Alisaura
Blue Crack Supplier
Okay, here we go. I've been working on this since May or June last year... it starts off kinda slow, so please bear with me... it's a bit different, I guess; I hope you like it.
It's set more or less in the present day.
Disclaimer: This is all total fiction. I don't know the band, never been to Wales except for one afternoon in Cardiff; any factual errors about Wales or other things are entirely my own. Wikipedia can only help so much!
Also, all song lyrics/quotes etc. are the property of their authors. Don't sue me, I'm broke.
----------------------------------------------------
I have always been drawn to the earth.
I don't mean to sound like an alien, who has visited a hundred worlds, and is rather fond of the Earth as a holiday spot.
And I'm not talking about gravity; that force which draws all the things on this planet to its centre.
Of course I am one of those things, bound physically to the Earth – but I am drawn, too, in other ways, less tangible ways.
I was brought up on documentaries; my fascination with fossils and dinosaurs as a child led me to study geology and palaeontology. But now, even though my youthful dream of dinosaur hunting lies ruefully behind me, I still have the privilege of working with the earth. Its fascination for me has taken on a far more scientific flavour. The whole history of this planet, and the life on it, is locked in the rocks beneath our feet. The deep fires within the Earth have oozed, or exploded, out and solidified. There are titanic forces driving the continents' stately dance. Wind and water wage their ceaseless battle with earth, wearing it down, only for it to consolidate again at the bottom of rivers and lakes and oceans.
What's not to love?
----------------------------------------------------
Green fields, grass and earth...
It was April, the sky low and leaden, and a cool wind was bending the moor grass on the rolling hills. The springtime air still smelled of green and growing things, despite the chill. Hills rose to an indistinct horizon in the east, becoming the Cambrian mountains. There was the brooding darker green of a pine plantation to the north, but elsewhere the hills rolled on in various shades of lighter green, punctuated by rocky outcrops. Not what most people would call a desert, but still, this whole area had been dubbed "the desert of Wales". Once away from the towns surrounding it, you could walk, drive, or ride for many miles and never see another human being, or any sign of civilisation. Roads were rare enough, but there was a track nearby which was good enough for my four-wheel drive.
On this day I was surveying a section of a broad valley, a magnetometer strapped to my back, a sensor sticking up in the air above my shoulders. I probably looked as if I'd just walked off a space ship, and the vivid pink beanie on my head (complete with pom-pom and ear flaps) probably didn't help. My hands were stuffed into the pockets of my yellow jacket, my eyes on the display of the unit strapped to my chest, and my ears were full of loud, heavy music. I like a solid, heavy beat. My feet moved steadily, eating up the grid I was walking. The display made sure I stayed on course – it wouldn't do to screw up the data because I couldn't walk straight. Even if I was doing this survey as a favour for the archaeology department, my employers wanted the data too, and I had my reputation to think of.
Freelance geology isn't the most stable career option, but I had done pretty well. I was a jack of all trades, so to speak, although admittedly a master of none. Had my own car and a lot of my own gear (including the bizarre-looking contraption I was currently wearing), no inclination to teach, and very itchy feet.
My official job on this trip was to take a series of soil samples in this part of the Welsh "desert", with a view to solving a puzzling case of apparent soil impoverishment. And since I was out here, the archaeology department asked me to do a geophysics survey of the area, looking for buried artefacts or cairns or something. There was a stone circle around here somewhere, and they probably figured there might be other signs of ancient human habitation to be found and excavated. That's the beauty of these magnetic surveys – you can find everything, from pipelines to fault lines to old bombs to even older things; medieval furnaces, Roman villas, Bronze Age burials, Neolithic barrows.
My personal interests ran to things far more ancient than that, however. The Cambrian mountains to the east had given their name to an age of the Earth's pre-history, 500 million years ago. Long before dinosaurs or mammals or birds, long before most forms of recognisable life had evolved. Plants had just begun to colonise the ancient shorelines, and animals were only thinking of following. Trilobites populated the ocean floor, and graptolites were leaving their mystifying remains. Nobody today really knew what a living graptolite looked like; all we had to go by was their pencil-squiggle skeletons in the rock.
