"Well, the travel adds to the creative stuff.Besides, three-quarters of what I do is made-up anyway.I mean, I have no idea if aliens have penises with knots on them that swell when they're inside their mate."
They both started to laugh."How do you come up with this stuff?"
"Researching."
"Researching what?"
"You caught me; I have a teleport station in my house so I can beam myself to other worlds--"
"Dimensions.If there was life out there, close enough for that kind of tech to work, it would have to be dimensional, not linear."
"Thank you, miss scientist.Then I have aninter-dimensionalportal in my house."
They both cracked up.
The tide, however, started to creep into the cave a bit more, and Gianna didn't want to get caught in the cave if it started to fill.It could go completely under water if the tide came in too fast.
"Hey, should we leave?"Gianna asked.
"It does this sometimes," Tina said."Come on, we can go a little deeper."
They hopped down into the splashing water.
"Um, doesn't this mean we'll get trapped in the cave if the tide comes in?"
Tina waved her hand."There's a hole back a way if it does, but it never....What in the world?"
"Tina?"Gianna came up to her, trying to figure out what she was looking at.
Tina stared at the cave wall."What is that?"
"What?"
"That?"Tina said and pointed to the round stone archway."Where did that come from?Has someone been down here carving out the stone?"
A ring, a damn near perfect one, was in the rocks.Or looked like the rocks.But could nature make something so perfect looking?From the way the water was around the bottom, she couldn't tell if the circle went all the way around, or if it was just an arch, but either way, it looked so good, it had to have been machined.
Tina snapped a few pictures.
"Hold the lantern up," Gianna said, her fingers running over the rock."Look at this."There was writing on it.Of some kind.She didn't recognize it.It wasn't hieroglyphs, it wasn't any sort of far eastern language or Sanskrit or anything that looked at all earthly.
She got a strange feeling in her gut.
Tina came over to her."Take my hand."She flipped off the light.
Gianna cried out."It's dark," she said after a second.
"Yeah, but look at the ring."
"I can't see anything--oh, what is that?"
"Writing.There's writing on the ring.I don't know what it says, but it is there.Crisp and clean."
"How is that possible, this stone is the same as the walls.It has to be a natural--"
"Nothing in nature is that perfect of a circle.And it can't be the same as the walls.Look for some kind of carving or tooling on it."
Like I know what that means, Gianna thought to herself as they crept closer.
