Anna rolled over slightly, her back brushing against the brutal, unforgiving floor as she desperately tried to find some place on the rotten cloth sack she laid on that wouldn't sting her with the constant ache of discomfort. Her backpack was her pillow, although it was a lot flatter without her clothes in it. She had no blanket... not that she needed one in the oppressing summer heat of the subtropics. Her winter coat, still present (although a lot shorter than what it would be from a full snowy winter), was shedding as quickly as possible to a more comfortable length, small golden hairs littering her clothes, tickling her nostrils, and getting in her eyes and mouth.

The sound of footfalls that she recognized distinctly as her father's caused her ears to swivel. He must've caught the movement, cause his voice chimed out soon afterwards, "Can't sleep?"

Anna rolled onto her back, rubbing a sore and painfully dry eye as she looked up at her father's figure, completely dark and silhouetted by the glow of the waxing moon above, "Yeah," she sighed, "Did they just not invent beds over here?"

Indiana's face was imperceptible, but the disappointment in his voice was clear, "Plenty of people sleep on the floor. Some of them are happier than some of the richest people I know in America. You're just not used to it."

Anna remained silent, knowing her father was probably right as she shuffled slightly again. She was in a wall-less gazebo, as it was the most spacious place in the village... and probably one of the more clean places too. Aside from the moon, the only source of light was a distant fire where a few men kept watch, no doubt the fear of the cultists keeping the unfortunate souls on their toes. Willie Scott and Short Round slept nearby on the far end of the shelter, enough that the two's hushed voices were unlikely to disturb them.

With a sigh, Anna looked up to her father again, "Dad? Are we gonna go- are we... are we gonna go back to Delhi?" she eventually chose to phrase it.

Indiana leaned on one of the supporting corner beams, folding his arms, "Most likely. I'm not all that interested in some random holy rocks."

Anna's brow folded, "I think it was more than just a rock... that shrine felt really weird. Like nothing I've ever felt before. There's gotta be more to it. And... I mean, look around us. Does all this rot and dust really look natural?"

"Crop failures happen all the time, and when your community is built entirely around agriculture it can lead to devastation. It's likely they're telling the truth at least about being raided, though," Indiana surmised, "It's real unfortunate. The Indian countryside is turning into a wild west and the British aren't doing anything about it."

"I know what I felt, Dad," Anna said, voice firm.

Indiana reached up and scratched the back of his head as he soberly said, "You're not built for the wild, neither is our tagalong. I'm not risking our lives further by tramping around the jungle just to poke around some ruined castle."

Anna drooped her head as she looked out the opposite way from her father's shadow, "...Can we at least send these people some money or something?"

"Sure," Indiana reached down and patted his daughter on the head as he stepped back from the shelter, "You saved our lives back at the plane crash. I owe you that, at least. How are your wings feeling, anyway?"

Anna shuffled her wings slightly, wincing as the sore spots at her joints began their dull aches again, something that had gone away only after several hours of rest after the crash, "...Not great. They're real stiff, and they hurt a lot."

"I'm sure it'll get better. Otherwise I'll fly to Germany myself to drag Uncle Johan back kicking and screaming to take a look," Indiana chuckled softly.

Anna cracked a small smile at the thought of that, before rubbing an eye again and yawning. After finishing her yawn, she looked back at her father, "...Dad? If I was making the decisions, I'd at least try and check out the ruins."

"Well, that's why I make the decisions," Indiana stared down at her, his expression changing though indeterminable in the shadows, "I thought you wanted to go home just as much as Willie did."

"I did, but..." Anna pursed her lips, "That was before they asked for our help. What if they're right?"

"If they're right, the best we can do is tell the military administration in Dehradun that their village was raided. They'll send the Army down to poke around," Indiana assured, before circling around and looking back towards the fire, "If I'm firm with them, I'm sure their guide can be convinced to take us to civilization. Otherwise, we'll walk. If we're careful, we can be there in a few days."

It was later in the night. Anna knew not how much time had passed since her conversation with her father. Sleep had come in short, hard-fought bursts. At this point, she yearned for the light of the sun so that she could at least go, walk around, read a book, something. Instead, she was in the dark, sleep evading her, as she alternated between shifting herself around and trying (usually unsuccessfully) to fall asleep. The shrine, illuminated by the moon's position in the sky, bode her with passive curiosity. What if she had stood closer for longer? Would she see things?

No. No, it was probably malevolent. A few more hours of lying around wouldn't kill her. Hopefully the trip to Delhi wouldn't be too long. She longed for the comfort of a hotel bed.

