"The skeletons of small, unfamiliar creatures littered the balcony like grim talismans. Their contours reminded her of the pseudo-organisms harvested from the reclamation tanks so perilously far below. But her inner logic told her these were genuine, relics of whatever biology persisted above. On impulse, she scooped several of them up and dropped them into her sac, hoping to sell them to gene merchants upon her return. Perhaps having something tangible to show for her unannounced exploit would take the sting out of her homecoming, or at least dull the awkwardness that typically greeted those who had transcended the shaft's depths.
Hugging her scabbed knees to her chin, Dep studied the gently curving wall. She recognized glyphs etched in the flowing, organic style of her native vocabulary and other, decidedly alien markings that might have predated her fellow travelers by millennia. She spent indeterminable minutes attempting to decipher them, frowning in disgust when her efforts met only failure."
- Mac Tonnies, (an excerpt from a work in progress)
via a PHB post 1/28/2009
An intriguing fragment...
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