This was my (rejected) submission for the recent “The Rabbit Dies First” anthology. I tinkered with it a bit and am posting it today, Halloween, because it sorta ended up horror-adjacent when I was writing it.

This, as with everything I’ve written before, is published here under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. You’re welcome to share it around, as long as you attribute it back to your dear pal, Old Pines. I encourage feedback, as well. I’d love to know what does and doesn’t work for the story, as I am still terribly inexperienced. If you like what you read and feel that I deserve a cup of coffee as a reward, I've got a Ko-fi page (ko-fi.com/oldpines) that I'm crap at keeping updated.

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy.

~OP

Her Gift

   “Bullshit!” snorted someone behind me; the ram, Davies, by the sound of it. His nostrils were the only ones in the group that could manage a proper snort anyway. “You must’ve read it wrong, Morris.”
   My ear flicked to brush off the interjection, but I maintained my focus on the wall before me. I tugged at my shirt, feeling uncomfortably confined. We all wore these thick, ridiculous khakis, trousers and shirt to match. It was too hot for the damned things, but they kept out thorns and bugs. Between the smudges of mud and sap, the outfits probably camouflaged us a bit, too. I was long past sick of them, despite any supposed benefits.
   The complaints continued behind my back while I looked over the markings again. The inscription was wind-eaten and flecked with moss. To the scruffy, grey ram—hell, to all of them—it probably looked like a bunch of gibberish. Even Bhattacharjee, our antiquities guy, was unfamiliar with this dialect; though, he was quick to point out that he grew up in Wales and his parents only taught him Bangla, so it was a bit dickheaded thinking that he would be. On the other paw, Indian cultism was my specialty and academia wasn’t keeping the bills paid or the mind occupied. How better to stimulate the mind and the bank account than wading through ass-deep rivers to read three thousand year old inscriptions beside the mouth of a cave in Bumfuck India?
   “Stuff it, Davies,” gruffed the expedition head, a stoat named Carlson, confirming my suspicion. “Unless you’ve been brushing up on your Sanskrit at rack time, instead of beating it to that old magazine you keep in your ruck.”
  It wasn’t Sanskrit; but, good luck telling her that. Not that it mattered; Davies hadn’t been brushing up on anything, of course. Everyone with a nose and half an ear knew what he was getting up to in his sleeping bag every night. There were eight of us on the team, and seven of us who existed in a state of perpetual amazement that the obnoxious cunt could still roll and unroll the damned thing. I turned back to our little assemblage with a scowl. The black tips of my long ears brushed the back of my shirt, and I considered my response on the off chance I’d be able to get a word in edgewise.
   Davies was doing his best not to allow it, pointing at the wall and bleating back, “Fuck off, boss girl. I may not be able to read a bunch of old scribbles, but—”
   Whatever he was about to say next came out as a sputtering, pink aerosol around Carlson’s fist. The stoat was a head shorter than me, which put her eyes level to the shaggy moron’s chest. She was a one-time student of mine, tense and wiry; but all that wire was coiled up tighter than a shark’s ass. You didn’t want to be the one to pop her spring. She landed with feet spread and knees bent, ready to pounce in for another hit if the first didn’t do the job. As she stood there, tail lashing into a black-fringed blur, the ram staggered back a step and dropped onto his ass with a string of unintelligible curses.
   “If I wanted your ‘but’,” she barked, relaxing her stance and giving her paw a shake, “I’d have packed a strap-on. Do us a favor and shut your goddamned trap.”
   Harmon, a hyperactive Dalmatian, and Ellis, a tall Irish wolfhound, helped the sheep to his feet. The three of them were former military, who had found mercenary work to be more lucrative. Davies chuckled and daubed with his sleeve at the blood dripping from his snout. This wasn’t the first time Carlson had knocked him on his ass during this trip, and he didn’t look any closer to taking the hint. At least he shut up for a minute.
   “Morris,” Carlson commanded, rubbing her paw, “try again, without the interruption.”
   It was time to earn my pay again. I sighed, but forced my ears to swing back up over my head. Tone was important with her. I’d have to strike something between patience and pride, show that I knew my shit without making her think that I was talking down to her. There was no resting on your laurels with that one.
