The cave was nearly impossible to find if you didn't know where to look.
The entrance lay hidden neatly behind one of the smaller cascades of a
shallow, slow-moving waterfall, the low stair-like drops in the stone
making the falls more pleasant than treacherous. To reach the entrance
to the cave, one simply had to slip behind the right cascade and follow a
short slope up past the drip and spray of the cool water until they
emerged into the dryer main area.
Occasionally, during the spring rains, the floodwaters would cause the
falls to spread and overflow their banks, making a rear entrance to the
cave necessary. This entrance could be found, if one looked hard enough,
hidden among the roots of a large tree about half a minute's walk behind
the falls. The hole that was the beginning of this entrance was outwardly
quite unremarkable, appearing at first to be the abandoned den of a family
of lynx. However, upon closer inspection one could see that the den had
been widened and reinforced.
If you entered the hole and kept following it past where the natural end of
the den would be, you would find yourself in a short tunnel that emerged
into the back of the treasure cave, which you would find both surprisingly
light and dry. In the roof of the cave, right at the edges where the stone
walls turned into ceiling, there were placed holes that let in a dappled light
from above. Vines and moss grew over the outside of each, hiding them
from sight but still letting enough light through that, in addition to the light
that sparkled back through the running water of the falls, made the cave
pleasantly bright.
Underneath each of the holes in the ceiling was a bowl-shaped indentation
in the rock, in which water collected when it rained. From each bowl ran
a shallow divet that led all the way to the waterfall at the front of the cave
and served as a pathway for the rainwater to run down if it overflowed the
bowls. In this way, the cave was kept surprisingly dry and always had
water to drink (except in the dry season, when one would have to walk to
the front of the cave and make a bit of a mess of oneself attempting to
drink from the falling water).
Along the walls of the cave there were indentations in the rock of various
shapes and sizes that held a wide array of things -- shiny stones,
hardened amber, butterfly wings, colorful feathers, and other strange and
unusual items that the inhabitant of the cave had decided were worth
collecting. In one remote corner there was what could only be called a
"nest" of soft things -- moss, feathers, shed fur -- where the inhabitant of
the cave slept.
This inhabitant was a kimeti - a doe named Undecorated Desire who
others called Want because of her almost selfish need to collect things
that she found pretty or interesting or attractive in some way. Want wasn't
home at the moment, but it was late in the afternoon and the sun was just
beginning to set, so she would surely soon return from her daily
wanderings, as she usually did, to spend the night in her precious cave of
treasures.
