Waking up was different. There was no noise to startle her into alertness, no morning sun to coax her out of bed. No phone with no alarm to be snoozed multiple times in a futile attempt to delay the day. There was only a slow sense of regaining control, of returning from a land of already forgotten dreams to reality.
The slow transition into alertness was beneficial. By the time Jen had remembered her situation she had already been awake for a while, drifting in a half asleep state as she mended her soul. It still hit her hard, to realize once again that her old life had been torn away. She shook her head a little at the loss, before feeling the stiffness that had crept up while she was sleeping. A series of body stretches followed, cribbed from half remembered yoga sessions with her mother, and by the time Jen had run through all the poses she could remember or come up with she felt much more limber.
Taking a moment to listen for the dripping water and re-orient herself in the darkness, she carefully made her way over to the pool, drinking her fill once again. As she did so, her stomach cramped a little. Finding something to eat was her next priority. Jen first thought of the moss that she had slept on, but decided against it. If she couldn’t find anything else, she would try and force some down, but she wasn’t quite hungry enough to try so at the moment. Jen also had a suspicion that moss was either inedible or non-nutritional, given that she’d never even heard of anyone eating moss. Finding the water had made her optimistic that with enough exploration she could find both food and a way out before having to risk becoming a moss-eater.
Ready to get started on another expedition, Jen grabbed her rope from where she had left it the night before. After a moment of consideration she decided to take the time to gather up a decent portion of moss to take with her. If necessary she could eat it, and if not there might be other tasks where it could come in handy. It was the work of moments to tear up a section of the mossy floor and stuff it into her pockets, where it would be easily accessible.
Wanting to make the pool of water her new center of operation, Jen decided against trying to make her way back to her marked path from yesterday. She instead decided to further explore the side of the pool that the moss was growing on, hoping that she would eventually come across some other edible plants. Neither the smooth stony ground or the sparse moss covering would be very helpful in navigating in the dark, so Jen planned on staying within earshot of the steady drip of the pool. She would still make her own noise to try and get a feel for any landmarks further out, but she knew just how much her continued survival relied on having access to a source of water.
Not having to worry about marking her path let Jen move quickly. Her routine from yesterday was now familiar, a constant pattern of moving and clapping that covered ground and gave her a steady stream of information. While the original pillar had seemed to have a ceiling far away, the echoes around here felt more and more contained as Jen moved on. There were occasional echoes off of walls or other structures in the distance, but Jen didn't think it was the time to gamble her current location and its resources on finding something there. As she neared the limits of where she could make out the location of her source of water, Jen changed directions, working her ways sideways around the pool.
The safe bet ended up paying off. After several minutes of searching, Jen came to an area where the ground changed. The previously smooth floor began to break up, large cracks running along the ground, deep and wide enough to swallow her arm up to the elbow. The first few were empty, but were covered with a thin sheen of condensed moisture that made Jen optimistic about what future cracks might hold.
The fifth such fissure contained mushrooms. Jen blinked a little, tears welling up in her eyes from relief. Mushrooms were never her favorite food, but she had eaten them before, and would be happy to do so again. Jen began to harvest the shrooms, pulling the larger ones out of the fissure and leaving any that felt smaller than her thumb.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
After clearing out the cleft, Jen took stock of her loot. The mushrooms all together ranged in size from an inch across to almost the size of her palm, and completely filled her two hands when piled together. They had a dry, almost leathery texture, and a surprising amount of firmness and weight. None of them seemed to have any dirt on them, and had seemed to barely have been attached to the rocks beneath them. Her fingers didn’t feel itchy or irritated at all, and a quick lick with her tongue hadn’t immediately ruled the mushrooms out as inedible.
With her hands now full, Jen decided to head back to the pool. Getting something to drink would help with eating, and she could stockpile any mushrooms she had left over. A few moments silence let her get a direction to travel back in, and she set off in high spirits. After travelling a while without coming across any holes in the ground, Jen decided to let her rag rope trail behind her, to serve as a directional marker so she could more easily find her way back to the mushroom fissures.
After arriving at the pool, Jen dropped her rope and mushrooms, before taking off her shoes and socks. All that walking had led to her feet being quite sore. Not wanting to contaminate her only source of drinking water, Jen used her hands to splash water on her feet before rubbing them slowly, massaging the soreness out of them. She then turned her attention to the mushrooms, picking up the largest and starting to clean them in the same manner.
Jen paused in her work. She'd been too happy at finding food to really consider it, but there was a problem. What was the energy source these plants were using to grow? Most normal plants relied on sunlight to fuel their growth, converting available CO2 and water into biomass using the power of the sun. She'd heard of some underwater plants, far from any source of light, that took advantage of heat from geothermal vents instead. Parasitic plants such as creeper vines could subsist without sunlight, stealing energy and resources from their hosts.
But as far as she could tell, there was no obvious source of energy for the mushrooms and lichens to utilize. There was definitely no light, the temperature seemed constant, and unless this entire cave system was inside a tree then there was no host organism present either. In short, Jen had discovered a large mystery, one that made her both excited and nervous. Excited for the chance to learn and discover something never seen before. Nervous because the unknown carried with it a large chance for death or injury.
The theory that had worried her the most was that the plants were somehow utilizing ambient radiation from heavy isotopes buried in the rocks, but she was soon able to dismiss that theory. If there was enough radioactive material present to produce an equivalent amount of energy to sunlight, she would have been dead several times over in the minutes she had already spent resting and thinking. That still left the actual mechanism behind the growth of the plants a mystery, but hopefully not a deadly one.
In the end, Jen decided to treat it as safe for an entirely different set of reasons. As she spent an increasing amount of time in this dark cavern, she had come to the conclusion that there was some sort of intent that had placed her here. Her initial teleportation had been perfect, exactly on the ground in a smooth part of the cave. The cave itself had both breathable air and a source of potable water, even though it seemed to be completely sealed off from the outside world. If her situation had been engineered, it would make sense that a source of food would be provided as well.
Not willing to put off eating for any longer, Jen grabbed the cleaned mushroom and proceeded to take a bite out of it. The taste was surprisingly rich, reminding Jen of a mix between good tofu and a bad steak, a thick texture that oozed flavour with every bite. After the first mushroom was devoured, a second followed, then a third.
By the time Jen’s hunger was sated, a good three quarters of the mushrooms she had foraged had been devoured. Satisfied for the moment, Jen crawled back to the moss beds, lying down to relax and digest while she planned out her next move.
That was when the pain struck her stomach.