Assemblage in the Cavern

Anton found himself in a cavern near the top of the mountain that was surrounded by the jungle. His memory was hazy, and he distinctly remembered entering the jungle a couple of days ago. Or was it nearly a week since he had entered the jungle? He could not remember.

He didn't even remember when he had made his way up the mountain and how he found this particular cavern. It was all so queer.

Anton scratched his head in confusion and looked about him. The cavern itself was more of a corridor upon deeper inspection, with torches lining alongside every twenty or so paces. It seemed to be occupied.

Having nothing to lose, Anton followed the corridor down until it opened up to a much larger cavern.

This one, in comparison, was gigantic. The ceiling was high above and unreachable, with only a single opening at the top where the sun beam shone straight through, creating an obvious pillar of light through the diffused dust that was present in the air.

But it wasn't the ceiling that was awesome.

In front of him, under the shaking lights of a few standing torches, Anton saw a roughly hewn up rock that seemed to be used as a stage. On it he could barely make out ten to twenty silhouettes. Of these, only the top half seemed to be moving, while the bottom half was still. He swore that he could hear some sound from their direction.

Anton walked closer up towards strange group of people. The distance between the corridor that Anton just left and the stage that he could barely make out was much farther than he thought, and he was glad that there were no obvious pitfalls in the path that he chosen. In fact, he was surprised that given the large extent of the cavern, that there were no faults in the ground at all.

When he got close enough, he could hear the sound much clearer. It was the sound of an orchestra tuning up; he could tell from the relatively familiar harmonic sounds that he had once heard from a travelling band that had been through his village.

But who would have an orchestra in a hovel like this? It all seemed otherworldly.

He crept up closer, careful to stay within the shadows as much as he could. The pillar of light was between him and the orchestra, when suddenly he noticed that the light had diverged from its original path. He looked up and tried to figure out how when he noticed that someone had moved two prisms into place, one to capture and redirect the light from the sun from the hole in the ceiling, the other to redirect the redirected light again towards the stage.

When that second prism was in position, Anton could see the people on the stage with startling clarity. They were all dressed in silken cloth with gilded hemlines on the sleeves, pants and skirt. And they seemed to be a modern orchestra, at least from our parlance, but to Anton, they just seemed so ethereal.

He stood there and gaped on, in awe at what he had seen.

(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 25-Jan-2014 23:53:55)