You take stock of your situation.

You’re lost in a part of the cave complex you haven’t seen before.

Wotjeo, and you are the only people around now that Elder Minaro has left.

Part of you wants to chase after Elder Minaro. The old man is horrible, but you are scared of being alone in a strange place. Thinking for just a moment longer, you realize that Elder Minaro is horrible enough to just drag you back here even if you managed to catch up to him. The only way you are getting out of here is by learning to turn down the volume on your new ability to hear dream vital essence.

You and Wotjeo sigh simultaneously.

You both say “jinx” simultaneously.

Wotjeo’s cute bear cub face smiles up at you, and you hug him. Your bear brother always makes you feel better.

You scratch him behind his ears as the two of you explore the tunnel beyond the cave Elder Minaro left you in. Openings lead away from the tunnel, seemingly randomly spaced but you decide to ignore them for now. You don’t want to get lost. Every few steps you stop and strain to hear the sounds of dreams. The sound in the main cavern was so overwhelming you didn’t have a chance to process what you were hearing, so you don’t know exactly what you are listening for. You wonder what dreams sound like. Will it sound like someone snoring? Will it be a crackling noise like the tin cry? Or maybe it will sound like Mama’s voice as she sings lullabies? Oooh, maybe dream vital essence endlessly repeats the name of the dreaming person? That would be convenient. You wouldn’t need to learn how to block out the sounds; you could race back and impress Elder Minaro right away!

Instead of the dream sound, you were listening for, you hear Elder Minaro speaking. He’s repeating the same two words over and over again, hardly pausing to take a breath: “mero dudla”.

Has Elder Minaro come to take you home already? You race forward, but soon the words are so loud it is painful. You clap your hands over your ears and push forward, but Wotjeo bites down on the back of your shirt and holds you back.

You look over your shoulder at your bear brother and ask, “What are you doing Wotjeo, can’t you hear him?”

Wotjeo tells you, “I don’t hear anyone but you.”

You shout to be heard over the two endlessly repeated words: ‘mero dudla’. “It’s Elder Minaro! His voice is so loud it hurts, why can’t you hear him?”

Wotjeo shrugs, a complicated and unusual movement for a bear cub, “I don’t hear anyone, sister. I don’t smell him either. His scent went the other way and isn’t coming back. I can smell that he went this way too, but it is older. A few days old maybe? I’m not sure. I don’t think he’s here. Weren’t you supposed to be listening for the sound of someone dreaming?”

After some more back and forth you realize that Wotjeo can’t hear dream vital essence or metal vital essence like you can. Since only you can hear it, you decide that the voice you are hearing must be the sound of dream vital essence. That doesn’t answer the question of why a random tribe member’s dream sounds like Elder Minaro’s voice, but what else could it be? That decided, you back down the tunnel a little way until the dream words no longer sound like they’re being shouted and settle in to run through the exercises Elder Minaro taught you to quiet the noises of vital essence.

A little while later, you get hungry. Exactly how much later, you aren’t sure. There’s no sun to tell time by, and the rocks in the braziers spaced just close enough to light up the tunnel dimly are still burning merrily. You have two pomegranates. You give one to Wotjeo and eat the other yourself. Hunger satisfied for the moment you return to your exercises.

A while later, you get hungry again. Hungry and thirsty. A large part of you hopes that Papa or Mama will come find you and give you food; but you fight it down. This is part of your training to get strong like Papa. Papa doesn’t depend on other people to feed him! He cooks his own food!

You have to be strong like him and feed yourself. You’ve already eaten all the food you brought with you, and have nothing to drink, so you decide to explore the tunnel exits you ignored earlier.

The tunnel floor and walls here are much rougher than in the other parts of the cave complex you’ve seen. The floor is relatively smooth compared to the walls which have frequent outcroppings and indentations causing the width of the tunnel to vary a lot, but the tunnel is always at least wide enough for someone as big as Papa to pass through easily. The tunnel walls are heavily textured, almost like a giant was digging through it. You look up at the low ceiling. A short giant nearly as tall as Papa? That doesn’t make sense; maybe a normal sized person with giant super strong hands dug it! You shrug, and decide to think about it later, solving the mystery of why the tunnels here are different and less consistent than those you live in won’t help you find food or water.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Moving on, most of the openings off of the tunnel lead to narrow, tunnels that wind back and forth. Usually they end quickly. Some of them open out into more cave-like spaces, but still with rough walls and floors rougher than the tunnel you’ve been following. In one of these cave-like spaces, you find a bunch of metal barrels a little taller than you!