Eventually, she sat up, the frustration of lying down becoming too much to bear. She was hungry, but it would be unimaginable to walk into one of these villager's homes and ask for food, especially after how much they scrounged up for her the previous day. She could try grass again, even though she hated it, but it would require she walk all the way out of the arid, blighted soil to the forest's edge. Who knew what kind of predatory life lurked outside of the safety of the village.

"Can't sleep either?" a feminine voice whispered from across the shelter.

Anna looked over, her eyes barely able to perceive the silhouette of Willie Scott sitting up in her place too, "Yeah," she whispered, "I dunno how people sleep without at least a mattress or something."

"You're brave to sleep on that rag. I didn't wanna get lice, so I left mine aside," Willie Scott murmured, shuffling quietly over nearer to Anna to not risk waking up Short Round.

Anna had... not considered the fact that the cloth could be infested, and frowned as she looked down, "Uh... well, if it's infested, I am by now."

Willie Scott sighed, "Hope they have delousants in Delhi," she reached up and fussed with her hair.

"Me too..." Anna felt a flicker of fear in her heart as she thought of herself infested with fleas or lice all the way on the trip home, "I'd hate to be beating through the bush and crawling with insects the entire way."

"What do you mean, beat through the bush?" she asked.

Anna shrugged, "Well if the guides won't take us, we'll probably have to walk."

"Walk? For three days straight through this damn jungle? Seriously!?" Willie balked.

"Do you see any roadsters around here?" Anna gave an amused grin, before stopping and considering, "Well... they did say they had elephant paddocks. I don't know if they're still alive or not."

Willie's head turned to look out into the jungle surrounding the village, before she eventually asked, "How far is Delhi?"

Anna did some quick thinking about the distances of India, before shaking her head, "Well, we'd probably go to Dehradun and then take a train the rest of the way. About three days, by how my dad estimates. But... he's also a lot more experienced with hiking through jungles than we are, so maybe we might slow him down."

Willie snorted, her shadowed head looking up towards the moon and stars scrolling by above the village. Eventually, she admitted, "You're probably right. I'm not suited for this whole 'living rough' kinda thing," she sighed as she brushed something off her face, "I gotta admit. I'm torn. Your father threatened to kill me over a diamond, then saved me when Lao Che threw me to the wolves. Then he forced me to get on that plane, and come here..."

Anna quirked an eyebrow, "He threatened to kill you?"

Willie Scott paused, her facial expression shifting ever so slightly in the darkness, "Lao Che had one of his sons pull a gun on him. He grabbed me and put a fork to my side and threatened to stab me if he didn't put the gun away... then he did it again when Lao wouldn't give him the diamond."

"That doesn't sound like Dad..." Anna murmured, before an idea popped into her head, "...Well maybe he wasn't gonna actually stab you? He just wanted to make it seem that way?"

"I hope so," Willie reached up to scratch her nose. Eventually, she reached out towards Anna's mane. Usually, the only people touching her hair was her father ruffling it all up, but instead the woman just ran her fingers across it gently, "Your hair's nice. Smooth but thick. What do you use as shampoo? You use any special products?"

Anna scrunched up her muzzle, "Uhhh... I dunno what it actually is. It's just a brand that Dad gets at the shops, usually."

"You use the same stuff as your father?" Willie chuckled incredulously, "You saying your hair's all natural? No tricks or remedies?"

"Uhm, yeah...?" Anna looked up at the bangs of her greyscale mane, the fringe only barely visible in the moonlight.

"Well, I'd kill to have hair like yours. Naturally dyed, nice and straight... I need to spend an hour a day usually to get it all nice and in shape, and if we're taking all this time in the jungle it's gonna devolve into an absolute bush!" Willie huffed as she reached up and brushed something out of her face again.

"Thanks..." Anna smiled slightly, looking towards the woman with warmth in her heart, "...Your hair's pretty nice, even when it's all messy."

"Well it's dark, you can't tell what it looks like," Willie refuted, finishing fussing with her hair before reaching back out towards Anna's mane, "You know, I thought yours would be kinda coarse and stringy like horse mane - I've ridden a few horses back when I was a country kid - but it's a lot more like human hair. And good human hair at that. Have you ever tried styling it?"

"I've... brushed it?" Anna offered weakly.

Willie blew a raspberry, "That's not styling it, silly! I think even a simple bun would look amazing, it'd help bring up the back end of the mane. Though you have some length to work with... could do something a bit more elaborate. Ohh... if only we were in Shanghai, I could get you connected with someone who really knows her stuff," her face panned more towards Anna's haunches, "Not to mention the tail. You could do something with that as well. No girls I know can flaunt a tailstyle as well as a hairstyle."

