A Message

So we arrived. Which I all ready stated I suppose but I really would rather just linger on the arrival rather then delve deeper .. futher ... into the dark depths ... yeah.

Sahli was all prepared .. had some ropes ready and leather straps. Seemed to know exactly what he was doing with a certain self confidence that Sahli usually lacked. Not self worth ... but the kind of uncertainty of youth. And he was not speaking like a youth .. in fact he made several references to things only an elder would speak of ... in an elder kind of way. Which was all very strange and I began to suspect it was not Sahli at all we were speaking with ... which was exactly what Jaella had tried to tell me but I dismissed as simply the mental anguish of being trapped inside of a cavern. Which was some projection on my part I suppose .. what I would be like if I were trapped in a cavern. Deep beneath the surface away from the Sky and the Central Fire forever cold and sapped of strength and stamina slowly devolving into a fat white slug with no eyes and nothing but a voracious appetite for slime that glows in the dark.

Anyway.

I have rappelled down a cliff face before .. but I do not do so every day. Just not my normal mode of getting from point A to point B .. mostly because point A to point B does not usually consist of GOING DOWN INTO CHASMS. So my descent was much slower .. and more sedate than Sahli's who went sailing down in great leaps and bounds with blue hanging onto him and just a tiny little string attaching them to the real world.

T'zuri and Jaella stayed up on the cliff's edge .. where it was safe and they could see the horizon out there .. far away ... stretching beyond .. where it was supposed to be.

I worked myself up into a good sweat by the time I got to the bottom and Sahli and blue were waiting for me .. Sahli asked if I needed a moment and I did not want to be down here any longer than I had to be so we set off towards where Sahli said the cavern would be. The castoffs of generations of Tuchuk littered the belly of the old stream. Trash so old it was almost interesting. But it was not a piece of trash I picked up as we walked .. it was a small yellow stone. And this stone I began to work and rub in my fingers .. occasionally blowing on it.

Sahli said he had not caught how old I was .. I told him that was because I had not said. But that I was in my early twenties .. give or take a year or two. He said that was very young for an Ubar and I had to agree ... he asked me if I was too young to know of the virgin flower. Well I got the idea we were speaking of something other than a young innocent girl .. so I had to say yes ... I was too young to know.

As Sahli began to tell me the story I lifted my hands and let loose the little yellow butterfly trapped within and it rose on the air currents sweeping up the side of the cliff towards the top.

The story was about a young woman .. the daughter of an Ubar. So at least I was sort of right about the vestal virgin ... anyway ... this woman was coquettish and a rude little snape .. the word snape caught my attention but I listened quietly as we walked along. This woman thought herself better and wiser than the men who sought to take her as their mate. But a stranger came to HIS Harigga .. yes I noticed that also ... and raped the woman and she bled her virgin blood into these very grounds.

By this time the yellow butterfly had ridden the air currents strait up the side of the cliff and had settled on the knot of one of the ropes. Fanning his wings in the warmth of the Central Fire.

Sahli said that blood red flowers grow to this day on the spot. It was about that time that we came to the mouth of the cavern. Like a great diseased spot in the ground where the light had eroded away into a cancerous sore. Now I was really sweating and it stung the little slit over my heart as salt got in the wound.