Alisaura
Blue Crack Supplier
Thanks again for the feedback and encouragement 
I'm going to take a leaf from YDW's book and post a little reminder of the end of the previous chapter before the next... let me know if you think it's a good idea or not!
Usual disclaimer: 100% not true. Any factual errors are my own.
From the end of chapter 1:
-------------
"My parents are Welsh. We moved to Dublin when I was very young."
"Aah."
"From London."
"Better not mention that in the village," I said, although not entirely seriously.
--------------
Chapter 2:
--------------
Ed asked me a few more technical questions about my gear, but he seemed to know more about the theory behind it than I did – I just used it, after all. And we ran out of polite conversation long before we returned to the part of my grid where Ed's family was waiting.
I still had a few more passes to make, and Ed had clearly walked the kinks out of his back. His wife didn't look like she wanted to indulge her husband's love of gadgets any longer, either.
"Come on, doctor Evans," she called out in an American accent, as I checked the display in front of me. "Stop harassing the poor guy."
I looked up. "Ed Evans?" I said, unable and unwilling to hide a smirk. "What were your parents thinking?"
Ed looked equally amused, although I had the feeling it was for a different reason. "It could be worse, you know," he said, waving acknowledgement to his wife. "They could have called me Evan." He turned towards his family. "Farewell, doctor Erikson," he said over his shoulder, still smiling. "Walk on!"
He looked at me for another odd moment, as if waiting, then gave his head a little shake when I just looked at him blankly.
"Goodbye, mister Ed," I returned, it being the best I could do in the face of that cryptic remark. There was a chuckle as he walked away.
I watched him settle his children on the horse they were sharing, and smirked again as he struggled to mount his own horse. The animal was having none of it, but eventually man conquered beast, and they set off. Ed turned and waved before they disappeared over the crest of a hill. I waved back before I, as he'd said, walked on.
------------------------------
"So, what was he doing?"
"He was a she, and she's a geologist. She's doing a geophysical survey with an Overhauser magnetometer. They're more efficient than the proton mag--"
"Okay, okay! Were you swapping science jokes, or something? There you go, chuckling again."
"It's hilarious, she thinks my name is Ed. ... Ow, bloody hell, my arse will be raw at this rate..."
------------------------------
Don't think I'd missed the "guy" thing, either. I was fairly used to occasionally being mistaken for a man, at least at a distance, with a coat (and a magnetometer) on. I couldn't say how many men would have worn a bright pink beanie like mine, but otherwise it was an easy enough mistake to make. I'm tall for a woman, and I was taller than Ed, if only by a couple of inches.
It was fortunate that I didn't have to use my brain too much to operate the magnetometer, because my thoughts were well and truly focussed on the bizarre reaction I'd had to this guy, Ed. I was not a people person, but I'd never hated anyone at first sight before. I was even willing to give politicians the benefit of the doubt, most of the time. I didn't watch much TV anyway, so I rarely got the chance to judge people on it. In fact, I did my best to avoid "popular culture" at all turns. I relied on friends to alert me to any new music that was worth listening to, or movies worth watching.
In any case, it wasn't my way to make snap judgements like that. Hell, it wasn't even a judgement, the reaction had happened the moment I laid eyes on him. No conscious thought involved. If I had to judge him based on our conversation, I would have come up with a more favourable impression, but somewhere in my head, or my gut, something had clashed with something about him. Clashed violently. I could not for the life of me figure out why, and it drove me bananas until I finished the grid. It irked me all the way back to where I'd parked my four-wheel drive, and nagged at me while I uploaded the data from the magnetometer into my laptop.
When I got behind the wheel, I forced the issue out of my head. It doesn't matter, I told myself. So you don't like him, you got a bad feeling, so what? He's a passing tourist, you'll be here for days yet. You'll never see him again. And just as well too. You've got your solitude back.
Without Ed there to look friendly and smiling, my initial knee-jerk reaction was over-riding what my eyes and ears had told me. I decided that he must have been a creep, and I could tell, even though he was being all nice and charming. And with his family right there, too! Pfft.