   “The larger inscription, here,” I said, pointing to the markings in question, “states that this is the entrance to the ritual space for the ‘Soul of the Void’ cult. So, the rumors the locals told us were dead on. If this is their main temple, there’s a good chance we’ll find something of value. It goes on to say, ‘In the name of Void, Mother of All, welcome to those who seek to lose themselves and accept Her bounty.’ That bit sounds rather promising to me. The smaller stuff underneath is some legend of theirs about a group of animal spirits who existed before civilization was born. They set out to the edge of the world to court Void and, through marriage, win her riches.”
   Carlson frowned at the etchings and grunted, “What was that bit you said before, when Davies cut you off?”
   “It’s the bit near the bottom. The end of the story kinda startled me.”
   “I’m not payin’ you to hold me in suspense, Morris. Spill.”
   “The rabbit died first.”
   The battered ram spat blood onto the ground and scoffed, “That’s what I was saying! How the hell would they have known that our party had a rabbit? Either the old fucker’s screwing us around, or he’s senile.”
   “For fuck’s sake,” I groaned. “Were you just born deficient or did your mom have to drop you on your head a few times? The writing isn’t about us, asshole. I just covered that.”
   Carlson looked fit to snap again but managed through gritting teeth to say, “Morris, stay on track and explain: in full. Davies, don’t make me get McCann to stitch your mouth shut. He’s already offered.”
   “Twice,” added the medic, a badger whose striped face betrayed little emotion.
   I cleared my throat and read the story aloud, squinting at the worn bits where the etching had almost vanished. Using my claws once or twice, I scratched away some patches of moss as I read.
   “Before the first Sutra, there was Void. From her all that was not came to be. Her wealth was in lack, and in Her poverty She possessed all things. Within Her embrace the soils, waters, and airs formed. On the new-made world, a group of animals—Dream Viper, lord of visions; the Twins, cunning wolves who…something too worn to read; proud Lion, terror of the something-something forest; Leopard, swift hunter of the frozen mountains; cunning Mongoose, master of serpents; Stag, great warrior with his crown of spears; and Rabbit, the least among them—came to desire her bounty. Light of foot, the rabbit lead the charge, followed on heel by the Twins and the rest. At the boundary where the world gave way to Void, they halted and called in unison to the Mother. Her voice answered them, humming within their bodies, as if it came from within their own hearts. ‘You have,’ yeah, that bit’s gone…come, probably, but the gap’s longer than that, ‘to join with me, but what do you offer?’ The Twins spoke first, offering Void the First Song, which both then tried at once to sign. Their voices fell into a tumult, then an argument, then gave way to tooth and claw. As they grappled with one another at the edge of the world, they forgot themselves and vanished into the abyss to float for eternity. Then came Stag who bellowed at Mother Void that she belonged to him and no other. He would pay no price for that which was his and brook no rival. Brandishing his spears, he defeated Lion and Leopard. He left them alive, denying them access to Void. He himself succumbed to Dream Viper, who unleashed his fangs at Mongoose’s call only to become trapped under the warrior’s sleeping bulk. Left before the Mother, Mongoose and Rabbit stood and considered one another. Both understood what Mother Void desired in tribute: life. Robbing Mongoose of the chance to offer the gift to Void, the rabbit died first. Mother was pleased.”
  The others blinked at me with varying expressions of ambivalence. Strictly speaking, the tale had nothing to do with what we were doing. We’d come to the ass end of nowhere in search of the hidden riches of a dead cult, not the bedtime stories with which they scared their children. We had hoped for a description of the treasures beyond or warnings of the traps that would likely be waiting inside to invalidate the months that had gone into finding this place. There just wasn’t anything like that.
   “What, the rabbit just…killed himself?” she deadpanned.
   “I guess. Hell, I didn’t write it.”
   “So,” Carlson hissed through her teeth, “literally nothing of value.”
   “Not entirely. We know this is likely the right place but not what we’ll find inside.”
   She kicked at the ground and grumbled, “Jesus Christ. Okay, enough dicking around. Everyone, get your shit together. We’re going in.”
   Hoisting our rucksacks, we switched on our flashlights and stepped through the entrance. Carlson directed me to walk in front, in case any other inscriptions should appear. She might also have just wanted me to catch the first booby trap. I’d never known her to be the most patient person; and, after the time wasted with translating the inscription, she probably wouldn’t have minded being rid of me. Ellis and Harmon chattered away incessantly a few paces behind me and the others formed a train after them that ended with Carlson. The tunnel we followed seemed as though it had been bored into the mountains by a massive laser; there was no hint of upward or downward slant and no turns. It was broad enough for three of us to walk side by side with arms outstretched, maybe five or six meters. The floor comprised of meter-square tiles. They cut an odd contrast to the smooth curve of the walls and ceiling, which formed a nearly perfect semicircle over us. The air within was stale and dusty. Unlike most of the caves I had seen, there seemed to be no hint of moisture. No mineral-rich drops from the ceiling or matching mounds of mineral deposits on the floor. No moss or algae. Just smooth stone, unbroken by mark or wear.
