"We'll go first thing in the morning…"

"It's still light out," Daniel said, looking at the fading daylight. "Maybe we could start there now? If we use flashlights – torches, or something?"

Ian scowled. It wasn't light out. It was almost completely dark, and the last thing he wanted to do on the planet was fall in one of those fucking holes and break his leg like Taylor had. Sure as shit he would, too. And it'd be a tree that pushed him there, he was sure.

Luckily, Richard had been thinking along similar lines.

"It's dangerous to walk in the dark if you're unaccustomed to the ground you're walking on, Daniel. There are uneven areas that would surely be a danger to you and your companions. They are dangerous to us, even – Taylor knows the area well and he still fell and broke his leg."

"But we-"

"It can wait until morning, Daniel," Jack said.

"But, Jack…"

"It can wait," Jack said, firmly. "I don't want to risk an injury – and those caves aren't going anywhere, right?"

Richard nodded, looking at Daniel.

"They have been there for as long as anyone remembers, Daniel. I promise to lead you there myself come morning."

He was trying to appease Daniel, and the archeologist knew it. And knew that he was right. It probably was too dangerous. He sighed, and nodded.

"Thank you, Richard."

"You are welcomed." There was a slight hesitation. "Now… can you tell us more of Roke?"

There was a longing in the older man's eyes, and Daniel knew it to be a hunger to learn more about a place that he'd heard of only in legend. And knew he'd be feeling the same way if the places were reversed. Say someone had come to Earth and just happened to mention that they knew of… El Dorado or someplace – or Atlantis. Daniel looked over at Ian, recalling that the cadet seemed to know something of Atlantis. The villagers followed Daniel's gaze towards Ian, and Jack realized that it looked as if Daniel were asking Ian permission to tell the story.

Ian didn't catch it though. Once the whole wandering around in the darkness issue had been resolved, he'd attacked his dinner, and wasn't watching those around him – although he always listened.

"Go ahead, Daniel," Jack said, shrugging. "It's not going to hurt them to hear the story – although you might be wrong about them…"

Daniel disagreed, but he'd already told them some of it, so the damage was probably already done. He did, however, tell it as if it had happened to someone else, and not as if it were the history of the villagers – as he suspected it was.

"There was once a country – well, it's still there, really, so I suppose once isn't really the right word to use… but there was – is – this country. And it sits on the edge of a great ocean. Some of the people who live in this country sailed ships and on the other side of the ocean found a new country – a new world. It was filled with things that they'd never seen before – animals they didn't even have names for, and new people. People that were as strange to them as these people were to them."

"What's an ocean?" Taylor asked, enthralled with the story already.

"It's a body of water."

"Like a puddle?"

"Much bigger," Daniel said. "Huge compared to a puddle."

"How much bigger?"

Daniel frowned. How did he explain an ocean to a group of people who obviously didn't have anything to compare it to?

"A lot bigger."

"But how much bigger?"

"It's just a lot bigger," Daniel said, trying very hard to be patient with the boy.

Ian didn't share that inclination. He scowled, and looked up from his dinner.

"See this cup?" He asked, Taylor, holding up the cup he'd been given.

"Yes."

"How many cups of water do you suppose a puddle holds?"

Taylor hesitated.

"A lot."

That was scientific. Ian didn't say that, though. Instead, he drained his cup, and looked at the boy – and those around him, who were also waiting for the answer.

"Guess."

"Fifty." One of the men said, caught up in the hypothetical lesson.

Ian nodded.

"Okay. So how long would it take you to drink 50 cups of water?"

"It would depend on how hot it was," Richard said.

Ian scowled. Jesus, didn't these people have any imagination?

"Just guess."

Richard shrugged.

"A couple of weeks."

"By yourself?" Ian asked.

The man nodded.

"Fine. If you were to try and drink an ocean a cup at a time, you and all the people here in the village would have to drink 50 cups every hour, and it would still take all of you 908 lifetimes to drink it all. That's how much water is in an ocean."

They all stared at him for a long moment – and Daniel was, too. It was as good an explanation as any – and really wasn't a bad analogy. Daniel wondered if Ian had done the math in his head – and decided he'd check it out when they returned to the SGC.

"That's a lot of water…" one of the women finally said, staring at the cup in Ian's hand.

Daniel nodded, drawing their attention back to the story. He was an archeologist, after all, and they dealt with stories all the time, and he was a closet storyteller – whether he liked it or not.

"So these people found this new land, and sailed their ships back to their own country – telling of all the new things they'd seen and the boundless land that had been on the other side of the ocean. And other people were interested and wanted to see it as well. They were crowded where they lived, and hoped that they could have a new place with plenty of room for them."

"Did they ask the people already living there?" Taylor asked, awed by the story.

Daniel shook his head.

"But these people were very nice to the strangers when they showed up, and welcomed them. They helped them get settled somewhat, and the people called their new colony Roanoke. Seeing that they were welcomed, the ship left them there, to go back to their own country and get more supplies, and more people. But when they came back – several months later – there was no one there. Not even a trace of them."

There was silence as the villagers all took this information in, and stared at Daniel and the others.

"But what happened to them?" Taylor asked.

"I don't know," Daniel answered. "No one does."

"They do," Richard said. "The ones it happened to…"

Daniel nodded.

"Which is why I'm so interested in the cave."