Field Trippin
Copyright© 2026 by Sci-FiTy1972
Chapter 3
Week 3 — Heracleion (Thonis)
Day 1
The city smelled alive.
River water and salt. Fish and incense. Wood soaked too long in sun. Heracleion sat where the Nile met the sea, and everything that mattered passed through it.
Boats crowded the harbor, hulls knocking softly like impatient shoulders. Stone rose higher here—columns, pylons, thresholds worn smooth by traffic and ritual. This place wasn’t quiet about being important.
Randy loved it immediately.
“Okay,” he said, lifting his hands a little as if greeting the city itself. “This place gets people.”
The AirPods murmured concepts—tax, offering, permit, temple. Words that meant rules. Lines. Consequences.
They moved carefully at first, then with growing confidence. Faces turned. Eyes assessed. No hostility—just appraisal.
Randy met it with a grin and a nod, posture loose, shoulders open. He didn’t push. He didn’t linger. He let the city decide what it wanted from him.
It responded.
By afternoon, they weren’t being guided so much as absorbed. A porter waved them aside from a narrow passage. A scribe gestured for quiet near a shrine. A woman selling bread corrected Randy’s pronunciation with a patient click of her tongue.
He laughed, thanked her—too loudly—and she smiled anyway.
“Charm still works,” Randy said later, pleased.
Eric watched him. Tyler said nothing. DeAndre clocked the guards.
Day 2
Day two taught Randy the difference between welcome and permission.
It happened near the temple district, where processions slowed the streets and voices lowered without instruction. The air felt heavier there—not oppressive. Expectant.
Randy didn’t mean to joke.
That was the problem.
A small delay. A miscommunication. Someone waiting too long in the sun. Randy filled the gap with a light remark—tone easy, timing off by a breath.
The AirPods translated intent, not impact.
The response wasn’t anger.
It was stillness.
Conversation thinned. A priest’s gaze flicked over and away. A guard shifted his stance—not threatening, just present.
Randy felt the smile slide off his face.
DeAndre stepped half a pace closer without looking at him. Tyler’s eyes were already on the exits.
Randy swallowed and did something new.
He stopped talking.
He dipped his head—not apology, not performance. Just acknowledgment. He waited.
Time stretched. Then released.
A woman near the offering table resumed her work. The street breathed again. The guard relaxed.
No reprimand. No lecture.
Just the knowledge that he’d crossed a line—and been allowed back.
Later, near the water, Randy rubbed his hands together, uncharacteristically quiet.
“Okay,” he said finally. “So ... not every room wants a laugh.”
Eric nodded. “Some want accuracy.”
“Some want respect,” DeAndre added.
Tyler looked at Randy. “You did fine.”
Randy shook his head once. “I did better after I stopped trying.”
That night, he met her—not the first face that smiled, but the one that waited. She asked questions that weren’t questions, listened more than she spoke. When he paused, she didn’t rush to fill it.
They sat with the river between sentences.
No promises. No sparks.
Just steadiness.
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