A gust of wind tried to push me off-course, and also served to bring my mind back to the present. The box on my chest beeped at me, telling me it was time to turn around and walk the next line of the grid, several metres to the south, back in the opposite direction. Upon turning around, I saw a small group of people on the other side of the valley. That, in itself, was enough to stop me in my tracks. I hadn't planned on seeing another person for at least three more days. I was not a people person – one thing I loved about my job was going into the field in remote places, free of the stress of having to deal with people. Free from having to interpret words and faces, free from having to make polite conversation. Free to talk aloud to myself and inanimate objects and the universe in general; free to listen to music at high volume, and sing off-key as loudly as I liked; free to commune with the earth and indulge in some very un-scientific musings.
Now my freedom had been truncated, and I was annoyed. Although I'd only been in the area a few days, I suddenly felt possessive, as if my territory had been invaded. How dare these people interrupt my solitude?
There wasn't much chance they wouldn't approach me, I thought gloomily. Nearly every other human on the planet seemed to have this compulsive desire to seek out other humans and engage them in conversation, whether wanted or not. Of course, most of them probably didn't mind. And when I'm back in civilisation, I generally don't mind, either. But not out here. This is my place. My space.
They had horses with them, I noticed, as I pushed a button on the unit and began my trek on the next grid line. Towards the people. Must be tourists – the nearest village, Ystradffin, had places where you could hire horses to ride into the wilderness, and camping gear if you wanted to rough it for a while. There were a few small huts scattered about too, to provide shelter in case of extreme weather. I didn't see any tents or sleeping bags on the horses' saddles, though, so these people must have been on a day trip. They had dismounted, and one of them was stretching gingerly. I smirked to myself. I would have bet money that he hadn't spent much time on horseback before.
------------------------------------
"Oh god, why did we do this again? My spine will never resume its proper shape."
"I seem to recall this was your idea, honey."
"You needn't sound so amused. Aaaahhhh, ow... Hey, there's someone else out here."
"So there is, probably a hiker. He's got a pack..."
"I don't think that's a backpack, there's a big pole coming out the top...It looks like some kind of scientific equipment. I might just wander over, I need to stretch my legs, anyway."
"...Don't take too long, dear."
------------------------------------
I plodded on, music still blaring in my head. The line of my walk was not directly towards them, and I kept my eyes mostly on the ground, or the display. I tried to think unapproachable thoughts.
My next involuntary glance revealed that the group consisted of a couple, and two children. Great, kids. I didn't like kids. The man was looking at me, and I snapped my gaze back to the display, veering slightly to my right, back on course. Even that one glance at the man caused my hostility to spike irrationally.
Idiot.
I didn't know whether I meant him or me.
My peripheral vision told me that the man was walking towards me from my left. He'd probably called out to me, but the music would have obliterated it. And the ear flaps on my beanie would be concealing the earphones, although the wind had long since worked loose the knot tying them in place, and was making free with them. Flashes of neon pink kept whipping across the edges of my field of view.
I kept walking, eyes down, sighing internally, and told myself I would have to acknowledge his presence. I looked up at the man without stopping.
Feigned surprise congealed on my face, and my step faltered as I got my first proper look at him, and I felt a confused jumble of reactions. Anger flared prominent, then sank back into a maelstrom of confusion, fear, protectiveness, familiarity, and god knows what else. In the space of half a second I had mastered myself again; my foot came down, the mask of feigned surprise was back in place, my puzzling reaction stifled and filed away for study later. I glanced at the man again as I kept walking. Let him follow.
And follow he did, smiling what I had to admit was an open, friendly smile. It was a struggle to look at him objectively. He was beanied up against the wind as well, plain black to my eye-wrenching pink. Jovial creases around green eyes, the rest of his face reddened by the wind but generally unlined, and a collection of salt-and-pepper stubble which thickened to a goatee around the smile. Black leather jacket, tatty jeans, grotty sneakers. Awkward gait, courtesy of the horse. Not the outdoors type, I surmised. He was keeping pace with me (hobbling slightly), the smile taking on a slightly uncertain cast as I continued, my face falling just short of a stony expression.
His mouth moved, and I finally reached up and pulled one of my earphones out. A look of partial comprehension crossed his face, and the smile became more sure as we walked. I glanced at the display; still going straight. Back at the man.
