The cave itself wasn’t special, it looked like any other cave. It wasn’t large by any means, especially now that we had grown up, it seemed so much larger when we were kids.
It didn’t look like it formed naturally, it might have been blasted out for whatever reason before we found it. There were rough ledges and weird chunks of rock all over the ground that we had eventually swept toward the back of the cave.
It felt weird to me to be in the cave all alone, we only came up here in groups when we did come. We made so many more memories here than anywhere else in the forest. We made so many meaningful memories that shaped each one of us. That tradition might not continue anymore though. Not now that they can’t see me. Not now that I wasn’t there for them anymore, now that I wasn’t able to be in the picture.
I had been sitting with my back against the cave wall just inside the cave for a while after I was left alone in the dark, I was just thinking about everything. My life, my death. My family, all the memories that I made. Everything. I stared into the darkness that now engulfed my very being. I tried to listen to the past that had come to me so easily just an hour ago. I wondered if I would lose myself entirely.
I wanted to listen to memories of the laughter, the tears, the pain, and the joy. I tried to listen to all of it, anything that would come to me. But nothing would. Not even as my heart sank to my stomach and my eyelids grew heavy.
Reluctantly, I laid myself down on the stone floor of the cave. I couldn’t decide if I should be extremely worried or relieved at how nice the stone felt against my skin. Either way, I welcomed the sweet release of sleep for the first time since I passed over. As I drifted off I wondered if sleeping was a habit that I had in life or if it was something that I still needed. It didn’t matter, I welcomed it the same either way.
The sunlight crept into the cave and slowly met my face, burning into my still-closed eyes away from any hope I had of going to whatever was after the pain that this forsaken world held near and dear to it.
I pushed myself up from the embrace of the stone floor and wall that I used as a blanket as I slept. I looked around at the empty walls of the cave that I may as well call home for now. I was surprised that the cave stayed this empty throughout the years of us using it.
It wasn't much of a home. Mama would be disappointed if I left it bare.
I’d have to fix that.
I stood up and looked outside at the trees that went on for ages, the many trees that I had passed. “So many trees and I just had to go so far away for just one...God, I’m an idiot,” I stepped out into the blinding light that the sun already gave off that bounced around off the snow on the ground and into the snow in the trees. There wasn’t a lot around in the forest that I could use to fill the empty void that was the cave other than the forest itself.
I grabbed a couple of fallen branches and some other small things that broke away in the avalanche. I thought I might be able to use some of them to make myself a little bed or at least something to keep the little heat I still had in.
Does that even work without a body?
I walked around in the snow as I looked for anything that I could use to help with the loneliness that I was feeling. Anything that might be able to spark a memory in the dead of night when my loneliness gets to an all-time high. I didn’t have much luck no matter how long I walked around, I wasn’t surprised though, it was a forest after all.
What’s the point in dying if I can’t do anything I used to do? Or get to be even slightly comfortable in death? Or did I just get forgotten?
Is this all that’s after life? It can’t be unless I couldn’t see the others that died before me. Somehow, the thought of that was even more lonely than just being the only one stuck here.
Am I supposed to just wander around in the wasteland for the rest of eternity forever all alone?
I passed tree after tree. Some were bare, some had been broken or ripped out of the ground from the force of the avalanche that…killed me, and some were still as green as a Christmas tree should be. The wasteland I walked around was still covered in white, nothing but white. The brown of the tree trunks barely peeked out of the blanket of snow and the deep green from the evergreens looked more like dark shadows that stared out at me from a distance. The dirt that had been picked up on the way down must have been covered by fresh snowfall in the night.
I carried my goods back to the cave and did what I could to make it feel like home. There wasn’t much there but I managed to make a small bed out of the branches and some foliage that I found around in the snow and made a small tent out of the larger branches that I had in hopes of being able to keep warm. Or get warm.
The cold seeped into my bones, or whatever I had in my “body”, and deep into my soul. It was beginning to get easier to deal with but I still had hope that I could warm myself up somehow, even if I had no way to light a fire on my own since everything was still too wet from melted snow for me to even think about trying to build a fire out of them. I guess it was a good thing that I didn’t need fire to survive out here in the cold and snow anymore.
I placed whatever I had leftover haphazardly around the cave in a vain attempt to try and insulate the cave and bring some color inside even if it was just browns and little bits of green. I knew that I couldn’t bear to look at plain gray walls and plain bright white for much longer before I would lose any sanity that my mind had and any sense of self that I still had left after everything.
Soon after, I found myself sitting on the hard stone ground staring out at the forest wishing that things were different for the millionth time that day. I slowly spun my knife in my fingers mindlessly as I stared out at the more than perfectly good trees that I had ignored. There were so many of them. Probably hundreds of them, hundreds of trees that were all perfectly fine, hundreds of trees that I should have chosen that were much closer to the house than the one I had decided that I needed. Some would have even given extra as I wanted.
I sat and watched the forest for hours. I watched as the white light reflecting off of the snow changed in color to a golden orange and then faded out of view as the sun set in the sky. I watched as the moon rose and gave off its faint light giving the snow an otherworldly glow that was just faint enough that even I had a hard time seeing it at first.
I waited hours before I went back to the bed that I had made. It wasn’t very comfortable but it was better than nothing. It gave way and cradled me better than the ground ever could have but the branches poked and scratched at me making it harder to sleep than my own bed at home would.
The hours felt like they dragged on longer and longer than they had the night before. But eventually, I was able to get comfortable enough to begin to slip into yet another restless sleep.
It seemed the world had other ideas, however.
“You have no idea who I am, do you?” The soft voice seemed to come out of nowhere, even as I opened my eyes. I crawled out of my little tent to look for the source of the voice. The pitch-black cave that I had expected to be met with instead had a faint glow reflecting onto the walls, coming to a singular point. An orb of light no brighter than a softball, undoubtedly the same one that had shone so brightly before, the one that had led me to my cave in the dark of night.
“What?” even my voice felt foreign to me as I whispered out the word, “What are you?”
“The question should be who.” The voice seemed to come from the orb itself, but it didn’t make any sense to me, it couldn’t have, how could it possibly talk?
“Then who are you?” my voice was only slightly more confident, but it still held the same foreignness.
“I am the reason that you still breathe.” it paused, it seemed to be watching my reaction even though it didn’t seem to even have eyes, “I am the reason you are here.”
I took a shaky breath, everything seemed so hard to process now. It wasn’t that long ago that I had so many questions to ask not even an hour prior, but now when the answers may be staring right at me I couldn’t bring myself to ask. I couldn’t think of anything to ask.
“I will be back to show you more of what I want from you. Do what you feel is necessary to prepare yourself.” The orb disappeared and stole all of the light that it had given it. All that it left behind was the pitch-black cave that I had expected to see when I left my bed.
And I was once again all alone, left in the dark with nothing but a brand new load of questions that I would never be able to ask.
And of course, I remembered all the others as I laid my head back down.
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