(The Silence of Ancient Light, continued)
The howl of the storm echoed through the tube, a banshee screaming in furious reverberation, increasing in ferocity and beginning to drive sideways rain many meters in from the cliff entrance. Any thoughts of waiting it out near the entrance now gone from their minds, Anna and Laxmi scrambled toward the inner end and peered into the dark void beyond, their headlamps piercing the gloom with twin beams of focused light.
The roughly eight-meter long by one-meter wide tube ended much as it began, with a sudden and smooth circular opening in the midst of an inward-facing cliff. Beyond lay a dark, cavernous chamber, its size lost in the black, though Anna’s headlamp picked out crystalline reflections sparkling from what might be the far side, a few hundred meters away. The floor of the chamber lay not far below them, a half-dozen meters, with a deeper narrow gully between the main floor and the wall from which she peered.
Read more at…
Yes, I know I told you that I was going to resume work on an older work-in-progress, for the moment called Shadow, but I also said I’ll still continue with Silence, didn’t I? So continue I have done, and will do, and here you go, the latest installment. Anna and Laxmi escape from the hurricane, burrowing deeper into the cave they’ve found, but what awaits them inside? What secrets of the mysterious missing Keplerians might be revealed?
You’ll have to read the scene to find out! And as always, I welcome feedback of any kind.
Until the next scene…
header image credit: user:darkmoon1968 / pixabay.com under Pixabay License
Matt Fraser 