"Nice beanie," he offered, probably for the second time, eyes touching my headwear before they flicked over the rest of my outfit. Yellow jacket, tough weather-beaten jeans, solid walking boots, magnetometer.
"Likewise," I replied coolly, still walking. That feeling of familiarity was almost as tenacious as the baffling hostility I was trying to suppress. "Look, I'm busy, I can't stop and chat." My tone was shorter than was strictly polite, but ol' green eyes didn't seem perturbed. He was looking at me in an odd way, searching my face, and seemed to be waiting for me to say something else. I kept walking, looking at the display.
"Can you walk and chat?" he asked, still keeping pace beside me. He glanced at the part of the apparatus that stuck out behind me. Up the mast to the sensor.
"I guess so." Noncommittal.
There was a beat of silence.
"What IS that thing?"
I felt a perverse desire to say 'It's a beanie, you already mentioned it,' but restrained myself. "It's a portable Overhauser magnetometer/gradiometer," I replied, hoping to put him off with technical jargon. It didn't work. His eyes lit up.
"It's not a proton magnetometer?" he asked, nearly stopping me in my tracks again. The wind was doing a good enough job of slowing me down, without this guy adding his surprises.
"No. Overhauser's more efficient, and as sensitive as a caesium one." The smart arse was nodding like he understood. Another look at him – well, he looked smart enough, I supposed. No reason to assume that he wouldn't understand. Just that lingering feeling of antipathy.
I gave myself an internal shake. You're being rude, I told myself. He's walking where he's not welcome, my self replied testily. And? You're here to take samples and do a survey, not get all protective about some valley you've never seen before this week. And as for invading the solitude, suck it up!
Chalk one up for my slightly more polite self. I pulled out the other earphone and turned off my mp3 player. The silence rang loud in my ears.
"So you're looking for iron, or something?" he asked then. Seems he did know something. But not everything, part of me was smug to note.
"Nope. Archaeology." Checked the display. "Metal or magnetic minerals will give a very strong signal, but this thing will pick up most anomalies in ground density down to a certain level. Constructions, burials, artefacts, old ditches, and so on."
"You're an archaeologist, then?"
"Nope, geologist. Just doing a favour for the archaeology department." I fished in a pocket and handed him one of my cards. Lisa Erikson, Ph.D. (geol.), freelance geologist. Mapping, geophysical surveys, soil samples, core logging, provenance, etc. Over fifteen years' experience. "I'm here primarily to take soil samples. The archaeologists want to find whoever put up that stone circle, I guess." I gestured vaguely behind me. The circle was in the next valley over, but I hadn't gotten that far yet.
"I didn't know there was a stone circle out here," the man said, looking reflexively after my gesture. "I must take a look before we go home. The locals didn't mention anything," he added, puzzled.
"I get the feeling it's something of a taboo," I said, scowling to myself. "Of course, they'll barely give me the time of day, and then it's in bloody Welsh." His puzzled expression deepened. "English," I pointed out, referring to myself. His eyebrows climbed towards his beanie, clearly sceptical.
The unit on my chest beeped, I'd reached the end of another line. The man's family was off to one side, maybe fifty metres away. The woman had long, dark hair, and was fussing over one of the children. The horses were either grazing, or looking bored. I thought to myself that the woman's hair was going to be an unholy mess of tangles after being out in this wind all day. I was glad I kept mine cut short. I pushed a few buttons, and walked a little way, preparing to begin the next line. The man seemed torn between a sense of familial duty and some geekish desire to keep gawking at my magnetometer.
At least, that's what I hoped he wanted to gawk at. I cast him a glance through narrowed eyes. No, he was definitely looking at the apparatus, not my arse. Just as bloody well, too.
Apparently satisfied that his family was doing fine without him (and probably wishing to delay getting in the saddle again), the man followed me over.
"I have you at a disadvantage, Lisa," he announced, indicating my card in his left hand. "I'm Ed." That's what I heard, at least, over the wind that gusted and blew his quiet voice away. And what else could it have been?
I shook his proffered hand firmly. "Nice to meet you, Ed." His mouth twitched, but I must have got it right, because he didn't correct me. A corner of my mind was still sure that I couldn't trust him, and shouldn't like him, but everything I'd seen so far didn't fit with that at all. Getting paranoid in my old age, I told myself. Be professional.
