If past experiences held any sway over Vala Mal Doran's current predicament, then the presence of two suns was a sure sign of impending disaster. Normally, and she was quite pleased to admit to herself, most of the somewhat dire situations she had found herself in over the years tended not to be impacted upon in any way by local celestial bodies. Today, however, was different.

Both suns were high in the sky. One slightly closer than the other and shifting into the red spectrum, thanks to some spectacular atmospheric conditions... or so Samantha had told them with a mixture of enthusiasm-soaked babble and hand waving. The other sun was smaller and farther away, but was still putting out enough heat to fry an egg on the bow of her little boat. If only she had an egg to fry.

Combined, taken as a duet of extreme solar radiation beating down on her lily-white skin, the suns made for formidable foes.

Only a few hours ago, when said suns were shrouded behind a heavy blanket of black cloud that was throwing down enough rain to erode a healthy slice of the mainland, she would have killed for a bikini and a tube of some expensive tropical bronzing lotion. Now, in the light of an offshore earthquake that had triggered a tsunami, followed by the storm, and then followed again by a parting of the clouds to reveal two altogether peppy suns, she was more interested in hiding in a nice dark cave.

Vala looked towards land, what little there was left, and struggled to find any of the landmarks she had taken note of from her and Daniel's jaunt between the mainland and the little island they had been exploring. It would be an overstatement to say she was familiar with the island, despite it not being overly large, and especially because the weather had been so poor during their trip that what they saw was a mostly mist-coated mountain top and the beach... when their guide rammed the little boat into the shore.

Thankfully, they were still relatively close to the beach, largely due to the fact that the boat she found only had one oar. Rowing in a continuous right-hand circle, especially now the sea was calm and the wind had dropped, meant that gaining any great distance was almost impossible.

And right now she had little precious energy left to come up with a better plan.

Movement towards the bow caught her attention, and she shifted cautiously forward, careful not to sway the boat. Mekrit fishermen were known for their boat building skills, or so their leader had declared with an air of pride, but this battered dinghy showed none of that famed craftsmanship whatsoever. In fact, Vala was quite surprised when she had found it wedged between two palm trees and relatively in one piece- minus an oar, sails, the mast, and a repair kit for the many worm-chewed holes peppering its wooden planks.

"Daniel?" Vala said softly and reached out to touch his shoulder, half expecting him to wake-up with some complaint on his lips, but not surprised when he quickly settled.

The quake had rumbled in from across the ocean, shifting the ground beneath their feet, and roaring across the island like a rock rippling the surface of a pond. She remembered looking across at Daniel, who was moving out from the shade of the ruins and running to where the jungle met the beach. There was confusion and worry on his face, and then there was fear. She scrambled to his side, forgetting the implements she had been holding for him and the journal in which she had been noting down his findings, when suddenly she found herself being forcibly spun about back in the direction of the ruins and shoved forward. He told her to run.

Somewhere in all the confusion, where she was trying to catch a glimpse of whatever it was that had frightened him, she found her pack being thrust into her arms, it's top flap still open and stuff falling out onto the ground.

And then Daniel was suddenly in front of her and pulling her forward. "The ocean!" he said breathlessly as he stopped to let her past so he could boost her up the face of a small rise. "The quake must have triggered a tsunami."

"How—"

"The water in the lagoon is gone. Up! We have to get up as high as possible!"

"Daniel!"

"Just go!"

And they had. As fast and as high as they could. All Vala could remember was her lungs burning and legs stinging from running and climbing, stumbling and retching. She never did get an opportunity to look back, but Daniel's none-so-gentle urgings to move her butt fueled her forward until they reached a sheer cliff face and could go no further. He pushed her up a tree and made to follow her when suddenly he was gone, and the world around her churned grey and white, cold and wet, as a wall of water slammed into the tree and then the rocky cliff behind her. She held on where Daniel could not. And she cried.

Vala had found him sprawled, broken and unconscious, on a rocky ledge a few hundred feet from where they had taken shelter when the tsunami had struck. At first she thought he was dead. He was pale and still, his head turned to left and a thick trail of blood running down over his eyes and cheek and dripping onto the rock beneath him. She dropped her pack and clambered to his side, one hand reaching, searching for the pulse point on his neck, the other stroking his wet hair as though she could make him better.

"Darling, " she whispered when she realized he was alive, and when the enormity of their situation hit her. All around her, the land had been flattened by the force of the water. What trees were still standing had mostly been stripped of their foliage and left bare and shredded. Debris banked up against the rocks and what remained of the ruins was left as silent witness to the force of the wave and the equally as deadly receding tide.

Daniel had remained still, and it had taken all of Vala's willpower to leave him there while she collected enough fallen branches and wide leaves to cobble together a stretcher.

All that had happened before lunch.

Their guide had deposited them on the shore, handed over a basket of fresh fruit and two skins of water, and announced he would be back at dusk to take them home. Apparently the ruins were regarded as haunted or something, and totally out of bounds for the locals, though Daniel quickly theorized, once the guide was back in his boat and out of earshot, that it was more likely Mot had forbid the Mekrit from traveling to the island. It was all part of his master plan to keep the population under his control.

The ruins were some distance from the shore and well back from the beach, which in itself was nothing more a thin strip of white sand being held back by a low-set natural rock wall. They cleared the shore and headed off in the direction the guide had suggested until Vala stumbled on a moss-covered rock, which turned out to be the start of the temple complex.

Daniel was ecstatic! Vala was lamenting the huge chunk of leather gouged from the toe of her boot by the rock.

