I come from the cave people who dwell in the dark, and once a year my day would come to fetch the water from the drinking cavern. I liked to feel the gnarled roots that snaked along the limestone walls. The mud never bothered me since I was barefoot. I sometimes forgot how the sucking mud fought with me for each step, pulling into depths too heavy to salvage both my feet and my shoes. The torch I carried cast long shadows around and ahead of me. What a strange phrase, casting shadows, as if light is the sinister creator of those dark, shifting lines.
The groundwater pooled under an exposed sinkhole to the sky. It was like a tunnel running upward, leading to a dangerous revelation of the outside. The rule was to bow our faces to the water, get in, collect, and get out before temptation drew our eyes toward the brightness above. But when a shadow soared across the surface, a form my torch had not cast, I did look up and witnessed for the first time a bird in flight, and I followed that vast, spell casting light into a totally new world.
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