Another button pushed, and I started off on the next line. Ed followed, rubbing surreptitiously at his lower back. I had uncharitable thoughts of talking horses on old American sitcoms.
"How many times do you have to do this?" he asked.
"This is a big survey area, I might walk a 500 by 200 metre grid in a day," I replied.
Ed whistled. "Don't you get bored?" he asked. I waved one of my earphones at him, and he nodded. "What were you listening to?"
"When you came up? Korn," I said, and saw him surprised. I supposed there weren't many women my age listening to Korn, but there you have it. Come to that, it was a little surprising that he'd heard of them too, since if anything, he was older than me. If I'd had any children, they'd probably be embarrassed by me. Luckily for everyone, my man and I had felt just as little desire to procreate as we had to get married properly.
There was silence for a few minutes, and I was beginning to miss my music when Ed spoke again.
"Do they really give you a hard time in Ystradffin? Because you're English?"
I managed to shrug with only my head, not wanting to jostle the magnetometer too much. "I sound English, never mind that I went to uni in Aberystwyth and met my man in Cardiff. And I am English," I asserted. "Old grudges die hard in some places, I guess. And the younger people are all right." (Funny how your definition of 'young' changes as you get older. I this case, I meant everyone under 50.) It didn't bother me that much, it was just annoying because it was so stupid. "Where are you from, then?"
That was what you did, in conversations, I'd learned. They ask about you, you ask about them. And that nagging feeling of distrust was making me stubbornly determined to be nice and civilised to this person.
Ed jerked his head westward. "Over that way," he said.
I could hardly miss his accent, although I couldn't place it precisely, but I didn't want to make any assumptions. "Cardigan?" I ventured. There were plenty of non-Welsh people living there.
He smiled. "Dublin."
"Right." It didn't sound quite like a typical Dublin accent, and I eyed him again.
"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.
-------------------------
(There you go... the chapters won't all be that long, but I don't want to take a year to post the whole thing!
)
It's set more or less in the present day.
Disclaimer: This is all total fiction. I don't know the band, never been to Wales except for one afternoon in Cardiff; any factual errors about Wales or other things are entirely my own. Wikipedia can only help so much!
Also, all song lyrics/quotes etc. are the property of their authors. Don't sue me, I'm broke.
----------------------------------------------------
I have always been drawn to the earth.
I don't mean to sound like an alien, who has visited a hundred worlds, and is rather fond of the Earth as a holiday spot.
And I'm not talking about gravity; that force which draws all the things on this planet to its centre.
Of course I am one of those things, bound physically to the Earth – but I am drawn, too, in other ways, less tangible ways.
I was brought up on documentaries; my fascination with fossils and dinosaurs as a child led me to study geology and palaeontology. But now, even though my youthful dream of dinosaur hunting lies ruefully behind me, I still have the privilege of working with the earth. Its fascination for me has taken on a far more scientific flavour. The whole history of this planet, and the life on it, is locked in the rocks beneath our feet. The deep fires within the Earth have oozed, or exploded, out and solidified. There are titanic forces driving the continents' stately dance. Wind and water wage their ceaseless battle with earth, wearing it down, only for it to consolidate again at the bottom of rivers and lakes and oceans.
What's not to love?
----------------------------------------------------
Green fields, grass and earth...
It was April, the sky low and leaden, and a cool wind was bending the moor grass on the rolling hills. The springtime air still smelled of green and growing things, despite the chill. Hills rose to an indistinct horizon in the east, becoming the Cambrian mountains. There was the brooding darker green of a pine plantation to the north, but elsewhere the hills rolled on in various shades of lighter green, punctuated by rocky outcrops. Not what most people would call a desert, but still, this whole area had been dubbed "the desert of Wales". Once away from the towns surrounding it, you could walk, drive, or ride for many miles and never see another human being, or any sign of civilisation. Roads were rare enough, but there was a track nearby which was good enough for my four-wheel drive.
