Hall of Infinite Doors
You turn your squinting gaze at your own cavern and notice that it extends quite a ways, turning almost instantly into a recessed, low bit that you can't quite see due to the angle of the walls. The floors are heaped with bits of acquired objects and shaped tools: knives whittled from bones or pieces of flint, scales and fur and clumps of fluff in various stages of being turned into clothing, unfired clay jars holding ground herbs and pitifully small remains of stored food, tools carved inexpertly from rock and all over the walls, in bands extending horizontally from the cave entrance back into the gloom, symbols and pictures and artwork carved into the flat rock of the cavern walls. They're crude bits of artistry, depicting sticklike men hunting, mating, raising children and worshipping the mountain, depicted often as a hermaphroditic spear-wielding human surrounded by fish and birds, but the amount of them, as well as their significance, stuns you a little. You spot a flat rock and crude chisel by your foot; you were apparently carving something when interrupted by your arrival.
Further exploration of the cave reveals something even more startling: you have a family. A crude individual of the opposite gender as you hunches in a pile of pointy, sharp feathers at the back of the cave, nursing both the embers of a small fire and an angry gnarl of baby with the same barkless stick. They turn to you and emit a snarl that would be ordinarily indecipherable - but with your new memories you can translate it. It apparently means "done" or "finished", though is phrased as a question, and before long you cobble together the appropriate response and grunt it back to them in a way that seems pleasing. You realize now what you were doing before: carving a record of your last few days, so if the winter kills you your child might know who you were.
Now, more than ever, you feel your hunger more acutely. Though your emotions are a bit of a jumble at the moment, the memories you acquired show you actually caring for your mate, and your newborn son, and this emotion overcomes you in a way. You feel protective, worried not just for yourself but for the future generation. Now more than ever the need for provisions strikes you, and you know that you can't just lay down and take this.
All members of your tribe hunt, and have the means for hunting. Without much difficulty you find your tools for killing: a large cudgel wedged with pieces of sharp black obsidian, a cluster of small flint stones sharpened in such a way that you could hurl them as a rude dart, and a belt of tough animal fibers upon which you could affix both a pouch of the latter and a place for the former.
Whether you're searching for the means behind this strange drought of food or just some provisions for the winter, you know you can't just let this be. For your son, and your mate, you will either find them food or die trying. Even a cursory glance at the walls around you show you what you are: a hunter, to die hunting, not shivering and starving in your cave.
All that's left to decide is where to go.
Further exploration of the cave reveals something even more startling: you have a family. A crude individual of the opposite gender as you hunches in a pile of pointy, sharp feathers at the back of the cave, nursing both the embers of a small fire and an angry gnarl of baby with the same barkless stick. They turn to you and emit a snarl that would be ordinarily indecipherable - but with your new memories you can translate it. It apparently means "done" or "finished", though is phrased as a question, and before long you cobble together the appropriate response and grunt it back to them in a way that seems pleasing. You realize now what you were doing before: carving a record of your last few days, so if the winter kills you your child might know who you were.
Now, more than ever, you feel your hunger more acutely. Though your emotions are a bit of a jumble at the moment, the memories you acquired show you actually caring for your mate, and your newborn son, and this emotion overcomes you in a way. You feel protective, worried not just for yourself but for the future generation. Now more than ever the need for provisions strikes you, and you know that you can't just lay down and take this.
All members of your tribe hunt, and have the means for hunting. Without much difficulty you find your tools for killing: a large cudgel wedged with pieces of sharp black obsidian, a cluster of small flint stones sharpened in such a way that you could hurl them as a rude dart, and a belt of tough animal fibers upon which you could affix both a pouch of the latter and a place for the former.
Whether you're searching for the means behind this strange drought of food or just some provisions for the winter, you know you can't just let this be. For your son, and your mate, you will either find them food or die trying. Even a cursory glance at the walls around you show you what you are: a hunter, to die hunting, not shivering and starving in your cave.
All that's left to decide is where to go.