'He must be the new photographer.' Holly thought as she put down the broken fragments of pottery she was working with.
She could tell because he had an actual camera, not just a smartphone.
It looked like a very high end piece of equipment, and she was willing to bet that it was the most expensive thing he owned.
He looked somewhat indian despite his rather pale complexion.
His dusty brown hair was a little thin and wispy for such a young man but it might have just seemed that way from how much it stuck up.
Holly couldn't help but cringe a little when she realized that he was wearing a short sleeve shirt with a sweater vest and socks with sandals.
Either this man lived alone and had absolutely no sense of fashion, or he just enjoyed ticking people like her off.
Holly soon realized that she was staring, but unfortunately, so did he.
She tried looking back at her work but it was too late, he was already walking over to say "Hi, my name is Terry Skipwire."
"Holly Bower." she responded.
Holly had a habit of complimenting people when she first met them, but her three go to compliments were, nice hair, nice shoes, and nice shirt, none of which really worked for Terry.
She could have mentioned his snazzy camera, but being a photographer he would have probably had a few stories to tell about it, and she wanted to keep their introduction as brief as possible.
"Nice bear." she finally decided, trying hard to not sound sarcastic.
"Oh thanks." Terry said looking down at the palm sized stone statuette hung around his neck with a nostalgic smile. "It's actually a supper old family heirloom that predates written history."
Holly looked at the bear, then at Terry, then back at the bear.
"Really?" she asked, her voice thick with subtly condescending dout.
"Oh yeah." Terry nodded "You see, this thing used to belong to the brother of one of my ancestors. Back when the world was still new and magic filled the sky."
'Ugh, why couldn't it have just been a meaningless trinket that he picked up at a gift shop somewhere?' Holly thought to herself, as she politely listened to the young man recite a story that, honestly wouldn't be out of place in a greek epic.
Basically it was the tale of a man who killed a bear for no other reason then to kill it.
And as punishment for his pointless act of violence the gods or whatever transformed him into a bear, and forced him to raise the animal's orphaned cub as his own.
"Cool story." Holly admitted "But just so you know, that trinket of yours is at most a few hundred years old."
"What?" Terry quickly inspected his charm, as if he was worried that some ne'er-do-well had swapped his genuine heirloom with a cleverly convincing fake. "How do you know?"
"Because this is a very hard type of rock, and the details on it are too good." Holly said dismissively.
She was going to leave it at that, but then she noticed the look of existential crises on Terry's face.
"You don't… can't know that for sure." Terry muttered almost to himself "They could have just been very skilled."
Holly rolled her eyes, the kid was really starting to get on her nerves. "Look, you don't have to take my word for it."
She sat up and held out her hand. "If you give it to me then I'll show you the marks from the power drill.
After thinking it over for a pained moment, Terry handed her the heirloom with an exaggerated look of disappointment.
"Come on." Holly coaxed as she led Terry to another part of the building.
"Hey Eddie, you using the microscope?" She asked a lanky, but not particularly tall, man with greasy black hair.
Eddie looked up from his work almost as if he had just been woken up from a long nap "Hu? What? …Oh um... Nope, it's all yours." He said before returning to his work.
"Thanks." She chirped before placing the bear face down on the large sheet of glass that served as the base for a rather large and complex looking machine.
"Now look closely." Holly instructed as she turned a few knobs, and adjusted the image being displayed on a nearby screen.
"You should, see, a… hold on." she muttered, the confidence in her voice rapidly fading. "I can't find anything." She admitted a few moments later.
"So… Does that mean I'm right?" Terry asked hopefully, but Holly just ignored him.
"Hey Eddie come look at this." She requested with a hand gesture.
Eddie sighed, picked up his papers, walked over, and started wordlessly tinkering with the settings.
He seemed nonchalant at first, but after a few seconds he became a bit agitated.
"This can't be right." he said as he put down his papers and took Holly's seat.
Terry looked confused. "What's wrong?"
"This doesn't seem to have been cut. At all!" Eddie said finally, his voice thick with skepticism of his own claim.
"What are you saying? That the rock just formed like this naturally?" Terry asked.
"Yes. I mean no. I mean, that's what it looks like." Eddie stammered.
"Could you be wrong?" Holly asked him calmly.
"Okay look, you see this oxidized layer that coats the outside of the rock?" Eddie said, pointing it out on the screen. "If you were to cut into that then you would reveal a less oxidized layer underneath."
"Is it possible to fake this?" She asked, still very calm and collected.
"No. At least, not that I'm aware of." Eddie answered soberly.
Holly nodded. "Alright then... Thanks for your time."
"Wait." Eddie protested. "What are you going to do now?"
Holly pulled out her phone. "I'm going to call Kayden."