A door in the green hillside
From the ridge, the cave is a dark wound in the green.
Distant, half-real, easy to ignore — except you can’t. The way in is a black mouth at the foot of the cliff, and your feet are already pointed at it.
The mouth
Daylight ends a few steps in.
Vines over wet stone. Cool air breathing out of the dark, thick with the smell of deep earth. Behind you, the jungle. Ahead, a throat of black rock that swallows the light. You step in.
The descent
The light behind you thins to a rumor.
Stone closes overhead. The floor tilts down. Your eyes give up on the dark and your hand finds the wall instead — slick, cold, going on forever. Down is the only direction left.
The bend
Then the passage turns.
Black rock, slick and breathing cold. The path bends, and the dark takes whatever waits beyond it. A blue light bleeds around the corner — faint, wrong, impossible this deep. Behind you, the way back is still open. Ahead, only the turn.
The grotto
Around the turn, the dark opens into stone and sky.
The passage exhales into a cathedral of stone. A lake lies still as glass. Far above, the mountain has cracked open — vines spilling down, a single shaft of sun falling all the way to the water, and the lake glowing blue where the light lands. The whole cave holds its breath.
Make it yours