"Mmmm, chicken."
"It's supposed to be meat loaf, Sam." The unimpressed, recently-descended archeologist deduced by reading the MRE wrapper.
Sam took another bite of her dinner and had let the taste savor in her mouth for a short while, only to conclude with, "Mmmm, chicken."
Jack couldn't help but snort, receiving big grins from his two scientists and the trademarked raise of one eyebrow response from Teal'c. He looked around their campsite. This was turning out to be a quiet mission, though he wasn't stupid enough to admit it out loud. The SGC wasn't keeping tabs on the death toll for each member of SG-1 for nothing. There was a philosophical question roaming around the base, "If SG-1 was a bunch of felines, what feline would each of them be?" And then the follow up question, "How many of their nine lives have yet to be used?" So there was a good reason why Jack was always on alert, even while he slept.
And while there didn't seem to be a threat lurking in the shadows, those… spheres, balls, whatever, were still noticeably all over the place.
"So, Carter? Have you found out what these things are yet?" He held one up for everyone to see. Carter must have swallowed wrong if her sudden choking was any indication.
"Ah, Jack."
"Yes, Daniel."
"You'd probably want to put that down."
Ah, shit. He was sure that Daniel wasn't going to let this one down. That twinkle in his eye was telling Jack all he needed to know about how many future discussions of pastel balls laid in wait.
"R-right. So," trying to revert the topic back to the balls instead of his faux pas, "did you conduct any readings. Figure out what they are? Where they come from? Yadda."
Since Carter seemed to still be trying to find relief in the water bottle that Teal'c had handed to her, Daniel piped up instead. "Actually, Teal'c is the one who had figured out what they are while you were doing the perimeter check this morning."
"Oh? And what are they, Master Teal'c?" He was still ticked by being told off this morning by the hundred-plus year old, doesn't look a day over forty, Jaffa.
"It is excrement from a local creature, which I had later concluded to be herbivorous in nature."
"It's what?" He had to have heard wrong. No way that this was…
"It's shit, Jack." Daniel said, while being kind enough to give him a hand-wipe.
"Yuck."
"Yeah. But it's also what's been setting off the naquadah indicators on the MALP scanners, too."
"Oh, you're full of--- uh, you're kidding me. Right?"
Getting her act together, Carter finally contributed to the conversation, "No sir. These spheres have trace amounts of naquadah. There's hopefully a big deposit somewhere close by for the local flora and fauna to be ingesting some of it…"
"Wouldn't the MALP have picked it up?"
"Not if it was covered somehow, Colonel. We've found numerous amounts of these spheres inside some of the ruins. Daniel had remembered that there wasn't any indication on the MALP of any naquadah inside the structures, yet a lot of them were full of it. We took samples of the building material, but it's not something that we've seen before. Though, it does have blocking capabilities to hide whatever may be contained within. Which in this case was… um…"
"Shit."
"Yes, sir."
Gr-reat! "Well, I for one can't wait to write up this report for Hammond." That had actually made Daniel snicker. As far as quiet missions went, this one was going to be right up there.
"What a way to be reminded of Easter." It had been celebrated over the previous weekend. He wondered what Hammond would say, if he were to ever find out that Jack had posted a notice at the front of their 'gate, for any Goa'uld invasionists that might happen by. He played with the imaging software on Daniel's computer that afternoon to create a sign which read, 'Sorry! We're closed for the holiday, please leave a message and we'll be sure to kick your sorry ass on Monday.' After taking a look at Jack's clever work, he heard Daniel mumble something about his regret of having taught him how to use Photoshop. He wasn't put off by the remark though, cause Siler liked it and that man had good taste.
Jack had wound up staying at the SGC on Easter Sunday last weekend so Hammond could have dinner with his granddaughters. Carter had gone to visit her brother and his family, while Teal'c went to the Alpha site to visit Rya'c and Bra'tac. And Daniel had stayed with him that evening for a 'nice' meal in the commissary. As nice as commissary food was going to get, that is.
There was something that he had wondered about for years though and the colourful balls of… Well, they had reminded him about what had bothered him for some time now, "Daniel? I just bet you know the answer to this."
"To what, Jack?"
"Why bunnies?"
"Um, pardon?"
"You know, the Easter Bunny. What the heck do bunnies have to do with the Christian Resurrection of Christ?" It wasn't that he was all out religious or anything. Especially after his son had died and his career at the SGC began. But, like all the other kids on the block, Charlie had started every Easter Sunday morning with an egg hunt. He truly loved the search. Some years, he wanted his father to act out the role of a military commander, and give him a mission to find that one special egg hidden within the backyard. And if he found it, which he always did, he'd be rewarded with a bag of hyper-inducing jelly beans.
"Actually Jack, the Easter Bunny and Easter eggs are kind of a mangled twist of a Pagan celebration. You see, there was this Anglo-Saxon Goddess name Eostre, but also known as Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra--"
"Daniel."
"Right. Anyhow, to convert Pagans to the Christian faith, the head of the church would try to incorporate Pagan celebrations into their own. The Resurrection fell around the same time as the Pagan's spring festival, to celebrate rebirth. In fact, many cultures had a similar Goddess of fertility that would celebrate soon after the Spring Equinox; there was Kali from India, Aphrodite from Cyprus…"
"Hathor?" Damn! Why did Sam have to bring her up?
Looking a little green, Daniel nodded his head, "Yeah, Hathor too." Was nothing sacred? It seemed everywhere that Jack turned, the Goa'uld had stuck their fingers in where they didn't belong yet again. The younger man sitting beside him would never get over what she had done to him, not that Jack could blame him. Every time he thought of the bitch himself, he had to stop his involuntary reaction of checking his stomach to make sure that there wasn't a little Junior swimming inside.
He needed to take Daniel's mind off of that dead red-haired whore, "And these women have to do with bunnies in what way?" Only thing that came to mind were of the Playboy variety.
"For Eostre specifically, the animal that represented her being was the hare."
"Because they…" he twirled his finger in the air as if that would explain everything, "like bunnies?"
"Yeah." The Easter Bunny was supposed to be there for the children's amusement damn it!
"Ah." Peachy.
Jack looked up to see that the sun had nearly finished its decent. "Ok kids, time for bed. Carter? You can take first, Daniel you'll take the second. I'll take third, and that leaves Teal'c with the final watch. Everyone good?"
Three heads nodded in agreement.
"Good. See ya in the morning then." Jack got up and made his way for the tent that he shared with Daniel. He would consider himself lucky tonight if they both had a good rest void of dreams consisting of pastel balls with red hair.
The End
