AN: I expect, and beg for, input on this chapter, I personally think it's poorly written but I cannot for the life of me fix it
As the years went on, children began to think the story was false, only to be told by the survivors that it was a mistake to ignore the teachings of the older generations. Some did not listen to them, they thought they knew everything, that the adults were just trying to scare them into being good children, but they were wrong. The adults had known about the plans this time and the children were put inside and told the whole story, not just the tales that were told to children, the whole, gruesome story. They were told of the voices that would speak, those of the townspeople that traveled down, and how they spoke of delights and treasure, only to lure those dumb enough to follow the voices of the fallen. They learned about the first to disappear and the first to be greedy enough to take more than given, about the rituals performed around the cave and how people worshiped it, they learned about the gifts given and the lives taken. Still, some of the children didn't listen, those children had been locked up and reminded of the danger until they were sure that they would not go to the cave. They did not listen, being stubborn children, and they went down, never to be seen again.
For the village, this was terrible. For the cave, it was fun. No one knows why the cave finds joy in the death of children, but there have been rumors that it's not the death that it finds funny, but the fact that people never learn. Remember your past mistakes or you will make them again. People started leading lives by that. It was taught in school what has happened to those who didn't listen to the legends and warnings of elders. The cave was closed off permanently for everyone, townsfolk and tourists alike. The safety of people was in the best interest of the elders, or so they thought. Behind the backs of the townspeople, the elders would meet and discuss the attitudes and traits of children, teens, and adults, trying to find someone to go to the cave with as few casualties as possible. Not one person could be found that was able to go down, but the elders kept trying. They looked into the people that had gone down, specifically those who had survived. Looking at the kind of people they each were and trying to find others with similar traits to narrow down the search. They made a point not to overlook anyone, but the elders still missed a few people that could have been candidates.
One that wasn't counted was a little boy, he was smart, kind, generous, thoughtful, honest, and hardworking. He was young but he understood more than most people would learn in their early years of adulthood. He had been abandoned by his parents when he was just a baby. They claimed that they were unable to take care of him in the state they were in and that they would return to him when they could. He had been raised in his early years by some of the children, they had hidden him from the adults and tried to take care of him themselves.
Before he was 5, the adults found him, impressed that their children had raised a child together, and angry that they were not told and that they had been lied to for years about where the children had been going. The town took him in and took turns housing and feeding him, they taught him what he needed to know, such as how to read and write, along with the story of the cave. Because he had grown up in everyones care, he never truly learned what it was like to have his own family, instead, everyone was family. But as he got older, he grew more distant from everyone, realizing that even though they had taken him in, none of them were family and none of them ever would be.
At 14 he had his own job and was saving up for a home, but only because he did not want the townspeople that had been so kind to him to have to continue to have to take care of him when he could take care of himself. No one knew his true name, not even him, but through the years he had been called different things, anything from "The Boy" to "Cousin Pete". Though his legal name was unknown, he usually was called Pete, or something along those lines, and he never really had any issues with what he was called.