Anna smiled awkward, reaching up and scratching her mane self-consciously, "I'll... pass. I've not really gotten into beauty stuff, and I've got... other things on my mind right now."

"Well yeah of course, not saying we should do makeovers in the middle of the rainforest," Willie shivered as she looked around, "But, maybe once we're back in the city, I can have a few spare moments to sit down and chat and show you a few new looks? It's the least I can do after you saved us all from becoming splatters on the mountainside."

Anna shuffled her stiff, painful wings, before shrugging, "As long as I get to put it back when I don't like it."

"Suit yourself," Willie giggled.

There was a pause, before Anna asked, "So... you seem to have it out for the wilderness a lot for being a farmgirl."

"I was the oldest kid in my family. Five brothers," Willie tittered a little, raising a hand to her mouth, "An absolute madhouse! I was never much for the actual farmwork. I helped my mom with the cleaning, the cooking, taking care of my siblings... she wanted me to be a nurse, y'know?"

"Buut you became a singer instead?" she questioned.

"Mhm," Willie confirmed, "I wanted to get out of dusty old Missouri, go to Hollywood," a pause, "I wanted to live in a world where I could do whatever I wanted without other people pushing me around. And when it came time to marry, I wanted to have enough money to be able to choose a man who would let me keep pursuing my own career rather than chaining myself to some asshole actor who would just put me on his mantle and make me look neat.

"...and then the crash happened," Willie heaved a sigh, "I struck out everywhere I turned. I had the choice to return to Missouri with my tail between my legs, or bet everything on a chance in China. Things were going well until you people shot up my club."

"The mobsters were the ones doing most of the shooting," Anna pointed out.

"Well, yeah-" Willie gave a snort, "Forget about it. So, what do you want to do when you grow up? Got any dreams?"

"I kinda wanna become an archaeologist, like my dad," Anna shrugged.

"Oh yeah? Full doctorate and everything?" Willie probed.

"Yeah. My grandpa says it'll be tough, cause usually girls don't get far in academia," Anna said quietly.

"Well, I think you should go for it. If you can deal with getting shot at and tramping around the jungle now, I bet you'll do just fine when you're a bit older," a pause, "...But I never really thought archaeology was like this. I thought it was more sitting around in libraries and digging holes in the desert."

"Dad says it's like that most of the time."

"I hope so, for your sake. Sounds like a dangerous job to me," Willie finished.

The sound of something moving in the brush caused Anna's ears to perk. She reached for where her belt was, discarded by her 'bed', and felt around for her holster as she looked towards the sound. Willie, clearly not hearing what Anna had heard, simply followed her line of sight.

Eventually, looking back, she shrugged, "Hear something?"

That was when something stumbled through the bushes behind her.

Anna jumped with a start, taking in an involuntary gasp of breath as she clumsily yanked the revolver from her holster, the leather flying with the momentum to somewhere unseen. A bang filled the air as light flashed through the gazebo. Too late did her father's words echo through her head.

"And don't aim your gun at anything you aren't one hundred percent sure you want to kill."

The bang woke Short Round instantly, and let out a panicked yelp from Willie Scott, her face illuminated for the first time that night temporarily in the flash of gunpowder. Anna's aim quivered as she realized that she didn't know what she had just shot, which was now a dark form on the ground by the gazebo foundation. Despite the shock of the figure coming from the underbrush and the fear it elicited, Anna immediately dropped her weapon and leapt across the gazebo to inspect it more closely.

The flickering of fire approached from behind her, along with the sounds of human footfalls, likely the villagers she had seen on watch earlier. As the warm light grew nearer, she finally was able to make out the body. With a mixed feeling of relief, Anna exhaled as she saw its chest rise and fall. It was the body of a small child with dark skin... although it looked terribly wrong. As the firelight grew brighter behind her, she was able to make out more details.

He wore no clothes, and his skin was covered in hundreds of blemishes. From what knowledge of first aid Anna had, she could recognize severe burns, lacerations, bites... and, oh god, those wide, red lashes across his back and chest. They actively drooled blood, and she recognized them as sympathetic pain coursed through a scar on the back of her neck: whip marks. The child's ribs showed through his skin, and his gut almost sunk away beneath the ribcage. His arms were nothing but sticks, and his fingers were nearly degloved as he held them up to shield his face.

The child parted his fingers, a haunting, almost hollow eye staring straight up at Anna. Slowly, using what must have been all of his strength, he moved his other hand away from his face. Voices shouted in Hindi from behind Anna, but she had neither the wherewithal nor the focus to try and translate them in her mind as he held out a small scrap of cloth towards her.