   We’d been walking for about two hours when things went tits-up. A section of floor opened beneath Harmon and Ellis as they were singing some out of tune country-western monstrosity about the joys of, if the lyrics were any indication, alcoholism and sexual assault. The aperture may have been a contrivance of the people who constructed the tunnel or an effect of time; either way, the dogs’ combined weight overwhelmed the ancient structure. The pair managed to catch handholds below the rim, but they both tried to climb up through the same route at once. The Dalmatian stuck his elbow into Ellis’s ribs in rebuke over their tangled limbs and caused the wolfhound’s paw to slip. A yelp echoed in the corridor, warped by some strange acoustic property into something that sounded like a distant chorus of giggles. Frantic for any hold, Ellis wrapped his shaggy, ginger arms around Harmon’s leg. The added weight as too much for the spotted dog to maintain his grip and they both tumbled into the darkness. Our flashlights lost them after a few dozen meters and the somersaulting pinpoints of theirs winked out shortly after. Only their voices carried on for a few moments. It as hard to tell if they hit bottom or not; their screams just faded away. Granted, it was damned near impossible to hear anything with everyone shouting after them.
  With caution, the other five managed to circle the sinkhole and join me on the far side. We rested several meters from the grinning aperture; far enough for comfort, but unable to fully turn our backs on it, yet. Occasionally, one of us would turn their light upon the gap, as if expecting something unwholesome to come creeping out of it. A half hour passed, with us sitting on the floor of the corridor. McCann produced a hip flask and graciously allowed it to make the rounds. Knowing the medic, it was probably bottom-shelf bourbon at best, but I’d never tasted better.
   The absence of voices made the cold corridor seem so much smaller, but none of us felt particularly conversational. On the way to the cave, the smells of nature managed to dilute the team’s scents. Now, clustered together with no breeze but our own breath, it became hard to know where one of us ended and the next began. The flashlights cast hard shadows across us and up the curved walls. I soon became aware of Bhattacharjee glancing at me from under his eyebrows. The stripes on his face warped over the wrinkling of his forehead and his ears alternated between folding back and focusing on me. After a few minutes, it got on my already raw nerves. 
   I snapped, “Something I can do for you?” at the tiger, perhaps a bit sharper than I had meant to.
   Despite his advantage in size, he flinched and stuttered in his soft, Welsh accent, “N-no! I was just, eh…just thinking about the story you read outside.” The tip of his tail fluttered against the floor, fur standing on end.
   With my ears folded down I offered an abashed, “Sorry, man. I’m a bit on edge.”
   “We all are, surely.”
   No shit. “What about the story?” 
   “The twins who sang and fell,” he whispered with a shudder glancing over to the black wound in the floor, “into the abyss. They were dogs, too.”
   The expressions on the others’ faces suggested that he wasn’t the only one thinking it. Kilgore, the scrawny Canadian lynx who managed navigation for the team, smacked the tiger’s shoulder with the back of his paw. When Bhattacharjee winced and snarled at him, Kilgore offered a paws-spread gesture that, paired with his flattened ears and crooked mouth, said what we all thinking: What the shit, man?
   I rolled my eyes and rebutted, “Not dogs, bud: wolves. Not exactly twins, either.”
   Carlson muttered, “Not much difference, is there?”
   “Well, there kind of fucking is,” I scoffed. “One is a modern, actual person and the other is a goddamned fairy tale, dreamed up by some wall-scratching, cultist shithead who was probably off his face on hash or opium.”
   Davies snorted and winced, touching his nose. He spat on the floor next to my outstretched feet.
   “What’s the matter, Morris? Worried about what the story holds for your fluffy, little nub?”
   I favored him with a sneer and replied “Sure, dumbass. Terrified. Between that and El Chupacabra, I just might piss myself. Give me a fucking break.”
   “If you lads are through flirting,” grunted Carlson as she stood up, “let’s go find the damned treasure. Sucks for those two, but now each of our cuts’ll be that much bigger.”