On this day I was surveying a section of a broad valley, a magnetometer strapped to my back, a sensor sticking up in the air above my shoulders. I probably looked as if I'd just walked off a space ship, and the vivid pink beanie on my head (complete with pom-pom and ear flaps) probably didn't help. My hands were stuffed into the pockets of my yellow jacket, my eyes on the display of the unit strapped to my chest, and my ears were full of loud, heavy music. I like a solid, heavy beat. My feet moved steadily, eating up the grid I was walking. The display made sure I stayed on course – it wouldn't do to screw up the data because I couldn't walk straight. Even if I was doing this survey as a favour for the archaeology department, my employers wanted the data too, and I had my reputation to think of.
Freelance geology isn't the most stable career option, but I had done pretty well. I was a jack of all trades, so to speak, although admittedly a master of none. Had my own car and a lot of my own gear (including the bizarre-looking contraption I was currently wearing), no inclination to teach, and very itchy feet.
My official job on this trip was to take a series of soil samples in this part of the Welsh "desert", with a view to solving a puzzling case of apparent soil impoverishment. And since I was out here, the archaeology department asked me to do a geophysics survey of the area, looking for buried artefacts or cairns or something. There was a stone circle around here somewhere, and they probably figured there might be other signs of ancient human habitation to be found and excavated. That's the beauty of these magnetic surveys – you can find everything, from pipelines to fault lines to old bombs to even older things; medieval furnaces, Roman villas, Bronze Age burials, Neolithic barrows.
My personal interests ran to things far more ancient than that, however. The Cambrian mountains to the east had given their name to an age of the Earth's pre-history, 500 million years ago. Long before dinosaurs or mammals or birds, long before most forms of recognisable life had evolved. Plants had just begun to colonise the ancient shorelines, and animals were only thinking of following. Trilobites populated the ocean floor, and graptolites were leaving their mystifying remains. Nobody today really knew what a living graptolite looked like; all we had to go by was their pencil-squiggle skeletons in the rock.
A gust of wind tried to push me off-course, and also served to bring my mind back to the present. The box on my chest beeped at me, telling me it was time to turn around and walk the next line of the grid, several metres to the south, back in the opposite direction. Upon turning around, I saw a small group of people on the other side of the valley. That, in itself, was enough to stop me in my tracks. I hadn't planned on seeing another person for at least three more days. I was not a people person – one thing I loved about my job was going into the field in remote places, free of the stress of having to deal with people. Free from having to interpret words and faces, free from having to make polite conversation. Free to talk aloud to myself and inanimate objects and the universe in general; free to listen to music at high volume, and sing off-key as loudly as I liked; free to commune with the earth and indulge in some very un-scientific musings.
Now my freedom had been truncated, and I was annoyed. Although I'd only been in the area a few days, I suddenly felt possessive, as if my territory had been invaded. How dare these people interrupt my solitude?
There wasn't much chance they wouldn't approach me, I thought gloomily. Nearly every other human on the planet seemed to have this compulsive desire to seek out other humans and engage them in conversation, whether wanted or not. Of course, most of them probably didn't mind. And when I'm back in civilisation, I generally don't mind, either. But not out here. This is my place. My space.
They had horses with them, I noticed, as I pushed a button on the unit and began my trek on the next grid line. Towards the people. Must be tourists – the nearest village, Ystradffin, had places where you could hire horses to ride into the wilderness, and camping gear if you wanted to rough it for a while. There were a few small huts scattered about too, to provide shelter in case of extreme weather. I didn't see any tents or sleeping bags on the horses' saddles, though, so these people must have been on a day trip. They had dismounted, and one of them was stretching gingerly. I smirked to myself. I would have bet money that he hadn't spent much time on horseback before.
------------------------------------
"Oh god, why did we do this again? My spine will never resume its proper shape."
"I seem to recall this was your idea, honey."
"You needn't sound so amused. Aaaahhhh, ow... Hey, there's someone else out here."
"So there is, probably a hiker. He's got a pack..."
"I don't think that's a backpack, there's a big pole coming out the top...It looks like some kind of scientific equipment. I might just wander over, I need to stretch my legs, anyway."
"...Don't take too long, dear."
------------------------------------
I plodded on, music still blaring in my head. The line of my walk was not directly towards them, and I kept my eyes mostly on the ground, or the display. I tried to think unapproachable thoughts.
