Chapter Four

Sheppard stirred the campfire, then moved back to recline against his backpack again. "Okay, Teyla, you start. What did you have as your best pet ever?"

They were camped out just outside the jumper's rear hatch, which was still open, providing them with additional illumination. Teyla and Ronon's trip around the sinkhole had proved to be futile. There was no miraculous bridge to the surface, no hidden route for escape to be found, only lots of dirt, mud, uprooted trees and brush, and rock, though she did find a wealth of medicinal herbs, plants and roots.

The flickering campfire and amiable company was comforting, Teyla thought, as she took another bite of her dinner. She never relished the MREs in the same way that Rodney did, but it felt good to get some warm food into her system. As she glanced around the campfire, she watched her friends, marveling at the strange way fate had brought them together – four people so entirely different from each other, yet meshed together by happenstance and luck into something indivisible.

"Best pet ever?" Teyla smiled. "A tarksmer."

Ronon's eyes bulged a bit. "Really? A tarksmer? How old were you?"

Teyla noticed the questioning expressions of John and Rodney, but ignored them as she answered Ronon. "I was twelve. I found it in the woods at the end of our annual survival training. It was wounded and old, but we formed a wary relationship. My father wouldn't let me bring it into the village so I took it something to eat every morning while it healed."

Ronon shook his head. "You were lucky it didn't eat you."

Teyla shrugged as she set her dinner down on the ground. McKay glanced up at her. "Are you going to finish that?"

She shook her head and he picked it up with all the fervor of a starving man.

Sheppard turned to Ronon. "What's a tarksmer?"

Ronon glanced at Teyla with newfound respect. "A tarksmer resembles the tigers you have on Earth, only it's more serpentine than feline and has a deadly stinger."

McKay took a bite of Teyla's dinner, then spoke around the food in his mouth. "Geez, Teyla, you don't do anything easy, do you?"

Teyla smiled. "I never let my guard down around him and I think he respected me. He was a worthy ally. What was your best pet, John?"

"The pet I grew up with was a dog. Golden retriever. We were inseparable. But my best wild pet would have to be..." Sheppard chuckled, then turned sheepish.

Teyla noticed. "What is it, John?"

John shook his head, avoiding meeting Teyla's gaze. "Never mind, you'll only laugh..."

"Please, John, I promise I will not laugh. What was it?"

"Well, I don't have any stories about pets as fearsome as a tarksmer..." He chuckled again, then said, "It was just a tree squirrel."

McKay almost choked on his food, then laughed. "That's appropriate – must have been a perfect match since you were probably born already nuts."

Sheppard made a face at McKay. "Ha-ha-ha. It was before I had Boomer, my dog. There was a park down the street that was on my way to and from school. This damned squirrel would wait for me every day when I came by. I fed him peanuts and he entertained me."

"Entertained? Like how?" McKay asked.

Sheppard looked a little uncomfortable. "Well, you know, with tree squirrel type antics. It's something you had to see to appreciate. He was really very funny."

Teyla leaned forward. "What is a tree squirrel?"

"It's a rodent with a long fluffy tail," McKay said with a smirk, still chuckling.

Sheppard put out a hand. "Ah, come on, McKay, you'd have to agree that they are cute."

McKay waffled. "Only from a distance. Those kind of things are carriers of all kinds of disease."

Sheppard started to argue, but stopped instead and stared at him. "I suppose you had a pet cheetah."

Rodney grunted. "Not hardly. I had a bulldog, but it ran away when I was nine. Jeannie said I wasn't paying enough attention to him, but I just think he didn't like me very much. We did have exotic fish, though. I could sit and watch them for hours. I named every one of them after famous scientists. Einstein, Galileo, Copernicus, there were several of them, but my favorite was a puffer fish named Newton. I do well with fish because you don't have to do anything with them, besides feed them. They just are. Kinda like cats. They can take care of themselves, too. My father was highly allergic to cat dander, so I didn't get one until I moved out on my own."

