Author's note: Daniel will always be the one who Jack thinks needs extra watching! Not only because he tends to get hurt, but he wanders off, and he's not military.. no matter how long he's been on the team, he'll be told to stay close, I imagine. Also, due to my vacation being so relaxing, I am now paying for that by being swamped at work, so I'll probably be a little slow on the updates for the next couple of days. Sorry!

OOOOOOOOO

It wasn't all that far from their position – although Teal'c had wandered a fair distance from the others, following a similar looking path to the one that Jack and Ian had been following until theirs had overgrown.

They found themselves on the same path, Jack walking in the rear of the group as they walked, so that he could watch Ian and make sure that tree hadn't hurt him more than he was letting on. The cadet was walking fine, though – Jack had a slight limp from being pulled off his feet by one leg – and would occasionally rub his side as if it bothered him, but it was quite a welt he had, so Jack would have been surprised if it didn't bother him. As long as it didn't hurt him so badly that he couldn't handle it. He'd have Janet take a look at him when they got back.

"It's right over here," Teal'c said from the front where he and Jack (the dog) were leading the way.

'It' turned out to be a stone building of some sort. A very low building in the middle of a large group of trees that sheltered it so completely it would have been easy to miss. Actually, Teal'c hadn't found it, Jack had – otherwise it might have gone undiscovered, since Teal'c had been looking in the other direction.

"What is it?" Jack asked as they all gathered around.

The walls were crumbling, but there were writings of some sort on the front of the one next to the 'door'. Or the opening that could have been a door, anyways.

"A house?" Ian guessed, looking over at Daniel. He was the expert on these things, right?

Daniel was looking in the doorway, which was only about five feet high. Whoever had lived there – if it was, indeed, a house – hadn't been very tall.

"It could be a house…" he said, shrugging. He wasn't quite willing to make it a statement of fact, though, since he didn't have much evidence to prove things one way or the other. He took his flashlight out of its pocket, and shined it into the building, lighting up the interior a little. It was one room, about 12 feet by 30 feet, and it appeared to be empty, save for a pile of rubble in the middle of the floor – which looked to have originally been stone, but now had grass and brush growing up between the cracks. "I don't think so, though…"

"It doesn't look like anyplace I'd want to live," Ian said, shining his own flashlight inside, but not going anywhere near the door. Which was good, because Jack didn't want him to just go walking into strange buildings.

"What does this say on the wall here?" Jack asked, pointing at the writing, that didn't look like anything to him – although he was fairly certain it wasn't Egyptian. They weren't pictures, anyways; it looked kind of like Japanese or Chinese – an Asiatic language. Or maybe it was Ancient gobbledygook.

Daniel pulled his head from the doorway and looked at the symbols on the wall. They were hard to read and faded – crumbling as the wall they were chiseled on crumbled as well.

"It looks familiar," Daniel said, frowning. "I'm not… sure exactly what…"

Ian hadn't been all that interested in the writing on the door, or what it might have said. And he wasn't all that interested in the inside of the building, because the building was – as near as he could tell – empty. It sort of looked familiar, but only a little.

Curious, he walked around the side of the low slung building, looking at the structure and the building style, but whatever it was that was so familiar about it eluded him, because he was as baffled as Daniel was.

"You shouldn't go far."

He turned and saw Teal'c and Jack (the dog) standing close behind him – the Jaffa had followed Ian to make sure he didn't manage to get into any trouble, and Ian appreciated the big guy's concerns.

"I'm not, Teal'c," he promised. "I just wanted to see if there was a back door or something a little more interesting back here."

Teal'c looked at the building.

"There is not."

"No."

"Hey! Where'd you guys go?"

They both heard Jack's worried call, and a moment later Jaffer came barreling around the side of the building, obviously sent to look for them.

Ian leaned down and rubbed the lab's shoulder.

"We're fine."

But they'd better get back to the others, before Jack came looking for him this time. With Teal'c right beside him, he headed around the building – going the opposite direction he'd come from so he could finish walking around the thing – and Jaffer bolted off ahead of him, Jack (the dog) right beside him.

On the side of the building they found more writings, but these were even harder to read than the ones on the doorway. He tripped over a tree root, but managed to catch himself before he fell, and scowled as he looked up.

"Trees suck…"

Teal'c didn't answer him, but he had heard similar sentiments from O'Neill, so he was hardly surprised to hear Ian uttering them as well.

"What did you find back there?" Jack asked as they rounded the building and came back into sight. Jack and Daniel were both still looking at the tablet of writing in the front of the building.

"Nothing, O'Neill. There is no sign of whoever might have lived here."

"If I copy down these symbols," Daniel said, pulling a notebook from his pack, "I might be able to find something about them in some online reference texts." He frowned, "They really do look familiar, I'm just not sure where I've seen them before."

"Laosi."

They all looked at Ian, who hadn't even realized he'd spoken.

"What?"

The cadet shrugged.

"You have a book in your apartment on ancient Asiatic religions, Daniel…" he said. "It kind of looks like some of the symbols I saw when I was looking through it – but not exactly the same."

Daniel looked back over at the engraved images, frowning even more.

"You might be right…"

"So write them down, Daniel," Jack said, shrugging. "We'll keep looking and see if we find any more of these buildings – or some other kind of building – and then we'll go home, and you can look them up in your little books – or on the internet. Whatever."

Daniel nodded, and pulled out a pen.

"This won't take long," he said, looking up at Jack. "If you want to go ahead and look around while I'm doing it, I'll be right here if you find anything."

Jack shrugged, looking at Teal'c and then Ian.

"You won't wander off?"

Daniel rolled his eyes.

"No. I'll stay right here."

"And you won't be distracted by something and wander off…?"

"No."

"Fine." Jack slung his P-90 strap over his shoulder and stood up. "Keep in contact with us, and if you find anything, give us a call."

"I will, Jack."

"Let's go."

Ian fell into step on Jack's left, while Teal'c took the right.

"Watch where you're going, guys," Jack warned them. "These trees are devious…"