A Hard Line

Journal of Rowana, daughter of Rowetha
16 / 02 / 2120 of the Fourth Age

I had seen Thorin VI tanks roll across the plains of Rohan. Lines of tracers that glittered in the dark of Far Harad, during the Siege of Dol Menwha. Heard the echo of blade and pick in the tunnel-fights beneath Moria. The Crash of '19, when half the grid on the White City went offline, and all was dark except for the upper city, which glowed like the branches of the White Tree at its heart. Supersonic aircraft thread the Pillars of Argonath.

Yet for all the technology in this world, there were still rocks that had to be moved by hand.

"On three," I said. "One...two...three!"

When Mount Doom had erupted at the end of the last age, the magma had mostly been channeled on the other side of the mountain. Ash and dust had spewed and rained down all over, and the **** of the explosion had sent fragments of heavy metamorphic and igneous rock crashing into the foothills. On the surface, the area we'd denuded had been ideal; but some of the rocks on the surface had proven to be just the tips of sizable boulders.

I would never have been able to move them without Azzie's help.

We grunted and struggled between the two of us, the great green woman's feet digging into the soft volcanic soil in her borrowed shoes. I promised myself I'd get her proper clothes, when I could. Our muscles strained in the setting sun as we shuffled the boulder over with the others...a long line of black and grey rocks, set into a makeshift wall parallel to the creek.

"How many...more?" she huffed. Azzie grabbed the front of her shirt and used it as a fan. The sweat made the cloth cling to her breasts, and even after two weeks of seeing far more of them than I ever dreamed, the sight made me pause.

They're just tits, I told myself, as I handed her the canteen. She chugged gratefully, and I knew just from looking at it that long black hair would be hot from the hours of toil in the sun.

"We need to run the ground-penetrating radar," I said. "All we need is a flat surface; the house will settle and compress the earth beneath it, but it needs at least a couple feet of earth underneath to be stable.

She made a noise in her throat, unhappy, some guttural curse in the Black Speech. I gave her my best smile.

"There's beer cooling in the creek. Go take a bath. I can run the radar myself."

It was almost the last of the beer. When I'd packed provisions, I hadn't planned on two mouths to feed. Soon, I'd have to drive down to Bardur's Rest and restock. Not that I minded in the least. At this rate, I'd be calling for the prefabs to be delivered in a couple days. Then we'd have a real bed...running water for a shower...even a hot shower. The thought of Azzie stepping out of a steaming shower, her skin scrubbed, fresh and wet...those lips parting to show her fangs in that way she did when she wanted something...

I didn't shiver. Yet I felt something, a feeling that had grown in me ever since I had first woken up with her against me. I had experienced puppy-love before, that first blush of infatuation. Felt too that **** need for contact that sometimes came with coming out of a life-or-**** situation. This felt different. Like...she didn't ask me for things. But I wanted to give her things. Do things for her. The thought of not seeing her for a few hours just to drive down for beer and rice sent a pang through my heart, as if I was afraid I'd come back and she wouldn't be here.

I didn't want to be alone out here, not anymore. I wanted to wake up next to her forever.

The ground-penetrating radar was a collapsible rig on wheels, with a screen between the handles, though I preferred to plug it into my neural jack. I rolled it carefully over the back half of the space we'd cleared. Noted a few buried rocks, not visible but just beneath the surface, which we'd have to dig out and smooth back over again. Through the neural jack, I didn't just see the grainy images of the rocks below. I could feel the outline of them, the way they displaced the space, the irregular edges. Nothing too big, maybe another day of work.

Then I hit a hard line. My lips turned down at the edges. The edge was too straight. I followed it for about six feet, and it came to a sharp corner. Ninety degrees. Utterly unnatural. I checked the depth, and felt myself relax a little when I saw that it was a little over two feet deep. Nothing we had to dig up, then.

Curiosity got the better of me as I tried to trace the whole outline of the buried structure. Which is what it was. A flat, rectangular void, about ten feet by twenty, buried under two feet of volcanic ash and dirt. Something that the satellite maybe should have picked up...unless it was too small for the quick passes they did? I frowned, not sure how to proceed.

Azzie was naked and in the deepest part of the creek by the time I finished and put the radar away, and the sun had gone down. Her dark hair flowed out all around her, and only her face and the tips of her breasts were visible above the surface. I hadn't seen so much as a frog or crawdad in that creek yet; it seemed lifeless except for the small green grasses that swayed in the deeper portions.

As I unlaced my boots and peeled off my socks, I told her what I'd found.

"Buried deep," she said, as her big eyes stared up at the night sky, where the first few stars of evening were now visible. They taught us the names of many of those stars, for celestial navigation. I'd pointed them out and named them, one night. "Maybe for a thousand years. You ever think about that?"

"Ancient history," I said. I couldn't even imagine what it had been like, a thousand years ago. Our wars now seemed such small things, squad against squad, with rifles, grenades, wired reflexes, cyberlimbs, targeting computers, guided bombs. Jet fighters streaked through the sky, not dragons and Black Wings. No grand battles of good versus evil. Good had won, then fucked off. What was left was grey and messy, blood and broken bones, ancient hates and new ways to kill each other.

I sank my tired feet into the cold water and sighed in relief.

"It might be treasure," she whispered. "Who knows what the Dark Lords buried or lost out here, in a thousand years?"

"If the Dark Lord built it, then the earth can keep it," I said, and meant it.

She stood up then. Nakedness covered in that dark, wet hair. Her smile was terrible as she strode over to me, and the water ran in rivulets down her belly and thighs. Her mons was still hairless—they'd done something, she said, and there was no body hair at all except her eyebrows—and the moon had not yet risen to show the tracery of mithril woven into the flesh. By comparison, it was about time to shave my own bush, though Azzie didn't seem to mind. In fact, she found the dark and curlies fascinating.

One wet hand caressed my cheek.

"You don't even want to look?" she said. "You aren't curious to find out?"

"It's two feet down. Could take hours to dig out...and we don't know what it is," I said. "I'm not a dwarf, to prospect for troubles."

She bent low, so that her breasts hung from her chest. Not that I could see them. her cold, wet arms rested on my shoulders, her hands gripped my neck, careful to keep the water away from my neural jack. Her face an inch from mine.

"I am curious," she said. "Perhaps I can...convince you."

Her lips were cold. The tongue was warm. Strong. It **** itself into my mouth. She used her strength then, for all that I was taller and outweighed her, and pressed me back against the creek bank as her hands sought under my shirt for my own breasts. Azzie had a delight for playing with my nipples. Sometimes when she was bored, she'd sit and play with them. Watch them get hard. Tease and suck on them.

I would have dug that thing out of the earth for the asking. But I didn't mind being convinced.