   Our trek onward was uneventful, if painfully slow. All of our attention was focused on cautiously scouring the floor below us for any sign of weakness. We planted our feet with care, made certain that no two of us stood on the same section of floor, and kept our ears perked for any sound of grating stone amid the sounds we made. The rustle of clothes and wheezing of labored breaths filled our straining ears. Someone’s canteen sloshed in the darkness, reminding me of the sound of waves slapping against the side of a canoe. The adrenaline had half of us shaking like leaves, but we met with no further incident in the corridor. The hours that passed after the accident felt like days. 
   When we reached the end of the corridor, the walls opened into a tremendous cavern. Impossibly, the darkness seemed to press closer than the stone walls had. The air seemed heavy and breathing was difficult. At least the space allowed our scents to disperse a bit. It had started to remind me of a county fair livestock building. The floor of the corridor continued as a broad, tiled causeway in open space. Whatever support stood beneath the path, it could not be seen in the depths below. Only Carlson and McCann had the balls to get near the edge for a better look, but even they could not identify quite what held us up. Snap lights dropped over the edge were swallowed by the darkness long before they showed signs of halting. The badger’s ears were laid backward when they rejoined us in the middle of the path, and he muttered something about the air being darker than it should be. We cast our flashlight beams around at the walls to keep our minds from dwelling on what he could have meant. A low whistle split the stillness.
   “Son of a bitch! Oh, sorry gu—” whispered Kilgore, ending with a cough when he realized there weren’t any sons of bitches to apologize to anymore.
   The others echoed the lynx’s amazement. Our fallen partners and the strange chasm were temporarily set aside in light of the splendor laid out around us. Each of our beams conjured gleaming reflections on the walls of the huge cavern. Gold and silver shone back at us in more shapes and arrangements than I could recognize. There were tiny glints from bowls, plates, vases, and urns set amid the larger shapes of statues whose forms ranged from the mundane to the grotesque. The latter’s forms were familiar in the way that an embryo is familiar: they seemed to have the fundamental anatomy one would expect, but the proportions were viscerally wrong. Smaller sparks amid this glittering assembly bespoke jewels of varieties we could not guess. The collection seemed to go on forever, as did the chasm around us. At odd intervals, there stood tall, natural columns. Their stone gleamed in delicate creams and oranges under the lights, but did not shine with a cave’s normal wetness. This cavern had long since died, robbed of minerals and the water to bear them. Perhaps at one time the empty gulf around us had housed an underground lake or river.
   Our flashlights traced the ledges on the far sides of the encircling chasm. They stretched far above into the blackness where a ceiling must have been and down into the mirk. The flashlights could not penetrate the seething gloom father than a few meters. In height and depth, the treasure alcoves disappeared into unguessed distance. If there was a Mother Void, or whatever, she had one hell of a knick-knack collection. 
   The walls ran roughly parallel to one another, with the causeway splitting the emptiness between them like a jetty. At the end of the path was a cul-de-sac, a circular platform of sorts that was at least three times as wide as the causeway itself. There the floor changed from the bland, square motif to concentric rings of curved tiles, a change recognized more by feel than by sight. Our eyes could hardly leave the wonders that lined the walls. When we reached the center of the platform, we probed the cavern to see if there was any end. Rank upon rank of treasure on either side receded away before us into the black haze that our lights could not pierce. The darkness at the far end of the cavern exerted a pull that one felt in the pit of their stomach. There was a moment where I wasn’t certain, suspended as we were in this bubble of miasmic shadow, which way was down or if directions meant anything at all in there. A quick wave of dizziness and nausea swept over me.
   “Now,” Carlson muttered, propping her balled up paws on her hips, “how are we supposed to get the lady’s goods?”
   All at once, a tremor struck somewhere in the darkness. A deep, wavering groan rattled the treasures around us and reverberated in our ribcages. It lasted for only a few moments, but it felt like an eternity. When the shaking stopped and the cavern’s voice quieted we stared at one another, ears flagged, eyes wide and terrified. Another tremor like that and the causeway could collapse or the corridor close with falling stones. The fear was palpable in the air.
   “Enough of this bullshit!” bellowed Davies, as he threw his pack onto the floor and pulled his pistol from its holster at his side.