There was one thing Vala didn't have in spades and that was patience. She sat on the rock and watched Daniel walk about the perimeter he had established, making notes in his journal and mumbling to himself. And it wasn't until he pulled up a rock next to her and opened the journal out on his lap that she could see the detailed map he had made of the area. Where she saw trees, plants and funny flowers that curled in on themselves when she touched them, he saw the foundations and shattered remains of the temple complex that was hidden beneath.

"The entrance should be here," he said stabbing a finger at a point on his map. "There's a fair amount of structural damage and overgrowth, which probably means we'll have some work to do to actually find the entrance, but-"

"Why there?"

"Where?"

"There." Vala tapped the spot on the map. "Why not someplace else?"

"The entrance?"

"Uh huh."

"Well, because the Greeks liked to face the entrance of their temples towards the rising or setting sun. Almost seventy five percent of all ancient temples in Greece were found to be orientated within about sixty degrees of due east. I took note of the rising sun this morning, which then gave me an automatic reference to the direction of the setting sun. We try this location first," he pointed back to his spot on the map," and if there's nothing there then we go to the other side."

"You do realize we only have a few hours here before our lovely guide returns."

"I know, which means we don't have time to be sitting about. It also means if we do find something then we'll need to return with a science team."

"And you think the Mekrit will let you?"

"I don't know. Taphir moved quickly on the other site when I told him it was actually a museum, so he may well do the same here."

"I wonder why that was?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I don't really know, but Taphir wasn't interested in the building when he thought it was a temple but as soon as you tell him otherwise, he sends in an archaeologist."

Daniel nodded slowly and then smiled. "I think you're on to something there. Makes me wonder if history and education weren't the only things Mot subverted during his rule."

"Made it so visiting this place-"

"Which likely would have been seen as a holy site..."

"I was going to say a crime."

"And you'd probably be right. SG-1 encountered Lord Mot the year I was..." Daniel pointed a finger in the air.

"Playing celestial sightseer?"

"Ascended."

"Ah."

"According to the mission file, Mot was in the service of Ba'al and was in charge of the naquadah mines on P4S-237. Only, Ba'al believed the mines to be depleted."

"But Mot was hoarding the naquadah for himself."

"Right. Apparently, he planned to overthrow Ba'al at some point."

"Don't they all!" Vala laid back and stretched her arms above her head. "I met Mot once. Or should I say Qetesh did. Just briefly. Wiesel of a man."

"He's dead now."

"Can't say I'm sorry."

"Anyway!" Daniel closed his journal and stood up. "That way," he said pointing to an outcropping of stones. "The upper floors have collapsed down on the structure below. We could be here a while."

Vala groaned.

According to Daniel, the time spent on trying to help the Mekrit uncover a temple lost centuries ago was somewhat akin to them chasing their tails. Vala must have looked confused, given she had no tail and they really weren't chasing anything except too much sun exposure, because Daniel broke into a long lecture about the use of idioms and slang in everyday conversations.

She blah blah blahed, as she did when he tried to educate her in ways she wasn't interested in, and he gave up and went back to counting and cataloging rocks. Stones. Bricks. Whatever.

Which was where they were when the ocean pulled back and then reared up at them.

So here she was. Rowing round and round in a continuous circle, which, in reality, she only did once because it didn't require a degree in rocket science to realize that one oar meant going in one direction.

There was also a moment where she considered using the oar as a mast and her BDU shirt as a sail, except the two suns overhead laughed mockingly at her, promising to bake her to a crisp so she had an outline of her bra as a souvenir of her silliness.

Back to rowing. An oar on the right, swap to the left, back to the right. And pause to wonder why she thought leaving the shore was a good idea in the first place.

There wasn't much current to speak of, but there was a lot of debris in the water, floating and bobbing away, dispersing off into the distance as the slight breeze slowly carried everything away. She looked to the shore again, which seemed a little closer now, and spotted the rocky outline of the ruins they had been exploring. Originally, the site had been overgrown with vines and shrouded beneath tall trees that seemed to knit together to form a kind of barrier around the site. It had all been perfect when their guide first lead them ashore and pointed to where they needed to go, on what was looking like one of the only decent weather days they had. Now, though, the trees were mostly gone, the vines had been ripped away from the crumbling outer wall of the structure... along with the wall itself. Most of what was left was a lower room Daniel concluded had been the base of the structure that had once sat atop the small clay knoll, but had long sunken as the landscape changed over the years.

"Vala?"

The boat rocked from side to side as Daniel struggled to sit up. He had his right arm across his chest and was using his left hand to reach blindly out for any support.

"Daniel," she called and inched forward, trying not to rock the boat any more. "Just lay still. We're on a boat. At sea."

"Good place for a boat to be," he muttered in return and flopped back into the little alcove at the bow. "Where are we?"

"Boat. Sea. Not obvious enough?"

"Funny." His eyes were still closed and the cut on his forehead that snaked into his hairline was still bleeding quite heavily, despite the field dressing she had applied. "I mean... where are we?"

"Just off shore, about a mile or so, but getting closer." Vala finally wriggled her way over the center seat until her knees touched his. "I thought we would be safer on the ocean than back on the island. Or what's left of it."

"What-"

"Giant wave. Lots of water and floaty stuff. You don't remember?"

"Would I be asking if I did?" He tried to open his eyes a fraction, but snapped them closed again and winced as the suns bit into his vision.

"You lost your glasses," she said sympathetically and with a tired smile. "And your pack with your shades. I did a scout of the area before we set sail, but there was nothing to find."

"Did you try-"

"The radios? Uh, huh. Mine is broken and yours was totally ripped off your vest when the wave hit."

"What about water?"

"One canteen. Mine."

"Care to share?"

"Oh!" Vala dragged the canteen from her pack and reached forward, placing Daniel's free hand around it and pushing it towards his lips. "There's not much, so..."

"Take it easy. Yeah, I get it."

TBC