Painted history

Alexis slowly, almost reverently stepped into the roundish chamber, the warm glow of her torch illuminating the painted walls.

The very place, small as it might be, whispered of ancient secrets and it filled her with a sense of childlike wonder. Just like when she would explore such ageless caverns with her friends all this time ago back in Garrah, even though they knew they would be in trouble if their parents found out. With their minds still young to the world, that threat of a grounding had seemed so much more daunting than the dangers the grownups wanted to protect them from. And yet, they had been lucky enough to never experience anything worse than a bruise here and a scare caused by the scuttling of some random animal there. Maybe, knowing what could happen sometimes spoke those dangers into existence in the first place, a step too hesitant making them reality where an ignorantly confident stride would have gone unharmed.

Alexis mused, as she slowly walked along the perimeter of the cavern and took in the simplistic paintings, that if it wasn’t for the taint of coercion she would have truly loved exploring like this. Child her would have.

The paintings remembered her a lot of what she had discovered back in Garrah, plainly, roughly, but still lovingly depicting elements, animals, plants, the natural world captured with the muted colours itself would offer freely, and adorned by beautiful patterns that might have something to tell, but mostly felt like decoration. She remembered that back home, in those caves, there could be found large round stones that where carved with surprisingly intricate patterns, given that the people of old should not have had elaborate tools to fashion them. She had loved those stones. Alexis had never taken one home, that would have felt like stealing, but she had taken to try and replicate them to the best of her abilities in painting and, much to her mother’s amused chargrin, carving them into walls and furniture.

The memory bringing a faint smile to her lips, she proceeded her exploration until she lingered on the depiction of a whirlwind. This was the closest of a representation of what the twin gods to her knowledge encompassed she had found so far. No tusks at all, yet even more of the inverted triangles. This cave most likely predated the worship as it was today. Maybe the Red Keep above had been built after it was discovered? To secure access to it? They once must have held the message hidden in those paintings in high regard.

So what had happened that it lay abandoned now? Had it been actively shunned or just fallen out of importance? Did the Ozainae even still know it was here, a treasure trove of their ancient history? Or had everything prior to their prophetess’s ordeal been erased from memory? That would be a shame. Alexis truly wanted to understand the story that was told on these walls, and she was a stranger to these lands.

She slowly continued her walk, her mind trying to put together what the pictures wanted to tell. Her gaze wandered from one painting to the next until both her eyes and her step halted abruptly.

Just a breath later, Alexis approached the wall, her fingertips tracing the depiction of a hammer.