She took it, her hoof feeling numb as she held the scrap. An outpouring of empathy finally shouted over the cacophony of chaos in her mind. In that moment, she felt that she would cut off a limb just to feed the child a solid meal. She would fly him all the way back to civilization on her bad wings to get him to a doctor. She would...

"Ranjit? Ranjit!?" a woman rushed past Anna, almost completely displacing her as she reached out towards the child. The woman paused, tears pouring from her sunken eyes. The desperate state of the villagers seemed like the picture of health compared to the boy. Bile rose in Anna's mouth as she realized there probably wasn't anything they could do for him in such a state...

"Oh my god... that's a boy...?" Willie Scott breathed from behind them.

Short Round stood next to Anna, his eyes locked on the boy as he was carried away into the woman's arms, "I can tell he boy. He naked after all," an incredulous look came across his face, "I see a lot of bad things happen to little children in Shanghai. Never that bad."

Anna's ears rotated at the sound of familiar footsteps, causing her to break from her reverie. Indiana Jones's shadow was cast against the torches of the villagers, his head turned towards the child as he was rushed to one of the buildings, "Christ almighty... Shorty, go keep an eye on them," as Short Round dutifully complied, he looked back towards the group, particularly towards Anna, "I heard gunshots," he inquired.

Anna looked to her revolver, abandoned on the floor of the gazebo, "I nearly shot him. I was spooked," she murmured, walking over and grabbing the revolver again.

"Don't shoot if you don't mean it," Indiana scolded, before looking down at Anna's hoof, where she still clutched the cloth, "What's that?"

Anna looked down at the cloth, her expression clueless as she realized that she hadn't questioned what she'd been given either. She fell onto her haunches, using both hooves to unfurl the cloth and examine its contents. Indiana's shoes clicked across the gazebo floor as he loomed over her, looking down at the cloth.

A colored depiction took front and center, surrounded by writing in another language. The depiction saw a large, weird human with dark blue skin, red pants (or maybe it was a skirt?), and a white crown sitting cross-legged on the right side of the depiction. On the left, a more normal human of indeterminate gender kneeled with his hands in a praying position in front of the blue human.

Indiana's hand plunged into Anna's view as he took the scroll from her hooves, "Hold on a second..." he breathed.

Anna looked up towards him, her stomach unsettling as a familiar look went across her father's face. The light of the torches glinted off his wide, opened eyes as he scanned the cloth, his mouth sounding out words as a grin slowly spread across his face. Anna's muzzle, still firmly locked in a destitute frown, remained unchanged despite her father's enthusiasm.

Looking up from the cloth, his arms slowly lowering as he kept the cloth clasped in one hand, he whispered, "Sankara..."

"What does it mean?" Anna asked, sitting by her father's side and craning her neck to see the cloth he held.

The sun was just beginning to rise in the distance. The horizon was smeared in a dim, nearly cerulean shade of blue that contrasted with the dark night sky. The stars had fled, and the ambient light was barely rising to visible levels. The dead, scraggly flora surrounding the village was silhouetted against the rising sky, and the black shapes of the village buildings in the wake of the hills was wreathed by the smouldering embers of the night watch's campfire.

"It's Sanskrit," Indiana explained, "It talks about a prophet who climbed up Mount Kailash, that's in the eastern parts of Tibet," he pointed at the blue human on the right, "That's Shiva, one of the major gods of their religion. He's depicted here, giving five holy stones to the prophet and telling him to go and fight evil."

"What's the big deal, then?" Anna quirked an eyebrow, "...Is this unknown to archaeology or something?"

"No, I've read about this stuff in school. The Indian subcontinent is something I studied along with Near East archaeology," he tapped a finger on the center of the cloth, looking towards Anna with a passion-filled grin, "Those stones. They're the Sankara Stones."

"So...? What are the Sankara stones?" Anna quirked an eyebrow.

"Fortune and glory, Anna. Fortune and glory..." Indiana chuckled.

Anna was unimpressed as she folded her forelegs, "Yeah, sure Dad. But what is it?"

Indiana Jones blinked, before raising a hand and coughing into it awkwardly, "Uhm- yeah. They are holy stones, said to have magical powers and the ability to bring good luck and fortune to whoever has them," he reached into his pocket, bringing out his diary, with a pencil attached. Flipping to a blank page, he sketched the image of a small, cylindrical stone with three lines across it, "They look like this. But, there are reputable accounts of them glowing as bright as the sun, and emitting heat. They might be made out of an unknown material of some kind, and the community at home would kill to have it, know they actually existed, and to study it. Even if not, there are diamonds in the center of the stones, large enough to be visible through the translucent outer layer."

