Underground

The darkness was comforting to Caleb. It was the only place that he knew, that place where darkness overruled everything. There was nothing illuminating at all, but Caleb managed to make his way around relatively easily, having learnt how to echo-locate as well as having a heightened sense of touch and hearing.

It was a cave. An underground cave.

Caleb wasn't dumped into that place; far from it. If anything, he was born there. Legend has it that the cave was once populated by many people, and that it was well-lit, and that the only reason why everyone was in the cave was that there had been a rather large scale war that caused so much destruction top-side that the only people who survived were those who had been living deep in the ground to begin with.

That was nearly thirty years ago. The last time he remembered seeing anyone.

His parents died when he was ten. He was looked after by the remaining people in the community, the community that knew it was doomed to die because other than his parents, the rest of them were sterile.

No one could remember why.

Thirty years later, the last of the other people who were not Caleb had already been dead for ten years. The lights that kept the place well lit had dimmed over time and were completely out seven years ago. The slow plunging light levels taught Caleb the skills he needed for travel in the deepest dark, and it showed.

Caleb knew that he was the loneliest person. And he didn't need anyone else to prove it.

But he wasn't sad. He was nostalgic at times about the past, but those had eventually become memories where he could only vaguely recall. There was only one thing that he could remember with startling clarity -- he was to find a way out.

Too many years had passed, and no one could remember where the exit of the cave was. No one. They knew that at some point they would have to head out to the surface, since there was no easy way to keep food growing underground forever. They had basic nutrient-laced protein gruels that grew from bacteria that they reared, but they had remembered stories about the surface, where there was the sun overhead, and the large varieties of crops and animals that could be taken as food.

Food that was more palatable and nutritious than the gruel that they were making.

Caleb didn't have those thoughts in mind though. To him, finding a surface was a way to honour the memory of the community of people who had taken care of him while he was still young -- it was a way in which he could fulfill their final wishes, the ones that they all died before they could even catch a glimpse of. He personally had no reason to find the surface, having been used to living alone in the cave for so long.

But memories were all he had, and honour must always be kept, no matter the price.

(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 2014-08-06 17:34:43)