A Frequented Path

The young man found himself walking in a cave trying to head his way somewhere that there was light since what he was really trying to do was find an exit and he thought that it would be a great idea if he could find some luminescent walls that he could guide himself with but as of now it was pitch black and he was just winging it without any proper procedures on how to better handle his situation. The young man did not know how he got here but it probably had something to do with a certain fair maiden who had been telling him a few things about maps at the dining table of her place. He remembers having a conversation with her about that, but he has forgotten the details of their dialogue together. It could also be his mind creating memories that did not exist just to comfort him.

The young man had not given it much thought about it then but now that he did, she had rather too light of a skin to be a peasant living in that small cabin. She mentioned she had sold their country’s national dish at a warung before which he took to imply that she was not originally from here. She did not elaborate much further on the subject and the young man had not asked any further questions about it. He thought that there was something off about her the moment he saw her enter the cabin, but he just could not figure out why. The young man was initially suspicious about her but trusted the fair maiden enough to listen to her explaining the map of the area he had spawned into which he has now inconveniently forgotten all about. She took control and responsibility as his host after the monk died when she could have just thrown him out. 

As all of the other previous revelations, the information the fair maiden divulged was rather vague for him to understand and she was adamant that the young man could not take a picture of the map since it was not accurate enough and incomplete which he thought was a ridiculous reason but refrained from telling her that. The penultimate memory that he could recall before he found himself in this cave was having a drink that the fair maiden had prepared for him before his head started getting heavy. This happened while the young man and the fair maiden were playing a game of chess which both of them were about to stalemate in a few turns. She told the young man that it was getting rather late, but she was not tired yet, so she asked him if he wanted to play chess with her before they went to sleep. 

The young man was rather exhausted himself, but he could not get himself to decline the fair maiden since she had been such a nice host and all, so they played the world’s most popular board game for a while until he dozed off. Now the young man was in a cave trying to find his way out. He had his distrust for her before, but he had no grounds for it then. The cynicism that he had is definitely justified now he would think though he was still rather disappointed that he was betrayed, nonetheless. What the young man could not understand is why she allowed him to keep the camera that he had with him. She could have just taken it when he was knocked out. The fair maiden might have also been a victim as well and could be somewhere in the caves here with him as well though the young man highly doubted that.

The young man came up with a theory thinking that the camera was originally hers, but she lost it then when she saw the young man with it she must have thought that he was a dangerous bandit who had stolen it from her so made a pact with the monk to take it back though that still does not explain how he ended up dead or was that also just an act. The blood seemed too real for them to have been faking it he considered. But again, similar to the bodies in the meadows where he initially woken up, he realized that since he was no doctor and could not confirm whether someone is truly dead or not. But one thing that the young man might not have realized was that he was a stranger in these parts and had just strangely appeared in someone’s cabin unannounced. He was obviously not seeing things through the eyes of the fair maiden.

The young man later found the camera lying in the ground of the cave after a few hundred steps of walking in the direction of light. That threw his theory right out of the window. Although it is a bit dark in this cave, the young man believes it is the same camera though he could not really confirm this since all the pictures that were in them had been deleted.  The young man could not remember there being any compromising pictures in the camera, so he failed to understand why they had gone through this whole hassle to get rid of him and the entire gallery in the camera. The accomplice that the maiden had must have been rather strong to carry him all the way inside of this cave. This was the young man assuming that the fair maiden had some help with handling him instead of doing things alone.

The young man was able to use the flash from the camera to help himself navigate out of the cave. When he did, he immediately looked up at the sky to see that it was getting cloudy. It was no longer as bright as it was when he last remembered it like the default Windows XP desktop wallpaper that reminded him of his childhood years. How long ago was it then? The young man was parched now after walking around in a cave for who knows how long but now that it would seem like it was going to rain, he could use the rainwater to quench his thirst when it eventually does. The young man could not see any other source of water from where he was standing. He tried to look harder but something else caught his eye. The young man could see two figures sitting down not far from where he was, so he walked a little bit farther to their direction to get a closer look.

When he got near enough to them, the young man could see that there was a young couple not far from the mouth of the cave he had just gotten out of having a picnic. It was rather odd to have a picnic at a time like this considering the look of the sky tells that rain was imminent. The weather in this place that he had been spawned in has not been so predictable. The young man could still recall when he had just woken up here when the sky was clear but all of a sudden there was a strike of lightning which shocked both him and a little girl who was flying a kite then. He wondered where she could be now. Maybe she was used to it like the young couple over there who seemed quite accustomed to the bizarre weather here already. But then, the moment that thought came to his mind they were already packing up and keeping their stuff in a carriage behind a familiar tree that he had just noticed.

The young man was no longer beating around the bush anymore. He was getting desperate now and there were no more maybes in his mind about what he was about to do. It is definite that he was going to ask for a ride from them, so the young man began to walk in their direction but when they saw him, they immediately dropped what they were doing and approached him to greet him a good morning concurrently. The young man could not tell if it was actually morning or not since he lost his watch, but he took their word since they seemed sure about it. He really could not tell from the state of the sky currently. They then asked him with an exasperated tone simultaneously if he had already finished his cave exploration again at the same time. The young man felt like a child whose parents were impatiently waiting for him to be done playing on the slide at the park. 

This young man was thinking to himself whether these two were assigned as his chaperones or something. They seemed to know him and even expected for him to come out from the cave without the need to go in and help him which he now knows that he did not need with hindsight now that he actually managed it though not without the help from the flash of the camera that he mysteriously found. How did they know him or were they mistaking him for somebody else? That was also likely since the young man was so smudged with dirt all over his body that he would not be able to recognize himself in the mirror. It was just a small cave that he caught himself, but the young man did not see or stumbled upon anyone else in there though that was probably because it was too dark. He heard some screeching noises in there but assumed that those were just the sound of the bats. He was actually hoping that they were just harmless animals instead.

The young man was still surprised with himself that he was able to find his way out and now these two are asking him if he has finished exploring the cave. He had been getting tired and confused with his situation but above all he was now starting to get angry but before he was about to lash out at them, he collected himself and thought better he should just answer their question and affirmed to them that he had indeed finished and wanted some water from them. They gave him some water from a flask which he gratefully thanked them for after he had received it. They asked him if he had found anything noteworthy inside the cave. The young man considered their question for a while then showed them the camera that he had found for a second time. He told the two that the first time was at the meadows and the second time was at the cave just now.

They did not look impressed and again asked the young man altogether what it was about the camera that was so interesting to him. Their questions were starting to get weird and the way they were saying things simultaneously as if they had the same minds thinking the same thing at once did not help. The young man asked them if they have never seen a camera before or do, they only take pictures with their phones? Before they could answer, a downpour started, and they quickly ushered the young man into the carriage and started riding off. It seemed only natural that he would get into the coach while the both of them held the reins of the horses as they clearly looked the part with their fashionable dresses. The young man initially wanted to grab the picnic mat they had left together with the other stuff they had still yet to collect but the postilion urged him to not bother with it.

Before he got into the coach, the male half of the couple introduced himself as the coachman while the other half introduced herself as the postillion. The young man nodded as if he understood what either of those roles did and they must have either erroneously assumed that he did or had no bother whether he did or not. The coachman and postilion had more concerns for the weather, however. They had come prepared for the rain as they had their raincoats on which they wore above their lavish clothes. The young man was never really good at remembering names and they never introduced themselves but somehow, he knew that it was going to be easy to differentiate between them because the man was called the coachman and the woman referred to herself as the postilion which lacked the suffix that made them distinct even though deep down, he thought the roles were similar.