Amy was sitting before her table, in her home. Perched on that table were the trinkets she had found. There was the jeweled kirin, and the puzzle pieces and the shield wasn't far, propped up against the wall. They were each worthy of discovery. They each needed to be properly cleaned and restored.
They would each make a fine display in a museum somewhere.
They were each a sign that she had broken a law.
On top of all of that, sitting there on her table, not a single one of them would help her pay her bills. She lost, the world lost. Everyone involves lost. With an unhappy grunt, she stood up, marching to the window with an agitated lash of her tail. "I have to do something..."
Her phone suddenly hopped into the air, its bell chiming with a sudden sharp noise that made her jump just as well as it had. She raced over and grabbed it up. "A.K. Yearling."
"Hello," spoke a faintly familiar voice. "We had a chance to show your book to some test readers."
It was the publisher! Amy sat on her haunches with a hopeful smile. "And?"
"They really like your style! But they were hoping you could expand on it, get personal. Following a specific pony instead of speaking broadly about them all."
Amy inclined her head faintly. "Would... that be for the next book?"
"Oh, yes! Sorry. This book is fine, but for the next one, really get in an archaeologist's head so we can follow them around. This system-wide peek isn't what pony's want."
Thoughts tumbled through her head as she turned in place. "A specific pony... right..."
"With specific finds, specific problems, and specific triumphs," further explained the penguin-shaded pony on the other end of the phone. "Specific."
"Specific," Amy echoed. "Got it. So... about the book I already wrote?"
"Love it."
"Does that mean I'll be getting more bits for it?" She glanced over at the bag that held her reserve of bits, growing thinner by the day.
"Huh? Oh, of course. You'll get royalties as it sells. Speaking of that, the book is being printed and distributed. Want a copy? Most authors like having a copy of their books, I found."
She looked to her cluttered shelf with a wry smile. "Sure, why not? Thank you. Is there anything else?"
"That's it! Congratulations, Author."
She heard the click of the other person hanging up and gently set her own receiver down. "Author."
Amy was one of those. She was an author. "Author." She tasted the word, felt how it rolled off the tongue. "A.K. Yearling, Author."
Authors didn't break laws doing their job. She'd really have to mess up to manage that. She sat down and pulled her typewriter over with a growing smile. "I can be that..."
She just had to write. Something personal...
"About a specific archaeologist... Who finds something..." Her eyes strayed to the statue without a proper home. "Their challenges..."
She sat back, stroking her chin softly. Caballeron had never seen the statue, and she had given a fake name anyway.
A name... "Daring Do." The name had come partially from Cabelleron. He had inspired the monicker. She began to type, at first slow and hesitant depressions of her hooves, describing Daring's approach to the jungle.
Daring would not be Amy, A.K. decided as she went. Daring was a trained field agent. She never worked with others! She got into trouble all the time, so she knew how to deal with it. She was everything Amy wished she had been when she was busy being scared to death in that jungle.
Daring dodged from tree to tree, narrowly avoiding the scouting patterns of the hungry cats below. Examining their tracks and hints had revealed to her exactly which way they'd be going, so she could outsmart them.
What, lost? Of course not. She had never gotten lost. She was going for that temple specifically, with the tip of a friend she didn't bother naming. No reason to get them in trouble, even if it was all wrapped up in a thin layer of fantasy.
Ah, yes, the temple. One of the last great monuments to the kirin before they vanished. She had fooled Caballeron, making him waste time as she snuck in through the trapped window, that she outsmarted of course. To say nothing of the deadly jumping puzzle!
Then the statue, huge and glowering and... also alive. She had to fight with it, barely dodging and jumping out of the way before she found out how to put it back to sleep, causing it to hulk over the room. She snatched up the little statue, her best find of the day, just in time for Caballeron to show up.
She traded barbs with him, and he foolishly tried to take the very statue she had just managed to lull back to sleep.
While he did that, she discovered a puzzle and was engrossed with that to find a magic and glowing shield! Of course, Caballeron got into trouble, and a huge crash had her rushing out to find he had fallen into a hole. Silly Caballeron. Rolling her eyes, Daring had gone down to save her fellow adventurer and got him out. When he wandered off, she looked around and found a box.
But she didn't just open it up, of course not! There were traps! She sprung it from afar, sending an arrow flying. Phew! That could have been painful!
Amy sat back with a little sigh. She glanced towards the window and saw it was getting dark. She'd spent all day writing about Daring Do. She was hungry and tired. But also... satisfied. "The adventures of Daring Do can wait a moment." She rose up to her hooves and moved to get something to eat. "I should take more time to describe what I saw... Really draw the reader in." Those ancient frescoes and patterns, likely lost to the foreseeable future.
