October 2nd, 2024.
Terry Manning sighed. None of the professionals they'd hired had been able to solve this puzzle, and once the higher-ups decided it wasn't worth the time and resources they were pouring into this project, they shoved it off to her.
The excavation was her idea in the first place, but she hadn't expected that she'd be sitting in her room, trying to solve an ancient puzzle for hours a day. As far as they knew, this thing could've had missing pieces. There were several dozen of them, all strangely shaped and clearly meant to fit together into one piece somehow.
That all being said, Terry kept at it tirelessly. It was fascinating, if frustrating. The design was immaculate. Each piece was flawlessly crafted and entirely made from a material that was similar to solid gold. It was harder and stronger than gold, and smoother; still sleek and shiny despite all of these years buried underground. It was her duty to figure out the cultural significance of the items they had recovered, and she had proposed that finishing this puzzle was the key to that.
She actually had no idea whether that was true, it was just a feeling. But it was a strong one. This frustrating puzzle had a strange, mysterious draw to it. Like it was pulling her in, whispering to her that it needed to be solved.
...
October 25th, 2024.
Sam Savallis always loved this time of year, though no one else she knew really appreciated it. It reminded her of her childhood: taking detours on the way home from school as she admired all the houses covered in Halloween decorations, and the pretty autumn leaves all over the ground.
Sam was grumpy and cynical enough to complain about the gray skies and the dampness and the windchill, but it was still nice. She could handle it. She wore boots, thick socks, multiple layers of underwear, pants, and shirts with a jacket over top. Overkill? Most definitely, but Sam was also fairly skinny and didn't want to freeze to death.
The extra weight did make riding her bike slightly more difficult. Yes, she didn't have a car. Not that she needed one now, but it was incredibly embarrassing for her that she still could barely muster up the confidence to get behind the wheel. Maybe one day she wouldn't get scared any time her car came within 10 feet of another vehicle.
A car that won't move can't get go anywhere, Aurora had told her. That was probably the most literal metaphor she'd ever heard, but it got the idea across. Sam admittedly had always been the type to be paralyzed with indecision. In the words of her sister, she was, "always with one foot in the door and one foot...not in the door. Out of the door. Whatever". Yeah, Aurora was really bad with idioms.
She wasn't exactly wrong, though. Sam was worried about life after college, if she'd be able to turn her passion for science into a career. And if she did, would she really be happy with it? She already found her enthusiasm for it draining due to the excessive amount of coursework.
God, she felt like a child sometimes. Her one consolation since attending Uni, she supposed, was that she'd at least lost her virginity. Not that it was particularly good, and that asshole of course bragged about it to everyone. She never wanted to talk to him after that.
Her sex life after that was a mix of awkward and generally not great; maybe it was time for her to become a lesbian. Sam laughed, she'd probably mess that up too. The female relationships in her life tended to be pretty intense, to say the least, which was absolutely not what she needed right now from a partner.
Plus, Sam had little idea of how to please another woman, as stupid as that sounded. She imagined it was like trying to use someone else's shower, it should be the same thing but the controls are all different.
In any case, it was no use thinking about any of that stuff now. Sam was on her way to meet with her friend Grayson Elliot, she was just about to get off work and told Sam she wanted to go shopping. And by "go shopping", she usually meant look at cute dresses and lament that she was poor. Grayson never ever wore dresses, she just liked the catharsis of envying others and complaining about being broke. Sam admittedly could relate.
Grayson had also mentioned wanting to show Sam 'something weird', whatever that meant. She just hoped it didn't take them all day, she had to go to her mom's house later; she'd been invited over for dinner.
Sam pedaled toward the local mall, she whizzed past several slithering tendrils of Pink; they went in every direction as they looked for pressure points to exploit. They were invisible to her and the Pink energy within her was largely ignored by them, dormant Pink would always eventually find a way to grow.
Sam chained her bike in front of the mall and made her way inside. Grayson worked at a record store; it had been known as a pretty hipstery, underground place for music snobs from the mid 2000's to the early 2010's, before vinyl records became the trendy thing to buy.
Grayson was great, but she was definitely that type of music snob. She always complained about the Swifties and other pop fans who would come into the store to buy records and not even know how to work a record player.
Sam entered the store, chuckling to herself as she saw Grayson leaned against a shelf, reading a comic book. One wondered what her actual job was here besides giving customers music recommendations.
Sam supposed that Grayson was such a wealth of music knowledge, you couldn't really easily replace her. Plus, a lot of the guys that bought records were nerds that probably sometimes entered the store just to see a cute girl with the same interests as them. And then they'd promptly leave as soon as she started shitting on their favorite bands.
"Hey, my dear Sammy-whammy." Grayson joked, pinching Sam's cheek. The green haired student groaned and lightly slapped her friends hand.
The musician had a similar bespectacled nerdy look to Sam, but with shoulder-length, dirty-blonde hair. She generally wore a sweatshirt and checkered pants, and a small lip ring. She had two small tattoo's on her wrist and lower neck, respectively. She was 5'4, while the slightly taller Sam was 5'7. While Sam had more sharp and mature facial features, Grayson looked a bit more soft and youthful. She had a brilliant, wonderfully wide smile as well. Sam always liked seeing it.
Ahem.
"Oy, knock it off. You're not my gramma. Don't you ever work at your job, by the way?" Sam protested. Grayson laughed.
"As little as I possibly can. I just got off, anyway. I actually wanted you to come in here cause I bought you something." Grayson said, before pulling a record out of her bag.
"Wh-what? Why?" Sam blushed. It was an old record of a boyband (or possibly girl group) she was obsessed with in Highschool called the Maybe Boys.
"I know you don't really listen to them anymore, but you said your sister broke your copy of it, so here you go." Grayson said, grinning slyly.
"Wow...thank you." Sam held the record closely.
"Hey, don't get soft on me." Grayson put Sam in a headlock despite her equally weak body.
"Oy!" Sam cried out.
Soon, the duo was off. Sam usually didn't spend much time at this mall, it was only now that she realized how relatively unpopulated it was. People didn't really congregate to smaller malls like this one nowadays, they tended to just stay home and buy things online. She supposed people found more pleasure in being alone.
"You ever notice how, like, no one really looks happy when you're walking through a public place?" Sam suddenly asked. Grayson shrugged.
"What do they got to be happy about?" Grayson asked as she put her hands into her sweatshirt pockets. Fair point.
It was nice catching up with Grayson, it was normally hard finding the time or energy to hang out with her friends. Sam mostly just listened as Grayson talked about the live shows she was going to be playing, old friends, and just generally gossiped. She likely would've been offended if Sam had called it gossiping, but that's what she tended to do.