As I started the car up, the thought occurred to me that I should take a look at this stone circle. With the peace of the valley restored, I thought it would be nice to spend some time alone with some rocks, placed by people with, presumably, a similar attachment to the earth as my own. It was comforting to know that some people had always attached more significance to the bones of the earth than science said they really deserved.
------------------------------
"I think we've stared at these rocks long enough. The kids want to go back to the village."
"...Mmm...?"
"Are you even listening?... Look, we're going back. If you get lost, call me."
"...Mmm."
------------------------------
I drove carefully across the trackless valley, keeping an eye out for boggy bits of peat. It was a long way on foot to the village, and the thought of some of those miserable old gits laughing at me if I got stuck was more than I could stomach.
There were no mishaps, though, and I parked a couple of hundred feet away from the ring of standing stones. It stood on a modest hill, a position that commanded a view over the whole valley. There was an indistinct small ditch running around the outside, and one or two of the stones had tilted or fallen over, but otherwise it was in amazing condition, for something that had stood around in the elements for four or five thousand years. The westering sun threw long shadows from the stones across the hill.
I climbed out of the car, and walked towards the circle. The closer I got, the more I felt a haunting feeling of déjà vu, although I was quite sure I had never been there before.
I'd been to Stonehenge, and seen a couple of old barrow stones here and there, but I'd never felt anything like the atmosphere on this hill around another ancient monument. I had generally been more interested in the provenance of the stones, and the rock itself. But this circle exerted a magnetic pull, and when I stopped, a few feet away from one of the larger stones (which was several feet taller than me), I stood transfixed for I don't know how long. I couldn't have said it was beautiful, although the builders had obviously taken some care with the shape, spacing and relative sizes of the stones. There was nothing overtly striking about the stones themselves, they looked perfectly ordinary, although I did notice that they weren't the local rock. They were grey, angular and weathered, much of their surface grown over with lichen and moss; an old structure, but hardly on the order of the age of the rocks I was used to working with. Yet something about the circle fascinated me.
The circle itself was about fifty feet across, the four largest stones set at equal intervals around the perimeter, and nine or ten feet tall. The others in between ranged from four feet to six or seven.
I registered these details absently. The wind was still gusting quite strongly, and at length I came out of my reverie, shivering. To warm up again I started to walk around the circle, trying to shake the eerie atmosphere. I didn't go to church, I wasn't a religious person, but it was almost how I used to think churches would feel, when I was a child. Which was fair enough, I told myself, since the people who raised these stones probably worshipped here. If faith could inspire those immense and astonishing cathedrals in the Middle Ages, why not stone circles in the Neolithic age?
But I'd never felt a feeling like this in any church.
I paused again, near another of the four larger stones. The angle of the sun seemed to suggest the faint remnants of carvings on the outside of it, and I reached out hesitantly to touch it, but then stopped. My hand hovered inches away, reluctance fighting fascination, and me equally unable to explain either.
Just as I was telling myself what an idiot I was being, I saw movement. There was someone else here. I stepped back, feeling defensive again. And sure enough, it was that guy, Ed. I scowled. He was wandering around the other side of the circle, looking dazed. I wondered if he'd fallen off his horse. You'd think someone called Ed would be better with horses, I thought.
I didn't want to find out, anyway. I stepped further back, and turned to head back to the car.
"Hey!"
Dammit! He'd seen me... and he wasn't sounding so friendly now. My own hostility had returned, for that matter, this time largely undiluted. So I ignored him and started walking away, fists bunched at my sides.
"Hey, wait... Lisa...?" The challenging tone had left his voice; and it seems there really is power in using someone's name. I stopped and turned.
He'd come closer, but stopped now. "What?" I snapped, my own voice still unfriendly. "Where's your family gone?"
Ed glanced around, as if expecting to see them nearby. "They must have gone back," he said, sounding faintly puzzled.
"Obviously."
He came closer. "Um... do you know which way the village is?"
The tense atmosphere eased with that embarrassed admission. I rolled my eyes and walked back towards him, pulled a compass from my pocket, checked it and pointed. I also saw his hired horse, grazing unconcerned on the other side of the hill. "You're lucky that horse is still here," I said. Its reins were trailing on the ground.
