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The Caves (5): To any explorers visiting the new Reservoir, they may find that just a bit away from the sandy water are a set of caves. Some of these connect back to the lake, but others rapidly plunge into darkness. It wouldn't be hard to get lost in here, but thankfully there are some very odd lights to help guide you out. If you turn off your light down some of these dark paths, you may find yourself surrounded by glowing pastel lights. A closer inspection reveals that you seem to be looking at some sort of glowing caterpillars. An internet search will reveal that Destiny City scientists have been researching the strange, unnamed creatures, but the articles are very limited. If you take them out of the cave they seem to shrivel up almost immediately. They’re neat, but clearly meant to be stay in their natural habitat.
It was not, objectively, a great idea to go spelunking (spelunking. pssh. 'spelunking', more like. this wasn't real spelunking, which Strix had done a few times in their life but had distinctly not been this nonetheless) in some random caves kind of outside of town, and they had good nightvision but it wasn't that good, but sometimes they just really needed to get somewhere else. Be somewhere else. Sit on the sand for a few hours, and get a little sunburned, and feel the sand against their skin and the weight of it with water all worked through - and then, usually, remember in quick succession a few things. One: Destiny City was a major metropolitan area. Two: this meant it had a lot of damn people. Three: this meant shrieking children and yelling teenagers and. People? In general? Who, in general, Strix was not super fond of most days.
So instead of spending time hanging around in slash on the reservoir proper, they'd opted to bike over to the caves, which were just far enough out that they were much scarcer with the people. Thank god, honestly? Not that that meant there wasn't TikTok influencers hiding somewhere in the caves, there probably was, but out of sight meant out of mind. Maybe those types of people could fall down a hole and twist an ankle, for all Strix cared.
Which was kind of mean of them, honestly, and they knew that, but they weren't about to thought police themself into being a little angel. They were alone! Nobody could read their mind!
(Not that people could read their mind on the regular! But sometimes they really kind of wondered, given their siblings!!)
Anyway, that had been a train of thoughts and events they'd managed to get through and finish about twenty minutes ago, and now they were twenty minutes into wandering alone around a dark cave. Which was actually... kind of great? It was vaguely cool to cold, and vaguely mossy, and they did love a good moss, and for at least three minutes they'd just sat on the ground and thought about moss. But they couldn't just sit there forever, and it was a far enough drive they didn't feel like making it out here tomorrow, so onwards they went.
It wasn't as dark in here as it was in the past few sections, though, even not lit by a flashlight. The whole passageway was ringed with softly glowing pastel lights, smaller than a finger, adhered to the stone of the walls and ceiling. Looking closer, Strix determined these were - caterpillars? Some kind of insect that looked a lot like caterpillars. They weren't an insect expert, but they'd picked something up from spending enough time with someone who thought very deeply about sitting in the dirt and looking at cool bugs. Not that determining caterpillar shape was difficult; there were only so many things that looked like that, and they weren't quite worms, and they weren't quite legless lizards. Easy.
They were delightful, though, and not incredibly afraid of one very slow-moving and careful human, so of course Strix took photos. This was a good memory to keep; this was a good memory to engrave into their own personal annuals of their album, of their portfolio.
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