Meeting Miriam
"Well they say Time loves a hero / but only Time will tell / If he's real, he's a legend from heaven / If he ain't he was sent here from hell" ~Little Feat, Time Loves a Hero
"How old are you, Mister Sands?" The interviewer was pretty, a college student, ostensably here for a puff piece on the visiting archaeologist.
"Old enough to.." The man stopped, considering, then went with his gut instinct. "I don't really know. Older than these." He waved his hand, indicating the ruins, currently in mid excavation.
She took a sudden breath. Not shock, he decided. Surprised confirmation? He didn't really know. Once more, he was over his head. It was a good feeling, not having played this scene out a hundred hundred times already. Scary, and good.
She was thinking about her next question. That, and something more. Something with Time in it. Not out of place, though, or he'd have known to do his research. He'd had this conversation before, at least seventeen times in as many centuries, not all of them adjacent. Each time had been very different, as Humanity changed. This one looked to be no exception.
"What are you?" she finally asked. It was the right question. Again, following his deep instincts, he answered truthfully.
"I'm not really sure," he admitted. "I awoke in a field, alone, naked, without memory. I had been there some time -- grass had grown up around me, and died out from underneath, and I had either sunk an inch or two into the soil or it had built up around me. I felt pretty much as I do now, though I looked different; shorter, with darker skin and curlier hair. I knew my name, and had words for things like east and west, but that was it. There were no tracks indicating how I might have arrived there, no items around that might have arrived with me. As far as I could tell, I might have simply fallen from the heavens, or been spit up by the very earth."
He held the last part back. It was too weird. Best see how she took this much.
He watched her eyes. Interest, calculation, that something-else again. Attraction? Hard to say whether it was to him, or to the mystery he represented. He'd dealt with both.
She finally settled on a comment, not quite a question. He felt himself relaxing slightly.
"Surely you've come up with some theories, Mister Sand."
"Some," he admitted. "Perhaps we could discuss them over dinner?"