"Yeah." He looked off in the direction I'd pointed, memorising, and rubbed the back of his neck. He wore a sheepish expression. "I don't know what happened. I just..." He gazed at the circle, and my eyes followed.
"It is... an amazing place," I admitted softly, searching for an adequate word and failing.
A gust of wind rushed through the valley and across the hill, howling mournfully among the stones. We both shivered, and my hair, at least, felt as if it stood on end. Ed's beanie didn't move. I avoided eye contact – this place was spooking me badly.
"I'd better get going," I said, putting the compass away.
"Me too."
"Bye, then."
"Goodbye." And we went our separate ways. I didn't wait this time before I drove off.
-------------
I called my man, Glen, up that night. I'm not the sort that has to speak to him every day while we're apart, or even every week, but I guess I was a bit jangled by the day's events, and I wanted to hear his voice.
"How are you surviving in the desert, then?" He was born Welsh, and I'll never get tired of his accent.
"It's surprisingly green," I smiled. "Not quite as deserted as I was expecting, however."
"Aw, don't tell me there's a McDonald's every three miles and tourists everywhere," he replied in mock horror.
"Not yet," I said, equally mocking in my voice of impending doom. "It was the strangest thing though. I met this guy called Ed, he was out there on horses with his family. I don't know why he had to pick that part of everywhere to be a tourist in, though."
"That doesn't sound so strange to me. Unlikely, yes, but hardly strange."
I suddenly felt immensely foolish at the thought of telling Glen about my bizarre reaction. Maybe I had imagined it, after all. But I'd begun, might as well forge ahead.
"The strange thing was, I took an instant dislike to him. From the second I saw him, he just... I dunno. It was weird. The guy's a jerk." I was surprised at the vehemence still in my voice. I think Glen was too, because there was a brief silence on the line.
"Jerks are all too plentiful, you know. I'm sure you told him where to go," he said, a knowing tone in his voice. I had to laugh.
--------------------
There you go... that's your lot for the week, as they say on a TV show here
(Except I'll probably post another chapter before a whole week goes by!)
I'm going to take a leaf from YDW's book and post a little reminder of the end of the previous chapter before the next... let me know if you think it's a good idea or not!
Usual disclaimer: 100% not true. Any factual errors are my own.
From the end of chapter 1:
-------------
"My parents are Welsh. We moved to Dublin when I was very young."
"Aah."
"From London."
"Better not mention that in the village," I said, although not entirely seriously.
--------------
Chapter 2:
--------------
Ed asked me a few more technical questions about my gear, but he seemed to know more about the theory behind it than I did – I just used it, after all. And we ran out of polite conversation long before we returned to the part of my grid where Ed's family was waiting.
I still had a few more passes to make, and Ed had clearly walked the kinks out of his back. His wife didn't look like she wanted to indulge her husband's love of gadgets any longer, either.
"Come on, doctor Evans," she called out in an American accent, as I checked the display in front of me. "Stop harassing the poor guy."
I looked up. "Ed Evans?" I said, unable and unwilling to hide a smirk. "What were your parents thinking?"
Ed looked equally amused, although I had the feeling it was for a different reason. "It could be worse, you know," he said, waving acknowledgement to his wife. "They could have called me Evan." He turned towards his family. "Farewell, doctor Erikson," he said over his shoulder, still smiling. "Walk on!"
He looked at me for another odd moment, as if waiting, then gave his head a little shake when I just looked at him blankly.
"Goodbye, mister Ed," I returned, it being the best I could do in the face of that cryptic remark. There was a chuckle as he walked away.
I watched him settle his children on the horse they were sharing, and smirked again as he struggled to mount his own horse. The animal was having none of it, but eventually man conquered beast, and they set off. Ed turned and waved before they disappeared over the crest of a hill. I waved back before I, as he'd said, walked on.
------------------------------
"So, what was he doing?"
"He was a she, and she's a geologist. She's doing a geophysical survey with an Overhauser magnetometer. They're more efficient than the proton mag--"
"Okay, okay! Were you swapping science jokes, or something? There you go, chuckling again."
"It's hilarious, she thinks my name is Ed. ... Ow, bloody hell, my arse will be raw at this rate..."
