Diclaimer: What I wouldn't give to own a slince of that edible hotness, Ardeth Bay…..
Note: Hello again, a big THANKS to those who added me to their alert list! Well here is the next chapter, here we get to meet my OC, and I hope you guys like her as much as I do. And I apologize for the delay, but I've been pulling a few extra doubles at work. Hopefully I'll be able to post the next chapter here soon, as well as add on too a couple of my other stories I've got going.
To Splisboom: Thanks so much for being the first Reviewer! Seeing your feedback gave me hope that perhaps my creative muse wasn't completely leading me down a path of doom. And yes you were definitely not the only girl squee-ing. In fact I take your 'squee-ing' and I raise you 'excessive drooling!' ; )
To Twilightlvr5: Thanks! I appreciate the welcome into the Ardeth/O.C fandom folds. I was nervous that the Ardeth love had waned over the years, but it is wonderful to see that it is still going strong! Also I thank you doubly for the review!
To Fanficlover: You sneaky anonymous reviewer you! So happy I'm not the only one on a Mummy Kick! I've actually never seen Covert Affairs or Undercover, but you've now got me looking up episodes online just to catch a glimpse of that Oded hotness! Thanks so much for the feedback!
Life is either a great adventure or nothing.
-Helen Keller
Chapter One:
British Museum, Department of General Archives and Acquisitions - 1934
Penelope sighed into the silence of the museum. Her breath fanned over the magnifying glass, blurring the enlarged image of the pendant in her palm. Taking a moment to allow the tool to un-fog, she let her eyes flicker around the open expanse beyond her meager desk. 'Cluttered' didn't even begin to cover it. Boxes and crates piled from floor to ceiling, most unmarked, in haphazard pillars. Lining the walls were vast shelves crammed to the brim with books, pottery, maps, and the crumbling remains of the muffin she had brought for lunch earlier in the week but never got around to eating. And what floor space wasn't occupied by the odd sarcophagi and or priceless statue, was littered with crate stuffing and old newspapers. Needless to say, the room was a hopeless mess.
It didn't use to look like this. Believe it or not, there was a floor somewhere beneath the rubble. A beautiful Italian made marble floor with scroll embellishments that glittered like small veins of gold in the lamp light. Penelope mourned for that floor. Wept for it every time she stubbed her toe on the corner of yet another piece of history just tossed into her domain like yesterdays rubbish.
It had been a year since the fire resulting from a poorly neglected cigarette had destroyed the storage wing of the British Museum. And though it had been rebuilt in a surprisingly short amount of time, thanks to the monetary contributions from the O'Connell's, whose matriarch now held the title of Curator and Penelope's employer, it was still not quite ready for reopening; something about special precautionary measures for housing explosives. (Who stored explosives in a museum, Penelope would never know…) So, for the past eleven months, her department specializing in the identifying and recording of artifacts of unknown origin had been invaded, nay, conquered by an army of debris bent on the destruction of her precious toes.
Ah well…. Penelope shrugged, pushing the rims of her glasses back up the slope of her nose. Her eyes re focused on the necklace laced in her fingers.
There was something wonderfully tedious about cataloging. It was constant, patterned, familiar. A state of being that was comforting in its monotonous process. Rarely was Penelope Forester presented with a relic of mysterious origins she could not properly code and classify in mere minutes of running her fingers across the surface. A gift some would call it, but Penelope wasn't proud nor vain; her knowledge came at a great cost. While other young women were dressing for evening galas and sipping champagne with eligible upper-class gentlemen, she was sequestered in cobwebbed alcoves, her nose buried deep into the creases of books and her cheeks smudged with the dust gathered on shelves from decades of neglect. But the choice of knowledge over social graces was never one she regretted.
So what that she was a 26 year old spinster living alone with not a single romantic experience to her name? Who needed to live an adventure when she could just as easily pluck a book from the library shelves and live one through the eyes of another? She had tried her hand at being the heroine once. There was a brief moment, long ago, when she dare dreamed that every tale ended with a 'happily ever after.' But all she received in return for her efforts was a cold dose of reality.
"Penny!"
Penelope jumped from her hunched position over the necklace as the door burst open with an abrupt bang, connecting with a waist-high alabaster statue of Horus,
"Oops." Came the familiar grouse.
"You're here early Alex."
Rather than turn around, Penelope merely went back to jotting down notes in her ledger, translating the hieroglyphs into English. Behind her, Alex O'Connell busied himself with kicking the broken bits of Horus' beak under the corner of a partially un-furled rug.
"Erm, yes," He coughed, covering up the sound of broken rock scrapping against floor. "Mum's finishing up some things before the trip next week."