"Soooo... they're worth a lot of money?" Anna raised an eyebrow.

Indiana nodded anyway, snapping his journal shut and putting it back into his pocket, "We've made a total loss on this trip so far. Wu Han is dead, the Peacock's Eye is lost, I can't do business in Shanghai again now with Lao out for my head. This could be how we recoup."

Anna blinked in shock for a moment, before jabbing forward the question: "You're going to steal from the village?"

"It's just a rock, Anna," Indiana dismissed, "The failure of this village is just a coincidence."

Anna, eyebrows settling angrily over her eyes, opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the sounds of small footsteps clambering up the slope of the hill towards them. Short Round's ballcap emerged over the side of the hill as the boy panted, straightening up and looking towards Indiana Jones, "The chieftain, he tell me that the boy came from Pankot. There are many more there, he say," Short Round wiped sweat off on his sleeve, taking a moment to breathe before asking, "What do we do Doctah Jones?"

"I think we're going to take up our host's offer for an elephant ride to Pankot Province," Indiana said, heaving up onto his feet from the stone he had been sitting on, "Hopefully, whoever the new masters of Pankot are might be willing to take in some wayward foreigners fresh from a plane crash in the mountains."

Anna frowned as she watched her father adjust his clothes and turn back towards the path to the village. Before they set off, she stated evenly: "Dad. It's not just a rock."

Indiana gave one glance over his shoulder, before simply gesturing for her to follow and plodding off.

Apparently, the only animals possessed by the village of Mayapore that had survived the famine were a family of elephants. Three of them had been lined up to carry the party to north, a bull, a smaller cow, and a calf, lead by a group of guides, who lead them around by the ends of ropes tied to chains wrapped around their thick necks. Rations had been loaded up onto their backs, both food for the people and feed for the elephants, along with their luggage.

At first, Anna was afraid that the animals might react to her with some amount of skepticism. However, she supposed since they weren't equine, they simply regarded her as some strange creature rather than an uncanny reflection of themselves. After probing her a few times with their trunks, they seemed contented to leave her alone.

As soon as the guide signalled the bull to raise one of its legs for mounting, Indiana climbed onto its back in a single, practiced motion. Short Round was given the calf, at first facing some difficulty climbing on, but with a small boost from one of the guides he was able to easily mount the animal's lower back.

Willie was much less fortunate, having neither the grace of Indiana or a beast with a short stature. The cow raised its leg for her to mount, though even with the guide's help she continuously slipped and stumbled. Eventually, with a surge of effort, she finally managed to awkwardly flop over the elephant's shoulder and onto its back, legs wrapped around its neck and arms gripping its sides as she struggled to maintain balance.

Anna, being unable to simply fly onto the back of the bull, was boosted up by one of the guides then hauled in by Indiana's hand. Standing unsteadily on its back, she eventually settled down enough to sit comfortably, within leg's reach of her father if she began to lose her balance.

As soon as she was secure, Indiana looked down to their guide and said, "Sajnu, chal dar!"

After a very short delay, the guide began to move the elephants forward, going ahead of them on foot. Willie let out a yelp as her mount began to move, clearly struggling to keep her balance as she continued to lie flat and hold onto the cow for dear life.

"Ohhh wait a sec, Indyyy! I can't go to Delhi like this!!" Willie shouted.

"We're not going to Delhi, doll!" Indiana shouted back, "We're going to Pankot Palace!"

"Pankot!? I can't go to Pankot! Ohhh-" Willie lifted her head up from the elephant's back, looking towards the groups of villagers crowding around, "I need to find a phone! Is there going to be a telephone anywhere along the way? I need to call my agent!"

"You didn't tell her where we were going?" Anna asked.

"I don't think they would've taken her to Delhi. These are all of their guides and they wouldn't have split up their party," Indiana shrugged, "If it's that big of a deal, she can probably get a more elegant form of transportation back south once we're at the palace."

Anna looked back over her shoulder, watching as Willie struggled to get into a proper position on her elephant. Behind her, though, she caught sight of the necklaced man, standing beside the shrine. His hands were clasped together in prayer and his eyes were fixed on her, watching as he muttered inaudibly.

The man continued to pray until the view of him and his village were consumed by the jungle foliage and hills.