Sheppard smirked, "What about Sam, the whale? Or did you classify him as another one of your exotic fish?"

McKay shrugged. "I thought we were talking about pets we had as kids, otherwise Sam would win for best wild pet. Remember, Sam saved my life."

John rubbed his hand over his face in irritation. "Sam was not your pet – he was more like a good Samaritan."

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well, it's all a matter of interpretation. Besides, who let you make up the rules for this little discussion anyway?"

He folded his arms in front of him and turned to Ronon. "I bet you had some type of seven-foot tall souped-up attack dog that slept at the foot of your bed..."

Ronon smirked and shook his head. "My mother had a royal blue gashnita bird. They were very rare on Sateda."

McKay's eyes widened with interest. "Okay, so it was some type of souped-up attack bird then, huh? Razor sharp talons that could rip out a man's throat in the blink of an eye? A super dangerous harpy with a deadly attitude?"

Ronon only smiled and shook his head. "It was just a bird that sang, but it had the most beautiful birdsong. I remember waking to its singing every morning."

McKay sat back. "Huh. Who would have imagined that?"

Teyla put her hand into her jacket pocket and found her necklace, the gift she'd received from Charin so long ago, safely tucked away there. She had almost forgotten she'd brought it along. It just seemed right to have something of Charin with her as she mentally prepared herself for the memorial tea ceremony.

She looked into the heart of the campfire and said, "Athosian legends tell of wild animals who have a connection to a spiritual world we know practically nothing of. They just sense things on a level most people never know. My people also believe humans can bond with the land, gaining strength and wisdom from nature's timeless presence."

"Well, if it means I have to bond with a snake tiger with a deadly stinger, I think I'll pass on the spiritual world, thank you very much," McKay said as he sat down Teyla's empty dinner tray and settled a little more to get comfortable. "And after spending the better part of a day hanging out in the aftermath of one of Mother Nature's rampages, I'll pass on bonding with the land, too."

Rodney was grumbling, but at least he hadn't complained about his foot in over an hour. On second thought, he was probably just too tired to complain any more. Even as she watched him, his eyes kept drifting shut. The same thing was happening with Ronon.

She glanced over at Sheppard sitting next to her. He was watching the fire with a glazed expression, his mind seeming to be in another place...or perhaps another time. John was always so mysterious, keeping most of the world at arm's length. When he caught her watching him, he straightened, almost as if he'd been embarrassed about letting his attention wander, then he noticed McKay and Ronon had drifted off to sleep, so he relaxed a bit.

"Thinking again of your tree squirrel?" she asked with a smile.

Sheppard returned the smile, but shook his head. In a quiet tone, he said, "Nah, just thinking how lucky we were today."

Teyla nodded and she settled against her backpack a little more comfortably. "We were indeed."

Sheppard nodded, his gaze again distracted by the fire, as if there were answers hidden in the dancing flames if he could just concentrate on them long enough. She thought he had drifted off to sleep just as Ronon and Rodney had done when he spoke again. "Can I ask you something? You don't have to answer it unless you want to."

Teyla paused, considering his request, then asked, "What is it?"

"Why was it so important for you to come back to Athos now?"

She glanced at him and then the fire, looking for some answers of her own. She scratched at the back of her neck and sighed. "I came seeking...healing."

"Healing?" he asked as he turned to face her more fully, his voice still low so as to not to awaken the others. "What kind of healing?"

She felt her gaze become distant as she played with the necklace in her pocket again, her fingers tracing along its craggy stone surface. "The kind only this place – this land – can give me."

She cleared her throat. "My people believe one can draw upon nature's strengths to restore and refresh a tired soul." She glanced at the fire, staring deep into its flames. "I feel very tired."

She went quiet for a few moments, and when she spoke, it was in a much softer tone. "And...maybe to help find something inside myself that I've lost along the way between Athos and Atlantis."

Sheppard tilted his head slightly, gazing at her from a different angle. "What was that?"

She looked at him, wondering how she could explain what she was feeling, or if it was even possible, but then decided to try. "Do you remember Charin? You met her a few times."

