The River Back

Darkness would be a poor synonym for what the colt saw in front of him, as he hobbled deeper and deeper into the cave, the crack of light peeking over the rock pile fading away behind him, so too was the frozen world of snow as it changed into a biting cold from within the cave.

With eyes refusing to adjust fast enough to the blackness, he was left stumbling for a while, occasionally tripping on a stone and falling flat on his face shouting agony one more time through his body, particularly to his rear where gouts of blood still dribbled down a hefty bite mark. Deciding to walk closer to the water seemed a reasonably option for the moment, or at least until he could catch his bearings. The ground was mostly flat, giving the impression of sentient handiwork as the river flowed with ease through a trough in the floor it'd carved, making it easier to follow the stream, but this would also become a double-edged sword if anything in the shadows crept up behind him or pulled him into the river. He tried his best not to think about those things.

As his eyes began to make out the outlines of the cave's walls and it's imperfections, he could begin to feel confidence build up inside him, urging him to bump up his speed to squash some time. Ignoring all doubts and worries in his mind against this, he picked up his pace, slowly morphing it into a sprint.

Not pausing for a breath while charging through a cave you could barely see in would be seen as an idiotic feat to perform at least, but he only saw the consequence when his hind rebelled against this act and tightened the warped muscles of his still-healing wound, forcing him to stop with all hooves screeching on the ground. Making matters worse, the colt tripped over a cylindrical object lying on the ground that sent him flipping forward, smacking his muzzle into a wall and ricocheting onto his back like a cockroach.

Wiping the grit from his face, the colt realised he'd run directly into the side of a waterfall that lead into the stream. The source of the waterfall was at such a height that the amount of mist would pound to the ground like needles, barraging him at the bottom of his abyss.

Feeling around, he found the cylindrical object he'd tripped over; from running his hooves along it's structure and his limited sight, the object appeared predominantly red, hollow, and with symbols on one side. Some of these symbols pointed to an end that had been badly burned off not too long ago, he thought that it might've been from a traveller heading in the same direction he was going in, or perhaps heading in his opposite direction, believing it may be the tracks of the aliens.

He placed the tube gently against the wall if the travellers would ever come back to find it, and cautiously started to traverse the vertical wall in near blindness, feeling for a groove before lifting himself one step higher. This soon became natural to him, climbing the obstacle like an automaton left him in a state of mind where he forgot about time, purpose and a lack of energy. What would have been hours for most labourers became mere seconds in his mind.

This became a problem however, as when he tuned back into reality he froze where he was, terrified to think of how far he had to go and how far away the sound of the waterfall hitting the ground was. Gulping, he tried not to think about what would happen if he fell and splattered against the ground, continuing up the face of the wall. He moved to grasp for another small ledge, his heart burst into action when the rocks buckled beneath his pressure, tumbling deep into the blackness he had climbed through, leaving it up to his wits to scramble upwards for another hoofhold in the wall.

Engulfed in fear, he accidentally repeated to toss more loose ledges into the abyss, until finally clambering up quick enough to find one big ledge with enough strength to hold his whole weight. He pushed himself as far away from the chasm as possible, keeping his eyes locked on it's position and waiting for the feel of the lumpy and jagged characteristics of the wall against his back. He continued to slide away, his expectation of meeting with a cold, stone wall quickly replaced with confusion.

He turned around in hope of seeing the wall and slight fear of seeing some horrible, drooling monster towering over him, only this time, before him lay a colossal cave decorated with hundreds upon thousands of different sized stalactites clinging from the ceiling, glistening in a blue-white colour like stars. The river too had this look, as it finally flowed calmly through a crevice in the floor instead of a raging waterfall. The little colt simply sat in awe, staring at the formations and withstanding the cold by wrapping his legs and short tail around him on a freezing patch of stony ground.

Snapping out of the cave's beauty, he carefully slunk over to the edge of the abyss, sticking his small tongue out at it's emptiness in a taunting sense, before retracting once more from it's presence. Something caught his eye however, at first glance it was something circular and red, but as he trotted closer to the object he realised it was similar to the tube he found at the bottom of the waterfall, except this one had a cap on one end where the symbols pointed to. The colt first tried to remove the end by wrestling it with his teeth, when that didn't work he tried to bang it on the ground, when that plan also failed he scrapped the cap along a nook in the floor, holding the other end in his mouth. There was a snap as the rod instantaneously burst into flames at the other end, bright red light blinded the eye closest to the fire making him panic and toss the rod away in surprise.

He closed the light-sensitive eye and rubbed the eyelid with his hoof, the remainder of his sight tracked the rod as it flew a good distance through the air, stalactites dancing in the reflection of the red flame. He blinked constantly in an attempt to even-out the light in his eye, and seeing how this rod did nothing but lay where it was and burn, the colt approached the rod without much worry. He lifted it up in the grasp of his teeth so that it faced the opposite eye this time, continuing on he walked closer to the stream as he observed everything around him illuminate under the flame's influence.

The red fire slowly died away, leaving a black scorch mark on the tip of the rod just like the first one he discovered. When his eyes began to adjust back to the light of the cave's reflections, he felt the tickle of warm air brush against him. Believing it to be the trickery of his imagination reminding him of how cold it was, he disregarded it the moment before a strong gust of air caught him off guard, snuffing out the remainder of the flame leaving him in shadow again. He stood where he was, befuddled as to how a current of wind reach this far into the cave. The colt's eyes widened when a hopeful thought entered his head, dropping the rod, he quickened his pace once more, just as he did when he first entered the mountain yet this time he could see and run with far more ease, not to mention determination.

The size of the cave began to shrink down to that of a tunnel, until he turned a sharp corner to see…

The outside; the other end of the mountain; filled with lush, dark-green vegetation to which he could never had imagined and trees tall enough to scratch the starry night sky - the real night sky, shining with all the creativity space could offer like a universe painted with a dodgy brush. The young colt breathed in the warm air with a happy heart, his optimism telling him it won't get any worse hereafter as he looked back to the gaping mouth of stone, where the river flowed through and into the mountain.