Elias stood by the river, trying his hand at stone skipping. His relentless attempts at getting the stones to bounce on the calm waters of the Mahanadi were the only disruption to the quiet landscape.
From the cave, Laura could hear the stones hitting the river, disturbing its smooth surface. Combined with the heat, it distracted her.
Turning her Nikon off, she reached for the bottle of water on the side pocket of her backpack and took a generous gulp.
"Where is Professor Donne?" he asked, approaching her with shy, uncertain steps.
"Probably still at the temple," she replied, wiping the sweat off her face with her bare forearm and passing the boy another bottle.
"Doing what for so long?" he demanded wide-eyed, showing impatience for the first time.
Elias had just spent his entire vacation traveling across India with an aunt and a private tutor instead of having fun with kids his age. Never until that moment had he demanded any sort of explanation or complained about their itinerary.
She sighed and fiddled with the bottle cap until an idea came to her.
"Come closer to the wall. I want to show you something cool."
The place was more of a rock shelter than a true cave, so all he had to do was take a step forward and follow her finger with his eyes.
"What are those?"
"Cave paintings."
"Did you make them?" he inquired, stuffing his hands inside the pockets of his cargo shorts, looking more like a grown man than any eight-year-old should be allowed to.
"Of course not. Cavemen did."
"Cavemen?"
"Hairy and uncivilized primitive humans who inhabited this region a long time ago. They lived off the river, developed stone tools, and sometimes drew what they saw and what they did on stone walls. Can you guess why?"
"To pass the time?" he offered.
"Might be. It was the only way of registering their activities since written communication hadn't been invented yet." she replied, thinking that "invented" hadn't been the best choice of word.
"Did they have a brush?" he asked, examining it closer.
"No, no brushes. These people painted the walls with their bare hands, using mineral pigments they collected from the soil."
He mulled over her words for a few seconds. "Were they like us?"
"In what sense?"
"Did they have legs and arms and a face?" he asked, pausing between words.
"They were very much like us. That's why we call them 'modern humans'."
He looked around as if seeing what surrounded him for the first time. Then he started walking in circles, the tip of his fingers gently brushing the walls as he passed them. She picked up the camera and turned it on again.
"Aunt Laura?"
"Yes?"
"Were they astronauts?"
She looked at him and smiled. He'd taken the bait.
"No, they weren't."
"Then why is there an astronaut over here?", he pointed to a wall in which one of the drawings resembled a man in a modern astronaut suit, right next to a humanoid figure.
"That's the million-dollar question, El. It's what brought us here."
"Really?"
She nodded.
"I guess one of the cavemen dreamed about astronauts," he said after a while. "Then he woke up in the morning and painted them."
"I think human beings only dream about what they know and feel while they are awake..."
"Then maybe he saw something," Elias went on, cutting her off mid-sentence. "Something like Martians." A short burst of laughter followed as if to discharge the electricity of such unexpected thoughts.
She put both hands on his shoulders and guided him to another corner of the cave, where the paintings depicted multiple humanoid forms.
"Those are the cavemen and their families," he stated, proud of his quick interpretation.
"Look up," she directed. "Do you see the disk?"
In the large monolith that towered over them, two men were sitting inside of a disk, surrounded by eight smaller spherical shapes.
He gasped. "Wow! It looks like a spaceship!"
"It might be a representation of something they saw hovering in the sky."
She crouched by his side to take a few shots from a lower angle. "These paintings predate the invention of the wheel, so it's a bit far-fetched to say that two cavemen were driving around in a disk-shaped vehicle. But it might be a hoax."
"Like a setup?"
She nodded again, meeting his almond-shaped, olive green gaze, the part of him that most reminded her of her sister. "Someone could have come here and added the astronauts and the disk much later."
"Why?" he asked, knitting his eyebrows.
"To throw us off the right track, so to speak. That's why we have to analyze it in the lab. The trick is to differentiate what is real evidence from what isn't."
"Is this your job? To differentiate...?" he asked, experimenting with the last word no doubt for the first time in his life.
She nodded and watched a curious expression settle in her nephew's face. Wonder? Excitement?
"Your job is really cool, aunt Laura!" he declared with enthusiasm.
She could not help but smile back at him. Words of appreciation were rare, so she welcomed the warm feeling Elias' spontaneous declaration triggered.
"Do you want to help me find more of these paintings?" she prompted.
"What do I have to do?" he volunteered, all brightened up.
"Can you spot more monoliths outside?"
"Monoliths?"
"Big rocks like this one," she pointed to the wall with the disk.
"Sure thing!" he said before running outside.