Prologue I
Rawg strolled gently along the shores he had discovered the previous day to the sound washing waves as they rolled back and forth, inching their way closer to him. He had learned these waters well enough to know when they reached the border between the sands and the dirt that combing the beach was least fruitful. For now he judged he had a decent opportunity for combing ahead of him.
He stumbled upon one or two striking pebbles for starting fires, but only kept two about his person at any one time for the sake of keeping in with the status quo back at the huts. He did not understand their behaviour, but he dare not intervene, no matter how fun it was to carry as many items about himself as he could on a single days combing.
Still he missed those old days. He wasn't forced to know how his collections compared with other hunters, he wasn't told how much was too much to carry at a time and wasn't forced into areas where he needed to jump. Life was both simpler and more fun for it.
Regardless, today had otherwise been a terrible waste of a day. He had changed striking pebbles out four times, but found no flint for spear tips. He preferred spears to the newer stringed bows and arrows. There was something that struck him as more raw and noble to hit something with a projectile that's course was entirely driven by the warriors own volitions, he'd always thought.
Not that he'd ever been able to properly articulate this to anyone. No matter how many times he conversed with people, he could never convey, truly, the difference in sensation with petty words. The only tool he felt he could articulate the sensation with was the one that gave him the sensation and only miming or actually throwing a spear gave him satisfaction at expressing the joy of the movement. It felt fruitless trying explain in verbal communication things that were now somewhat old fashioned when language itself hadn't really been around for that long.
It seemed silly, but indeed none of this bore any relevance to the task at hand. Not much he ever pondered in quiet, solitary moments ever did. Of course here his thoughts were silenced by the crashing waves and the vast ocean that they visited him from.
Gazing out over the choppy waves, he perceived no difference between the lighter blue of the sky relative to the ocean below it as he gazed out as far as he could. It was times like this when he would feel both lost and free, but most of all he would trust in himself the most, taking actions that would have been considered risky, if anyone had had the word handy, and yet it always paid off.
This time was no exception.
He rolled his head round to the right and the corner of his eye caught a dark speck which he hawked in on. Focusing more attentively, he suspected he'd found a cave. He made it his task for the day.
Staring down into the bleak opening he scanned the entrance for signs of wildlife. None. He proceeded cautiously, leaving more weight on his back foot with every step. His forefoot would behave as his eyes in the dark, before he put weight on it. He reached a sudden slope, damp but not rough. He rescinded his forefoot to gently squat down and investigate the floor with his hands.
It was thick with soft mossy rocks as he suspected, so the waves most certainly crept in here at some point. He was still strangely curious to the contents of this cave. He carefully trod to the sides to check that the drop went as far as the cave was wide. After a while, he ascertained it did and immediately forgot why this was important upon doing so.
He turned to go back and took a confident stride toward the well lit cave entrance, before his foot landed painfully on a sharp piece of flint. Falling to the side instinctively to avoid cutting his foot, he felt a very sudden frustration. Letting it subside before he stood again, he realised an opportunity had presented itself, ignoring the fact that flint had been the aim of the game for a good few hours.
Grabbing the flint that had just stung him, sharp as it was, he began striking against the pebble he had to hand. After a few strikes, the flint was sparking. He stuffed it away next to the pebble as it now had a secondary function.
He fetched from outside the cave many dried weeds and a few sea plants he knew that burned for long and brightly that lay near the boundary between sand and Earth. He wrapped them tightly around a large stick he found, dropping a pebble to carry this instead. The weeds as kindling, he struck many times when the sea breeze dropped, only to have his efforts blown away.
It was a few attempts to get a ready flame going around the top of the stick. He thought up a new use for the flint as slipped it away, leaving behind another pebble and slipped it away, making quickly for the caves slope with his new light. It barely occurred to him to measure the waves present progress or the suns standing in the sky as it shone at him from just above the horizon.
Re-entering the cave, he walked back to the edge of the ledge and threw his flaming ahead of himself to illuminate it. It bounced a couple of times before it landed at the bottom clattering against a wall. Perfect. The slope was not fatally steep, not flooded, it had a wall at the far side and clearly led to somewhere else.
Carefully, he slid down the ledge toward the torch, still glowing brightly on the floor, remaining mostly unscathed by the sharp rocks beneath the layer of soft mossy stuff his feet slid through. The light of the torch lit up the ceiling of a new lower roofed cavern.
