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Morning.

Nithya mm's as she awakens from her sleeping bag. She gets up to sitting, feels her hands on her back and stretches: "Mm! Stone floors really don't make the best ground to sleep on, do they."

She looks around, taking another look at the murals that don't feel quite as strange and eerie in the daylight streaming in from the hole above.

Clay is quick to awaken, stretching from his sleeping bag, with a yawn, he's always been one able to sleep anywhere, but even he seems a bit more worn down than usual. "I think... we've slept on worse. That sunlight feels good at least."

Nithya smiles as she stretches again and starts getting up. She's slept in all but her outermost layer of clothing, never quite agreeing being in cold latitudes as much as Clay does, so she's almost dressed up straight out of the sleeping bag. "There is that. And you won't get an actual bad sentiment from me about sleeping outside, anyway."

Clay is just in his undershirt and pants, needing a moment to put on his heavier gear for the weather. "Is this technically outside? Heh. I guess it is, isn't it? I admit, I think the excitement is getting to me, I am still pretty tired."

Nithya nods: "I'm feeling pretty winded too. Guess we walked a lot yesterday before our find." Some part of her is saying like it wasn't more than usual, but she brushes that thought off.

She starts getting the campfire together... or would, if they had any firewood left. "Huh. Guess we had less firewood left than I thought. Cold rations it is, then, until we get some gathered."

Clay blinks, "Didn't you just gather some last night? Did we use it all? I guess we were both a bit overexcited, eh?" He walks over to the packs to pull out the rations, but finds the backpacks disturbingly light. "Hey, Nithya... we had enough food for the trip back yeah? Did you already grab some?"

Nithya is looking through her own backpack: "No... I mean, I grabbed a single protein bar before bed, but..." She looks up at Clay: "Pretty sure we had food for a couple more days."

She fishes up two protein bars and one canned ration, looking a bit pale as she attempts to find the rest of the food.

Clay glances around for any sign that something may have rummaged through their bags, "Maybe this temple worships mice as well as deer, eh? But... it doesn't look like anything got in the bags, they were zipped up and I don't see any holes. It's like the food is just... gone."

Nithya frowns: "Last I checked, I don't sleep-eat and neither do you." She looks up at the hole: "Pretty sure no wild animal would come down here like that either, just to fish at our backpacks, without waking us up." She looks down at the remains of their campfire. "Weird."

Clay sighs, zipping the packs back up. "Well... we're no stranger to foraging, at least. It won't be pleasant, but we can probably make do on limited supplies. We just might have to cut down the number of days we were thinking about staying here and leave as soon as possible. I'd still like to go down into the temple at least one more time though."

Nithya nods: "Yeah, me too. Maybe see if I can pick up one of those stone..." She trails off as she looks at the entrance to the temple. "...tablets."

The entrance is gone. Walled up, like it never existed. "Um..." She points a shaking finger at the wall where the doorway was, now covered up in continuous murals from the rest of the walls.

Clay watches Nithya's expression, feeling a growing chill run down his spine. He turns towards the doorway and sees the mural, paint faded as if it had always been there. He runs to the wall, running his hands along it to find the seams. "How... how? There must be some kind of mechanism... or... or..."

Nithya gets up from the backpacks and follows Clay, confused. "Y-yeah... something like that. Must be."

A more primeval part of her brain is starting to yell at her that it might really be time to run, soon. For now, she brushes it off.

Clay presses the wall along where he remembered the passageway being, trying to find a loose brick or hidden switch or any evidence at all that the passage was there in the first place, but at last he steps back, baffled.

"...this... makes no sense. We went down there last night, didn't we?" He turns to Nithya and tries to joke, but the confusion makes it only half-hearted, "You uh, can go ahead and pinch me now..."

Nithya nods, swallowing: "We did. I remember that beautiful amphitheater down there, and that wooden statue... everything. Unless we both imagined all that, somehow."

Clay nods slowly, thinking, until he brightens up with a solution, "Pictures! You took pictures, right! Of the stone tablets at least! Pull those up! We can prove we're not crazy!"

Nithya blinks, then nods hastily before getting back to her backpack: "Yes! I did take a lot of pictures, they should be fine. Right?" She opens her pack up just carefully enough to not break anything in her hurry, and picks up the camera, swallowing.

The pictures of the interior are intact. She looks between them, and at the doorway that is no longer there. "...we were in there. And..." She blinks as she continues looking through the pictures: "...I don't remember taking these."

Clay walks closer to peek at the digital camera, "...what the hell? That... I don't remember doing any of that? All we did was walk into the center and walk out..." He looks at the date stamp and freezes, "Nithya, that's... not until two days from now?"

Nithya blinks a few times. She then picks up her phone and checks the date. "That's... according to my phone, today is April 22nd. We um... pretty sure it was nineteenth when we found this place." She looks at Clay, a bit pale.

