Living in the cave

       5. Living in the cave

When the woman came back in the cave she told that her name is Alessa and we should clean up the cave so it wouldn’t start smelling bad, we pulled the dead people out of the cave and she set them on fire. I don’t really know how she did it, it didn’t seem like she had equipment to make fire.

Now she is in the first room as she said that she would clean out the blood stains from the ground.

When I first found her in the room I thought that it would be difficult to kill her because I had no strength left and she was in a cage. I thought whether to wait to regain my strength or try to kill her right there and then but when I saw her feared expression I thought she wouldn’t cause me harm if I let her go.

When she asked to stay here I was surprised and wondered if she wanted to stay to try to harm me but then she explained she wouldn’t survive outside. I decided to let her live here as she probably will be useful for learning things I do not know about. I will be cautious of her but I don’t think she will harm me, I leave the cleaning to her and go to the room filled with boxes.

I take out my dagger and pry open the first box, it is filled with dried meat and nothing more. I open the second box and it is also filled with dried meat. I think they might all be filled with meat, no point to open them all then.

I pull one of the opened boxes in the corridor and go to the next room. I drag the chest into the cage where the woman was and see the door that I forgot all about because of the woman. I walk to the door and open it slowly, light seeps in from the crack and I open the door fully to see a small room and an opening the back of the wall.

There are two ropes in the ground and both have one end of the rope tied into a metal ring that is inside the wall, the rings are opposite to each other and near the opening where the light is coming from.

I walk close and see the view from the opening, the wide blue sky, rising sun and the distant trees on the right look pretty. I go near the opening and see the drop down is long and on the left, there is a lot of water gushing down, I look at the view for a little bit before going back into the room with the cage.

I look at the cage and think what else I need. I think I’ll take one of the boxes with meat and something to sleep on top of. I go to the box room and take the opened box from there and drag it into the cage, my body aches but I feel much better than before that I don’t mind it. I walk to the corridor and head to the widened area, when I reach it I see the woman on her knees scrubbing the blood near the room in the right so I go to the left room.

I take the all the blankets from the room and carry them to the cage, I start to organize the things in the cage. I put the chest against the cage wall opposite to the door, I put my blankets next to it and the meat box after my blankets so the blankets are in the middle of them.

I close the cage door and lock it from inside, then I turn around and eat some meat from the box. After eating I lay down on the blankets and start to sleep.

I wake up to a weird sound, I wonder what it is as I stand up and go open the cage door. I walk to the corridor and see the woman scrubbing the floor. She looks up and our eyes meet, she smiles and waves at me. I point to the box filled with meat.

“Is that for me?”

I nod and go back to the cage, as I was locking the door I remember to show her the room with a bed so she would know that she can sleep there. I walk back to the corridor and when she looks up I point to the other room.

She looks at the room and walks in.

“Do you mean that I can sleep here?”

She peeks from behind the door frame and I nod to her as a reply. She shows a happy expression and goes back into the room, I’m about to turn to go back into the cage as I hear her say.

“Oh wow, is that a map? Hey, do you know how to read a map? If you don’t I can teach you a little something about maps.”

Map? Is that the scroll I found? I go the room out of curiosity and see the woman on the other side of the desk looking at the scroll excitedly.

“Come closer so you can see it better, so this is called a map and it is used to tell where things are in a large area. You can see this point right here? It is the cave we are in now, well at least I think it is because it was circled in the map. These brown lines indicate roads and these blue lines indicate water. Then there are these green patches that are forest and theses grey things are towns.”

She kept explaining things on the map but she used a lot of words that I do not know the meaning to. As the time went on I started to feel uncomfortable hearing explanations to things I do not know of so I decided to ask her.

“What are roads? or Towns?” I ask quietly.

She stops her explanation and shows first a very happy expression but then a sad one.

“Road is just ground that is easy to move on, it’s even and it leads to places. Town is a place where many people live, there are mostly only one race in one town but there is an agreement that you have to let people from other races in the town if they want to go there and they should be allowed same rights as other races in the same town but mostly people wouldn’t want to go to a town that has people from a different race than them living there.”

“What is race?”

“Race means the similar characteristics of a group of people, for example we are from a different race. You are a human and I am a half a beast man, you can see my ears and a tail, right? they make me different from you, and most people would hate others just because they are different.”

“Do you hate me?”

“No, I love you.” She says with a big smile as she puts her arms wide.

“Why do you have your arms like that?”

“Because I want to hug you. Do you mind it?”

“What is a hug?”

“Here, let me show you.” She said as she slowly comes closer to me.

She puts her arms around me and gently pulls me closer to her until I can feel her body. I can feel the heat from her body and she smells nice, it feels calming as she hugs me and we stay like that for a while. She then slowly releases the hold and looks at me.

“I don’t mind it.”

She looks happy as I say that and then she continued to teach me words I didn’t know and how to read the map, after some time I start to get sleepy and she tells me that we can continue this tomorrow.

I go back to the cage and eat some meat while I’m sleepy. I was about to go to sleep as I remember that I didn’t lock the door. I briefly think it might be okay to leave it unlocked but then I brush it off and lock the door and go to sleep.

Chapter four. Chapter six.