Crystal Illumination

Rishi had laid on his back for about five minutes. It seemed only a heartbeat in time for him. The rumbling of the chamber had stopped and all the water in the cave had drained into chambers below. He just barely sensed that the ledge on which he lay stood fully ten meters above the bottom of the cave. There was no going back. Was there a way forward?

He finally stirred and rolled toward the rift against the wall of the chamber. He put his hand into it and felt cool water.

"How could there still be water in there?"

His geologist mind drew blank after blank after blank.

But then, perhaps he should be thankful, the vein of glass on which he perched might have a thirty foot drop on both sides and that water might be the only thing preventing him from falling to his death.

"I really can't wait. I really mustn't." He thought to himself.

He looked at the cavern, his home for the past few days, and noticed how very little of the green glowing algae remained. Much of it had been spirited away by the nearly invisible effects of the water pouring through the cave.

Rishi listened to the river flowing down from the ceiling of the Chamber. It was fast, but not so fast as to sound terrible. "The water must have lain across the ceiling of this chamber for eons, and today the roof decided to give way. Today it decided to take my life and the life of my new friend. It only half succeeded."

"I really can't wait. Any wait is taking a chance of further collapse."

The fear of death weighed over him. It was as if the Angel herself floated above him, tempting him to do something rash. Yet She also temped him to do nothing, because She knew nothing was as rash as something.

Rishi put his hand in the water again and felt the wall of the crevasse he needed to sink into. It was smooth and oddly angular, feeling along it he formed a mental image of its structure. Then it dawned on him, "I'm sitting on the side of a massive quartz crystal!"

Leaning his face over the water Rishi saw a distant glow.

"That is what the old man meant when he told me I'd know where to go, there's light at the end of this tunnel."

"How could there be light this deep in the cave? The light looks white, but honestly in this much darkness how could I be sure that the faint light I'm seeing is white. It could be the glow of green algae."

Beneath him, much deeper in the bowels of this mountain, came a rumbling as more eroded stone collapsed under its own weight and the weight of the melt water.

"No time for thinking," said Rishi outloud, and he plunged head first into the water.

Righting himself he looked down the dark water filled passage way, put his head above the water, took a deep breath and swam as fast as he could for the blurry light ahead of him.

As he swam he kept floating to the top of the passage way, scraping his back on the sharp points of large quartz crystals. This spurred him downward as well as forward toward the light.

He exhaled his breath slowly over time as he swam down the 45 degree decline toward the light. As he approached the light source he was nearly out of breath.

The light streamed in through a small opening in the surface of the crystal passage way. Even though the passage way continued on a down angle, Rishi squeezed through the opening toward the source of light. He ran completely out of breath. He allowed his buoyancy to lift him upward toward the light as his lungs ached to take a breath. They burned and pleaded, trying to inhale oxygen, but he forced them to obey to his will, to take a breath now meant death, to wait perhaps another minute meant life.

The light grew brighter and brighter as he floated upward. He kicked a little to gain speed. It seemed to take an interminable amount of time.

As he approached the surface of the water, the light was blinding and he had to close his eyes. He took a deep breath and tried to open his eyes. He could not, his eyes were not prepared for the light of day.

His mind pondered the light. Had he just come into a chasm in the mountain? Was the light the light of the sun or was there some other trick the mountain was playing.

Feeling around the edges of the shaft he and just floated through he found more quartz crystal. He felt large hexagonal structures. It seemed too dangerous to climb out before he opened his eyes. As a geologist he knew there could be very sharp tiny crystals that might slice him to ribbons as he attempted to lift himself out of the water.

He relaxed in the pool and waited.

He felt the distant rumbling of crashing rock and decided he'd better pull himself out anyway. Feeling around he felt a horizontal patch of large crystal. It was laying on its side so he pulled himself upon it.

Just as he slid onto the glass he felt the water leave his feet. The tunnel beneath him had just drained and now there was a 20 or 30 meter drop behind him. He would only be able to move forward from here.

"The cave seems to like that theme," Rishi thought, "Always forward, never back."

Laying on his back, Rishi began to slowly open his eyes. The light was blinding but he felt sure he was safe in opening them.

He lay on the inside of a giant quartz geode. It was 14 meters in diameter. The top was fractured in two places, in the top most fracture light poured in from above. The other fracture, along the east side, was dark.

"Perhaps the lit fracture is the exit", he thought, "but how am I to get there. Perhaps this whole room was water filled when the old man's teacher entered it."

Rishi sat up and surveyed his surroundings. Most of the room was white quartz, but a small block of it, which he happened to be laying upon, was amethyst. It was stunning.

For a moment Rishi wondered if he should be rushing along, after all it was possible these geodes would be the next to collapse.

Rishi laid back down and drifted to sleep. Apparently the adrenalin had worn off.

He awoke several hour later in total darkness.

Remembering where he was and his previous day's adventures he mused, "clearly that is sun light. Now I must wait for dawn before I can try to climb out of this wonderful structure."