"Yeah, sure. She was kind of like a grandmother to you. Nice lady."

Teyla nodded. "She gave me so much of herself in ways I never realized until she was gone." She had to stop speaking when her voice broke with emotion. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly to calm down. "What I am struggling with is related to the upcoming second anniversary of Charin's death. But it is that and something more – it feels tied to Carson – and my father and – "

She sighed again. "When I tell you I do not know exactly what I have lost along the way, it is true, but I am sure I will know it when I find it again."

He didn't seem to question the vagueness of her reply. He merely nodded, and returned to watching the fire again, then changed the subject. "Too bad you and Ronon didn't find anything during your scouting trip earlier. An escalator to the surface would have been real nice."

Teyla's lips quirked up with his comment. She had been on an escalator in a huge shopping mall on her last visit to Earth and thought it was a very odd device. "It was not a complete waste. I found some macca root, along with several other types of herbs, plants, and roots in the upheaval of the sinkhole collapse. After we return to the surface, I would like to come back with a few of my people and harvest what we can. There would be a very plentiful supply in our stores afterward."

"Sure, that sounds doable," Sheppard said, not sounding really interested in herbs or roots.

He rubbed his neck. She might have thought he'd been lulled into sleepiness by food, company, and the fire, but she would have been mistaken. Everything about Sheppard spoke of an awareness – although it was a relaxed one at the moment – but an awareness that involved watching over his people. She knew it wouldn't change until they were back at Atlantis and out of danger.

He sat up and poked at the fire again as if it were the sum of his frustrations, then said, "Well, trying to clear off the top of the jumper was a lost cause. The more I shoveled it away, the more fell down to replace it. At least, the communications array was still intact, so that means it's the minerals in the dirt and rock, and our depth underground that's preventing our signal from going out."

She took a deep breath. "Atlantis will dial in when we don't come back on schedule."

John cringed a little and said, "Actually, I told them we might be late."

When she looked at him, he said, "I wanted to give you all the time you needed to do what you came for. And I knew we'd also be in your way, so I factored in a little more time for that. Sorry."

Teyla shook her head, thinking about the simple trip to Athos she'd planned to meditate and reflect on Carson, Charin, and others that she had lost. It seemed like days ago, weeks ago even, after everything that they'd been through. And meditation was the last thing on her mind now. She straightened her shoulders. "It does not matter. They will send someone sooner or later."

All of them were wearing their jackets and tac vests to add another layer of warmth, because of the cold night and dampness of the sinkhole, except Ronon. He rarely wore a flak jacket. Instead, he just wore his regular clothes and a heavy hide-skin coat.

Sheppard scratched at the collar of his jacket. "Sooner would be better. I really need a shower. I've got dirt in places I'd rather not think about."

She nodded in sympathy. "As do we all."

She smiled, giving him a long sideways glance. "Your unique hairstyle has grown even more...distinctive."

Sheppard grunted. "Yeah, well, I'd say we've all looked better – or at least cleaner – than we do right now."

Teyla yawned so broadly she had to put a hand to her side to keep it from pulling. Before she knew it, she was yawning again. John glanced over at her with a tired smile. "Get some sleep. I'll take first watch."

She turned to look at him more closely. "First watch? Is there a need for someone to be on guard?"

Sheppard shrugged. "We can't be the only animals caught in this sinkhole. Better to play it safe."

After a moment, she nodded in appreciation, although she and Ronon hadn't seen any sign of problems during their survey. "Wake me next. The others are injured and need their rest."

"Sure," he answered, though she suspected he would let her sleep, too.

She closed her eyes and was drifting off to sleep when the ground beneath her began to shake. She sat up, seeing Sheppard was already on his feet. Ronon awoke almost immediately with McKay a few seconds later.

The rumbling sound grew and Teyla suspected the collapsing cave system was continuing to erode, causing the sinkhole to take another growing spurt. She glanced to John who met her gaze with equal apprehension. Apparently, they weren't out of danger yet.

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Chapter 4