~~~
Two hours later...
Jones lay back in the warm water. He reached over and ran his fingers through Erica's cropped jet black hair, and in return she gently stroked his naked skin beneath the water. She passed him a thin glass of golden fizzing liquid.
"Apparently they liked this on old Earth," she said, "it's called 'champagne'...alcohol...it can induce intoxication,"
Jones held up the glass and watched the bubbles for a moment before sipping it slowly.
"Nice," he said, and sipped some more,
"How did the mothership feel about you extracting your old ship, from below a hundred or so metres of metres of dirt and rock?" she asked,
"Well," he said, smiling at her and looking into her piercing green eyes, "it wasn't best pleased, but muttered something about me doing the best I could in difficult circumstances. It had been there for about thirty odd thousand years or something after all. The mothership quizzed me about interacting with one of the natives but that couldn't be helped. It's not like I haven't done it before, and I left some traces but nothing that can really change history or anything. At least I don't think so. Mothership says that the key components of my ship can be used to build a new one, so not all was lost."
Erica leaned into him; her lithe body pressing against his,
"Did you like her?" she asked,
"Hmmm...well," said Jones, with a wry smile, "I always have had a thing for redheads!"
She pinched him hard under the warm water and they both laughed and squirmed together before he pulled her close so that they could kiss.
She pulled away from the kiss, "One last thing I need to ask before I use you for my pleasure Jones,"
"Anything for you Erica..." he said mockingly, raising his eyebrows,
"What were those like?" she said pointing to the fossilised mammoth tusk; clean and gleaming like a sculpture on a shelf above the pool.
"Ah, those...those were beautiful and majestic; they kept me alive. I hear they never forget, so neither will I..."
She took the glass from his hand and leaned in to kiss him again. Behind them, through the large plexiglas porthole, the sun shrank quickly to the size of a twinkling diamond as the mothership began to accelerate far out through the solar system...
~~~
One day later...
Katie sat alone on a log in the forest not far from the site. She lit a cigarette and sat with her elbows on her knees. A lot of the last day and a half had been spent trying to explain why the tusk trench had been interfered with. She hadn't even bothered trying to explain about Jones; she felt that no one would possibly believe her, choosing instead not to even mention the mysterious stranger. Instead, she had made up a flimsy story about having a hunch about the pattern of tusks and looking for another tusk. The palaeontologists were not happy; but now she was beyond caring, they could get lost. She would still publish a hypothesis arguing that ancient humans perhaps had a symbolic language that was intertwined with their relationship with nature, as symbolised by their use of mammoths.
She felt frustrated; wished she had be more forceful. She wished she had asked more questions of the man who called himself Jones. Sitting up and dragging on her cigarette, she kicked her boots over the ground, dislodging a stone. A glint caught her eye, something silver shining in the pine-needle covered dirt. She threw the cigarette, reached down and picked up the small round piece of metal; it was like some kind of coin, but with rough edges, about two centimetres across. All over it were markings and symbols. On one side seemed to be what looked like stars with planets revolving around them; the workmanship was delicate and fine; unlike any coin Katie had ever seen. She turned it over in her fingers, rubbing the dirt from its surface with her thumb revealing the other face of the coin to her astonished eyes. There, engraved in its surface, were a series of symbols; obviously some kind of language. The markings curved and joined. They looked exactly like tusks and bones in a linear pattern.
Katie smiled to herself, turning the fantastic silver coin over and over in her fingers, before standing, putting it in her pocket, and slowly walking back to the site...
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