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My Mountain
The Cave

The Cave

Armed with Arlendr’s implied permission, Solveis would plan on bringing Livia to the cave when the opportunity next presented itself.

The opportunity presented itself the very next time the two girls met. Livia arrived on the island early one morning. After breakfast, the girls played on the plateau. They jumped around the hopping spots all around the plateau, sometimes counting or chanting a song as they jumped. (Though Solveis and Arlendr would often play in the chasms below, Livia was never taken down there. It was dangerous. To be relatively safe down there, one would have to be a good climber. One might have to climb up quickly if the tide rose suddenly or any other sudden danger appeared. One had to comprehend the real possibility of the tide rising quickly; then you’d have to be prepared to escape right away. Livia’s undeveloped sense of fear and urgency wasn’t trusted to the task. Solveis never even mentioned the chasms, so that Livia wouldn’t feel that she was missing out.)

Being on the plateau provided the perfect introduction to visiting the cave. Solveis played with Livia until her younger friend got tired out. Livia huffed and plopped into a sitting position on the ground, in the middle of the plateau. This was perfect, Livia was tired and in as suitable a mood as possible for really listing.

Solveis sat across from Livia and introduced the subject to her uncharacteristically quieted friend. “Did you know we have a cave here?”

“Noooo,” Livia answered excitedly. Then she gasped to get her breath back. “What kind of cave!?”

“It’s my and Arlendr’s secret cave,” Solveis explained. Then, she felt she must include a caveat to be factually correct. “Well… It’s not a secret. The parents know about it, but they never go in there. Only Arlendr and I go in there. We don’t even tell cousins about it,” Solveis continued in a hushed voice which caused Livia’s eyes to grow extra round and large. “It’s where we keep our secret stuff – and hide too.”

“Could I see it?” Livia asked timidly. Clearly, she felt like she was being let into a great mysterious secret.

Solveis was glad of Livia’s seeming awe and respect of the yet unseen cave. She was glad to have communicated its significance to her friend. Though, really, it hadn’t been Solveis’s intentionality that communicated its awesomeness, but rather her own genuine absorption, which Livia was feeling from her.

“Can you keep it a super secret? Don’t even tell people where it is? You know, we don’t talk about it at all, because then it wouldn’t be ours anymore.” Solveis questioned her little friend seriously.

“Is it a spell?” Livia asked. She understood Solveis to mean that talking about it would break a spell and put the place in danger.

Solveis didn’t exactly understand what Livia meant, but she thought it best if Livia maintained a strong reverence for the place, so she encouraged the belief. “It’s kinda like magic,” Solveis told her friend.

“But they always say magic is fake,” Livia stated, hoping to be told that it was actually real.

“It is fake, but it can sort of be real too, I think.” Solveis liked the idea of her favorite place being magic. She got lost in the idea and started speaking from her imagination. “If it can be magic, then I can be like a fairy or something, you know? Like a real faun, from mythology. I think it’s probably magic that keeps everyone else out of the cave… except that I told you about it, so you can go in. It could be magic that makes all the stuff in there special,” Solveis continued imagining.

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Livia was now so excited that she had to see the actual place. “Can we go there today?” Livia requested with a voice full-to-dripping with expectation. She asked like it might be far away. It might be anything at this point.

Solveis thought for a few moments, the anticipation of which made Livia’s face – too dark to show a flush generally – turn a little rosy. “Yes. Ok,” Solveis finally answered. Livia let a large breath go. “It’s pretty close,” Solveis informed her friend. “It's on the side of this plateau. You have to climb – just a little – down the rock, and the entrance will be right on the side there. Follow me. I’ll go down first and help you.”

They walked over to the east side of the plateau. There was a crevice dropping down into the earth. Solveis dropped down into the crevice. Livia peaked her head over; she saw Solveis’s head and arm peaking impossibly out of the rock. Livia followed her friend down the side of the plateau. It took Livia longer than expected to get down to the cave mouth. The slope down wasn’t particularly steep or hard to navigate, but it was a small space, and navigating a stony slope will be difficult for anyone who isn't accustomed to it.

Finally, Livia made her way down, and ended by sitting, facing inward, on the ledge of the cave mouth. Her heightened expectations fulfilled themselves. The way that the cave started out large and round, and then got smaller and smaller, in the cornucopia shape, seemed to her like a magic portal. The small cave mouth, difficult to spot midst the rocks, was an entrance hidden by magic. The popcorn canisters stacked all around were chests full of unknown treasures.

Livia’s wonder and interest made Solveis see the place in a new way too. She had always loved it as a sanctum, but now it was a fairy magic place too.

After the fullness of the wondrous place had mostly set in, the girls came back to themselves. Solveis gave Livia a tour. “Wow! The rock is so cold!”, “You have treasure chests!? A whole bunch!”, “What do you call a sweater if it’s magic too?” Livia made these and more exclamations. “A cloak,” was Solveis’s serious, though enraptured, response to the last question.

Solveis left some bits intentionally out of her tour. She didn’t detail the contents of all of the popcorn canisters. She also didn’t tell Livia, that the little handmade stick doll, which was among all the other stick soldiers and stick creations, was Solveis’s special favorite, which she had spent tens of hours on custom building and sewing. Solveis told her friend everything that it was safe to tell about.

She got cloaks out for each of them, and then introduced Livia to her favorite way to pass long periods of time. It was the tire game. It had become a favorite because it was something that she and Arlendr could always agree on doing.

Lunch forcibly pulled the girls out of their fairy land and back to the cabin, which had become more unbearably dull and ugly then it had ever before been. After lunch though, the parents released them right back to the cave. Livia tumbled in just about as clumsily as the first time. She ended up with a large, though not really visible, bruise on her brown thigh. She pouted about it in hopes of a candy or a hug, which social clues Solveis didn’t properly understand, or else she just chose not to respond to them. Consequently, Livia quickly gave up her interest in consolation and went back to a game of tires. It was out of character for Livia to remain interested in this one game for so long, but for today, this was a new and magical game. She would be tired of it by next weekend, not today.

In the middle of a round of the game of tires, a skidding sliding sound approached, followed immediately by Arlendr swinging feet first into the cave entrance. He froze in place, staring at the intruder.

“That little one,” he observed coldly.

Both the girls stared at him. Solveis stared in interest. She was already certain that he didn’t really mind the intruder, so his reaction would be interesting, maybe unexpected, but not frightening. Livia stared in fear that he would be mad, in amazement of how quickly he’d jumped in, and in awe of the realization that he (a person with whom she almost never communicated) was part of the magic.

Arlendr approached them slowly. He stood close to where they were sitting, tilted his head, considered, then kicked their tire away from them. Then, he walked away and forgot all about them. He went to a popcorn container, pulled something out, and started playing with it and with a knife.