Marbles: The Hawk Who Refused to Die a Virgin

Chapter 15. Opal Sucks At Caving

On the second morning of their journey through the cave, Languin awoke to find that the entire loaf of endless bread had been eaten. The foil wrapping had been thrown into the campfire in an attempt to destroy the evidence, and a tiny rivulet of wax had melted out from under the bordering stones that Languin had built to contain that fire.

"For future reference the wax can also be eaten," said Languin, scraping the wax from the stony ground and into a little leather pouch. "It is a delicious butter substitute that contains all the flavor and sustaining fat of butter without adhering to your arteries. It is an unfathomably magic delicacy."

Lucy and Opal looked at each other, shocked.

"I don't want to point fingers, because there's only five of us here," said Lucy, "but I swear to God it wasn't me."

"Don't look at us birds," said Marbles. "Jezebel and I have been feasting on these bats."

It was true, the owl had already known how to catch bats and had taught the hawk that morning. It turns out that Marbles was really good at it. He had great night vision, and the far off campfire had provided more than enough light for him to see each bat hanging in rows on the ceiling like huge juicy velvet kernels of squeaky night corn. And he didn't have to circle for hours in the air chasing them, he could just launch upwards and snatch one from the ceiling. In fact, after a particularly saucy bat had bitten Marbles's ankle, Languin had stitched together little leather bat chaps for both birds to protect them.

"These are awesome! I feel so cool!" Marbles had said as he marveled at the leather bands. Opal had winced. Languin was so accomplished and considerate.

Let's face it, Marbles and Jezebel were stuffed. Everyone knew that Opal had eaten the bread.

"OK I'm late to the game here, but I also swear to fucking God that I didn't eat that bread," said Opal. "Maybe it was an animal in the night?"

"An animal ate the bread while we were sleeping, then balled up the foil and threw it into the fire," said Lucy, etching her face into dictionary under the entry for "nonplussed."

"Why is Languin automatically above suspicion here?!" shouted Opal, the cave amplifying his tiny gnomic voice to almost human level.

"Calm yourself, Opal," said Languin, holding up his palm to placate the gnome. "My finely tuned elven metabolism would not allow me to consume such a huge source of calories overnight. I would be incapacitated by the act."

"I'm a tiny fucking gnome how can I eat a whole loaf of magic bread?" asked Opal. "Well..." said Languin.

"Oh cause I'm fat?" asked Opal. "I'm a fat gnome so naturally I can't be trusted around our supplies?"

"Opal I cannot make that call," said Languin. "Normally I would awake at the slightest sound, but this cave is chilly and I am close to torpor when we settle in after a long hike. But what I do know is that that no matter who ate that bread, we cannot continue like this. We have got to trust in one another and communicate. If you are hungry and require more rations, then please let me know and I will try to forage for more."

"FUCK!" said Opal. He was indignant. Mostly because while growing up, if situations like this happened, then yes, he had most definitely been the culprit. When they were children he used to eat all of Clementine's Nilla wafers but leave the box of wafer dust in the pantry like there were still some cookies left.

When he was in college a friend, who didn't have a personal icebox, had entrusted Opal with half a leftover calzone after a night out drinking, and Opal had eaten it that night.

Until some time after he had turned one hundred, Opal could just not be trusted around food that wasn't his. And when reformed scumbags get accused of something that their former selves would definitely do, they buy a first class ticket on the S.S. Umbrage and sail it straight across an ocean of fury.

"I did not eat that motherfucking bread," said Opal, cinching tight the cord that tethered him to Languin. They set off for another exhausting hike, walking for hours behind the indefatigable elf, resting only to walk sideways, squeezing between walls of cold stone. Opal didn't say anything to anybody for the entire day. He just rolled his eyes as Languin droned on and on about their effect on the cave.

"I happened to major in sudden intense nutritional stimulus," said Languin, lovingly running his hand in a spiral around a fossilized ammonite peeking out from the cave wall.

"What is that, like, eating an entire loaf of endless bread by yourself?" asked Marbles. He was perched on Opal's shoulders and gave Opal a little shake. Opal reached up and unsnapped one of Marbles's bat chaps and threw it forward into the darkness.

"Hey!" said Marbles, flying off to find it.

"No, it is when a normally much more nutritionally subdued environment, like a cave or an ocean floor, suddenly encounters a windfall of food," said Languin. "Sometimes it is a literal windfall, like when an owlbear egg is blown onto an anthill. During one class we piled into a dragon eye bathysphere and studied a whale fall for days. "

"Whale fall?" asked Lucy.

"When a leviathan dies and sinks to the bottom of the ocean, it is as if an endless feast has exploded in front of things accustomed to fighting tooth and nail for scraps," said Languin. "Some isopods will feast until their bellies burst. Then smaller things will feast upon their burst bodies in turn."

"That's fascinating," said Lucy. Jezebel heard Opal's eyes roll and let Lucy know about it by nudging Lucy, rolling her own eyes, and pointing down Opal.

"My senior class project was meditating at the bottom of a well, next to an ox who had fallen in and broken his back. I lost points for putting him out of his misery."

"Awww," said Lucy, reaching over Opal and patting Languin on the shoulder as they walked single file past the narrow stone bank of the river. They kept listening for the sound of the river as they walked. Some times, like now, they could see it, but most of the time it wended its way unreachable through tiny tunnels of stone. Luckily, Languin always found a path that could help them trace the river's course.

"My point being," said Languin, "is that right now, in this cave, we are that sudden nutritional stimulus. The salt in our sweat is a delicacy almost beyond the comprehension of every creature here. Every time we excrete I can hear a thousand insects skitter towards it as if it were some holy mountain as soon as we start walking off. Every fire we light is a single star in a universe of blind animals unwillingly wedded to endless cold."

"Now mind you," continued Languin, "most cave fauna are harmless to humanoids. They are deathly afraid of us stomping around their quiet stone home. But if there is anything down here big, anything down here hungry, then it will be irresistibly drawn to the nutrition that we provide. It will devour us or die trying."

* * *

Ummm. The next day was pretty shitty too. Opal still refused to talk, only grunting to questions from the party. Languin offered him a sitarful of caveberries that he had foraged for that night, but Opal waved him away. Instead, during the afternoon break, a famished Opal ate fistfuls of initially delicious bioluminescent fungus that he had scraped from the cave walls with his little fists. He had been sated for what, maybe fifteen minutes? Then his stomach turned into knots.

"Uh-oh," said Opal. "Oh man," he said, unknotting the rope that cinched him to Languin and running off into the darkness.

"Wait! Opal!" shouted Languin as he heard Opal trip over himself in a mad dash for privacy. It was so, so dangerous to take off running in a cave. Seconds later Languin saw Opal's crouched down shadow pushing out a giant (for a gnome) glowing turd. Languin stifled a laugh.

"Sorry guys," said Opal as he hurried back to the party a few minutes later. He was sweating, and his voice quavered. His pupils were huge. He saw orchids opening everywhere. In Jezebel's eyes. On Languin's cheek. Every color. "I ate some mushrooms from the side of the cave. Am I poisoned? Am I dying?"

"You will be fine in a few hours," said Languin. "Next time, swallow your pride before you swallow anything else, and run it by me."

"Oh my God I'm going to die laughing!" said Lucy. She couldn't resist, and had run over to look at Opal's leaving. "They look human, but they're tiny, and glowing! I could wear them as earrings!" Languin laughed. Marbles laughed. Jezebel laughed.

"Quit making fun of my dumps!" screamed Opal.