"Forget it! I'm not taking another step!" Audrey Morgen stopped her foot down on the rocky and dusty earth. She slumped against a boulder five feet higher then her. She panted and wiped the never ending sweat dripping from her forehead.
"Come on sweet heart! It's just a few more feet from the top of the mountain and then we'll go back to the cabin to rest." Audrey's mother urged her.
"No! You go to the top. I'll come up their when I've got my energy back." Audrey was already digging through her backpack for the Powerade she had packed earlier.
"Alright, but your gonna miss one hell of a view." Her mom said, taking a shrugged, and continued her hike up the hill.
Audrey pulled at her unpleasantly sticky shirt, and took a great chug out of her drink. She wiped the 'green' mustache for her lips.
A few minutes passed and Audrey's energy returned to her. She put away her drink and swung the pack back on her back. She looked around herself to take in the scenery. Lots of granite boulders and dancing purple flowers and green lush grass sewn upon the earth lazily. Audrey stepped to the edge of the trail and looked over. Audrey saw a nearly thirty foot boulder that leaned against the hill. But by some incredible force of nature, the boulder had cracked open down the middle and left a gapping space between the to separate rocks. Audrey and seen the rock at the beginning of her and her mother's hike, and had seen that there was some tunnel dug between the rocks.
Audrey started the decent down the mountain, not caring if her mother was still waiting for her at the top of the mountain. After a while, she came sliding, a trail of dust following behind her. She stood in front of the separated rock and tunnel behind it. Audrey wondered if a animal had made this tunnel, but quickly dismissed the idea, for the tunnel was to big and wide for any mere animal to create. Unless there where elephants in Colorado that can drill into hillsides. She stared into the tunnel, seeing endless darkness in it. Deep inside, Audrey really wanted to go inside and explore around and pretend that she was looking for dinosaur fossils, like she did back home with her little brother, Craig. A small light bulb went on over Audrey's dim lighted head.
Audrey reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell phone. She bravely stepped into the tunnel and flipped out the cell. The cell's screen gave of very poor light, but enough to let Audrey see everything in the tunnel. Audrey walked farther and farther into the cave, until she lost count of how many minutes she had taken in their. Audrey stopped and took a look around in the tunnel. Audrey thought that some must have found the tunnel by now, or some meddlesome teens had come in and put graffiti all over the walls. And yet, there was no sign that some one had ever entered this place. Audrey had a sudden sense of fear fall over her.
'What if the cave falls in on me? What if some animal lives in here?' Audrey looked down at the ground. No scratch marks, no animals droppings, no real sigh of life. Still with a sense of danger in her heart, she walked on. If anything was to happen, Audrey would run out of there like a jackrabbit out of a coyote den. A few more feet the tunnel surprisingly opened up and a huge cave opened up in front of her. Audrey shined her cell light in front of her. 'This cave is huge! It could easily fit three average sized class rooms.' Audrey thought.
Something white at the edge of the cave caught Audrey's eye. Audrey turned and saw eight round stones, of all different colors and shapes, over at the edge of the cave. A curious feeling came and took over Audrey. Audrey walked over to the stones to take a better look. Audrey sat on her haunches and eyeballed the stones. There were three pairs of the same eggs. The first two pairs were the same oval shape and size. The first pair was dusty brown with speckles of blue, but the second pair was white with swirls of light gray. The third pair was a sandy gold color and shorter and stockier then the first two. Then there was the other two, which were totally different looking then the other. The biggest of all the eggs was a muddy brown color and a bumpy, but soft surface. And last was a pearl white. Literally the look of a pearl, but a bit smaller then a soccer ball.
Audrey's clogs started turning in her head. The eggs kind looked like dinosaur eggs. Audrey smirked at this thought. Eggs. She knocked that thought from her mind. No, these had to be some sort of rare geodes. Audrey reached down to touch the pearl stone. As her fingers touched the it she felt that it was lukewarm. She frowned at this. 'Maybe it was a really hot day, and it sucked up the heat?' But that idea didn't sit with well her.
"AUDREY!" a angry screamed resonated all the way down from the outside of the tunnel. "YOU BETTER NOT BE DOWN THERE!" Audrey suddenly had a sense of dread run through her. 'Crap, crap, crap!' she thought to herself.
"Audrey? Are you down here?!" Audrey's mother's voice sounded real close now.
"Um....no?" Audrey cringed.
As soon as Audrey said that, her mother, along with her cell phone light, came out of the tunnel. Her mother's face had a glared pasted on.
"Audrey! I told you not to get any idea about going down here!"
"I know, I know. But look what I found!" Audrey turned around a showed her mom the stones. Adurey's mom quickly forgot that her child ran off from her and disobeyed her orders and focused on the stone as well/
"Geodes?" She asked.
"I think so. Aren't they cool?" Audrey's mom bent down to look at them.
"I've never seen rocks like these before."
"Can we keep them?" Audrey asked, wanting to have these beautiful new playthings.
Audrey's mom adjusted her glasses. "I don't know. The park ranger might get mad, but if we hide we might get away with it." Audrey's mom said with a giggle.
Thirty minutes later Audrey and her mother snuck all the stones out of the tunnel with out being detected by the park ranger. The two giggle over their little scam for a while back at the rented cabin. After that, mother and child left the cabin to go out on the town and eat at the local dinner. The two came back to the cabin at seven. Audrey floated through the cabin aimlessly, either cleaning the strange white dust off the stones or watching T.V. Audrey was on the couch when her mother came out of the bathroom. She was in her pink pajamas and a toothbrush in her mouth with some toothpaste dribbling from her mouth.
"Pock urf stoff. We weave tomarow." She said.
"What?" asked Audrey in confusion.
Audrey's mother stepped back into the bathroom and spit her toothpaste out and set the brush on the counter.
"Pack your stuff." Her mother said more clearly. "Tomorrow is our last day in Colorado. We're gonna first say good bye to your grandparents before we go."
"Oh...okay." Audrey said in a bored tone and sat the pearl stone on the coffee table.
Audrey walked into the bedroom she resided in and stopped in front of the closet, to reach up and take down her suitcase. She emptied out it's content on the bed. She started to undress and grabbed a towel to take a shower. Thirty minutes later Audrey was dressed in her own pajamas. She was folding and putting her clothes back in the suitcase with more care then she had when she packed it back home. She left her tomorrow clothes out and set her suitcase on the floor. She jumped into bed and snuggled deep into the covers, happy to leave the awake world and into her dreamland.