------------------------------
Don't think I'd missed the "guy" thing, either. I was fairly used to occasionally being mistaken for a man, at least at a distance, with a coat (and a magnetometer) on. I couldn't say how many men would have worn a bright pink beanie like mine, but otherwise it was an easy enough mistake to make. I'm tall for a woman, and I was taller than Ed, if only by a couple of inches.
It was fortunate that I didn't have to use my brain too much to operate the magnetometer, because my thoughts were well and truly focussed on the bizarre reaction I'd had to this guy, Ed. I was not a people person, but I'd never hated anyone at first sight before. I was even willing to give politicians the benefit of the doubt, most of the time. I didn't watch much TV anyway, so I rarely got the chance to judge people on it. In fact, I did my best to avoid "popular culture" at all turns. I relied on friends to alert me to any new music that was worth listening to, or movies worth watching.
In any case, it wasn't my way to make snap judgements like that. Hell, it wasn't even a judgement, the reaction had happened the moment I laid eyes on him. No conscious thought involved. If I had to judge him based on our conversation, I would have come up with a more favourable impression, but somewhere in my head, or my gut, something had clashed with something about him. Clashed violently. I could not for the life of me figure out why, and it drove me bananas until I finished the grid. It irked me all the way back to where I'd parked my four-wheel drive, and nagged at me while I uploaded the data from the magnetometer into my laptop.
When I got behind the wheel, I forced the issue out of my head. It doesn't matter, I told myself. So you don't like him, you got a bad feeling, so what? He's a passing tourist, you'll be here for days yet. You'll never see him again. And just as well too. You've got your solitude back.
Without Ed there to look friendly and smiling, my initial knee-jerk reaction was over-riding what my eyes and ears had told me. I decided that he must have been a creep, and I could tell, even though he was being all nice and charming. And with his family right there, too! Pfft.
As I started the car up, the thought occurred to me that I should take a look at this stone circle. With the peace of the valley restored, I thought it would be nice to spend some time alone with some rocks, placed by people with, presumably, a similar attachment to the earth as my own. It was comforting to know that some people had always attached more significance to the bones of the earth than science said they really deserved.
------------------------------
"I think we've stared at these rocks long enough. The kids want to go back to the village."
"...Mmm...?"
"Are you even listening?... Look, we're going back. If you get lost, call me."
"...Mmm."
------------------------------
I drove carefully across the trackless valley, keeping an eye out for boggy bits of peat. It was a long way on foot to the village, and the thought of some of those miserable old gits laughing at me if I got stuck was more than I could stomach.
There were no mishaps, though, and I parked a couple of hundred feet away from the ring of standing stones. It stood on a modest hill, a position that commanded a view over the whole valley. There was an indistinct small ditch running around the outside, and one or two of the stones had tilted or fallen over, but otherwise it was in amazing condition, for something that had stood around in the elements for four or five thousand years. The westering sun threw long shadows from the stones across the hill.
I climbed out of the car, and walked towards the circle. The closer I got, the more I felt a haunting feeling of déjà vu, although I was quite sure I had never been there before.
I'd been to Stonehenge, and seen a couple of old barrow stones here and there, but I'd never felt anything like the atmosphere on this hill around another ancient monument. I had generally been more interested in the provenance of the stones, and the rock itself. But this circle exerted a magnetic pull, and when I stopped, a few feet away from one of the larger stones (which was several feet taller than me), I stood transfixed for I don't know how long. I couldn't have said it was beautiful, although the builders had obviously taken some care with the shape, spacing and relative sizes of the stones. There was nothing overtly striking about the stones themselves, they looked perfectly ordinary, although I did notice that they weren't the local rock. They were grey, angular and weathered, much of their surface grown over with lichen and moss; an old structure, but hardly on the order of the age of the rocks I was used to working with. Yet something about the circle fascinated me.
The circle itself was about fifty feet across, the four largest stones set at equal intervals around the perimeter, and nine or ten feet tall. The others in between ranged from four feet to six or seven.