"I can at least share them, this way..." She nodded with building confidence as she slurped up some noodles. "Like a museum tour hidden in an adventure book."
Her belly no longer trying to gnaw its way free of her, Amy resumed typing with one hoof. She dedicated several pages to the walls, the ceilings, and the floors. She described the smell in the air and the sounds of her hoofsteps. She would have to re-write the entire thing to work all those details in, but a book without revisions was hardly a book!
She described the amazing pictures of the leaping kirin and the flaming forms she had seen. She noted the damage Caballeron had caused, but she left out that she knew exactly who had done it and why. She fluffed up the traps, added a few more for taste. Some even caught her, if briefly. Daring Do wouldn't go down to a trap, ha! That would be silly.
It struck her that she wrote about the climb up, and the pain, but Daring Do hadn't been injured by the arrow trap. Oops. "Tsk tsk, already plot holes." Amy got another page in the machine and got to writing up a new scene, describing how an intense new trap had clipped her wings, oh no. Not a lethal blow by far, but she'd have to walk from then on forward. It was amazingly dastardly, not some random arrow in a chest. No super amazing pony like Daring Do would fall for that.
Ha...
It had drawn late by the time she had that out. With satisfied fatigue, she nudged everything aside and started blowing out the lights. Soon she was collapsed on her bed, surrendering to sleep.
Maybe she'd see...
Wait.
She sat up sharply. "Luna?" She hopped right back to her hooves and hurried for her bookshelf, starting to yank them down with reaches of her wings. There. Ancient tales. She flipped it open and began nosing through it. Luna was the sister of Princess Celestia, banished to the moon. "But..." There was not a mention of dream-related powers or abilities. She was the mover of the moon.
That was all.
Her dream had put in an ancient, and banished, figure from Equestrian history in the middle of things. She huffed, closing the book. "Imagination, you need to cut that out. There's no way ancient history literally..." She trailed off, setting the book back on the shelf as a huge yawn escaped her.
"Sleep first." And into the bed she returned, flopping and passing out almost instantly.
She had a story to finish. She had lost artifacts to consider how in hades to get to where they needed to be without getting herself into trouble. All of that could wait to see how much sleep she could manage.
A soft thump roused her. Something had hit her door. With a sleepy grunt, she slid to the floor and trotted over. "Who is it?" But none answered. She opened the door and there was a newspaper. Her delivery foal had dropped it off, apparently detecting her presence somehow.
She smiled as she took it in her mouth. "Good colt." She headed back inside and unfurled it. "Maybe I could claim I saw it in a garage sale somewhere. Who says I have to specify exactly where it really came from?" Even as she said it, she felt that lie wouldn't work. Proper artifacts needed to have precise origins. The more precise, the more useful information could be gleaned from them. 'found in a yard sale somewhere' is about as close to zero of that information. Sure, it would look nice in a display somewhere perhaps, but its history would be forever lost and tarnished.
"I can't do that..." She glanced over at where the artifact stood in silent accusation. "But I have to do something." She reached with a wing and popped the hat on her head. Soon she was dressed not as Amy, but as Daring Do. "Let's go!"
She flew the short distance from building to building, landing on the roof of the museum. There she was, about to sneak in, not to steal anything, but to smuggle something in. Tucked into her backpack were several bundles, each with an artifact each, and a specific location and time they were found.
She carefully peeled up the window skylight, peering into the gloom below. "This isn't that hard..." How had ponies not taken a dozen things from the museum? Sure, she was sneaking things in, but that didn't change it much. She dropped down, wings catching the air and bringing her to a smooth stop.
The lights suddenly clicked on, blinding her. She heard hoofsteps. "Hold it right there," ordered a male voice that seemed familiar.
Blinking her vision back, Daring focused on the pony that was speaking. Dressed like a professor, she drew a soft breath. It was a fellow archaeologist, one of the team that'd be cleaning, polishing, and writing all about her finds. "I can explain."
"You can explain why you're breaking and entering into the museum? I doubt that, but, please, give it a try." He gestured with his head towards the front. "The police are already on their way."
Daring took a step back, her wings doffing her backpack to the ground. "I came with a donation, here. Take it." She had planned on a far more glamorous way to find them, but it'd have to do. She snapped her wings wide. "Sorry for the trouble." And she was in the air, flapping towards freedom as quickly as she could. The stallion was an earth pony, so he couldn't chase her, or grab her with magic.
"Was... that?" He shook his head, watching the skylight close behind the intruder. He advanced on the backpack and carefully pulled it open. He'd have a lot to explain to his managers come the next day. But, for the moment, he had new artifacts to examine.