The Cave

Part II: The Ishchik and the Icuali

Chapter 10

The vision of the room faded, juxtaposed with a new vision: a dissolve from local objects to alien ones. As the room dissolved amidst the vibrating and ululating things that began to appear all around (they popped in and out of existence) he sped forward as lights careened by, multiple streaks of red and blue. At seemingly unquantifiable speeds he entered and travelled the firmament, coasting on wings of pure Aether. Streaks of lights sped by before terminating in a flash of electric impulses inside of a cosmic maw——a vast void opened up sucking him and all surrounding light within.

The jolt from this transitional rebirth was followed by a relative calm——the rapid reconstruction of impressions coalescing as the mind orientated itself temporally and spatially. A new vista opened up before him; a collection of scattered images with the silhouettes of shapes in endless space.

This was outer space, or some transitional plane, or a previously unlocked aspect of his mind. The going was much more gradual now. Disjointed, new images began to form. The images were coalescing into firm impressions.

It felt like a dream. It was too detailed. And there was no abrupt transition as one dream replaced the other without any discernible logical sequence.

The panorama that unfolded was eerily familiar. It was our world many years ago——a verdant valley teaming with life and activity. Frank had a God's eye view of a primitive village with paths leading to clay buildings, and there was a granary complex for housing foods. There was even livestock and burgeoning specialization.

Without any visual cues or words, Frank intuitively heard the name of the tribe in his mind's ear: The Ishchik. A group of people whose ingenuity, social organization and efficiency made them more advanced than their neighbors. It didn't take long for Frank to recognize the region as the same one he was currently exploring (or had been exploring).

Zooming in on the village of people, he began to focus, closer and closer, until he became part of the scene. He felt like part of the village, like he was walking in and amongst the people who did not acknowledge him as having corporeal existence.

His mind had fully recovered from the cosmic madness which had threatened to wipe his mind blank like the resurfacing of a biologically vibrant planet. He was elevated above the fray like a familiar perched on a top hat. When he thought he had met a gap in comprehending aspects of the Ishchik, knowledge was almost instantaneous, as certain historically pertinent information were intuited from environmental cues (and from an invisible guiding mind).

He felt a great admiration for these people. Their characteristics and idiosyncrasies thriving in a time mysteriously lost in the annals of history. He understood their social arrangements. At the top of the social spectrum they relied upon the foresight of their holy men who acted as high priests; they were the messengers between humans and the spirit world. Another class of men were the warrior elite who lived alongside them. These men predominantly hunted unless a call to arms required their services. The rest of the people were men and women workers, who toiled at agriculture, gathering, and building. Some of the women were designated as breeders or nurses; they helped maintain nurseries for the entire tribe while they were busy with other tasks. The nurseries were the hope of a bustling future population. A select number of women, usually wives of important leaders checked in regularly with the nurseries to give their two cents about how things should be run. They were relatively free to the scope of their daily activities compared to the rest of the population. Oddly enough there were select woman in these nurseries whose full time job it was to get pregnant. Selected as the most fecund, these woman were expected more so than wives to be pregnant for most of their youth.