I pulled over and looked over my glasses at my phone again and pulled up the location of the nearest YWCA, at least I could get a shower there in the mornings until the money came through. I had to really ration what I had for the next week. I navigated the roads, which were surprisingly still quite busy as the rain started falling.
Well Denver is such a huge city, so I guess that makes sense a lot bigger than the tiny in the pale coastal town of Wicklow in Ireland. We had moved to from Seattle when I was seven. Da was a tenured archeology professor at the University of Washington. Ma used to run a bakery in Wicklow, and they fell for each other when he was in Ireland doing some research. We'll that's Ma's story anyway, Da just agrees to keep her fire branded temper at ease. I grinned at that, besides my hair and the rake of freckles over my entire body, I got Ma's hair-trigger temper.
I drove past the Y and nodded to myself as I continued on down the lane until I came upon a park. I pulled into the lot to the farthest corner from the road and settled in as the rain started sheeting. I ate a few snacks from my travel bag and reclined the chair as I removed my heavy glasses and set my alarm on my phone. I really hated being nearsighted. Once my research is done here I think I'll get that laser eye surgery everyone is always babbling about.
I took a minute to look over the packet the museum had sent and run my finger over the picture of the Fire Stone shard in their collection. This was almost a dream come true for me to actually see a piece of it. Literally, the stuff of legends. The shard and some associated scrolls were on loan from Dublin to the Denver museum.
It was unearthed in a dig near Dublin eighteen months ago. A perfect orb of red crystal. Some gobshite at the dig had dropped it, and it shattered into hundreds of pieces. Analysis of the shards dated them to around 450 AD. The most curious thing about them was that they glowed slightly at night, though compositional analysis showed them to have no impurities whatsoever. They were pure silicate glass, there is no explanation as to how they glow or why they appear red when there is nothing in them that would cause the effect. Nor was there any explanation as to how the glass was so pure when it was beyond anything the people had in the middle ages could produce.
My research for my dissertation actually lead me to an obscure writing about Saint George the dragon slayer that mentioned the Fire Stone that allowed him to trick and destroy the last of the dragons. It was described as a red orb of fire. Most scholars discounted that writing because it was not mentioned in any of the other Saint George tales. But the discovery of the Dublin Fire Stone changed all of that. And suddenly, little Myra O'Connell is the leading “expert” on the stone. I snorted at that, like I knew anything more than the poor eegit that broke it. There were some Gaelic scrolls that were unearthed along with it, that needed restoration. They might shed more light on the artifact. Those scrolls were what had my knickers all damp.
I grinned and looked into my rear view mirror. I was knackered and weak as a kitten. It was a very long drive. My emerald eyes didn't have their normal sparkle. They're my best feature if I didn't say so myself. I sighed and patted the steering wheel again. “Well Mags, it's you 'n me now, ya'know.” I locked the doors and let myself drift off, wondering what mysteries would be revealed on the scrolls. It was surely going to be an exciting new chapter in my life.
Syncopated Rhythm Page 16