You climb on top of them and lever off one of the lids. Inside is a liquid! You dunk your head in and drink excitedly, wondering what kind of awesome potion you’ve found.

It’s just water. More water than you could drink in two lifetimes. At least you won’t go thirsty. You lift Wotjeo up on top of the barrels so he can get a drink too. Afterward, you drag one of the barrels out into the tunnel so it will be easier to find the tunnel again. You wish you’d brought the goblet Elder Minaro left behind with you. It would make getting a drink a lot easier. The barrels are taller than you and it’s not easy to climb on top of them to get a drink. You and your brother continue on down the tunnel, looking for food.

In another of the cave-like spaces, you find a big pile of crumbly black rocks. You toss one and Wotjeo runs after it. The two of you play catch until hunger drives you out, to continue looking for food.

That’s the only thing of interest you find until you get back to the cave-like space Elder Minaro healed your eardrums in. Like the other cave-like spaces here, but unlike your home cave, the walls and floor are very rough here. In this cave, you find a few sleeping furs, several leather bags full of water, the metal goblet Elder Minaro left behind, a crate of pomegranates, and two crates of dried meat!

Two whole crates of meat just for you and Wotjeo! That’s more meat than you’ve ever seen in one place. More meat than you’ve ever even heard of! You do a happy dance, and Wotjeo stands up on his short bear cub legs to dance with you. He’s just as excited by all that meat as you are. Meat tastes great! You stuff yourself with meat until you feel sick, then you curl up in the bed furs with Wotjeo and drift off to sleep. Your last thought before you go to sleep is to wonder if Felero will come looking for you. He seems like a nice person for a boy.

While you are asleep you dream. You dream of a bear tribe teenager filling braziers with black rocks. When the black rocks touch the burning rocks, they turn into burning rocks. The dream melts into another dream, and you snuggle deeper into the bed furs.

When you wake, you use the restroom. There is no-one to tell you where to go, so you go where ever you want to. Time passes, and the caves begin to smell. You sacrifice one of your bed furs to clean up your waste and dump it at the end of the longest side-tunnel you’ve found. You decide that from now on, this will be your bathroom to avoid stinking up everywhere else.

Time passes. You practice lowering the volume of your dream vital essence hearing, you eat, you play with Wotjeo, you sleep, you practice some more. The fire in the braziers rarely fades and is always bright again when you wake. You make progress in blocking out the sound of dream vital essence until finally, you can stand to be in the same room as the sleeper. Now you can see that it is a teenage man.

You spend one more day, practicing and stuffing yourselves full of all the meat you can eat. At last, you can lower the volume enough to cross the cave-like space the teenage man is sleeping in. The sound of his dream is half-way between a shout and Elder Minaro’s normal speaking voice, endlessly repeating two words: “mero dudla”.

You shake him awake. He tells you his name is “Sonadoro” and then leads you out of the tunnels. As you walk he explains to you that these are tunnels are left over from mining out an iron vein. All the iron ore is long gone now though, and the Miners have moved on to newer veins. The tunnels they left behind are still used to store stuff from time to time. He’s going to be a Miner one day himself and tells you to find him later if you want to learn to be a Miner. Compared to most of the people you’ve met so far, he’s very nice.

As you approach the lesson cave you hear a deep feminine voice muttering gibberish endlessly. It gets louder as you approach the cave. When you step inside Elder Minaro’s lesson cave, you realize the sound is coming from Genialida, Elder Minaro’s spirit companion. Genialida is sleeping as always.

Elder Minaro claps slowly and sarcastically: “Congratulations, butterfly. You finally made it back. Did you remember to ask his name?”

You look around the cave and see that all the boys are sitting in the back of the lesson cave already and you feel your heart breaking. You worked so hard, and you are the last one to control your senses?

Before you can answer, Felero scrambles to his feet: “Pūmiè is back? Hello Pūmiè!”

Felero is facing the wall across from him and waving his hands. He looks pretty silly, so you giggle.

At the sound of your giggles, he turns to face in your general direction “Are you really back Pūmiè? I can’t see you because I’m still working on the last wrap of my blindfold. I wanted to go look for you, but Elder Minaro told me I might hurt you if I found you before you were ready.”

You look closer at the boys. All of them are wearing blindfolds. Does that mean…

You turn back to Elder Minaro, hope restored: “So am I the first one to control my dream sense?”

“Not unless you know his name.” Snaps Minaro. “And it’s not dream sense; you can only hear dream vital-essence right now. I still have a lot to teach you.”