Mummy Dearest | Margo & Helen
Sand stretched on and on and on in every direction, bright like gold in the molten sun. Despite her broad-brimmed hat, Margo raised a hand over to eyes to help shield from the glare. Quirking a brow towards her best friend, she grinned. “I think this is the spot,” she said. Of course, the decision of where to begin the dig would ultimately be a discussion amongst the various operation branches of the crew and the archeologists, but Margo was determined to scope out the spot and bring her informed opinion to the subject.
They’d crossed land, sea, gaping river and delta, and this - another sea made entirely of sand - only to be shown the way by dawn as it sketched Hamunaptra’s silhouette across the morning sky like Brigadoon. It had already been an adventure, but the real journey had yet to begin. Margo was itching to start, ready to take a shovel in the burning afternoon gaze of Egypt’s unforgiving sun, and dig herself if necessary. Fortunately, she restrained herself. The impulse remained, bitter and roiling, and she had to at least do this: choose a spot, a perfect spot, to start a dig that she felt sure would impact them for all time.
She had no idea how right she was.
“What about you, Helen? Any opinion on the subject?” It was half-rhetorical. Margo couldn’t imagine her friend without an opinion on any subject, little less one so monumental. Still, she would understand if Helen chose to differ. They were more historians and scholars than diggers. Even Margo would submit to a more well-informed notion - little as she liked the idea. But that had never stopped her from forming her own opinions before.
Hand falling away from her eyes, Margo crossed her arms over her chest. “Tell me,” she added, squinting towards Helen - partially from the sun, partially due to her feelings on the subject she was about to commence. “What do you think of this whole,” she waved a hand. Margo wasn’t one to gossip, generally, being too concerned with activity to have much patience for talking about feelings or personalities or those tiresome tiny necessities of life she’d much rather forget existed. This, however, directly impacted her focus, which made it a paramount concern. She bit her lip. She continued. “What do you make of the Nevilles?”
Rumors persisted, of course, regarding the nature of Peter Neville’s last dig. Peter was, afterall, the sole survivor, a circumstance so awful it had never before been encountered in such a context. His work had always been exceptional, up to this point, but no one knew quite what to make of what had happened out there in the desert, before now. Some speculated that he had seen something too terrible to speak of, others whispered that he had gone mad and murdered his own team mates. Whatever had happened, everyone agreed it was horrific. And now he was here, in the desert with them all, revisited the scene of these horrors…with the mysterious bride he’d married shortly after…a woman who knew a startling amount about the ancients. So much so, even Margo and Helen had come to believe her when she gave them this lead.
Margo was ambitious and excited and so, naturally, she’d jumped in head first, but that didn’t stop her from asking the questions. How did Joan Neville know so much? If she did, why did she and her husband not pursue these leads without them? What happened out there in the desert to Peter’s previous crew? What were they hiding? These sorts of questions didn’t sit well with Margo, but she equally understood that risk was a natural part of what they did…and some part of her had always lived and breathed for mysteries.
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