"Come," he instructed Hope as he continued down the path, not bothering to wait for her. "We should catch up with the others."

"That sounds like a wise idea, sir." Still, she fell back for moment, pretending to fix something on her shoe and studied him for a bit more. He was a hard person to get a read on. Was he just a naturally standoffish person, possible uneasy in the company where he was or was he just well... something of an arrogant bastard? From the glimpses she had caught over the last few weeks, she was starting to lean to the last one though.

Well, not much she could do about it now. With that thought, she followed him quickly and kept silent, deciding to leave him be for the moment.

Sam looked around at the cave walls as they made their way through the site, running one of his hands along its surface as he did so. His thoughts went back to the mines back home and the people who'd worked inside of them, and his father. It made him a touch homesick, and he got lost in his thoughts for a while, making him fall further back as everyone else progressed through the cave.

It was easy to let the students stay ahead so they were in sight. They could also explore on their own. Korvus was self-taught and he had high regards for the idea that people did best when allowed to choose their own path. As Sam fell back a bit father, Korvus lingered as well. Either of them could catch up quickly if necessary and the caves echoed well. Even from several yards back their could hear the conversations.

"Kids're excited, it would seem, huh?" Sam chuckled as the kids' loud chatter and laughter from up ahead echoed back to them. "Nice to hear them having a good time at least, and if they're learnin' anything at the same time? Well, that's a nice bonus, I reckon." He kicked at a nearby rock, watching it skip and bounce across the ground until it rebounded off the wall with a clacking sound.

"I do not believe it's possible to avoid learning from a new experience." Korvus offered in cryptic agreement. "The classroom is the only place I am aware of that can spend a significant amount of time on education without an effect."

"Oh, some kids could surprise you there, heh." Sam chuckled as a few former students' names popped into his mind. Thankfully those kind of students were mostly few and far between. "It's nice to get out of the classroom for a change, though, especially in the summer."