I registered these details absently. The wind was still gusting quite strongly, and at length I came out of my reverie, shivering. To warm up again I started to walk around the circle, trying to shake the eerie atmosphere. I didn't go to church, I wasn't a religious person, but it was almost how I used to think churches would feel, when I was a child. Which was fair enough, I told myself, since the people who raised these stones probably worshipped here. If faith could inspire those immense and astonishing cathedrals in the Middle Ages, why not stone circles in the Neolithic age?
But I'd never felt a feeling like this in any church.
I paused again, near another of the four larger stones. The angle of the sun seemed to suggest the faint remnants of carvings on the outside of it, and I reached out hesitantly to touch it, but then stopped. My hand hovered inches away, reluctance fighting fascination, and me equally unable to explain either.
Just as I was telling myself what an idiot I was being, I saw movement. There was someone else here. I stepped back, feeling defensive again. And sure enough, it was that guy, Ed. I scowled. He was wandering around the other side of the circle, looking dazed. I wondered if he'd fallen off his horse. You'd think someone called Ed would be better with horses, I thought.
I didn't want to find out, anyway. I stepped further back, and turned to head back to the car.
"Hey!"
Dammit! He'd seen me... and he wasn't sounding so friendly now. My own hostility had returned, for that matter, this time largely undiluted. So I ignored him and started walking away, fists bunched at my sides.
"Hey, wait... Lisa...?" The challenging tone had left his voice; and it seems there really is power in using someone's name. I stopped and turned.
He'd come closer, but stopped now. "What?" I snapped, my own voice still unfriendly. "Where's your family gone?"
Ed glanced around, as if expecting to see them nearby. "They must have gone back," he said, sounding faintly puzzled.
"Obviously."
He came closer. "Um... do you know which way the village is?"
The tense atmosphere eased with that embarrassed admission. I rolled my eyes and walked back towards him, pulled a compass from my pocket, checked it and pointed. I also saw his hired horse, grazing unconcerned on the other side of the hill. "You're lucky that horse is still here," I said. Its reins were trailing on the ground.
"Yeah." He looked off in the direction I'd pointed, memorising, and rubbed the back of his neck. He wore a sheepish expression. "I don't know what happened. I just..." He gazed at the circle, and my eyes followed.
"It is... an amazing place," I admitted softly, searching for an adequate word and failing.
A gust of wind rushed through the valley and across the hill, howling mournfully among the stones. We both shivered, and my hair, at least, felt as if it stood on end. Ed's beanie didn't move. I avoided eye contact – this place was spooking me badly.
"I'd better get going," I said, putting the compass away.
"Me too."
"Bye, then."
"Goodbye." And we went our separate ways. I didn't wait this time before I drove off.
-------------
I called my man, Glen, up that night. I'm not the sort that has to speak to him every day while we're apart, or even every week, but I guess I was a bit jangled by the day's events, and I wanted to hear his voice.
"How are you surviving in the desert, then?" He was born Welsh, and I'll never get tired of his accent.
"It's surprisingly green," I smiled. "Not quite as deserted as I was expecting, however."
"Aw, don't tell me there's a McDonald's every three miles and tourists everywhere," he replied in mock horror.
"Not yet," I said, equally mocking in my voice of impending doom. "It was the strangest thing though. I met this guy called Ed, he was out there on horses with his family. I don't know why he had to pick that part of everywhere to be a tourist in, though."
"That doesn't sound so strange to me. Unlikely, yes, but hardly strange."
I suddenly felt immensely foolish at the thought of telling Glen about my bizarre reaction. Maybe I had imagined it, after all. But I'd begun, might as well forge ahead.
"The strange thing was, I took an instant dislike to him. From the second I saw him, he just... I dunno. It was weird. The guy's a jerk." I was surprised at the vehemence still in my voice. I think Glen was too, because there was a brief silence on the line.
"Jerks are all too plentiful, you know. I'm sure you told him where to go," he said, a knowing tone in his voice. I had to laugh.
--------------------
There you go... that's your lot for the week, as they say on a TV show here
(Except I'll probably post another chapter before a whole week goes by!)
Last edited:
More!
you totally are my favourite science geek Ali!
This is really cool.....don't ever think that you have no talent for writing 
because this Kiwi is hooked!
post again soon !
I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to get that outta my head now!
But somebody doesn't like Ed? awww. 