My next involuntary glance revealed that the group consisted of a couple, and two children. Great, kids. I didn't like kids. The man was looking at me, and I snapped my gaze back to the display, veering slightly to my right, back on course. Even that one glance at the man caused my hostility to spike irrationally.
Idiot.
I didn't know whether I meant him or me.
My peripheral vision told me that the man was walking towards me from my left. He'd probably called out to me, but the music would have obliterated it. And the ear flaps on my beanie would be concealing the earphones, although the wind had long since worked loose the knot tying them in place, and was making free with them. Flashes of neon pink kept whipping across the edges of my field of view.
I kept walking, eyes down, sighing internally, and told myself I would have to acknowledge his presence. I looked up at the man without stopping.
Feigned surprise congealed on my face, and my step faltered as I got my first proper look at him, and I felt a confused jumble of reactions. Anger flared prominent, then sank back into a maelstrom of confusion, fear, protectiveness, familiarity, and god knows what else. In the space of half a second I had mastered myself again; my foot came down, the mask of feigned surprise was back in place, my puzzling reaction stifled and filed away for study later. I glanced at the man again as I kept walking. Let him follow.
And follow he did, smiling what I had to admit was an open, friendly smile. It was a struggle to look at him objectively. He was beanied up against the wind as well, plain black to my eye-wrenching pink. Jovial creases around green eyes, the rest of his face reddened by the wind but generally unlined, and a collection of salt-and-pepper stubble which thickened to a goatee around the smile. Black leather jacket, tatty jeans, grotty sneakers. Awkward gait, courtesy of the horse. Not the outdoors type, I surmised. He was keeping pace with me (hobbling slightly), the smile taking on a slightly uncertain cast as I continued, my face falling just short of a stony expression.
His mouth moved, and I finally reached up and pulled one of my earphones out. A look of partial comprehension crossed his face, and the smile became more sure as we walked. I glanced at the display; still going straight. Back at the man.
"Nice beanie," he offered, probably for the second time, eyes touching my headwear before they flicked over the rest of my outfit. Yellow jacket, tough weather-beaten jeans, solid walking boots, magnetometer.
"Likewise," I replied coolly, still walking. That feeling of familiarity was almost as tenacious as the baffling hostility I was trying to suppress. "Look, I'm busy, I can't stop and chat." My tone was shorter than was strictly polite, but ol' green eyes didn't seem perturbed. He was looking at me in an odd way, searching my face, and seemed to be waiting for me to say something else. I kept walking, looking at the display.
"Can you walk and chat?" he asked, still keeping pace beside me. He glanced at the part of the apparatus that stuck out behind me. Up the mast to the sensor.
"I guess so." Noncommittal.
There was a beat of silence.
"What IS that thing?"
I felt a perverse desire to say 'It's a beanie, you already mentioned it,' but restrained myself. "It's a portable Overhauser magnetometer/gradiometer," I replied, hoping to put him off with technical jargon. It didn't work. His eyes lit up.
"It's not a proton magnetometer?" he asked, nearly stopping me in my tracks again. The wind was doing a good enough job of slowing me down, without this guy adding his surprises.
"No. Overhauser's more efficient, and as sensitive as a caesium one." The smart arse was nodding like he understood. Another look at him – well, he looked smart enough, I supposed. No reason to assume that he wouldn't understand. Just that lingering feeling of antipathy.
I gave myself an internal shake. You're being rude, I told myself. He's walking where he's not welcome, my self replied testily. And? You're here to take samples and do a survey, not get all protective about some valley you've never seen before this week. And as for invading the solitude, suck it up!
Chalk one up for my slightly more polite self. I pulled out the other earphone and turned off my mp3 player. The silence rang loud in my ears.
"So you're looking for iron, or something?" he asked then. Seems he did know something. But not everything, part of me was smug to note.
"Nope. Archaeology." Checked the display. "Metal or magnetic minerals will give a very strong signal, but this thing will pick up most anomalies in ground density down to a certain level. Constructions, burials, artefacts, old ditches, and so on."
"You're an archaeologist, then?"
