We Belong Here

We belong here. The dark is where we live. We stay here. It’s damp, chilly, cold, but we like that. We like that. We wander in the dark, reaching, grasping, unseen and unseeing. And we like it that way. We know what it feels like down here, every crook and crevice, every drip of water and every crack or break in the wall. We know where we are. We don’t need to leave.

We brush our hands against the wall, gently following the curve of the cool mossy stone as we creep quietly around the cave. We run our hand over a familiar bump in the rock. We position our foot gently over a crack. Gently we follow the wall around the curving bend we have followed so many times. A shiver goes up our body as we step in a small puddle of cold water, and we freeze. That isn’t supposed to be here. It wasn’t there yesterday, or the day before, but maybe, we think, it will be there tomorrow. We think about trying to brush it away, wash our face, or drink until our throat is clear, but decide against it. It is sick and uncertain and new. Maybe we will tomorrow, if it is still there.

We have only just realized we are hungry. Our stomach, empty, and we can’t remember the last time it was filled, and our throat is dry and lined with the dust and mold and moss that lines the cave. We wonder how long we have been down here, how long we have spent in the damp moss, how long the moss and dust has been clinging to our skin and caked in our lungs. We like it here, but a memory pricks at the back of our head, a memory of light and warmth, a memory of clear throats and clean skin, nothing like what is in our home, our cave. We recoil from the memory, also uncertain, and it makes us fear. We should drink the water, a small voice in the back of our head says, thinking about the light and warmth and clarity of the memory, but we say no, no it is strange and sick. No matter how starved or thirsty we are, we refuse to drink something foreign, something out of our cave. Something that maybe, we once knew, but now we flinch away from. But we cannot shake the feeling of wrongness and hunger. Hungry, thirsty, strange, sick.

Just after we begin to move again we freeze. Something is wrong, something is off, something unsettles us and makes us afraid. Our eyes dart around the cave, something we have not done in seriousness since we came here an uncertain and unimportant amount of years ago, but a movement that does not help with the noise as we cannot see the cave walls we have traced so many times in the familiar dark. We cannot tell what is happening but it is something suspicious and to be afraid of, we know. There it is again, we tilt our head and our ears towards the sound- a thud and a click and a noise that is not normally there. We do not know what to do, we have not prepared for this and we are not ready if we need to fight or hide. We have stopped where we stand, an air of anxiety and sick uncertainty around us. This sound, this invasion, it is more uncertain than the water. We pull back to touch the wall and stumble into the water again, but we do not recoil as we did before, too afraid of the sound to worry about the water, too used to the water to recoil.

The sound, again. Closer. This time accompanied by what sounds to us like laughing, a sound we have not heard in a while. Clear voices chime in, clean and full, nothing like our own raspy, dirty voices, but we cannot make out the words. We are frozen, stopped by the familiar yet foreign sound of voices that aren't our own. We stand, unmoving, hand behind us gently against the wall to steady our nervousness. We stand there as the sounds get closer, clearer, stand as something bright slowly begins to show itself.

Sudden pain.

Sudden brightness.

Sudden blindness.

We are blinded, more blind than in our familiar dark. Shrieks come from around us, maybe it is us, we cannot tell. We grasp against our eyes, covering them from the fire that has been brandished at us. We throw our bodies against the wall, the water from the puddle splashing against our skin, cold and unwelcome. There is terror and chaos, but there is nowhere to run, so instead we cower against the wall and push our bodies into the familiar rock.

A voice, too clean and cold to be one of ours, whispers from near the firelight, something we cannot make out. One of us opens their eyes, we can feel it. Slowly, anxiously, we all do. Eyes open, eyes meeting light for the first time in as far as any of us can remember, but as our eyes meet the light we remember days, lighter, warmer days we recoiled from not even five minutes ago. Memories of happiness and courage enter our minds as we look at the light. We remember fire and sun and grass, the moon and stars and the entrance to the cave.

We remember entering the cave. We remember descending into the dark in fear.

We remember, we remember, we remember.

We crawl towards the light, yearning and searching for the light and warmth we once experienced and all too quickly forgotten, bodies pushing past each other and surging towards the fire. Bodies once connected through fear of the unknown and fear of the known, intertwined and afraid of self. Still apprehensive of going forward without each other, but surging as a group we find strength.

We look at the light.

I look at the light.