“Hmmmm hmmm, hmm hmmm hmmmm, hm hm hm hm hmmmm.”

CLAP

A moment of silence, as Jen tried to use the acoustic echoes to get a feel for her surroundings. Then, satisfied that the wall to her left was still the only interesting object of note, she continued on, pickup back up the song she had been humming.

It hadn’t taken long after setting out for the absolute silence of the place to get to Jen. Earlier she had still been possessed of a certain amount of terror that kept her focused on just surviving, but her short break upon reaching the wall had cleared her mind. Now armed with a goal, and moving quickly with the help of the wall to guide her forwards, her earlier fear had been replaced with a nervous tension. The occasional echolocation clapping had helped break up the oppressive silence, but Jen needed to make more noise to banish it completely for the sake of her remaining sanity.

And so she had started singing. She didn’t have a bad voice, at least not that anyone had ever told her. And she’d certainly done enough singing in church growing up that it should have been clear if she couldn’t hold a tune or keep the right pitch. But that was when Jen’s primary sense was still sight. Having been in the darkness for a reasonable amount of time now, she had grown to rely on her sense of hearing to tell her things that eyes no longer could. So it wasn’t that her singing was terrible. Her ears were just more sensitive, able to pick up quavers and off key notes that snuck their way in.

Eventually she gave up singing as a bad job. She’d been having a hard time trying to find good songs to sing anyways. Unwilling to start talking to herself, she had turned to humming to keep herself entertained as she picked her way along the slowly curving wall. It worked out quite nicely. Her humming wasn’t loud enough to irritate her ears, and occasionally a note or two would resonate with the cave a little, adding an unexpected depth to her improvised melodies.

The rhythm of her music had also helped her keep a good pace moving forwards. Take two beats to sweep for pits or loose rocks, one to step forwards, and one to rebalance. Clap every time she ran out breath, and listen to see if there were any interesting echoes worth leaving her wall to go investigate. So far there hadn’t been any, Jen only getting a feeling of vast emptiness except for the wall adjacent to her. She remained optimistic though that she would come upon something interesting soon.

She was right. Not long after that, one of Jen’s regular leg sweeps to check the ground came across across an unusual rock structure on the ground. Wanting more information on it, she knelt down, reaching out with her hands to get a better understanding of what she had come across.

Her face fell a little as she realized that the strange structure was one she was already familiar with. It was the stone cairn she had built before starting this expedition. The wall that she had been tracing was not a wall, but a titanic column supporting the middle of the cave.

Jen was experiencing mixed feelings about this. Her first response was that of frustration, of having expended all that effort only to end up right where she began. Thinking it through though, she decided it wasn’t all bad. She had learned a little bit more about her surroundings, and she hadn’t been injured in the process.

That still left Jen with the need to figure out the next step of her plan. She had explored the entire length of the wall, and hadn’t come across anything immediately interesting. She would need to pick a direction to go exploring further in, one that would not have the aid of a solid surface like the wall to prevent herself from travelling in circles. While she could use the echoes off the pillar to orient herself to begin with, Jen was afraid of travelling far enough out to lose ‘sight’ of that landmark, where she could end up wandering in circles until she met her end.

Jen needed some method of travelling in a straight line, and preferably a way of marking her path for future reference. Loose stones would help with the latter if she could gather them up into landmarks, but Jen needed something else. With a sigh, she pulled her comfortable t-shirt off. Momentarily thankful that her shirt was made of a soft cotton, she began to tear it into thin strips, starting from the bottom edge and working upwards. Once her T-shirt had been reduced to something approximating a crop top she stopped, pulling it back on and gathering up her strips. Carefully she began to tie them together. Once all the scraps had been combined, Jen estimated her makeshift rope to be around fifteen feet in length. It was lumpy in places from the many knots, and would probably rip in two if put under any amount of strain, but that was alright.

One of Jen’s favorite classes high school had been geometry. She’d enjoyed learning about the math behind it all, and had found coming up with proofs to be right up her alley, but what had truly stuck with her from that class had been the module on the construction of complex shapes. The ability to use nothing more than a straightedge and a compass to draw just about anything had been inspiring to her at the time. And her t-shirt rope could easily function as either a straightedge or compass.

