Author's Note
So this is just a short piece to break my writer's block, inspired by the prompt 'Discovery'. While it does include Aiden and Ashburn as characters, its not in any way connected to A Way Forward, and honestly I wasn't even trying to particularly put them in character, this was purely just a piece for fun.
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A loose chunk of rock rolled away into the dark hole, the sound of it echoing all around us and intensifying as it dislodged more gravel, causing a small landslide to erupt down into the cave. The cacophony of noise continued for several seconds, until the flow of stones came to a steady stop somewhere further down.
"That seems safe," I decided.
"What?! No it doesn't!" Ashburn protested as I took a step further into the cave entrance. It was quite large, at over four meters high and similar in width, a hole carved into the mountainside that I was just itching to explore.
"Oh come onnn, its so rare you see caves this big, don't you want to know what's in there?" I tried to coerce him, pulling out my headtorch.
"…A little," he admitted, stretching his neck out as though his head wanted to go in, but his legs wouldn't budge.
Aiming my torch down into the depths revealed a gravel slope that continued down for a short distance, a stalagmite sticking up through the loose scree here and there, before flattening out.
"Look, its flat further in, just need to ride the gravel down like a wave!" I grinned a little as my voice echoed tenfold, and I made a small jump down onto the slope to a protesting yelp from my best friend. It acted exactly as I imagined, shifting underneath my feet as I shuffled down, half carried by the movement, almost surfing on it. With a few seconds I came to a slow stop on the flat surface at the bottom.
"See?" I turned back to the entrance to see Ashburn with his front paws where I had been standing, obviously having made a small grab to try and stop me, and ended up half inside the cave with his back claws still gripping on. "Come on in, the gravel's fine!"
He warbled a little in worry, before carefully stepping forward and allowing himself to slide down as I had, but his much larger body meant that most of the scree ended up coming down with him, and I stood back a little as he came to a stop sitting down, having tried to lean back from the sudden motion.
"You good?" I half-laughed at his surprised expression, but it quickly morphed into a grin.
"Okay that was fun!" he admitted, before repeatedly bopping me lightly over the head with a paw, his version of admonishment. "But don't do that again, you could have gotten hurt! Next time we go together."
"Okay, okay!" I agreed, trying to push away his heavy paw to no avail, until he relented. Ashburn wouldn't be letting me away from his side again.
We continued further into the cave as it became eerily quiet beyond our footsteps, and while it narrowed a little, it was still more than big enough for comfortable movement. Then, I began to see a faint light coming from the tunnel—did it go back outside?
I reached up and turned my headtorch off, to Ashburn's panic, but I quickly pointed him at what I was seeing. With almost no light around us, we could definitely make out a glow further into the cave. Excitement spurred us both further in, as the light grew brighter and brighter.
Eventually, we turned a tight corner, and the tunnel opened up into a large cavern, absolutely covered in huge crystals of all colours. They seemed to be emitting the light themselves, and reflecting it all around until it almost seemed like sunlight. The spiky formations covered the floor, walls and ceiling, meaning there was no way forward from here. Just beautiful crystals anywhere you looked.
"Whoa…" we both breathed, staring at the beautiful underground display.
"Well now wasn't that worth it for a little danger?" I joked.
"Yeah…I kind of…wish there was more though…"
"Rare crystal caverns not good enough for you?" I laughed.
"I don't know," Ashburn shrugged. "I thought the cave would go deeper."
"What were you expecting? Some kind of hidden world?"
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Author's Note
BADUM-TISH
I'm so sorry.