dice exercise #5

speech bubble/burger/sun/cat/airplane/hot drink

The clue was hidden somewhere in the comic, I was sure of it.  I studied the words in the speech balloons carefully, paying close attention to the word choice, arrangement of balloons, and fonts.  Finally, I sat back in exhaustion, feeling no closer to solving the mystery than before I even knew it existed.  I needed something to eat.

Normally, I try to avoid fast food, but dammit, some days you just have to indulge your base desires.  There's nothing like a greasy, salty, cheesy burger.  Maybe the influx of calories would stimulate my neurons and help me find that clue.  I strolled into the little burger place down the street, empty as it was between lunch and dinner rushes, ordered two with double cheese, and enjoyed my treat.  I let my eyes wander around the walls as I chewed, noting the old and faded travel posters, wondering why they were on an eatery's walls.  Suddenly, one of them grabbed my attention like a traffic cop's whistle.  It was a poster advertising the south of Mexico, where all those Mayan ruins are, or is it Inca, I can never remember, but it didn't have a blazing color photo like most posters do.  It was kind of a woodcut design, with a pyramid and a palm tree, and a smiling sun in the white and cloudless sky.

The sun was all black with its features drawn in white.  Its expression was one of pure pleasure.  I dropped the unfinished second burger on the plate and rushed back home to re-examine the comic.  The same sun was there, on page 39!  What did they say about it?  Some kind of glyph or carving on desert rocks in the Southwest.  The only remains of an unknown civilization.  That was it!  That was my chance at glory!  I would rediscover a lost people for the annals of history to celebrate.  But, I had to be there at the rocks in person to decipher the carvings properly.

Enlightened Kitty Travel, with its smiling cat mascot, got me a reasonable price for a flight that very weekend.  I packed quickly, just one small bag, with the bare essentials.  On Saturday morning, I boarded my flight filled to the brim with anticipation.  All the way to Santa Fe, I kept thinking about how it would feel to see the carvings at last, to understand the great mystery once and for all.  The flight was smooth and uneventful, and I felt relaxed enough to get a coffee in town after landing.  I checked the New Mexican for any last minute messages from the void, but found nothing.

As I drained the last drops of a, quite frankly, mediocre coffee, I realized somebody was staring at my from across the cafe.  He was a handsome, dark-haired man, casually wearing a white shirt and dark bluejeans, a cowboy hat decorated with turquoise in his left hand.  I met his black eyes, shining like dots of wet ink.  We both smiled.