The Thing That Happened to Katherine

This month’s son of pictonaut exists soley because I wanted to write one line of dialogue, but first needed to do all the preamble before I could get to it.

It’s 3 days late becasue deadlines are for cowards and fools.

Katherine had wanted to be an archaeologist since she was 7 years old and had first seen Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981, Paramount Pictures). However, like many archeologists of her generation, early on in her career she had been forced to come to terms with the fact that real archeology contained almost zero high-octane adrenaline pumping adventure of the likes portrayed in this cinematic classic. It instead involved considerably more meticulous record keeping, photographing, and cataloging than Harrison Ford’s seminal character performance suggested. Although there were less Nazis. Which was a plus.

Her most recent dig was a posting to a new expedition in the northern tip of the Zagros Mountains, near the Turkish-Iranian border. She had been expecting it to be business as usual: dig, report, catalogue, repeat. Or at least she had been until the ground collapsed beneath her and she found herself at the bottom of some kind of vault. The rest of the dig team couldn’t just fish her out. They had to make sure the ground was secure and stable enough that the whole thing didn’t cave in. Which left Katherine alone, in the dark, with nothing better to do than to look around. It was at this point all those lessons about the realities of archeology began to rapidly unravel. She was alone down here, she’d probably be down here for hours, and since she had nothing better to do with her time, Katherine went exploring.

By the light of her phone’s torch she picked her way through the crumbling vault, past collapsed columns and piles of rocks until she reached a grand dais at what she assumed must be the centre of the chamber. Upon the dais was some form of platform on which sat something wreathed it shadow. The torch light glinted off something large and blue. Katherine’s mouth dropped open. It was some kind of crystal. Sapphire? Tourmaline? It was difficult to tell in this light, and she was no expert on mineralogy. In a rush of giddy enthusiasm she poured over the inscriptions on the pedestal. Katherine tried to make sense of the writing. It was clearly some form of cuneiform, but that hardly narrowed things down.

There were some simalarities with early dynastic Sumerian, it definitely wasn’t Akkadian, and there was some passing resemblance to the syllabic and logograms of Hittite and possibly hurrian? It made finding a clear and definitive meaning difficult, but it seemed to suggest that whatever this curious object was, it was the [Fist?/Egg?/Melon?] of [Marduk?]. Katherine reached out the touch then fist-egg-melon, because of course she did, how could she not?

At some point Katherine must have lost consciousness. She remembered reaching out the touch the big, blue, shiny thing, and then nothing. Just a slamming jump cut to the groggy, nebulous understanding of waking up to some sort of noise.

Katherine slowly opened her eyes and saw nothing but sky; perfect and unblemished by any cloud.

“Heeey,” said the noise “Hey kid. Come on. I ain’t got all day.”

Katherine pushed herself up into a sitting position and gazed directly into the eyes of a cat. It was sat on a quaint wooden stool, and had an array of whiskers, eyebrows, and moustache that gave it a permanently furious expression.

“Listen, kid. I’ve been out here waiting for you for three days, eating nothing but field mice. Now don’t get me wrong, a good mouse? Now that’s a succulent little meal right there. The problem is I gotta spend like three hours hunting enough of them down to even make a dint in my appetite. Sure ain’t like visitin’ the deli back home, capiche?” it said.

“You’re… a talking cat…” replied Katherine, utterly dumbfounded.

“What’s the matter, kid? Don’t you have talking cats where you’re from?” it replied.

“No…” Katherine began, “wait, why do you sound like you’re from Long Island?”

“I don’t know, kid. Maybe it’s the same reason you sound like an asshole.” Some how the cat took on an even more furious expression, and crossed its little furry arms.

Katherine sighed and scratched her head, trying in vain to take it all in. While she was lost in thought the cat had hopped off his little stool and began to trot away. After they had gone a few yards they turned their head back towards Katherine.

“Come on, kid. It’s time to mosey, we got work to do,” said the cat.

“Where do you want me to go?” asked Katherine. “What do you want me to do?”

“Call it destiny, an epic quest. The salient point is I ain’t got no thumbs, and I need your hands.”