Wendigo Island (ONC2024)

Jennifer's Journal 4: The Rabbit Hole

Jennifer's Journal: Chapter 4

The group walked a long way down the cave, past clumps of spider webbing and over cracked sheets of rock. The ground seemed safe at first. Solid enough to hold our weight, but we should have known better. We should have turned around before the floor caved in beneath us.

We were so far in that it cracked under all of us. We fell past shards and sheets of rock, and then the rocks fell down around us. A peice stabbed my arm three inches deep, but every other wound was superficial. When we landed, we didn't stop falling. We simply slid instead. We slid for what seemed to be miles. Thank goodness there was water between us, and the smooth slide or terminal velocity would have ripped the skin from our backs.

Sorry, we have enough morbidity floating around without my nerdy facts, but we spent so much time falling. I came to terms with dying and found Kalvin's hand with mine. We cried. We laughed. I thought we'd gone insane.

We stopped sliding all at once. The rock slipped out from under us, and we were free falling now. My heart and stomach rose out of my chest, and we fell through the ground.

The ground was a thin sheet of ice covering a freezing frigid ice water that surrounded our bodies. The thing about an adrenaline dump is that it leaves and takes all of your warm emotions with it. It was cold before we fell. The water around us was like being submerged into a tub of needles, and if you don't feel the needles, that means you've gone numb, and you start to sink. I would know because I did.

I was lucky to have Kalvin's tight grip hoist me up to the rock floor above. As I was still catching my breath, Kalvin brushed his long, wet hair out of his eyes and looked around. Only Valentina and Draco had made it ashore.

Kalvin barely gave me a glance before diving back in. The seconds waiting for him were longer than the hour we spent falling. He finally emerged holding Alex. Valentina ran to his side, and I tried to run to Kalvin's, but he took the plunge again.

Dale swam to the top on his own right after, but Kalvin swam down and pulled everyone else up one by one. Al, Cheryl, Reagan, Rico, and Travis were all hauled out of the ice water and set down to shiver on the stone.

No one else had the strength to help. We barely had the wit to flip over Al, who was choking on water, but Kalvin had the strength to save everyone, and he did it with only one leg.

It's amazing how focused and drained we were that we didn't notice the glow emanating from the wall of lava ten feet away.

The wall of lava flowing like a curtain as it spilled into the canyon below. The only gap in the lava fall was an ice bridge hardly wider than a human. The lava parted long before it even touched the ice. The result was a doorway made of steam. It's as if we were looking at the next level of a video game.

I'm sure there's some scientific explanation, but it was like magic. Lava was falling, but heat rises. The cold was forced up, but cold sinks. Walking through the steam was intoxicating. To know the forces of nature rage around you and yet you feel their effects as merely a tickle on your skin.

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Down the rabbit hole but against our will
still sliding is such a thrill
near death from cold
but lava flows like liquid gold
where the elements meet the curtain unfolds
Leading us further down the rabbit hole