He grimaced at the now flat-faced deity and hurriedly grabbed a bolt of tapestry depicting a knight and maiden, and threw it over the statues head; deftly hiding the vandalism. With a small nod at the finished product he turned heel and began weaving through the clutter. He made a point to hold the sides of his jacket down, not wanting to repeat the experience he had two days ago when the tail of his tweed coat caught the corner of a very precariously balanced Ming Vase. Penny had brushed off the incident, claiming that the destruction of such a rare piece wasn't such a tragedy, but Alex knew better. He had stood outside her office yesterday and overheard the Assistant Curator, Dr. Laurent, yelling at the young archivist, stating that if she 'Insisted on being as clumsy as an ox, perhaps they should put her out to pasture!'
Alex frowned. There were plenty of things to not like about Dr. Laurent, but his shouting at Penny topped the list.
"What's that?" The nine year old walked up and leaned over her shoulder with a curious tilt. Penelope sat up, turning her chair to face her young guest, holding out the necklace in invitation. Alex took it in both hands and squinted his eyes at the tiny text lining the rim of the scarab pendant.
"Could I see you with every glance, It would be better for me Than to eat or to drink…"
Penelope swallowed a laugh as she watched Alex's face scrunch in disgust.
"Ugh! That's worse then my parents! This is what you do all day?" He eyed the older woman incredulously. "Translate this lovey-dovey garbage?"
"Garbage!" Penelope huffed, taking the necklace back with a sniff. "I'll have you know, Mr. O'Connell, that 'garbage' you so call it, happens to be one of the only surviving pieces of jewelry said to be given to Cleopatra as a gift from Marc Antony."
"Yeah, yeah." Alex rolled his eyes shoving his hands into his pockets. "We all know how that turned out…"
This time Penelope did laugh, turning back to her desk and tucking the necklace down into the folds of its velvet lined case.
"Uh, Penny?"
"Yes Alex?" She picked up her pen and made a few more scribbles in her ledger.
"You remember…"
"Hmm." Penelope hummed, not really listening. If there was one thing Penelope Forester was sure of in her five years of acquaintance with Alex O'Connell was that the poor boy had the habit of going off on random tangents. Tangents of Epic proportions; Homer worthy tangents. And in order to survive the onslaught of nine-year-old historical ramblings, Penelope developed at foolproof system. As long as she inserted a few non-committal noises here and there, a couple 'yes'' 'alright's', and 'go on's' she could 'talk' to the boy for hours without losing complete focus on her work. After a few minutes she heard the tell tale lull in Alex's musings and responded, with what she hoped was an appropriate reply.
"That sounds interesting."
"What if….."
Penelope breathed a sigh of relief as the young O'Connell picked back up, his speech getting faster as he was clearly excited about whatever it was he was going on about. She resumed her translations from the pendant in her hand, it was rather 'lovey-dovey' now that she thought about it.
"Go on." She tossed in, as Alex paused for breath and then promptly went back to her writing.
"Well, mum….."
It wasn't that she didn't like Alex. In fact, she was fairly certain she loved the boy. He was the little brother she never had. Five years ago he burst through the double-doors of her office, snatched up an armful of rolled maps, invited her on a treasure hunt, and then ran back out the doors and into her heart. He'd been there ever since, filling her work days with laughter and the occasional fun fact even she didn't know despite her years of study on him. Hearing another pause, she interjected;
"Hm-mh."
"And she's….."
Just one more line of hieroglyphs and I can move onto the next piece…
"So, do you want too?" Came the question out of nowhere.
"Hmm?" Penelope looked up, her eyes significantly larger behind the thick pair of spectacles sitting on the tip of her nose.
"Were you listening at all, Penny?" Alex's face crumpled slightly, causing Penelope to swallow some guilt and jump in quickly.
"Of course I was, Alex. Didn't miss a thing." She smiled, biting the inside of her cheek.
"Great, then your answer is yes?"
Penelope felt as if the boy had snatched up just a bit more of her heart with the look he was planting on her; that innocent charm, those bright expectant eyes; looking at her as if the balance of his whole world lay in her answer. It seemed that one wrong word and five years of friendship could be wiped clean. She sighed, smiling once more and answered the only way she could.
"Yes, Alex. I'd love nothing more."
"Yes! It'll be great Penny! You just wait!"
So blinded by his brilliant grin, Penelope barely registered the small pair of arms hugging her shoulders before Alex whirled and took off for the door. In his excited haste, he knocked over two urns from a dig site in Tibet, kicked a stack of books, and successfully dislodged the makeshift covering hiding the Horus statues recent defacement. All in all, it was one of his more graceful departures.
"We leave in one week, Penny! Be sure to pack for the desert heat!" Alex's voice echoed back from the hall.
And as the museum settled back into that comfortable silence, the smile of admonishment slowly began to melt from the young archivists face. Penelope felt the blood drain from her cheeks; Alex's words finally beginning to register.
"W-What?" She blinked.
A/N: Well there it is. The first official chapter of this story. I hope you liked it and I doubly hope that Alex was within character, if not perhaps a bit more clumsy than usual.
Please review if you would like to read more!