It was actually a cold night. And phenomenally dark with the
moon nowhere in sight. And despite the fact that we were all literally glowing
with an array of glowthings like glow wands and glow sticks and glow bracelets
and glow masks, we couldn’t see anything in front of us. But we trekked out
anyways across fields of fragmented lava rock. A rough line of unearthly neons that
bobbed and shuffled across the desert.
The cave looked like a doughnut: a swirly dark hole in front
of us. We carefully climbed down its edges, circling and clinging desperately
to lava rock, wondering how a cave could form this way. Air bubbles?
Whirlpools?
We crouched down in parts, creeping through tight spaces
with our glow around us, protecting us from the fear of whatever lived in
there. But it was dry, dusty. Not the place for creepy crawling things anyways.
After what seemed like hours, the cave opened up into a dark
cavern. We stopped. We looked around. We spread out into the space. And then
someone said, “Well?” And someone else, “Grab a rock.”
We crushed our glowthings with rocks and they sprayed light
onto our fingers. We flung the light at the walls and the floor, splattering
every surface with stars. We created worlds. Galaxies. And the hum of the light
filled the enormous space with a warmth and electricity entirely palpable and
real. I never imagined that such an unnatural light could be so beautiful. We
leaned against the walls and disappeared into them, the specks of light on our
clothing and skin making us part of the rock itself.
When the neon flecks started to dim, we crawled out of the
cave into the black night, unaccompanied by the glow of the things we’d left
behind. But we didn’t care. We were gods of creation. Immortal glow-spotted
beings. And we laughed and stumbled back to the road as the fluorescent stars in the cave behind us melted into nonexistence.