Clay goes pale as well, "N-no... today is the 20th... we... we couldn't have slept that long?"

Nithya shakes her head: "I don't feel like I slept more than usual." She looks about the murals, and the statue near them. Once again there's that shivering, slightly menacing feeling.

She swallows. "You know I'm not... superstitious or anything, but..." She glances at Clay: "...think this place is telling us to leave?"

Clay slowly nods his head, then turns to look at the statue, which seems far less inviting in its gesture now. Still, he tries to put a positive spin on things, "Yeah... yeah you might be right. We uh, we'll be back with a team. But with low supplies, the sooner we head out the better, right?"

Nithya nods: "Yeah... let's pack up and get out of here. I'm sure we can be more... thorough rational when we come back, and..." She looks at the wall and shrugs: "...not like we have any tools to get through that, anyway."

Clay steps back to his sleeping bag and starts to roll it up, "I wouldn't want to risk damaging something trying to brute force through the wall... especially not um, now. Maybe our deer goddess here will be more welcoming later?" The joke again falls a bit flat, something about it feels a little too close to home.

Nithya gives a half-hearted shrug. "Maybe." She starts packing up. "I..." She trails off, then doesn't finish any thought there and instead continues packing. Her stuff is more spread out than she thought they would be after one night, but that's another thought she files away to not deal with right now.

She doesn't want to feel like she's afraid, but she kind of is.

Clay sees Nithya move to pack as quickly as possible, and he lets the jokes die for the moment and gets to work as well, the creeping unease about the whole situation getting to him, even as he tries to come up with a rational solution. They don't have internet this far out, and gps and even the calendar can flake out on a phone... and a camera...

Soon enough, he's finished packing up, and turns to Nithya, "One of us climb up, then haul out the packs, and then the other follows, all right?"

Nithya nods as she finishes up. "Yeah. Let's do this." The joke-cracking mood completely gone from the woman, she starts checking on their ropes. Which, thankfully, are still perfectly intact. Leaving is at least an option.

Clay heads up, carefully climbing first up and out of the hole caused by his wayward tent stake. Once up, he checks the tree that Nithya anchored the rope to, and has her secure the supplies and pull them out, then gives the all clear for her to climb up as well. The process is very mechanical, the two having done this kind of thing before, and Clay not feeling particularly jovial in the moment either.

Nithya gets up, giving Clay the tiniest of smiles but it's obvious she's a bit shaken.

Almost as mechanically, she looks around to try and get their bearings after being effectively underground for a day... or possibly more.

"...that way, I think. And at least we have a full day's worth of daylight."

Clay checks his compass, which seems quite unaffected by whatever EMP disrupted the phone date and times in his mind, "And we can head back the way we came. We'll probably reach the foot of the mountain path tonight..."

He pauses to look up at the sky, then around the valley. "Beautiful place... I can see the allure, but I think I'll be glad to get out of here..."

Nithya nods, sighing. "Yes. I'll be happy to come back... with more people and tools and supplies, to make sure we actually can stay and find things."

She shudders a bit and picks up her backpack. "Let's go."

Clay hefts his pack up and starts to head back towards the mountain. "Well, at least we do have the pictures. As... strange as they are. So funding an actual dig here won't be too difficult, once we show those off."

Nithya starts walking as she thinks. "...we may want to leave certain details out, about how strange this was this morning though..." She starts going at a brisk pace, wanting to get some distance between herself and that strange place.

Clay looks back over his shoulder at the strange hole in the midst of the valley, but then hurries to catch up to Nithya, "I... yeah. I don't know. With the excitement of it all, and the fall... uh, who can say?" He's grasping at straws, but doesn't really have any other explanation.

Nithya sighs and idly scratches at her back in an attempt to make her clothes sit better as she walks. "I certainly can't. I want to know what's in there, but..." She glances behind them: "...I definitely also want to get away right now. If that makes sense."

Clay sighs, "It uh, well... yeah. You know how I've kept saying it's like something is watching us down here? First the deer, then that statue... like it's just watching and waiting for... I don't know..." He forces a laugh, "I do not sound like a man of science right now." He glances back again as the hole slowly fades from sight.

Nithya gives a half-hearted smile: "No, you don't. But I think I will forgive you for that, this time." She continues in silence for a few moments, pacing herself despite wanting to just create some distance right now.

"Whatever that was, I think staying further would have invited worse disaster. If only because we're nearly out of food."

Clay nods in agreement, "You're right, of course... as curious as I am. But then again, you know I do tend to put food before science."

Nithya smirks, just slightly finding her humor again as the place creeping them out is left behind and out of sight. "Food science, as one would put it. Speaking of which, keep an eye out for edibles on the way, we're going to need them."

Clay grins, glad to hear Nithya perking up again as they hike, "Gastronomy! The science of good food! But yes, you might just need to fact check me on which berries are edible, but I'll point out anything I can see."

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