Caveman Chronicles Index

Kpleeb awoke still sitting.

He rubbed his stiff neck slowly to exorcise the ache and yawned deeply.

[I need something else to do.]

The sun-cycles were becoming too boring. His eyes wandered to the shallowest part of the cave floor. The pool of water and fragments of his last meal were gone.

Standing slowly, Kpleeb walked to the center of the cave and bent to look at the floor. There was no residue to show where the water line had been. He placed his hand palm down on the floor and felt the same warmth emanating. Where did the water go? There was no evidence that it had been there, and yet it had cleaned everything from the floor. He looked at the outcropping and it was empty. It filled with water when he put his hand into the hollow. He drank, and though his stomach grumbled there was some satisfaction. He was hungry, but did not relish the idea of eating more meat and gray flub.

Kpleeb felt that he had already lost track of the time he had spent in the strange cave, so he used most of the sunlight trying to find a way to begin marking the sun-cycles. Back home in the canyon he had attempted to make cave drawings before begging Pfftul to bring him to the cavecraftsman user group. He had never had an artistic side, but he did pick up a few tips after a few moon-cycles of watching Pupsig draw. He did not have any charcoal in this strange cave and no fire or wood to make any. In fact, there were no tools here at all that he could use to scrape even a line in the stone wall.

He contemplated the alternatives. He could smear feces or food on the stone, and perhaps the mark would stay until he could fashion a better tool. He tried his finger nails, which were sharp, but when he tested one on the stone, the fingernail wore down quickly and made no mark at all. His blood, obtained from the splintering of the fingernail did stain the stone. He carefully made a small blood mark for each of his fingers. He did not know what the number was, but it was done for now. He would try with his food before trying with feces.

That evening when the sun dimmed Kpleeb stood reluctantly and went to get his meal. When he looked into the hollow there was no meat accompanied by gray flub. In the center of the hollow was what appeared to be a nest of long yellowish worms. They must have been dead, because they did not move. Mixed in with the worms were small chunks of green, yellow and red plants (possibly), and the whole thing was covered in a white-ish goo.

[Gross.]

He bent and put his nose above the hollow. A warmth arose from the pile of worms, and the smell was unexpectedly good. The worms were not moving, so Kpleeb stuck the tip of his finger into the goo and pulled it up to sniff. It still smelled delicious so he carefully licked the goo off of his finger. He had never tasted anything quite so good – except for maybe the time Goomu had made her famous lemming pie with musk ox milk-sauce.

Kpleeb fished a long worm out of the gelatinous goo and broke it in half with his fingers. There was no blood or entrails to be seen. It was the same color and consistency all the way through, which he knew was strange. He had played with the mud worms as a kid, and as he became older, he had encountered the carnivorous blood worms that lived in the river shallows. No worm ever looked like this, at least not on the inside. He popped both sides of the broken worm into his mouth and chewed.

The colored plant pieces were crunchy while the worms themselves were slightly chewy and retained the flavor from the savory goo. In just a few minutes he ate the entire pile of worms and then patted his belly which was taut with its temporary fullness. Despite his happiness with the food, Kpleeb hoped that the drastic change did not affect his bowels in any strange way. He put his hand in the hollow and it began to fill with water from the upper edges. Unfortunately, the water mixed with goo residue on the surface, and ended up with tiny chunks of food floating on the surface of the water.

He grimaced and cupped his hands to scoop water for a drink. It was warm and filmy.

“Why does this not empty itself?” he muttered. He bent and sipped, and after a few seconds, a hole slowly formed in the bottom of the hollow. Kpleeb dropped his handful of water and stared as the water drained away. When the hollow was empty the hole closed again by itself and appeared as if it was solid stone.

Kpleeb retreated to the other side of the cave and paced nervously.

[What does it mean? Is this magic?]

He had never seen stone change except through carving. Even then the rock often shattered, and the work took time, skill, and much effort. The more he thought, the more he realized that the outcropping had given him his wish, but he did not know how that could be. Fab elder Shoofit’s lengthy (and boringly droning) descriptions of the great spirit tahr never included wish granting, gift giving, or anything that Kpleeb could remember as being a direct and active benefit to the cave-tribe.

The great spirit tahr had always been said to provide the sun that moved the tundra from the frozening to the wetening, the rain that made the flub and other plants grow, and the wind that howled at the cave entrance. Anas was the silent cunning behind their defenses when attacked by roaming plains bandits, and Koort (the vigorous) was their strength in battle. There were other magics mentioned by the fab elder, but Kpleeb believed those to be tales for scaring children. Kpleeb had been quite terrified of losing his toes to the Shinref when he was a cavechild, but as he grew up with all of his footly digits he became more and more skeptical.

He sat down. The stone was warm against his back, and he placed his elbows on his knees with his large, hairy hands on his sloping head. His mind swarmed with thoughts that he had never entertained.

[The great spirit tahr, Anas, Koort, and the others have never shown me anything so directly.]

Kpleeb did not know how to finish the thought, but in a moment his inner voice coalesced with more clarity than he had ever previously known.

[I simply do not believe in them.]

He sighed and thought about his mam and how she would beg him not to bring the great tahr’s anger down on the cave with his disbelief.

The sun dimmed, and Kpleeb stood to look again at the outcropping before darkness came.

This could be the magic of a god that I have never known. He remembered the bad flub and the voice he had heard. Maybe the hole in the outcropping was just a vision brought upon him by his sour stomach. He leaned and tapped on the spot where the hole had opened, but nothing happened. [Hmmm.] He was entirely skeptical and uncertain. Maybe there was a god or maybe he was merely sick and delusional.

After a time, he lay down in the hollow at the center of the cave and stretched his arms out above his head with his palms toward the ceiling. The crosshatch of his fingers against the waning sun reminded him of home.

[I wish I could see Pfftul or Ullipt, or Olara. They would not believe this strange cave. I will have stories to tell.]

[Have to remember to mark the sun-cycle tomorrow…]