Prologue
Jordan stepped out of the small house into the blazing desert sun. He was 18, a tall, good-natured young man. Many people in the nearby town and the capital city had asked him why he chose to live out in the desert, near the old extinct volcano and the strangely-furnished crack in the ground next to it, and he had always answered that the desert was his second love, then smiled and walked away before they could ask him what his first love was.
His first love stepped out of the house behind him. Rachel was 17, with short brown hair and sharing Jordan's good nature. They had met almost two years ago at the local high school and had become inseparable. It was their weekly routine to go for a walk around the volcano compound, sometimes up onto the volcano, sometimes down into the cleft, sometimes just for a relaxing stroll. Today was a day for a relaxing stroll.
There had been a huge dust storm last night, the largest Jordan could remember, and he wanted to go over to the new dunes he could see over by the windward side of the volcano. Rachel had never been as fascinated with dunes as he was; she could never understand what was so fascinating about them.
The new dunes stretched quite tall, almost as tall as Jordan. Sinking down in the shadow of one of the larger ones, Rachel stopped to rest for a bit whilst Jordan, tireless as he was, climbed up one of the smaller dunes. Her eyes followed the pair of birds circling in the sky. Years of experience in studying desert life and she still couldn't work out what sort of birds these were. She knew hawks when she saw them, and vultures and eagles were easy to recognise. But these birds were different. She had seen them many times before, and they didn't seem to be any species that she knew of...
Her thoughts were interrupted by a loud thump. She jumped up and ran over to where Jordan lay on the sand.
"What happened to you?" she asked, as she knew full well he was perfectly fine.
"I tripped over that, the sandstorm must have uncovered it," he said, pointing to a small object jutting up out of the ground. He got to his feet and together they went and tugged at the object. Slowly it came free from the sand. "Good Lord..." exclaimed Rachel softly as it slid out, "It's a..."
The old grey book sat on Jordan's table. Jordan and Rachel sat trying to read the incomprehensible script, but neither of them could make head or tail of it. Page after page of the completely unknown language. They had been at it all afternoon and still, no change, except that they were almost through the book.
Jordan turned the page again, and both gasped. Rather than the same script, something very different met their eyes. The left page was blank. The right page, however, contained a small rectangular picture of a wooden dock on some sort of island. The picture was immensely detailed and vivid with colour, but most amazingly of all, it was moving. Jordan could see the water lapping against the dock, Rachel could see the trees in the background waving lazily in the breeze, and they could both see the occasional seagull fly across the sky. They looked up from the book and at each other.
No words were necessary.