Armed with her new tools, but shivering a little from her now exposed stomach, Jen decided to head away from her pillar at a forty five degree angle. It had felt like she had first arrived at the pillar heading directly towards it, so in order to explore a new direction Jen would be leaving at an angle. Tying two rocks into the ends of her rope to act as weights, Jen marched straight away from the rocks before marking that location with the other end of the rope. Keeping a small amount of tension in the rope from her starting point, she quickly paced out the edge of the circle, arriving at the wall. The construction of a 45 degree right triangle was a simple one, but she now had a direction of travel.

Making progress forward was straightforward as well, simply requiring Jen to make constant markers along her path. Two markers were used with her straightedge rope to determine the direction of travel, and then a new pile would be placed at the end of her rope to be used as a marker for further travel.

It was slower going than walking alongside a wall, but Jen was kept busy enough gathering rocks and measuring directions that she didn’t really notice the reduction in speed. The effort it took to build her path markers eventually took its toll.

Tired of searching for more stones, Jen decided she deserved a break. Her hunger had begun to make itself known, a combination of the amount of time and the level of physical exertion burning through her last meal. As Jen sat down on the stone floor she could feel the hole in her stomach slowly growing. It was manageable for now, but she knew she would need food soon if she continued to be active like this.

As Jen rested, her hearing began to pick up a noise that was just on the edge of her perception. Her first thought was that of a steady metronome, ticking away. Curious as to what could be making this noise, the first noise she had heard since being brought into this dark cave, she wanted to immediately go and check it out. She could vaguely guess that it was off to her left, and was hopeful that as she travelled closer she would get a better idea of direction. Travelling back down her path a little, Jen again used her rope as a compass, quickly managing to determine the direction of her branching path.

Buoyed by this new sound, Jan made quick progress, the noise steadily growing louder. However, Jen also noticed that the further she travelled, the less rocks were available to use for building as the ground became smoother and smoother. After finally spending a few minutes looking for rocks, Jen realized that there would likely be no more stones ahead.

At the same time, she was now close enough to tell more about the rythmic sound. The ticking noise had revealed itself to be a light splashing instead, a steady dripping of water onto rock. Thinking hard, Jen realized that while the paths she had made were useful for navigation, there wasn’t anything truly important that she would want to get back to. The rocks were useful resources to be sure, but water was a much more valuable one.

Without having to stop to measure her direction or gather rocks, Jen’s speed drastically increased. She still made a determined effort to feel the ground before her, not wanting to fall into a pool or pit that could prove impossible to escape from. Her caution was rewarded when one such testing motion landed not on stone, but splashed off the surface of a calm pool.

Jen had been constantly humming for several hours to keep her spirits high, but her throat had become quite dry and sore in return. Unsure of any tests she could conduct to test the water’s quality and driven by a need to soothe her throat, Jen decided to simply start with a small drink. Her cupped hands brought some water to her lips, where Jen greedily sucked it down. As she began to drink Jen focused her attention on her taste. The water was clean in flavor, and was surprisingly cold as it travelled down her throat. She didn’t taste any sulphur or fluorides, and didn’t feel any plants or particles either.

Satisfied, Jen decided to risk the pool further, and drank her fill, gulping handful after handful of the chilly liquid. Drinking all that water also helped dull her sense of hunger. Even if it wasn’t food, her stomach was mostly full again, and Jen found her mind and focus to be much clearer. It surprised her how much her mind had been dulled. Jen knew that her lack of sleep would probably become a problem soon as well, but before Jen slipped into oblivion she was determined to explore her new surroundings a bit. The source of water was soon determined to be a pool, the steady drip of water enough to balance out the minimal evaporation that occured.

It was on the other side of the pool that Jen struck paydirt. The rocky ground was covered by a layer of a thick and soft moss. This softer texture was enough for Jen to stop. Her tiredness, coupled with the surprisingly soft surface beneath her, soon had her drifting off into the land of dreams.