Sunlight pierced the gaps in the curtains, casting slender bands of light into the room.
Those bands fell across the desk piled with books, across the sheets of rubbings spread open, across the archaeological tools leaning against the wall, and finally across the figure curled up on the bed.
Robin lay on her side beneath a thin summer quilt. She had not changed out of her close-fitting sportswear and had fallen asleep fully dressed-a habit developed over many years. Ready to rise at any moment, flee at any moment, disappear into the crowd at any moment.
Even with the "help" of Crocodile and his forces, research into the inscriptions remained frustratingly slow.
The difficulty of the archaeological work lay in the fact that she was alone.
She had to make the rubbings herself, pressing her hands against the stone walls over and over until every carved stroke had been clearly reproduced.
She had to restore the weathered or time-worn portions word by word, sentence by sentence, comparing them against her memories of documents long since lost to war and guessing at their original appearance.
Cross-referencing required her to search a vast sea of ancient texts for stray words and phrases, while organizing her conjectures required her to piece together possible truths from countless fragments.
Even when she translated a portion, most of it was merely praise for the tomb's occupant-those same repetitive compliments, that nonsense piled high with ornate language.
And she had to seek meaningful records in accounts of people's lives, catch hidden events in seemingly ordinary descriptions, and draw conjectures from hymns to ancestors.
It was too difficult.
Robin lifted the back of her hand to her forehead, shielding her eyes from the glaring sunlight.
"Ah..."
A soft sigh escaped her slightly chapped lips:
"I'm completely lost..."
The