Locke crossed the gleaming checkered floors leading out of the elegant building. The chief officer entered the brightly lit corridor with his top women and men. The chairman knew the explorer was a contributor to the museum, but could not recall his name. "Oh, it's one of our excavators. What is going to be your next ambitious trek?" The executive kept a guarded distance as though he were trying to avoid any dust the crypt rover might get on his suit.
"Just dropped off some pretty cool stuff. Is there literally anything else I can do for you? What about your old boss? Maybe I'll go find him."
The director coughed forward with a sudden gesture to step close, "If the grave robber isn't too busy knocking on heaven's door give my regards. Tell the washout to come by, we'll smoke imported cigars."
Later that day Angela returned to her desk. From a slightly opened window a gentle breeze wafted some strands of her corn silk hair making it glow like spun gold in afternoon rays of light. She thought for an instant then went to the case containing her father's accoutrements. One of his writing journals was missing, the one that legend said was bound with the skin of fallen angels, but testing revealed to be bat wings.
The sun gilded a flying river of clouds lazily playing tag across the graceful sky. The amphibious aircraft's shadow drifted over the ridges of waves pushing through the watery acres of a cerulean sea to a far-flung archipelago. The stripped-down warbird Professor Ravenscroft called Jumping Cockle pitched sharply downward, dive-bombing into fjord-like canyons between dozens of islet peaks made up of limestone, gypsum and dolomite like spiky teeth of the Earth.
An opening beneath a tropical rainforest canopy of twisted banyan tree root columns coiled with egg-eating snakes revealed a majestic vista of waterfalls resembling a weeping lion. To the eye of the spectator at this vantage point, the creative hand of nature formed a devilish parallax illusion of the king of beasts' forbidding mountainous mane cutting into the heavens with rocky star-scraping pinnacles from the collective chain of tightly packed islands.
"Shard Mountain... I love Magic Eye pictures," his inner voice told him.
