Temple, River, Museum, Frog

            After my dreaming was disturbed by random noises, probably raccoons on the roof, I made myself memorize four words to help me remember my dreams when I woke up for the day a couple of hours later. Those four words are Temple, River, Museum, Frog.

            I then had another dream that when I woke, late for work, I didn't give myself any keywords for, so it is completely gone, other than to say the blonde in the bikini had nice boobs. (She wore medium blue with black lined yellow polka dots on her swimwear.)

 

Part One, The Temple.

            I was with a large number of people reviewing a stand of ancient columns on top of a smallish pyramid surrounded by thick forest. The temple had little left in the way of glyphs or carvings, and there were more modern scratching on some of the pillars. (Although by ‘modern’ I mean from the late 1800's. Some of the etchings, they were historical now in and of themselves, still they were graffiti, and modern in comparison to the age of the pillars themselves.) I had the impression, for some unknown reason, that the temple we were in was a later addition to what was probably the real temple, which would have been closer to the actual waterline of the ancient river. We stayed with the tour for a bit, then several of us eventually broke off, having discussions that amounted to the same, the real temple had to be somewhere else. This was just the lobby, or entry way to or from the former city.

            We paced out the pyramid and the layout of the temple, and then looked out across the forested valley, trying to guess the former lay of the land. Just from the layout of the pillars we set off in a direction that we hoped would be promising.

 

Part Two, the River

            In the passage of time, the river had become a swampy basin below the pyramid. We made our way down to the swamp. In looking around I found a hillside, that on pacing it out looked like it could contain a small temple. We went around to where our previous survey showed the historical river had run, and found an opening under the hillside. I cleared away a couple of bushels of dirt and tree roots, and there, still sporting some of its color was a temple wall. Tetheys was how the rough translation came out, but I knew that the actual temple was older than that tradition.

            The water began to rise around our feet and we moved up onto the stone of the temple floor.

            I felt the presence, even in this late age, of that ancient intellect and offered a libation from my canteen and then took a sip from the rapidly rising water at our ankles. Soon the water stopped rising and we were making our way back to the rest of the tour, satisfied that we had found our next dig site.

 

Part Three, the Museum Basement.

            The crowd made its way back to a modern building and filed slowly down the stairs into a dark, cool, dry basement. There were many displays and artifacts collected here from places all around the world. This had once been the private property of a wealthy plantation owner. The struggle to keep the jungle out of the plantation had become too much, but the plantation house had been gifted to a fledgling university and they had maintained it as an archeological field house and museum ever since. The jungle was kept only from the road and mansion itself, but came right up to the back doors of the museum. Vines twined in the air overhead and had started what would be short-lived holds on the gutters and shingles of the roof.

            I drifted to the back of the group, certain of what I was about to hear. Sure enough, MS stopped the group before a large wooden and stone upright circle, some 12 feet in diameter. "This is the portal which brought me to this world..." he began.

            It was the portal that had brought all of us to this world, but that wasn't really common knowledge. I didn't really want to sit through the lecture again, and didn't want to be tempted to upstage M about who had really discovered the portals and made them all work, at least for awhile.

            I made my way back upstairs and wandered around the natural history displays before heading outside to follow the current day river for a bit.

 

Part Four, the Frog

            In following the river, I came across a student of mine (former as I was no longer teaching classes) who seemed unusually still. "B how are you doing?" I asked.

            There was no response.

            "B, are you Ok?" I crossed the river over to him. He was standing, well, more leaning, against a tree trunk. His pants legs were rolled up and his shoes were dry on a root at about the level of his hip. His hands were cupped together in front of him. I waved my hands in front of his glassy eyes. There was a small reaction. I stepped back, he was breathing, shallow, but noticeable.

            "What have you done to yourself?" I asked.

            His eyes seemed to flick down to his hands.

            I gently opened his cupped hands. There was a very brightly colored, blue with black outlines around yellow patterns across its back and face, frog. The frog was mostly in a plastic specimen bag, its right front paw and head were still sticking out.

            "Be careful there, the frog is very toxic!" I heard from behind me.

            "Thank you, I know, that's why I've stopped. Do you have another collecting bag?" I knew the frog was toxic, but I also knew the paralysis would only be temporary if we could the frog out of contact with B soon.

            "Professor, sorry, didn't recognize you. I have one here."

            A middle aged man reached out and collected B's frog. "Are you coming back to the university?"

            "Not for awhile yet. Let me help you get B back to the field house."

            "Thank you. We keep trying to get him to lose weight. I'm tempted to leave him out here, serves him right for not wearing his gloves."

            I laughed, "Why don't you then?"

            "Jaguars have been spotted again; they finally seem to be making a comeback.

            "I'm glad to hear that." We managed to wrestle B back to the field house. I really was glad to have the Jag's back, they would help keep looky-loos away from the new dig site.

            "You don't look a day older than when you left us." My colleague commented. I think he suspected that I had come through the portal with the other aliens, none of whom aged here either. I was already grey haired when we'd stepped through and the grey had persisted at my temples, although my muscle strength and skin had smoothed over the years to some extent. Except for my hair, I looked much like I did when I was thirty.

            "Retirement, or semi-retirement is very good for you, you should try it when you get the chance."

            We got B settled on a lounge in the foyer and his professor went to bring back the doctor and a little antidote.

            "Well B, I don't think we can keep up much longer around her without the geniuses figuring out our secret, let the others know we need to meet. It may be time."

            B's eyes bounced up and down.

            The rest of my small party came into the foyer. They were eager to go back out and make a rough site plan and start planning the dig. I waved goodbye to B as we slipped out into the forest, GPS and tablet computers in hand.

 

Ad astra per technica,

FF