Kpleeb awoke with the daylight shining into his eyes.
It was a warm and comforting light and he smiled to himself as he laid there with in a daze. He rolled over and felt the smoothness of the ground beneath him. He rested closing his eyes blissfully. Slowly, a memory of blackness crept up on him, and in a moment, he jerked his eyes open and rubbed the haze away. Above, the sun looked and felt like daylight, but there was something wrong about it. He looked around.
He was in a strange cave. The walls were far enough apart that he could not have reached them even if he were as tall as the fabled plains-giant. The floor was hard and smooth and it curved upwards toward the wall just like caves back home. But these floors were too smooth and too shiny, and where they rose upward, the ceiling met them perfectly. Kpleeb looked up and marveled at the perfect transition. These walls had so many sides that not even Pfftul would be able to tell where each side ended and the next began.
Kpleeb turned to place his palms on the floor. There was a slight warmth in them.
[Must be close to fire river.]
He grunted and sniffed the air cautiously. But… there was no sour smell or warmth in the air. The cave had no entrance that he could see, and yet it was neither hot nor cold. He carefully touched all of the walls, and then stood on his toes to follow the ceiling of the cave as it rose. There was a point where he could not reach the ceiling even when he used his hairy legs to vault upward with outstretched hand.
He stopped after leaping a few times and panting, stared up toward the sun. It was becoming dusk, but he noticed that the sun did not move to fall beyond some distant feature. There was no colorful sunset; only a dimming. This new sun intrigued him, and so he sat down on the smooth cave floor and watched it carefully. Slowly, the sun dimmed and after twilight it became almost entirely black.
The air cooled as the sun when down, and Kpleeb curled into a ball at the lowest part of the floor. After some moments the moon appeared and shone silvery and dim above him. He noticed that it was very near where the sun had disappeared. With the warmth of the floor on his side, he drifted to sleep.
When Kpleeb awoke the sun was dim and yellow but becoming brighter. He yawned and rolled over. He looked around and noticed that there was a shallow outcropping on one of the cave walls. He stood and shuffled toward it and noticed the smell first. In the hollow of the outcropping lay a grey vegetable of some sort. Next to it lay a small chunk of savory meat. That was the smell that drew him. He reached out with his finger tip and touched the grey blob. It was warm.
He was hungry, but needed to relieve himself first. He turned in a circle and scanned the walls. On the side farthest from the food there was another outcropping. This one did not smell when he approached it, but there was a hole just bigger than both of his palms together. He bent and sniffed. He was not sure, but thought that it would make a reasonable defecation pit even though there was no smell there.
When he was done, he ate. The grey vegetable was bland but filling. He thought that it was similar to the ground-nuts that many of his cavepeople ate during the cold times before the yearly wetening. The meat was a little overcooked to his liking. There was no blood in it, but he ate it anyway. When he was finished eating the food that was there, the outcropping filled up with water. He could not see where it came from, but it tasted fine, if a little less mineral than the river water.
The sun grew bright and with it the heat grew. Kpleeb slept and woke when the sun was still very bright. He examined every piece of the cave walls and found no cracks. He slept. The sun grew dim, and the moon came. When he woke again the sun was brightening. He ate. It was the same food exactly. He slept. The sun grew dim. He woke and the moon came. He slept. There was nothing but the routine, the sun, the moon, the meat and grey vegetable that he began to call a flub because it reminded him of the grey, ball rodents that lived all around the canyon back home.
[Is this the pit of the damned?]
He slept and woke.
Kpleeb stared at the wall. [If this was the pit of the damned, there would be no food.]
He ate and slept. The moon came. He leapt at the moon but could not touch it. No one said there was not food in the afterlife. He tried to count the days, but he had never been good at counting, even when using his fingers and toes. Everything blended together.