The experience of riding an animal was new to Anna. The closest she'd ever gotten to doing so was riding in Marcus's carriage in England, and the subsequent ice bath had quickly put a stop to any further plans for satagee. That being said, the broad, wide back of the elephant allowed her to sit or lie down without much fear of losing her balance made this new experience fairly pleasant. Furthermore, as they encountered more and more groundborne obstacles along the trails, the elephants' immense strength made her grateful they weren't attempting the journey on foot, especially with her sprained wings leaving her grounded.

The landscape they journeyed through was picturesque. Once they left the decaying valley the village withered away in, they were once again wreathed in the tall, green canopies of the jungle, frequently broken up by long wetlands and winding rivers coming down from the highlands. All too often, the soil became muddy beneath the elephant's feet, swallowing their giant stumps as if it was alive. Anna could imagine herself swamped in the mud, drowning up to her barrel in the glug. However, the elephants' defied the wetland crawl, the sounds of the mud sucking desperately at their feet filling the air as they plodded forward with only a slightly larger effort.

The only put-off of riding the elephants was probably their smell. Anna initially blamed her own more powerful nose for the power of the eye-watering stench the animals were putting off, but it seemed like Willie Scott had noticed it too and was suffering alongside her. Regardless, Anna couldn't muster the courage to complain, considering that Indiana seemed to be entirely unphased and Short Round was either too experienced or too brave to be bothered by bad smells.

Rolling her shoulders to relieve some of the stress that holding her riding position had given her, Anna reached to her backpack and took it off, placing it in front of her. Digging around inside, she retrieved her dried, rolled up map of Asia and her compass, drawing her lips into a thin line as she focused on the details afforded to India. Wincing slightly as she convinced her wing to harbor the political map for a moment, she dug around some more until she retrieved her topographic map, holding it alongside the political map and humming softly.

Looking up towards the horizon, her eyes scanned until she found a distant mountain peak. Licking her lips, she stared down at her maps for only a minute until it all finally clicked in her mind. Taking her red pencil from her bag, she began to add extra lines to their course, showing them pushing further into Pankot Province.

"Got a bearing on where we are?" a voice from in front of Anna asked.

Looking up, she saw her father looking over his shoulder and observing her navigation processes. She nodded, "We're about halfway there already... give or take."

Indiana Jones quirked an eyebrow, "If it weren't for the elephants, we wouldn't need guides," he gave her an encouraging smile, suggesting, "You could've probably guided us to the palace yourself."

Anna blushed, before recapping her marker and beginning to neatly fold her maps again, "Well I'm still glad they lent us the elephants. Would've taken us forever to trek all this way on foot."

"Yeah well..." Indiana peeked over his shoulder at Willie, "I have a feeling our famous female american vocalist might've had some trouble keeping up."

Anna followed his gaze back towards the woman in question. Willie had taken out a bottle of some yellow liquid, and was applying it sparingly to the head of her mount. It trumpeted in response to the foreign fluid, to which Willie scoffed, "Oh, calm down you big baby, this is expensive stuff!" she said, dabbing a few spurts of the liquid around her neck.

Anna snickered a bit to herself, before raising her head and shouting towards her, "So! Willie! What kinda stuff do you sing!?"

"Mostly radio, before I got picked up by the club!" Willie shouted back.

Short Round spoke up, looking up from his calf and saying, "She is right! I hear her on radio sometime!"

As the voices of the travellers rang throughout the area, the elephants mounted the a slope leading up from a river's edge back into the forest. Overhead, birds were briefly seen flying south in great flocks before the sky was subsumed by a green jungle canopy.

Their first night in the wilderness was brief, only allowing the minimum time for them to dismount and catch rest by a fire before immediately setting out at first light. For a bit of variety, Anna opted to ride with Willie, while Short Round rode with Indiana to give the calf a break.

The next day was mostly spent trudging through jungle and overgrowth. The original plan for navigation had been to travel on a slightly indirect route until they reached one of the main roads, then simply take that all the way up to Pankot. However, this plan had been spoilt when it was discovered that, due to a recent storm, the rivers had burst their banks and flooded most of the major roads and pre-established trails. Now, instead, their plan had shifted to following a tributary up into the highlands, using derelict trails that would hopefully join up with the road at a later date. This meant low-hanging branches, constant obstacles, and rough terrain constantly bogged down their forward progress.

Quite a few times, the elephants were instructed by their drivers to break branches to clear for the riders. With their trunks alone, thick, healthy branches were cleaved in half and tossed aside to either rest in the undergrowth or roll down the riverbank to splash into the water.

Despite the initial positivity they had set out with and their exotic surroundings, the journey had quickly worn down on Anna. Her scant sleep at Mayapore and a similarly thin amount of rest she had managed to glean the previous night left her brain sluggish and eyes heavy.

