Plot by burritorat and me
Beta'd by smithy_of_words
"I'm still in denial. Aladdin. Seriously?"
Lara just chuckled in response and continued to cram our backpacks until she craned her neck to look around the room. "Whe—"
"Still in the bag on the chair," I said without looking up from my phone.
I could feel her staring at me. She got up to check the bag, pulled out the climbing axe we'd bought the day before and stuffed it into her backpack.
"You think we'll find his magic oil lamp in the crypt?" I said
"You know very well chances are someone is pulling our legs with all this."
"Yet, we're here." I jumped up from the bed where I'd been chilling while Lara fussed over our equipment. I walked over to a window of the room we rented at the eastern edge of Kashgar.
Three days before, we'd arrived at Kashi Airport at the western end of China after a tense 26 hours flight with two stops. It was our first trip since… then.
We both had had a lot to process and come to terms with after Yamatai. We'd taken our time but after almost a year of mundane domesticity, Lara had wanted nothing more than to get out again.
"Happy birthday," I murmured, opening the window to lean out. A wave of cold air washed over me and into the heated room.
Lara's arms startled me when they wound around my mid from behind. Lost in thought, I hadn't noticed she'd stopped bustling about.
"Thank you, darling," she said. "For everything. It's the best birthday present I could've wished for."
"You think we can get a cake in the hotel restaurant?"
Lara laughed once. "I don't need one. I'm just glad we're travelling again. Together."
She tightened her hug and I leaned back into it.
"Are you still okay with all this?" she said.
"Yeah. Just a bit tense. It is nice here though, so I'm glad I'm not missing out on it even if we don't find anything."
We looked out of the window together, over the roofs of the new 'old town'. A few years before, the old town had been torn down and rebuilt. Safety reasons or something.
In the distance to the north and west, the mountains marking the border of China towered over the basin Kashi lay in. With those closeby, we'd stumbled, without looking, over shops with rock climbing equipment. Lara'd said a climbing axe could prove useful when we'd examine the crypt but I knew she just felt safer with some kind of defensive weapon.
To the east of the hotel, the last old mud-brick houses could be seen. A part that had been ignored during the renovation and left to rot. One of the protected areas. In it lay a small cemetery. Our target.
"Why always tombs and graves? Can't something be buried in a shopping mall?"
"Right," Lara chuckled.
"But, really, what if it's the Aladdin? What if there's something in there?"
"We go to the museum and tell them what we found, I guess."
After we'd reported the discovery of Yamatai and the press had gotten wind of the entire thing and started bugging us, we'd eventually agreed to interviews once we'd felt up to it. Inspired by how the tale about Himiko that had been told in my family had led to the discovery of the island, we'd started to receive letters and messages from others telling legends they'd heard. Some of them had been promising, most not so much.
A few weeks before Lara's birthday, there'd been an anonymous message with nothing but a string of numbers. Coordinates. It had started out as a joke to go see what was on that cemetery they pointed to but, fueled by restlessness, Lara had gotten obsessed with the idea to go through with it.
"But what if there's… more to it?" I said.
We still didn't know what had happened at the top of the mountain on Yamatai. I'd blacked out the moment the ritual started and Lara… It sounded so crazy even to her what she'd seen or had thought she'd seen. She wasn't sure whether it had actually happened or just been a product of her delirium. It still nagged her.
"I don't know," Lara said low, sounding like the question exhausted her.
"What would you wish if there's a genie? Disney rules." I knew the answer had reviving the dead been an option.
Lara sighed at length. "Knowledge, I guess. You?"
"A unicorn." I knew Lara was rolling her eyes at that behind me.
Shaking her head, she unwound her arms from me and went to grab our stuff. "We should get going."
"What? You had ponies and horses as a kid. I never had one. I want a rainbow farting unicorn."
"That's so..." Smirking, she handed me my backpack.
"Gay," I finished the sentence for her. "Damn right it is. So are you." I slapped her butt and went to the door to hold it open for Lara. "Ladies first."
"I was going to say 'you', but I guess 'gay' works, too. Aren't we both ladies though?" She raised an eyebrow at me.
"Now that you mention it," I said and stepped into the door frame with her. Giggling, we struggled to squeeze through at the same time.
"Goofus," Lara said grinning once we managed to get into the hallway.
"You know you love it."
"I love you," she said, catching me off-guard with the smoothness.
"Love you, too, sweetie."
We shared a quick kiss and left for the elevator.
