Dr. Jones was examining the ancient Mayan statuette. Carefully handling, due to it's age and fragility. It was crudely shaped, obviously female with exaggerated breasts and ass. She was posed squatting, as if giving birth, or just hunkering down. She rested atop a pedestal, with eight sides.
He wasn't sure it truly was Mayan, the script looked mayan, but the lettering didn't translate into anything meaningful. As if it were a later off-shoot of a tribe that went extinct, or as he suspected an earlier language from a people who went on to become the Mayans.
His fingers traced their way over the letters, feeling their shape. Hoping to somehow feel a meaning he couldn't read. The latex gloves protected it from the grease on his fingers, or the damaging effect of his sweat.
It felt like overkill, given he'd found it himself in an alcove on the outside of a temple wall. Exposed to the weather, even if protected by a coincidence of circumstances that prevented more severe erosion. But as a unique, and frankly priceless artifact, he wasn't objecting.
Thinking he was making a breakthrough he was working on an insight. A sideways look to the clock in the lab, told him it was 11:00. The surrounding silence told him that it was at night, and he was probably alone in the lab.
With a little interpretation, he'd made out the character for danger. A stylised Scorpion was on one face of the pedestal. Another face of the octagon was marked with a chararacter that meant either foolish, or hopeful. It's reading depending on some factor he couldn't decide.
Smiling to himself, he worked out the character for fertility, too. Though given the figure, it was hardly a difficult translation. The other sides remained obscure to Doctor Jones. On the base, he found a shallow engraving. Detectable only from a trick of the light, even his brushing fingers couldn't feel either the cuts in the material, or the raised edges of the embossing.
However, the half-light scattering through his lab from the corridor split into a prism, caught a distinct glyph.
Holding it steady, he shifted his head about, trying to see it from different angles, make out the meaning. Afraid if he shifted his grip the glyph would disappear and he might never see it again.
Memorising the shape, he finally had the confidence to put the statuette down. Copying the design onto the back of a lab report, he was sure he had it down as well as he could manage. Perhaps with time, the meaning would become clearer.
Patting himself on the back, and the statuette with his hand, he pricked his palm. A tiny bead of blood spilling out. Ripping off the glove, he sent the stray speck to land atop the figures' head.
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