Her father assured her that once they reached Pankot, which the villagers promised had been re-civilized, they would be able to rest for a while. Apparently, from what little he knew about it, the old palace had been particularly opulent, one of the old jewels of India laid waste around a hundred years ago. Anna hoped that meant a bed and a shower, while Willie wished it meant the same plus a telephone.

Anna eventually had to agree about the telephone. She wanted to send a call back home to her uncles, just to try and glean a small sense of normalcy from their situation.

The slow plod of the elephants made her sigh, the boredom, heat, and dirtiness pushing her sanity to its extremes. She reached into her bag, pulling out her ornithology book.

ASIAN BIRDS, from the same author that brought her AMERICAN BIRDS and ENGLISH BIRDS. Its pages were crinkled and slightly moist from its plunge into icy meltwater two days prior, and unlike the atlas it had not been built with hardiness for travel in mind. Still, she could carefully pry open some of the pages for the chapter on the Indian Subcontinent and appreciate some of the washed-out illustrations there.

"India is one of the most diverse countries in the world, both ornithologically and in other ways..." Anna read, humming to herself.

Willie sighed, reaching up to rub her eyes, "Yeah!? And what's that supposed to mean?"

Raising her eyebrow at the slightly aggressive response, Anna hummed, "Um, well- it means that there's a lot of different types of animals here."

Willie was silent for a moment, fingers rubbing at her eyes slowly at first, then suddenly in a very aggressive way. Shaking her head violently, Willie heaved a deep sigh, before looking over her shoulder, face stained with dirt and hair stringy with debris, "Sorry, Anna, I'm just- I feel like I'm on the verge of freaking out!"

"Uh- why?" Anna asked.

Shivering, Willie turned her head to look out ahead again before saying, "This jungle is driving me nuts. I need to have a bath- a-and a manicure, and-" she turned in her seat again and showed Anna her fingernails, "LOOK AT THESE NAIIILS!" she shrieked, "Ohhh it took me so long to get them to where they were and now they're ruined! And there's dirt under them!"

Anna couldn't precisely appreciate the value of nails as she looked down at her own hooves, seeing them lined with the usual amount of dirt she got when walking around back at home. With a shrug, she said, "Hey, it's not that bad. We're really close to being there. Just one more day, and I'm sure they'll have a shower and everything."

"Ugh!" Willie moaned, head turning once again as she reached up to wipe her brow, only spreading more dirt from her hands across it in the process, "I don't want- I mean, I do want a shower, but I want to. Go. Home!!! I'd be in Delhi by now if it weren't for his damned rock or whatever he's looking for!!!"

In the back of her mind, Anna knew that Willie wasn't listening to reason. However, despite this, she couldn't stop herself from correcting her, "We'd still be over two days out from Delhi, especially if the roads got flooded like they did here."

Willie gave a nasty look over her shoulder, before huffing and turning away to pout.

Anna frowned, leaning around her to look forward at her father. She caught her father sparing a glance over his shoulder, an unamused expression on his face. Fortunately, it seemed with the outburst, which had left Willie panting for breath, the singer had gotten out what she needed and calmed down slightly. Instead, she seemed to go from irrational anger to near tears, sniffling softly as she held her arms to herself.

There was a pause as the guides stopped to assess the way forward. Eventually, they seemed to decide it was best they ford the river, with them mounting the elephants to steer them from their backs. The calf had to swim, while the rest simply trudged through the neck high water. The cow, being slightly shorter than Indiana's bull, got deep enough to the point where it had to raise its head and trunk to keep breathing, and the water splashed against Willie's feet.

Eventually, the depth of the water receded as the elephants made their way up to the other bank, which was wider. The floodwaters had left the mud thick and gluggy, but the great beasts continued down it until they could step up a slope and back into the jungle, where the guides hopped back down onto firm dirt.

Anna checked her watch, still fortunately functional after her skydive and dunk into the river (the clockmaker in Marcus's hometown must have paid special attention to his work with all the money on the line). It was around four hours until sunset, where they could rest. It was hard to figure out their location with a lack of visible landmarks, but if she had to guess, they would probably be arriving in Pankot sometime the next day.

"We gotta be close, right?" Willie asked hopefully, voice cracking slightly.

Anna shook her head, "We're spending another night in the jungle at this rate, sorry. We haven't even found the main road yet."

Willie threw her head back for a groan, before setting her eyebrows and shouting forward to Indiana, "Doctor Jones! I thought you said two days! Two days and we'd be there!"

"Two days if we were lucky!" Indiana called back, "We're not lucky!"

