Graffiti Poems of Cremation
Sep. 29th, 2024 07:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eatthepenAlmost forgot this one - another short story written for Cohost, this one for the prompt 'A spire carved from bone; from a single bone, massive beyond belief.'
Graffiti Poems of Cremation
"Briss, it's a hundred eighty metres high." The professor's face hung slack. Ze looked around the room at the rest of the expedition. It didn't take long; their traklab was a generous model but space was at a premium nonetheless. Screens covered the two longer walls, cramped benches squeezed under them either side of the table spread with charts and data printouts.
"A- are all the samples the same?" Serana sat forward, reaching for the two-sheet document Briss had tossed onto the table. She was pale, her hand trembling. On the screen behind her was the first picture they'd taken of the monument after the traklab had crested the plateau, a sharp and gently-curved blade sticking up out of the wind-blasted sandstone, silhouetted dark brown against the clear jade sky. The rangefinder reading they'd all derided as the result of a broken instrument showed in the upper-right corner of the image, proven true by the lengthy drive it had taken to reach the thing's base.
"Pretty much." There was something listless in Briss' usually-bright voice. "Changes a bit higher-up, I pulled some old files from Lecto and it's commensurate with chemical gradients through cortical bone."
"What's that mean?" Tevon said. He pulled his feet up onto the edge of the bench and hugged his knees. For once the professor didn't scold him for it. Tevon's specialty was plant biology; he'd had very little to do on the bare plateau.
"Exact chemical composition of bone changes deeper away from the surface," Briss said, frowning at their own awkward explanation. "The top parts are from deeper in the bone than at the bottom."
"Erosion?" The professor said, zer voice catching in zer throat.
Serana shook her head sadly. "You couldn't get that- that shape, by erosion." Seen up close, or at least close enough to see the monument's shape clearly and not so close that seeing the whole thing at once was impossible, there was no mistaking that it was a blade. Serana was their climatologist, and it had been by her altitude rig that they'd been able to get the fifty- and hundred-metre samples down.
"So you're saying, what?" The professor looked at Briss, zer face a scowl that looked almost reproachful. "Someone carved that thing?"
Briss shrugged again. "Guess so."
"How can you be so calm about this?" Tevon's voice squeaked as it rose.
"Did my panicking before," Briss said, with a hollow chuckle. "I was in the lab shaking for a good ten minutes before I called y'all in."
"In't the monument you should be frettin' about," drawled Donan, and the scientists, as one, shifted slightly to look at her. It wasn't that they didn't like their pilot-driver, and she was their only way off-world at the end of the expedition so they'd been careful to stay on her good side. But she had a past, one she had been sternly unforthcoming about, and her outfit – calf-length cargo shorts in a military pattern and a vest that revealed the scarred, steroidal bulging of her arm muscles – marked her as profoundly different to them.
Still, her posture, sprawled in the corner against the rear hatch, heavy boots squeezed up against the table's edge, didn't suggest any urgent danger, from her or outside the traklab. Briss said, "What is it, then?"
"S'all one bone, right? That's what yer sayin'."
Briss nodded, swallowing as the driver put into words the obvious conclusion none of them had been willing to voice.
"Well iunno if there's any critter that big still on this rock," Donan said, her lips pulling sideways in a smirk, "but something out here hunted it, killed it, and carved its bones for a trophy."
The professor's skin was too dark to turn pale at the thought, but zer arm shook as they ze out a hand toward the table. "Briss, the seismograph readouts from the other day…"
Graffiti Poems of Cremation
"It's what?"
Briss shrugged. "Thirty percent or so is partly-decayed collagen, the rest is calcium phosphate. Ultrasounds show it has a complex subsurface structure, we don't have the resolution to map it but it's hollow. It's bone, as perfect a match for mammalian bone as anything that size could be."
Briss shrugged. "Thirty percent or so is partly-decayed collagen, the rest is calcium phosphate. Ultrasounds show it has a complex subsurface structure, we don't have the resolution to map it but it's hollow. It's bone, as perfect a match for mammalian bone as anything that size could be."
"Briss, it's a hundred eighty metres high." The professor's face hung slack. Ze looked around the room at the rest of the expedition. It didn't take long; their traklab was a generous model but space was at a premium nonetheless. Screens covered the two longer walls, cramped benches squeezed under them either side of the table spread with charts and data printouts.
"A- are all the samples the same?" Serana sat forward, reaching for the two-sheet document Briss had tossed onto the table. She was pale, her hand trembling. On the screen behind her was the first picture they'd taken of the monument after the traklab had crested the plateau, a sharp and gently-curved blade sticking up out of the wind-blasted sandstone, silhouetted dark brown against the clear jade sky. The rangefinder reading they'd all derided as the result of a broken instrument showed in the upper-right corner of the image, proven true by the lengthy drive it had taken to reach the thing's base.
"Pretty much." There was something listless in Briss' usually-bright voice. "Changes a bit higher-up, I pulled some old files from Lecto and it's commensurate with chemical gradients through cortical bone."
"What's that mean?" Tevon said. He pulled his feet up onto the edge of the bench and hugged his knees. For once the professor didn't scold him for it. Tevon's specialty was plant biology; he'd had very little to do on the bare plateau.
"Exact chemical composition of bone changes deeper away from the surface," Briss said, frowning at their own awkward explanation. "The top parts are from deeper in the bone than at the bottom."
"Erosion?" The professor said, zer voice catching in zer throat.
Serana shook her head sadly. "You couldn't get that- that shape, by erosion." Seen up close, or at least close enough to see the monument's shape clearly and not so close that seeing the whole thing at once was impossible, there was no mistaking that it was a blade. Serana was their climatologist, and it had been by her altitude rig that they'd been able to get the fifty- and hundred-metre samples down.
"So you're saying, what?" The professor looked at Briss, zer face a scowl that looked almost reproachful. "Someone carved that thing?"
Briss shrugged again. "Guess so."
"How can you be so calm about this?" Tevon's voice squeaked as it rose.
"Did my panicking before," Briss said, with a hollow chuckle. "I was in the lab shaking for a good ten minutes before I called y'all in."
"In't the monument you should be frettin' about," drawled Donan, and the scientists, as one, shifted slightly to look at her. It wasn't that they didn't like their pilot-driver, and she was their only way off-world at the end of the expedition so they'd been careful to stay on her good side. But she had a past, one she had been sternly unforthcoming about, and her outfit – calf-length cargo shorts in a military pattern and a vest that revealed the scarred, steroidal bulging of her arm muscles – marked her as profoundly different to them.
Still, her posture, sprawled in the corner against the rear hatch, heavy boots squeezed up against the table's edge, didn't suggest any urgent danger, from her or outside the traklab. Briss said, "What is it, then?"
"S'all one bone, right? That's what yer sayin'."
Briss nodded, swallowing as the driver put into words the obvious conclusion none of them had been willing to voice.
"Well iunno if there's any critter that big still on this rock," Donan said, her lips pulling sideways in a smirk, "but something out here hunted it, killed it, and carved its bones for a trophy."
The professor's skin was too dark to turn pale at the thought, but zer arm shook as they ze out a hand toward the table. "Briss, the seismograph readouts from the other day…"