"Nope, geologist. Just doing a favour for the archaeology department." I fished in a pocket and handed him one of my cards. Lisa Erikson, Ph.D. (geol.), freelance geologist. Mapping, geophysical surveys, soil samples, core logging, provenance, etc. Over fifteen years' experience. "I'm here primarily to take soil samples. The archaeologists want to find whoever put up that stone circle, I guess." I gestured vaguely behind me. The circle was in the next valley over, but I hadn't gotten that far yet.
"I didn't know there was a stone circle out here," the man said, looking reflexively after my gesture. "I must take a look before we go home. The locals didn't mention anything," he added, puzzled.
"I get the feeling it's something of a taboo," I said, scowling to myself. "Of course, they'll barely give me the time of day, and then it's in bloody Welsh." His puzzled expression deepened. "English," I pointed out, referring to myself. His eyebrows climbed towards his beanie, clearly sceptical.
The unit on my chest beeped, I'd reached the end of another line. The man's family was off to one side, maybe fifty metres away. The woman had long, dark hair, and was fussing over one of the children. The horses were either grazing, or looking bored. I thought to myself that the woman's hair was going to be an unholy mess of tangles after being out in this wind all day. I was glad I kept mine cut short. I pushed a few buttons, and walked a little way, preparing to begin the next line. The man seemed torn between a sense of familial duty and some geekish desire to keep gawking at my magnetometer.
At least, that's what I hoped he wanted to gawk at. I cast him a glance through narrowed eyes. No, he was definitely looking at the apparatus, not my arse. Just as bloody well, too.
Apparently satisfied that his family was doing fine without him (and probably wishing to delay getting in the saddle again), the man followed me over.
"I have you at a disadvantage, Lisa," he announced, indicating my card in his left hand. "I'm Ed." That's what I heard, at least, over the wind that gusted and blew his quiet voice away. And what else could it have been?
I shook his proffered hand firmly. "Nice to meet you, Ed." His mouth twitched, but I must have got it right, because he didn't correct me. A corner of my mind was still sure that I couldn't trust him, and shouldn't like him, but everything I'd seen so far didn't fit with that at all. Getting paranoid in my old age, I told myself. Be professional.
Another button pushed, and I started off on the next line. Ed followed, rubbing surreptitiously at his lower back. I had uncharitable thoughts of talking horses on old American sitcoms.
"How many times do you have to do this?" he asked.
"This is a big survey area, I might walk a 500 by 200 metre grid in a day," I replied.
Ed whistled. "Don't you get bored?" he asked. I waved one of my earphones at him, and he nodded. "What were you listening to?"
"When you came up? Korn," I said, and saw him surprised. I supposed there weren't many women my age listening to Korn, but there you have it. Come to that, it was a little surprising that he'd heard of them too, since if anything, he was older than me. If I'd had any children, they'd probably be embarrassed by me. Luckily for everyone, my man and I had felt just as little desire to procreate as we had to get married properly.
There was silence for a few minutes, and I was beginning to miss my music when Ed spoke again.
"Do they really give you a hard time in Ystradffin? Because you're English?"
I managed to shrug with only my head, not wanting to jostle the magnetometer too much. "I sound English, never mind that I went to uni in Aberystwyth and met my man in Cardiff. And I am English," I asserted. "Old grudges die hard in some places, I guess. And the younger people are all right." (Funny how your definition of 'young' changes as you get older. I this case, I meant everyone under 50.) It didn't bother me that much, it was just annoying because it was so stupid. "Where are you from, then?"
That was what you did, in conversations, I'd learned. They ask about you, you ask about them. And that nagging feeling of distrust was making me stubbornly determined to be nice and civilised to this person.
Ed jerked his head westward. "Over that way," he said.
I could hardly miss his accent, although I couldn't place it precisely, but I didn't want to make any assumptions. "Cardigan?" I ventured. There were plenty of non-Welsh people living there.
He smiled. "Dublin."
"Right." It didn't sound quite like a typical Dublin accent, and I eyed him again.
"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.
-------------------------
(There you go... the chapters won't all be that long, but I don't want to take a year to post the whole thing!
)
and this sounds like it will definitely be an interesting story.
Oh, and Korn! 
Geek 
!
Ed... that is so freaking awesome 
more please?
I thought it was your other fic! I am so dense sometimes..duh...
I can see his eyes crinkling in the corners and his infectious grin. 
