Part 5
It had taken her the rest of the day to reach the edge of the jungle where a river separated her from the rocky, hilly inclines of the mountains above. As she surveyed the river for places to cross, the rumbling thunder of the storm grew louder. More disconcerting was that she still couldn’t see signs of lightning or even ominous clouds, nor had the air pressure changed. It was the same feeling she got when she knew something terrible was about to happen, but she had no idea what the terrible thing was. It kept her shoulders and body tensed, ready to fight whatever dangers were headed her way.
The sky, too, had grown darker, her river search done under what she’d have thought was an evening haze—the sky still stealing pieces of light from the sun, but the sun no longer present.
Beyond, a brewing storm and mountains; before her, a river that looked easier to cross than she suspected it truly was. The waters above were almost tranquil, though she caught, now and again, the ripples and eddies of currents brought about by rocks and deeper depths. The water was clouded, silt and earth collected from somewhere further up its winding banks. She’d entertained the idea of fishing, but with night setting in (albeit without stars or moons) and the sound of the ever-impending storm, she searched now for somewhere to make camp, certain that if she stayed in the jungle or near the river she’d be flooded out when the rains came.
As the last vestiges of an unseen sun slipped from the sky, she finally found her crossing. Here the river rippled over and around a bar made of smoothed stones. The crossing was a natural bend in the river where rock and other debris likely piled up during the stormy season, hence the easy crossing there now in what reminded her of the last days of summer.
Picking her way across the stones with care, she tested each hoofstep before placing her full weight on it. Even an easy crossing could be hazardous if you were incautious going over, and even seemingly solid ground could prove otherwise within the bounds of a river’s waters. Time and again that caution saved her a thorough dunking as she made her way across, though both her tension and impatience mounted as the storm seemed to be growing closer and the light in the sky was lost.
In darkness her hooves touched the opposite shore, and with little hope of finding a good campsite without some light, she moved inland before setting to work on some of the twigs she’d collected throughout the day eventually getting a branch to catch flame and light her path.
The earlier lack of predators made her singularly incautious in that regard, but she understood in some way that she was not here to battle the forces of nature. Nor would they seek to hinder her in her Proving. And so as she made her way among the hills that guided her steps upward, she looked only for a place to settle in against the storm that had finally decided to show itself.
Flashes of lightning now punctuated a roiling mass of clouds overhead, and the flame at the end of her tree branch guttered as a downdraft pushed the warmer air up in order to let the storm in. Instead of the whisper of leaves, the echo of thunder and the hiss of hillside grasses accompanied her as she sought a crevice or cave in which to shelter. Eventually, on the incline of a hill she found an arch made of stones that offered a way under and into the rock. It was set in such a way that she doubted she’d have to worry about too much flooding, and so into and under the hillside she descended.
Grateful to be out of the wind and the rain that a few stray raindrops had heralded before she’d made it inside, she paused a moment to study her surroundings as the last bits of her branch gave light to the rocks, dirt, and stones that were to be her new dwelling for a while.
She’d had to duck as she made her way inside, but after a few steps the rocky ceilling opened up above her as the ground sloped steeply down. The scent of heat and earth held sway as the flames of her branch-made-torch led her deeper into the cave. Eventually, she conceded that this passage continued far beyond where she’d entered, and as she turned to make her way back closer to the entrance, she felt the rush of cooler air within the cave that portended the rain’s arrival.
It was at that moment that her torch decided to die, the flames fluttering to darkness as the storm’s winds finally caught them and snuffed them out. Far above her she could hear the hiss of rain echoing along the rocks at the cave’s entrance, and soon after came the steady plop of water as it filtered from the upper stones of the entrance to the ground below. There would be a small stream along the center of the cave floor soon enough.
Needing the reassurance of another surface apart from the one on which her hooves now rested, she shifted to the side until her fingers finally found the contours of the cave wall. She’d thought she’d have more time, her torch sheltered from the wind, to transfer the fire to another branch. But eventually, as she listened to the dimmed fury of the storm outside the cave’s entrance, her other senses began to adjust to the lack of fire.
The first thing she noticed was the chill that took up residence along her arms. Then came the scent of water as it met earth and stone and made its way beyond the cave entrance into the cave itself. Old earth and fresh water—the two battling until earth gave up the fight. She caught flashes of lightning far, far back and up the path she’d taken, but there was something else she heard now as she gave herself over to the darkness.
Behind her a soft humming had begun to fill the air—like the ringing in one’s ears when confronted with sudden silence, only this ringing didn’t disappear or get lost in the sounds of the raging storm above. Turning away from the path that led back toward the entrance, her eyes now caught the faintest hints of blue, glowing light. It seemed to grow brighter the longer she waited and watched.
Lichen? Mold? Fungus? She wasn’t certain what lit the way, but she found herself drawn further downward into the cave, anxious to be closer to the light that traced along the upper walls and sides of the cave, though the ceiling remained an unknown. She could tell it was high overhead, however, as the sound of her hooves echoed in the depths above.
Eventually the ringing sound wasn’t only in her ears. It seemed to vibrate the air all around her, and along the base of the walls were shards of blue and gold stone that seemed to gleam with its own inner light, brightening the world around her until she could easily see the stalagmites and stalactites woven within the confines of a large, open cavern.
As she walked further beyond the cavern, she saw whole parts of the walls and floor were alight with the strange glowing material that seemed to make up this hill and presumably these mountains. Eventually she came to a whole wall where the blue-gold stone formed what seemed a bubbling trail that descended into a pool of the same stone on the ground, forming another wide cavern. It was so strange and beautiful that she found her progress arrested as she reached to trace the bubbles—bits of stone themselves, though worn smooth or frozen somehow in what might have once been a true blue-gold flowing river of stonelight.
The power of this place shivered through her, such that she chose to sit down along the shore of regular stones that rimmed the lake of stonelight. She’d heard stories about the blood of Azeroth and seen jewelry and other accoutrements made of the stone, but never in all her years had she seen anything as truly amazing as this. As she marveled in silence at the beauty that surrounded her, a vision began to take shape before her.
“Not now,” she whispered, almost pleading with her power to just let her have this moment in peace. Thinking perhaps the lifeblood of the Earth Mother herself could stop it, she leaned down and pressed her fingers to the striated glow of the lake before her.
Blue-white light blinded her eyes, and she felt herself slipping to the ground, unable to stop her body’s fall. But she never felt the hurt of hitting the hard stone, the Presence pulling her into Itself as a vision took hold.
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