7
" It's so beautiful,” she whispers, face tilted up toward the domed ceiling and walls covered in the fractured rainbows. “Do you think they knew?” She finally tears her gaze away, just enough to look up at me. “Knew what beauty was?”
My heart's slamming against my chest, and it's not just that I'm holding her in my arms again, that I'm gazing down at her, her mouth only a breath from mine. It's that in this instant, she's me, back in Valencia. Opening herself to exploration. To curiosity. It's not just that for a moment she's sharing in my thrill of discovery. She's experiencing it. She understands.
As she reaches out across the millennia to the Undying, to wonder if they knew what beauty was, to wonder why they created something so delicate and perfect, she's opening her mind to all the possibilities they represent.
She's communicating with them, by picking up the stories they left behind and adding her own words, asking her own questions. This is what I do – what exploration and archeology is – and in this moment, Mia's in it with me. "
― Amie Kaufman , Unearthed (Unearthed, #1)
