Robert followed the path towards the top of The Mountains

Robert followed the path towards the top of The Mountains.  He had been on his quest for more than ten years and yet he still found nothing to tell Mother Earth. 

There was an area of The Mountains he had yet to search.  A passerby had once noticed that this area had a jagged look to it and had dubbed it Jagged Reach.  There were rumors that reached as far as the Southland town of This Place that told of a mysterious cave that was very mysterious indeed.  Strangely, that was all the rumors ever said about it, but nevertheless, Robert was curious. 

He climbed up the rocky incline, using his staff as support, until he stood on a relatively flat surface.  He looked around, observing the landscape around him and realized that he was standing on what looked like a rocky path.  The path led around a corner and while on one side was a smooth cliff wall, the other side dropped with a shear straight fall towards many sharp looking rocks.  The path was thin, but Robert managed to navigate it safely. 

Once around the corner, Robert found himself face-to-face with a small cave opening.  He walked to the opening and listened carefully.  Beyond the darkness within, he could hear the sounds of bangs and clangs; the sounds of two metal objects hitting each other.  Along with these sounds, he could hear the faint sound of giggling. 

Curious, Robert worked his way into the cave, following the sounds though the blinding darkness.  The cave wasn't very long and soon he found himself in a large cavern lit by several lanterns, which had been placed around the rocky enclosure.  In the light from the lanterns, Robert could distinctly make out the forms of two men at two different sides of the cavern, each carving something into the rock. 

Robert stood staring at the creations wondering what the final images were to be.  After a moment of deliberation, he decided to ask the man to his left.  The man was standing back from his sculpture in thought, with one hand's finger tucked under his lip and the other hand cradling his elbow.  "Excuse me, sir," started Robert.

"Why yes, you may," exclaimed the man in a wild roar of words as he spun around to look at Robert before spinning back to his previous position.

Robert furrowed his eyebrows, trying to figure out what had just happened.  It had been quite sudden and he hadn't expected it to happen that way.  He thought for a moment longer before giving up and simply pretending that the outburst had never happened.  "Would you mind if I asked you a few questions about your sculpture?" asked Robert softly.

"Don't mind if I do," cried the man, who spun full circle on one heal and returned to his previous position once more.

Again, Robert had to stop and think about this response. "What are you carving?" asked Robert before he had the chance to question the man's behavior any longer.

The man stood silent for a moment as if thinking.  Robert expected the man to bounce around the cave this time while chanting some incoherent dribble about something utterly bizarre, but nothing quite like that occurred.  The man simply pointed towards the statue and softly said, "This."

Robert looked at the statue in puzzlement.  "But what is it?" he asked again, trying not to smack some sense into the man.

The man paused for another moment before screaming loudly and attacking the sculpture with his tools.  A few seconds latter, he calmed down and stood several feet back from his creation.  Robert looked at the man, then at the creation, and back to the man. 

That was about when Robert gave up.  He wandered across the floor of the cave to where the second man stood carving a sculpture across from the cave opening.  "Good day," he said to the man.

The man turned to Robert and he could see that the man had a rather long and bushy beard on his chin.  There wasn't an expression that could be seen in the man's eyes, though they were slightly crossed.  Robert thought suddenly that the man must have been having trouble carving his statue, but on quick inspection of his work he decided against that possibility.   "Hello," said the man in a rather unusual sounding voice, almost as if the man was too happy for his own good.

"What, may I ask, are you carving on this fine day, sir?" asked Robert politely.

"It's not so fine if you ask me.  It's been night time for a very long time and a might bit cloudy too, if you ask me," said the man as he gazed up at the ceiling of the cave.

Robert looked at the ceiling for a moment and realized that the man didn't think he was in a cave.  "You know you're in a cave, right?  You can't see the sky from in here."

"If you ask me, that's garbage, if you asked me that is."

Robert stared at the man in surprise.  He wasn't sure what to say in response to that, so he decided that his best course of action was to change the subject.  "What are you carving?" he asked the man.

"Well, if you ask me, and I'm sure you will sometime, I'd say that I was carving something along the lines of that," he said, pointing at the statue.

"What?" asked Robert again.

"That," said the man again, emphasizing his pointing finger towards the creation on the wall that seemed to be developing a beak.

Robert looked that the man, then at the statue, and back to the man.  There was something about the two men in the cave that was starting to give Robert the feeling that he would go insane if he were forced to stay with them any longer.

That was about when Robert gave up again.  He decided that they were obviously quite mad and that he was never going to get a decent answer from either of them.  He made his way slowly out of the cave, disturbed by the loss of time.  He had a quest to fulfill and he had wasted nearly ten minutes on the mad men in the cave.

He ventured back down the path and marched south towards his "home town" – This Place.