4. You hear a rumbling as though a large animal is running overhead, aboveground. The ceiling begins to fall in in chunks, letting in shafts of light. You feel a powerful urge to follow them, and you do, back to the cavern with the stone, where the ceiling has completely given way and moths dance around the tip of the spire. One of them lights on your brow, and your eyelids are suddenly and strangely heavy. You curl up at the base of the stone to sleep.She wandered away from the stone, following the glow of the mushrooms that called her to walk the long, winding darkness of the caves she found herself in. She wasn't too concerned about her inability to find a way out or even know where she was. It didn't seem malevolent and if she had been able to find a way in, she was sure to find a way out as well. Each step echoed softly in the darkness as her hooves struck wetly against the damp stone under her hooves.
Her eyes took in the shifting patterns of the glow against the walls of the cavern. They drew abstract flowers in the wetness that flickered with her movements like flames against the darkness. She explored slowly, barely blinking as she tried to take it all in. She felt, for some reason, that this would all disappear in a blink of the eye, gone like smoke in the wind, only existing in her mind. Some mushrooms she spent a lot of time at, taking in their subtle variations in color and burning out her vision in their glow. She would walk off without her vision, blinking colors and lights rather than seeing, careful so that she didn't crash.
It was a different word here where her colors were reflected in walls and mushrooms and no where else. Here, she was all alone and she was comfortable there. It didn't bother her that there was no one else around. She was sure, at least, of this reality and the difference between this and her dreams. this was something to be lived and to be experienced, something that was both flesh and blood as well as smoke and flame.
Suddenly a rumbling began echoing between the walls from above. The glimmers of the glow shook with the pounding. It seemed like a huge animal was running over her, perhaps larger than her. She felt compelled to follow it so she ran to amid the falling chunks of rock. She ran and ran, hooves pounding, dodging the rocks as the fell. Back and back the pounding led her until she was back in the cavern with the tower.
The ceiling is gone but there is no evidence of the creature that had led her back to this room. There are only moths, fluttering at the tip of the tower. They look aimless and she feels a kinship to them, flying up there in the light. One in particular caught her eye as it drifted down towards her. It moved slow and steady, only occasionally fluttering away in an unexpected pattern. It came closer and closer until it landed on her brow. Her eyelids felt suddenly heavy and she couldn't find it in herself to resist the urge to close her eyes. The brush of the moths wings lulled her into a state of almost dreaming even as she stood. She walked forward without really knowing where she was headed. All she could do was fold down to the ground and curl up against the stone to sleep, the darkness claiming her mind and returning her to the land of smoke and fire where blood and flesh meant almost nothing.