Elements

Episode 8: Cave Of Doom

*

The drums are played in my head. A rhythm that I'm beating with my own hands. A beat that my father taught me when I was young. I can feel people gathering around, interfering with the beat. The leaves of the trees are whispering. Words of the spirits. The moonlight embraces us and the sun is down. It is time. Thunder can be heard. It's raining and ground slowly becomes mud. It's the raining season. I feel the lullabies and story inviting us to gather. Sardaar knows what story he is going to tell, he always does. He spoke to the spirits of nature, he knows the exact story that will keep our folk living. That will encourage us for the best hunt. The best scavaging. The flute can be heard now. The 3rd hunter is playing his part. Sardaar starts his story. A story of a mighty warrior. A warrior that fought against the spirit of the storm. The storm is being defeated by one of our own kind. He was a true hero. The storm pleaded and promised he would never smite his force of thunder upon our fields and huts. Since then, we trusted the storm. It caused vibes of darkness that we all enjoyed. The storm gives us the opportunity to sing and dance in his ways. With force and power. With might. The hero had fought with our knives, with our spears. With our bows and arrows. His blood runs in ours. We are made of his flesh. It makes us all a hero. He fought until he broke a sweat, cried and bled. I can hear his battle cry. After Sardaar's last sentence,  Boodha Aadamee starts singing. His voice remains low. It resounds in your head. I start a new beat, and people join. The clang of nutshells. A rhythm we usually work with. I finish quickly when the rain starts pouring harder. Nature tunes in with us, and we tune in with nature. I stop my drum. It was time for Gaana to start singing, and so she did. We followed her, it was the song of the night. Just like how Sardaar knew what story to tell, Gaana knew what song to sing. We sang while the drum of the thunder and the hissing of the rain sang along with us. Eventually, we danced with it. We danced until the children had fallen asleep on their mother's lap and the dogs had licked off the bones. It was time to end the feast.

And then I woke up. Gone was the music. Gone was the drum. I breathe in deeply and sit up. I look at Demi and shake her shoulder. She turns around and rubs her face. "Goodmorning guys." She quickly hissed and stretched her back. "Oh yes... we're here." Miley sighed. She quickly sits up and gathers her stuff. "The sooner we start walking, the faster we can get out of this place." Selena now sat up too with her tired face. She sniffed and nodded to Miley's comment. She starts to pack too. After a while, we walk into the darkness. Miley holds up her hand, after concentrating for a second a flame arises on it. She waves around with it, to check if there are bats. Luckily, there are none. I look at my side. "Guys look..." Miley comes closer to me to give more light. There are pictures drawn on the walls, just like what my tribe did to our caves. But it was quite depressing. Figures of dead people. Hanging. "Jesus.." Demi frowns. "Are people trying to make us go crazy?" "Maybe people went crazy here.." Selena says. I place my hand on the stone wall, caressing the drawings with my fingers. "It is made with coal." I say while rubbing my fingers against each other. "Let's just get out of here really fast." 

-,,-

"They are not going fast enough." "Malam? Where is Obscuro?" "He told me to give orders. He is busy." "At your service. What were the orders?" "Make them hurry up." "How?" "Well let's see, how do you make four adolescents run for their stupid lives?" "Danger."

-,,-

After walking for hours we stop for a pause. The further we got into the cave, the colder it got. Maybe it's just me because the other girls seem to be completely fine. But the colder it got, it also got wet just as much. It is as if it rains in this cave every day. It seems to make me nervous. Especially when a cold drop falls from a stalactite, right into my neck or the top of my head. I feel irritable. Perhaps it's from the lack of sleep. Sometimes we get to places where it's so wet,  that puddles have formed. Even now, on the place where we sat down, we had to look out for the water. Miley grabs her bag and hands food to us. Sandwiches that were made yesterday night. I have a hard time keeping the dry bread in my mouth. I can see Kyra looking confused in the corner of my eyes while Miley and Demi have a talk. I look at her. She's sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest, inspecting her hand. I scootch closer to her. She shows her hand to me, as she's holding water from the puddle in her hand. I frown too. It looks yellowish and thicker than water. I place my hand underneath hers to give it a better look. "Is that water?" I ask. She shakes her head. "It looks like oil." I state. "Did someone spill it here?" "I don't know how else puddles of oil can take place in a cave like this." Suddenly all of our heads shoot to the darkness where we came from. A source of light can be seen. "What the fuck!" Demi shoots up, and we all follow. Fire. It spreads towards us very quickly, until it stays in one place. We step back. "M-Miley. Try to put it out." Demi yells. "I.. I can't." Miley takes a few more steps back. "Miley come on!" "I can't!" She holds her hands up, trying to tone down the fire, but the attempt fails. The fire gets even bigger. It reaches the puddles closer to us. "Run!" We start running to the other side of the cave. The end can't be far away since Demi told us we're close to the top of a mountain. She didn't say she did, but she probably felt it. And yes, after running for a while we see light at the end of the tunnel. "Quick!"