"Of course we're not..." Willie muttered.

Two hours passed. Anna went through all the legible pages of her chapter on India about three times, then moved on to the rest of her legible pages. She hadn't seen many birds in the past few hours, ever since they had gotten back to travelling again after waking up at first light. That seemed to change as her ears perked at the sounds of wingbeats overhead.

"Oh what pretty birds!" Willie spoke up, voice slightly lifted for the first time that day.

Anna looked up, seeing several black dots crossing the sky overhead. She frowned, digging her binoculars out from her bag and putting them to her eyes. She'd just recently seen something matching the description of the 'birds' in her book.

"Those aren't birds, they're giant vampire bats!" Indiana called back from the top, just as a lower-flying flock of bats flew over the treetops nearby.

"...Vampire bats?" Willie mouthed, looking back up at the lower-flying ones as they screeched and called.

Anna shook her head, "He's just teasing you. They're probably just fruit bats. Pteropus giganteus, I think."

Willie, though seemingly comforted by the fact they were fruit bats, furrowed her brow at the scientific name, "I don't like the idea of something with giganteus in its name..."

"They're pretty big bats, but not really harmful unless you're a rat or a mango," Anna shrugged, looking down at the illustration in her book. She idly wondered what it would be like having webbed wings rather than feathered ones. She also briefly wondered what a mango would taste like.

The elephants plodded along a sandy trail near the riverbank. The murky, brown waters sloshed near the party's left flank, and eventually overcame the bank to come up to the elephant's feet. With the canopy broken overhead by the presence of the river, the sun was allowed to shine through and beat down on the travellers.

This, of course, had a clear effect on their famous american female vocalist. She once again grew more and more frustrated as sweat beaded up on her skin, flies buzzed around her, and mosquitos stung at her. Already, they were all welting up with bites all over their bodies. There was only so much that local insect-repelling herbs and oils could do to protect them from the onslaught of the vile creatures, especially when around large bodies of water.

Willie waved her hands in front of her nose again, chasing away several flies inadvertently as she did so. With a frustrated groan, she reached into her pocket again and pulled out her bottle of Parisian perfume. She began to sprinkle it again on the elephant's head, which elicited a trumpet of annoyance from their mount.

Their guide, several times now, had told them in Hindi (translated by Indy) to stop annoying the elephant with the fragrance. Willie, it seemed, was intent on ignoring his advice once again.

"Oh pipe down you big baboon," Willie scolded, "This doesn't hurt."

Anna looked up from her book as the elephant suddenly stopped and dipped its head.

"You know what you really need?" Willie said, nearly emptying the rest of her bottle onto the elephant's hide, "A bath."

The elephant responded by raising its trunk and hitting Willie solidly in the chest and face with a spray of water.

With a scream, Willie lost her balance and fell off, landing with a painful-sounding splash in the water several feet below. Anna, shielded from the blast by the woman, managed to stay aboard, even though she was still drenched by the backblast of the elephant's trunk.

Anna shook her head, tossing the water out of her mane as she looked over the side to where Willie had fallen. The woman sat up in the water, all but her knees and shoulders below the water. The rest of the convoy stopped as she began to hyperventilate, wiping her hair out of her face.

Short Round turned around, a smile breaking out on his face as he pointed at her and said, "Very funny! Haha!" he laughed, "All wet!"

"I was happy in Shanghai!" Willie whined, bringing her arms down against the water in anger and sending up another splash, "I had a little house! And a garden! I went to parties all the time in limousines and ooh god I HATE BEING OUTSIDE!"

Indiana frowned, slapping at a mosquito on the back of his neck. Short Round was still grinning, but had reined in his laughter as he looked down at the woman's misery. Anna simply slouched, ears flattening against her skull.

"I'm a singer! I'm gonna lose my voice-" Willie's voice cracked again, and she coughed as she finally stopped to breathe.

Indiana looked down towards the guides, "Ham kab tak pahunchenge?"

The lead guide shrugged, "Yah ek din lamba hoga."

With a sigh, Indiana turned and slung both his legs over the side of his elephant, "We'll stop early for tonight and rest a bit. Good place to set up camp and no point when we're going to have to wait the night out in the jungle either way."

Author's Note

guys help

Every time I write "India" or "Indian", my brain keeps automatically adding the letters necessary to write "Indiana".

I want your thoughts again on Willie Scott now that I've built her out a bit more. I've tried to keep her faithful to the fact that she's not a fan of wild things, and that she's not afraid to make it everyone else's problem. However, I've been trying to give her a few more sympathetic angles and more personality as well. What do you think?