Page 57 of Dark Rover's Luck

As Din and Fenella left the Hobbit Bar, he could practically feel her energy crackling. Getting hired had been like an injection of vitality for her, and for the first time since reuniting with her, he saw glimpses of the girl he used to know fifty years ago—full of life, smiling, and optimistic about the future.

His heart reacted. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed the girl she used to be and discovering that she was still somewhere in there made him hopeful.

"I'm so excited to work in a place that looks like it was plucked straight out of Middle Earth." She gestured animatedly. "Atzil seems like a nice guy, and if I prove to him that I can run the place without him, he will allow me to open the pub all week long. It could be my little queendom."

"He's lucky to have found you. The drinks you made were impressive. I had no idea you were so talented."

Fenella tossed her hair over her shoulder with a casual flick. "There's a lot you don't know about me, professor." The teasing lilt in her voice sent a pleasant warmth through his body. "Besides, I'm willing to bet that you've never ordered anything other than whiskey. All of you guys back home regarded cocktails as girly."

He chuckled. "True. It's probably the same here, and I'm surprised that Atzil didn't mention it. But given the selection of whiskeys on display, I suspect I'm right."

He wanted to bring up his dinner plans, but he didn't know how to do it without seeming like he was setting up the stage for seduction.

"Speaking of displays," Fenella said, tapping her lips with her index finger. "If you have time, I'd love to see the artifacts in the glass pavilion again, but this time with an expert by my side." She cast him a brilliant smile. "Would you like that? Or are you adamant about enjoying your break from teaching and don't want to look at one more dusty display until you have to?"

He feigned a frown. "And miss an opportunity to impress you with my knowledge? No way. Besides, I gave the display only a cursory look when I passed by it."

"Really? Why's that?" she asked teasingly. "I would think that you'd be interested to see what the competition was doing."

He had no reason to pretend like she hadn't been the only thing on his mind when he'd arrived at the village. "I was preoccupied with thoughts of you and in a rush to see you."

"Oh, that's sweet." Fenella threaded her arm through his and leaned her head against his bicep.

He could have started singing love ballads at that moment if he hadn't been too embarrassed. Fenella was letting him in and already treating him like a boyfriend. He hadn't expected to make so much headway in such a short period of time.

It's happening fast because we are fated to be together,a small voice in his head whispered.

"Fair warning, though," he said. "Once I start talking about archeology and the mysteries it uncovers, it's hard to get me to stop."

"I'll take my chances."

The glass pavilion that served as the village's central hub was quiet at this hour. Sunset was nearing, so the light wasn't as strong as it was midday, but it was still enough to illuminate the display cases containing Kalugal's artifacts.

"Let's start with an overview and then go back to whatever catches your interest, sounds good?"

Fenella nodded. "Perfect."

"Most of these are from Egypt," Din said as they strolled along the wall. "Though there are some pieces from Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and pre-Columbian America as well."

Fenella stopped next to a case that contained a collection of small figurines. "These don't resemble the typical Egyptian artifacts I've seen in museums."

He was surprised that she'd even visited museums during her travels. Perhaps they had more in common than he'd assumed.

"Good eye. They're from pre-dynastic Egypt, before the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt around the third millennium BCE. The mainstream archaeological community tends to focus on the more 'iconic' periods—the New Kingdom with its grand temples and Valley of the Kings, or the Old Kingdom with the Great Pyramids."

He approached the case, pointing to a small statuette of a woman with an elongated head. "These depictions have always fascinated me. Conventional archaeologists attribute the elongated skull to artistic license or perhaps depicting a binding practice, but given what I know about the gods, perhaps some had naturally elongated heads, or had been genetically altered to have them, because it was fashionable at the time. Or it could have been a depiction of another alien species that had visited Earth at some point."

"You think it actually depicts an alien?" Fenella raised an eyebrow.

She studied the figurine with renewed interest. "That makes more sense than head-binding, which is the orthodox explanation."

Din shrugged. "It would have been easier to accept the head-binding explanation if there were no other anomalies throughout ancient Egyptian art that the orthodox narrative struggles to explain."

He walked to the next case, which contained several tablets covered in hieroglyphics. "Take these, for instance. They're from Abydos, dating to the reign of Seti I, around 1290 BCE. But if you look closely at these cartouches, they contain symbols that don't appear in standard hieroglyphic lexicons. For years, Egyptologists dismissed them as either errors by the scribe or later additions. But the carving technique is identical to the rest of the tablet."

Fenella leaned closer. "What do they say?"

"They reference 'those who came from the sky,'" Din translated. "And describe technology that sounds remarkably like spacecraft. Of course, mainstream archaeology interprets this as purely mythological language."

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