The Discovery

A fantasy -adventure fictional short story

The artifact was small and half covered in dirt and dust, but Lisa could still make out the shape of a square. A smile spread across her face at the discovery of her first artifact. Carefully she dusted off the box with her little brush and ran her finger over the symbols that could now be seen.

“Professor? I think you should come see this.” Lisa stood up and peered out over the ten by ten-foot dirt hole she had been assigned. The hole was only three feet deep, and she scanned the crowd of people looking for her teacher.
She finally spotted him talking to another student. He turned her way and she waved her arms then waited as he approached.

“What is it, Lisa?” The older man moved with a speed you wouldn’t think possible for a man of sixty. He was clean-shaven with a full head of graying hair. He looked down into the hole.

“I found a box of some kind, and it has strange markings on it.” She stepped back away from the edge and waited as professor Miles climbed down.

He looked at the metal box half-covered in dirt, studying the pictographs on the outside. “I’m not sure what any of those markings mean. They don’t look like anything I have seen before. After you finish unearthing it, bring it to the main tent to be examined.”