Hall of Infinite Doors
The trip out of the cave was horrifying. The trip down the mountain was harrowing. The moon did not provide adequate illumination for mountain-climbing, but every time you stopped to rest you imagined snake-heads emerging from every crack and crevice in the stone to bite you and kill you, and your fear prompted to action. When you returned to the tribe you passed out from exertion and terror and general exhaustion just barely inside your cave, clutching your morbid artifacts to your chest, and you were not roused until well afternoon, with your mate standing over you worriedly, and the primal grunts and snarls that passed for language among your people echoing from the canyon.
You tried to tell them. You illustrated for them, you showed the things you brought back. Your language is not very developped, and you had to draw pictures, and on the merits of words alone you would not have been believed. But no one could argue with the hounded, terrified look in your eyes, or the hopelessness and truth with which you argued. The people around you, the thing you WERE now were not developped creatures - but they were humans, and they knew. You were listened to, and strong men were sent up the mountainside, and when they returned terrified the snow was already speckling the ground and it was already too late to flee. Winter was coming, and the nine-headed beast was still alive, and would always be alive, and there was nothing to do but wait out the season with the thing as your neighbor.
Winter was hungry, and cold, and desperate. Firewood was difficult to acquire as the snows became deep and the pass from the valley became choked, but it was cleared. In your efforts, you did more than simply bring your people a message. You turned a group of primitive hunters gathered together through an animalistic need for survival into a community. And what's more, you showed them that not every challenge can be overcome, and some things were and always will be bigger than men.
When spring came, and the hunting did not improve, and men saw the bulk of a huge beast in the forest and the mountain, your tribe decided to abandon the valley in which they had lived for so long. Several could not do so, worshipping the mountain as their god, and they were left there, and no one knew what became of them. Your mate and your son led your tribe down the valley of the mountain stream, and as you drew further and further away from the place where you had worshipped and wintered and staved and feared, the weather grew warmer, and fish appeared in the streams, and birds were sighted in the sky, and men preyed on wild rabbit and deer. Eventually you settled along the riverbank when it became deep. Your people learned to make houses by stretching hides along a frame of wood, and you fished and grew old and had children and led your people. Perhaps you did not save their mountain-god and help them survive the cold and foodless winter, and perhaps you did not defeat the hideous beast which made life there impossible, but you survived, and you lived happy, and who can say that for your leadership your people did not grow?
You tried to tell them. You illustrated for them, you showed the things you brought back. Your language is not very developped, and you had to draw pictures, and on the merits of words alone you would not have been believed. But no one could argue with the hounded, terrified look in your eyes, or the hopelessness and truth with which you argued. The people around you, the thing you WERE now were not developped creatures - but they were humans, and they knew. You were listened to, and strong men were sent up the mountainside, and when they returned terrified the snow was already speckling the ground and it was already too late to flee. Winter was coming, and the nine-headed beast was still alive, and would always be alive, and there was nothing to do but wait out the season with the thing as your neighbor.
Winter was hungry, and cold, and desperate. Firewood was difficult to acquire as the snows became deep and the pass from the valley became choked, but it was cleared. In your efforts, you did more than simply bring your people a message. You turned a group of primitive hunters gathered together through an animalistic need for survival into a community. And what's more, you showed them that not every challenge can be overcome, and some things were and always will be bigger than men.
When spring came, and the hunting did not improve, and men saw the bulk of a huge beast in the forest and the mountain, your tribe decided to abandon the valley in which they had lived for so long. Several could not do so, worshipping the mountain as their god, and they were left there, and no one knew what became of them. Your mate and your son led your tribe down the valley of the mountain stream, and as you drew further and further away from the place where you had worshipped and wintered and staved and feared, the weather grew warmer, and fish appeared in the streams, and birds were sighted in the sky, and men preyed on wild rabbit and deer. Eventually you settled along the riverbank when it became deep. Your people learned to make houses by stretching hides along a frame of wood, and you fished and grew old and had children and led your people. Perhaps you did not save their mountain-god and help them survive the cold and foodless winter, and perhaps you did not defeat the hideous beast which made life there impossible, but you survived, and you lived happy, and who can say that for your leadership your people did not grow?