As he stood again to look around, he noticed a small corridor to his right. It was gently lit by an unfamiliar green dust that his mother had often warned him about. Such dust allegedly led men onto commit awful acts, disguised in their minds as adventure, only regularly accomplished by mountains people.
They usually ended in the heroes taking an arrow to the heel and perishing painfully.
Since there was little else for Rawg to do now he was down here, he thought it might make for an interesting tale for ember-time back home. He proceeded on, his focus changing as he continued to inhale the dust he strode through. If it hadn't he may have realised that the waves had rolled high enough outside to soon creep over the slope he had slid down, making his return climb impossible and subsequently drowning him in the tunnels he explored.
Though as he realised this, from the puddles forming around his feet. He saw no point in turning back. All or nothing. He had to investigate the end of this tunnel now to be sure there was no other exit before he was waist deep and he would have to prepare for a lonely cold balled death.
Considering this, he took less and less hesitation, though came round to where he had started. He realised the dust had extinguished the flame of his torch before the water got it and it now glew the same gentle green hue. He felt beckoned to find the source of it and picked up his now green lamp and pressed on, focusing on following the dust clouds.
He was now walking at ankle level water.
Rawg proceeded on, following the denser clouds of dust as before. It was now that he paused for the first time as the water level reached the lowest part of his loin cloth and he realised just how chilly his demise would be...
His startled glare opened his eyes to a particularly dense cloud ahead of him, illuminating a fork.
The dust as his only guide, he pressed right towards it. He noticed it was now descending from somewhere. A small opening in the cavern ceiling, that sloped down and down as he pressed on in the right passage. His secondary objective of staying alive was now completed - the hole was large enough for him to climb up.
The waves below him now high enough to aid him, he threw the torch clumsily up ahead of him, before clambering up, awkwardly. It was just barely wide enough for him to do pull himself up. Flopping to the side as he entered the cavern, he sat and enjoyed the dry warmth as it hit his damp legs. He noticed beyond him a large deposit of the glowing green dust laden in the rocks in front of him, like ore.
It warmed him all over to see it, though all he could do was focus upon it intensely. It was strange being sat there looking on at it in the unfamiliar cavern. He felt unusually comfortable, as though he were at home here in a rather simple, unfamiliar cavern. It was his own discovery. More than that, the shards seemed particularly bright and he supposed they were breathing heat.
Lifting his legs up gently, he placed his feet down on the floor to his left. More shards in this direction. He gazed around. The room was entirely speckled with the mysterious mineral and he glowed from inside out. It was as he let out a deep sigh, that echoed marvellously, that he was able to truly appreciate the size of the cavern. It was spectacularly beautiful. He was happy to wait out the waves in here.
Having sat for what could have been life times now, just taking in the endless wonder of his surroundings, Rawg couldn't stop gazing at this or that sparkling section of rock. The welcomed chills up his spine were endless. The sea had risen to the hole, but stopped and now simply splashed gently against the edges of it, not causing him more trouble than the occasional spray.
He had forgotten what he had come here for, but he suddenly felt a yearning for interaction with this world within a world that he was in. He had contemplated all the particulars of his tribe and come to realise that Bez and Kos, the resident thinkers, had been debating the same point from two perspectives.
Feasibly, one could express the relationships between the animals that ate one another as analogous to the various family and friend ties or vice versa. Further, his mother and father had never fought, at least in the way he had understood it, when they were together and there had to have been something else going on between them. What this was, he needed further examination.
In getting up to do so, he found what had been his torch and remembered how it had become the glistening crystal it now was. It's tip was now melted into the larger tapestry of green crystals that speckled the floor.
Ignoring the realisation that it was not the strange dust that breathed heat, but the heat that drew the dust, he grabbed hold of many smaller loose crystals that lay around the floor, thrusting them into his various loin cloth pockets until he hit capacity. They would remain inconspicuous to his friends and relatives if he wished it.
As the waves drained away below the hole he had clambered up, some parts of him felt confused, but he never took a moment to wonder why. The cave that he followed to get here would have been a very possible climb, but for whatever reason it didn't cross Rawg's mind and he proceeded down the other side of the fork in the road as it occurred to him it may yield an exit.
So he followed it. It was far less narrow than the one he had taken, though it twisted and turned and very occasionally dipped in height. He noticed at the end of one such dip a light.
At last.
It was an uncomfortable crawl to freedom, but he embraced every part of the struggle. passing parts where it reeked of flesh and faeces, he reached the end and found he was in the middle of a forest clearing. He had apparently just crawled out of a rabbit hole.