Excavation: Completed

[Raleigh]

"I would suggest the jerky unless you are opposed to meat. Though either choice contains more salt that we should probably be intaking while on a hike, the crackers are more likely to dry out your mouth. Let's see, how many canteens do you think we will need to take, Lily?"

[Chibi MitchellTF]

Lily thinks for a minute. "I honestly have no idea. I'd say take how much we'd need for the trip normally, which I'm hoping one of you guys, or the professor, can remember. Then add an extra for the fact we're eating salty foods, and I need one more because I tend to drink more than average."

[Mitera Nikkou]

The crackers, they should remember, are not salty at all. They are hardened cakes of grain and oat, resembling crackers or wafers more than a cake. The taste is actually rather decent. The beef jerky is somewhat salty, but is mostly dried meat rather than preserved in salts. Since the water is unlimited (as long as the stream flows), any amount of water can be taken. Seeing as the camp has a five-gallon barrel for water, taking more than one canteen should be fine.

----------

Meanwhile, Donald set out to check on the dig site, as he had intended to do earlier. He figured that Lily and Raleigh had everything taken care of, and thus a trip to check on how the others were doing was at hand. When he came across Holly a few minutes later, he stroked his bristly chin as he regarded the large protuberance in her pit.

"It looks like you have quite a large rock, there." He commented.

[Raleigh]

"Alright I think I have enough canteens for us then. You ready to take a hike? Hahahaha, sorry."

[Stellar]

Holly looked up, "'Morning professor." She looked back down to the boulder and replied, "Yeah... It seems like a bigger nusance then I first thought. Do you know what to do or how to get it out?"

[Mitera Nikkou]

"I recommend digging it out, but there's no telling how big it is at this point." Donald replied, then eased himself into the small pit and squated before the rock, squinting his eyes as he inspected it. "Hmmmm..." He laid his hands upon it and gave a few pushes, and each following push he used more strength; but all of his effort didn't shift the rock at all.

He stood back up and looked down at the rock, saying: "Well, it must be big enough; I can't even budge it... Which isn't really saying much, though." He glanced down at his wrinkled, aged hands, before returning his attention to the rock. "I guess you can take a break for now, until we find some more hands to dig out and remove this thing." Then, absently, he added: "Though, I must say: it is a bit peculiar. So, we may just have more than masonry and petrified wood to study soon."

----------

When Lily and Raleigh are ready to head out to the forest, they'll traverse the wasteland most of the time, where there is no growth at all. There is a strip of land between the forest and the wastland that supports growth, that stretches about a quarter of a mile between the two areas; but there isn't much flora to speak of there. The forest itself is ordinary enough, and doesn't seem to have any real nutrient problems; it's dense with trees, and underbrush and other such things occur normally.

[Stellar]

"How is it peculiar?" Holly asked opening her backpack getting out a few crackers.

[Mitera Nikkou]

"Well..." Donald began, folding his arms while regarding the rock critically. "For one, the rock doesn't seem like it belongs in this region. Its size alone is odd because, as anyone can see, this plain bears no rocks on the surface that matches what we can see of this one's size." He knelt down and began to caress the rock's surface. "Furthermore, it's much too smooth to have always been here. It would be more likely that it came from a stream, though the one we get our water from is too small to immerse this whole rock, as big as I imagine it to be."

He stood up and, politely, asked for a cracker before contuinuing. "If I had to guess, it probably came from a river that's within the forest over there." He pointed to said forest with his index finger. "Which is possible since there's a mountain on the West side of the forest and, being that we're on the South side of it, there might be another river (other than the river that flows from the North side, which empties into Toyana's bay). It's just a guess, though; there's no telling if the people from this settlement even brought this stone here themselves, if anything did. But I've got a hunch..."

"Other than the one in my aging back, that is." He joked.

[Stellar]

Holly nibbled on one of her crackers through the professor's thoughts. "Well then, what would you like me to do in the meantime?" She knelt down and collected a few of her things putting them in her backpack waiting for a responce.

[Mitera Nikkou]

"You can either take a rest, lounge about, or whatever ever it is that you young people do." He said with a slight, playful grin. Then, as he continued, he appeared less animated. "Or you can join someone else in their pit. It's up to you, really."

With that said, he climbed out of the pit that Holly had been working in, and pushed in his back to work the kinks out of it. "Yup, getting too old for this..." He muttered to himself.

[Stellar]

Holly climbed out of the pit she was in after Donald and looked around for a promissing excavation pit. "Well I'll see you later then professor," Holly waved as she walked off and hopped into another hole waiting for the professor to go out of sight.

[Mitera Nikkou]

"I'm certainly not in the prime condition needed for this sort of stuff anymore..." Donald thought to himself as he went back to the pavilion, for the purpose of getting out of the sun. "And I need a drink... Too bad the water can't be cooled, but it'll have to do as is. It's also a shame that the stream wasn't closer, or I would have set up camp by its bank. Ah... I can imagine how cool the water would be, directly from the stream."

Once he was underneath the pavilion, he went to a table that had a barrel and a few cups. Taking one of the cups, he placed it under the nozzle (that was attached to the barrel) and, manipulating said nozzle, allowed water to flow from the barrel and into the cup.

[Chibi MitchellTF]

When they do get to the forest, Lily bends down, and begins putting samples of the soil into flasks, and stoppering them. She digs through the ground, and looks over the flasks like she actually knows what she should be doing. "Okay, it looks normal, but a few tests might change things."

[Mitera Nikkou]

Within the forest, Lily and Raleigh find it cooler under the forest's canopy. There was also a light breeze that rustled the leaves of the trees, making quite a tranquil atmosphere. However, should either think about it, they'd realize that there hadn't been any wind before entering the forest. Perhaps it had just been a coincidence that such a breeze had started once they entered the rind of the forest, but that remained to be seen on the way out.

(Lily & Raleigh: It took you two an hour and a half to get there, and it will take about the same on the return trip. So, when you guys decide to return, wait to do any more until I note that time at the campsite has caught up with you. or else you'll be interacting with people in the past. ;p)

[Stellar]

Holly began unpacking her digging utensils and continued searching through the dirt for anything of importance.