It had taken longer than she had first thought, but Jen finally reached the wall that she had been aiming for. Around halfway there the previously smooth ground had given way to a much more rocky terrain, and Jen had switched from shuffling forwards to crawling hunched over after stubbing her toes for the umpteenth time. A brief vision of Gollum passed through her mind, but she rejected it. She had no intention of staying here long enough for things to turn out like that. As she travelled, she took the time to gather up a handful of small rocks, throwing them forwards to try and hit the wall. The first few had skittered against the ground, but eventually they started to hit the wall ahead.

Not long after, Jen reached the wall. Still blind she felt out the wall in the general area, solid and smooth. Rapping it with one of her small stones showed the wall to be made of a softer stone. Satisfied that there weren't any secrets or hidden passages embedded in the wall, she promptly turned around and sat down against the wall. Even though there was no concrete way to tell either distance or time, the travel had still felt like it had covered a large distance and taken hours. Jen closed her eyes, tired of straining to make out any light at all. Not quite weary enough to go to sleep yet, she decided to try and meditate again to regain her mental balance.

It helped to have her eyes closed, to be able to pretend that the reason it was dark was because she had chosen to close her eyes. In. Out. In again. Each breath a little slower than the last. Jen focused on that illusion of normality, that she only had to open her eyes and she would be back in her small office, waiting out the rest of her shift. Robert and Jans would be in soon, early risers that they were, asking her how the experiments over the night had gone. After telling them, she could head home and go to bed, brushing off that thing in the middle as a break from reality caused by the stress of it all, adjusting to a new job in a new country.

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Then she let the image fade. It was a nice dream, but reality demanded her attention. To give her current situation any less than her all would be her undoing. Jen opened her eyes, a little smile forming at how little difference it made, before turning into a frown as she started to plan.

Jen had three pressing needs in her current situation. The first two were simply food and water. While she was alright for the moment, having eaten before the phenomenon, lack of either would soon reduce her energy levels to the point where she would be incapable of anything except waiting for death to take her. Better to find sources of both as soon as possible. The third need was more ephemeral, but no less important in the long run. A way out. Even if she could find sufficient water and food to keep her body alive, the dark and silence would still break her, given enough time.

Jen forcibly moved her thoughts onwards. Dwelling too long on that outcome would only make it come sooner. Better to stay focused on what she could accomplish, namely exploring the cave system in search of food and water. She was cautiously optimistic that this would be successful. The walls were smooth, meaning water had been in the area at some point. The air around her was still, yet she was able to breathe without difficulty. If air wasn't being blown in from elsewhere, then somewhere in the dark around here were both plants to produce oxygen, and the water that they needed to grow. She just needed to find them. Ignoring the small contrarian thought that the breathable air could have been caused by the same mysterious force that brought her here she stood up, ready to start moving again.

Before she left on her search, Jen decided to take the time to gather all the nearby rocks into a small cairn. She wanted to have some method of telling places apart from each other, and constructing things out of rocks seemed the most straightforward solution. Satisfied that her small rock cuboid was recognizable, she placed her left hand on the wall and started to walk, every now and again clapping her hands to try and get a feel for how the cave system around her was changing as she moved forwards into the unknown.