10828.1930
Following Hardly Fair
-=Sibalt=-
Lara looked around at the camp site -- or what would become the camp site once the team got started on it. The last time she had been on a dig this wet had been on Ferenginar. Now that was rain. They had been lucky to even get two whole days that month when it did not rain for more than half the day. So this was nothing.
Or at least Lara thought so. She was not so sure that most of her fellow teammates thought the same way. But then again, she did like the great outdoors. The sights, the smells, the pure naturalness of it.
She looked up and down at her wet and muddy self. She even didn't mind this. Or the "naturally" dyed brown hair that came with a mud bath, which actually made Lara smile. The last time she had donned this look, Julian Ryn had told her that she would make a great brunette. At the time, she had scowled, picked up a scoop of mud, threw it at him, and missed horribly. He had simply laughed and told her 'better luck next time.' And there had been a next time shortly thereafter, and as Lara recalled -- not to mention as the Ryn symbiont remembered it -- Julian had given far better than he had gotten in that encounter.
Lara shook her head at the memory, but then after a moment, she smiled, for once recognizing that a memory of Julian was not painful.
"What are you smiling about?" a voice asked.
Lara shook her head for a second time, bringing herself completely into the present and turning to face a fellow mud-covered teammate.
"Ghosts of mud baths past." Lara answered. "I take it you don't like getting wet?"
"Don't like?" Landry Steele groused, cringing at the sickening 'sucking' sound her boots made every time she took a step. "I like water about as much as your average cat. That is unless it is steaming hot and filled with cherry almond scented bubbles!" She heard a buzzing noise around her head and shrieked, batting frantically at the enormous flying insect that was circling her.
"Well I can't help you with the fragrance-laden beauty products, Steele, but hot and bubbling water we've now got." The voice of TC Blane caused Landry to spin around. "I just stumbled on a malfunctioning holo-blind while I was looking for something to use to start a fire. Panel was flashing in and out and when I deactivated it, turns out that we're really not far from a pretty dense forest area. At the edge of that forest area is a natural hot spring. I scanned it with my tricorder and it's definitely safe for bathing."
"I'm there." Landry took off in the direction in which Blane was pointing, but he grabbed hold of her shoulder.
"Not so fast, Bathsheba." He shook his head firmly. "Camp set up comes first. Then the Captain will then send the crew down to bathe in gender appropriate shifts."
"I hate this!" Steele moaned, dizzy from exertion and the heat. "I'm dirty, I'm cranky. My ankles are swollen. I'm retaining more water than the Hoover Dam and there isn't a Twinkie in sight for kilometers or a replicator from which to demand one! I went into Temporal Investigations for a reason. To avoid situations just like this! I do not do ground combat!"
"Hey! Goddess of all things Temporal! Either use your divine superpowers to speed up time to the point where you end your rant or shut your yap so we don't have to listen to you whine anymore. Either option works for me." Dane snarled, as he battled a couple of tent poles into submission before successfully joining them together. "Some of us are trying to work here."
Landry picked up the two nearest tent poles and tried jamming them together, yelping as she nearly pinched off the tip of her index finger in the process. When she finally got them assembled, she held the long metal rod they made up in the air and rotated it menacingly.
"Remember what happened last time you got too close to me while I was holding a lengthy metallic pole, Cristiane? Unless you want me to break your nose again, or find an even more unpleasant way to inflict pain using this thing I sincerely suggest that you cram it."
"'Accident' my ass. I knew you did it on purpose." Dane muttered, not really caring much anymore. He looked off into the distance, wondering when Gira and the Captain would return. The longer they were gone, the more he worried.
He worried about Gira a lot...
"I hear we're going to share a tent! I couldn't be happier." Jamie Halliday grinned as he approached Cristiane. Halliday seemed entirely too happy to Dane, considering he was wringing wet with muddy water, hadn't eaten all day and had hiked for hours before the tug of war. Cristiane just couldn't understand how anyone could be so naturally optimistic and...perky.
"Swell." Dane replied, handing off the tent poles to Halliday as he picked up two more. "Let's get this over with. I'm beat."
While watching the reality show that was Halliday, Dane, and Steele, Ryn made her way closer to the piles of supplies. Steele followed a few steps behind her though much less enthusiastically. Lara picked up one of the folded pieces of tent material meant to be stretched over poles and made into their shelter for the night and gave it a once over. "Standard Starfleet issue." She commented, "Zips shut, that's good for keeping our little winged friends from dining on us overnight...."
"That...that can't be the material for our tent..." Steele shook her head in horror and backed away slowly. "Dwan Tubman's flak jacket is bigger than that!"
"That also zips shut. Maybe he'll loan it to us and we can sleep under that instead."
"You don't understand!" Landry squeaked. "I'm seriously claustrophobic. I can't...breathe in...small...spaces!" She wheezed a gasping, half-breath inward to punctuate the point.
"First off, it is bigger than it looks. Second, where is your sense of adventure?" Lara asked as she began to put the tent together without much thought. It was an old skill, much like riding a bike; you never forget the basics.
"I don't do outdoors, I don't do nature, I don't do this!" Landry bemoaned as she dropped the last pole to their tent, which she had, to her credit, been trying to put together properly.
"Well, if you don't like the idea of a tent," Lara replied as she picked up Landry's errant pole with her foot, lifted it up, and snatched it with her hand, "then you could sleep out in the open." Lara watched as Landry's eyes popped. "But with this weather and unknown creatures out there, I wouldn't recommend it."
"I just want a nice hot bath and a warm meal. Is that too much to ask?"
"Not at all. You just have to think outside of the box when it comes to what a hot bath and warm meal mean."
While the two girls were bantering, TC Blane had come back around to inspect their part of the camp site. Seeing their tent almost finished, he asked of Lara, "How does it feel to be back outdoors?"
Lara smiled at the second officer; she didn't think that they had ever met, but she was still not surprised that he knew who she was; it was his job after all, and if there was one rumor about TC Blane, it was that he was good -- very good, in fact -- at his job. "Just perfect."
"Mud and all?"
"I don't see why everyone maligns mud so much. Mud will stick to you, granted, but dry dirt just gets everywhere. Do you know what it is like when everything you eat or drink tastes like dirt?"
"What do you mean, 'tastes like dirt'?" Landry interjected.
Lara did not know the second officer well, but she figured that he might appreciate her sense of humor when she replied, "Oh, you mean, you didn't know. We're having mud pie for dinner tonight."
Landry opened her mouth and a soft, exasperated whimper came out, but she did not say anything.
Now turning to TC, Lara added, "Too much, eh?"
He neither nodded nor shook his head before stating, "Keep up the good work, ladies."
Lt. Lara Valera Ryn
Science Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
and
Ensign Landry Steele
Temporal Investigations Intern
The Alchemy Project