   The first shot went wild between Carlson and myself. He probably didn’t know which of us he wanted dead more. I’d been a pain in his ass throughout the expedition and she’d been a pain in practically everything else. As the others clambered to subdue the ram, some of his subsequent shots found their marks. Bhattacharjee took a round in the gut and fell howling to the floor. The white fur of his fingers quickly stained red as he tried to hold the wound closed. Kilgore caught a bullet in his shoulder and one of Davies’s elbows to the face. He collapsed in a bleeding, wailing heap. At Carlson’s command to “tranq the fucker”, McCann had rummaged through his kit while the others struggled with the ram. He leapt in as Kilgore dropped. The badger’s fist slammed against the back of Davies’s neck and he emptied a syringe into the hulking idiot. Whatever was in the syringe happily obliged to incapacitate Davies; however, his stumbling legs tangled with the badger’s and the two toppled over together. McCann’s head struck the floor hard and a concerning crunch echoed from somewhere beneath the unconscious ram. 
   “Jesus…” Carlson muttered. “It really is going just like the inscription.”
    “Not you, too,” I groaned. “It’s not even close. Never mind the fact that there’s no talking supernatural embodiment of nothingness floating around; none of the species are right. Besides, the dogs died first.”
   “We don’t know that.”
   My ears went back at an angle, pressed together in frustration. She couldn’t have been serious. I’d known the girl for twenty years; gone on four of these ridiculous, little adventures with her. She was hyperactive, greedy, and aggressive in the best of ways when she was in a mood to celebrate. On two occasions, after particularly successful expeditions, she had shown up in my university office with wild eyes and whiskey breath and left my desk and my clothes in ruins. The stoat was utterly without moral compass and only gave a damn about the value she could squeeze out of the world. She was not, however, given to believe in curses, fairy tales, or other fanciful bullshit like that.
   Increasingly agitated, I countered with, “Yes, we absolutely fucking do! There’s no such thing as a bottomless chasm. I don’t give a damn how deep it is, they have to have struck bottom by now and there is no way in hell they survived it.”
   “Doesn’t matter, Charlie,” she said softly, surprising me with a name she had only growled in passion before. “It’s pretty damned clear what we have to do now.”
   The rabbit died first… “No, goddamn it! It isn’t clear at all. There’s no such thing as a Void…Mother…thing; it’s just a bunch of horse shit that some mental case scribbled on a wall!”
   “Maybe,” she said, kicking Davies’s pistol across the floor to me. “Maybe not. Maybe you off yourself and some way opens to let us—well, me—grab the goods. Worth a try.”
   I stared at the gun on the ground, trying to think my way out of this. I could just run. I may not have been tougher than the stoat, but even at my age I was sure as hell faster. I shifted my weight, almost ready to dart back up the causeway, when a metallic click echoed in the cavern. My ears twitched to the source of the sound before my eyes focused on it. Carlson stood five meters away from me with a revolver in her paw.
   “C’mon, bun,” she sighed. “You know me well enough to know that if you don’t do it, I’ll do it for you. Whether it works or it doesn’t, I’m not leaving without at least trying to get my paws on some of these things.”
   No honor among thieves; it had to happen eventually. I was running low on options. Nodding shakily, I stooped for the pistol on the floor. In the beam of her flashlight, the gun’s shadow stretched out in a black arrowhead whose base swallowed the toe of my boot. Davies’s firearm trembled in my grasp and rattled against the floor as I lifted it. The weight seemed all out of proportion to its size; though, maybe that was the sudden weakness that had crept into my muscles. I had to put everything I had into raising it. On the floor under it, though, I noticed something that I hadn’t seen before. Words.
   There on the central stone of the platform were the same characters from the entrance. The legend of Void’s bounty. They showed up crisply in the oblique rays of Carlson’s flashlight; no erosion or moss obscured these markings. My eyes jumped to the last lines on their own accord, expecting to see a repetition of the self-sacrificial act I was being pressed to perform.
   …Robbing Mongoose of the chance to offer a life to Void, the rabbit…The single, staccato laugh that escaped me came out sounding more like sob. My left paw, still clutching my flashlight, reached up to cover my mouth. The fur on the back of my wrist tickled the sensitive skin of my nose as it twitched furiously with my racing breath. Echoes of the laugh sounded worse as the uneven surfaces around us caught and twisted the noise. Davies was right, the bastard. I had read it wrong. The rabbit didn’t die first. True, no one in the story had technically died before the rabbit, but also…
   “My bad,” I muttered, though the laughter at the edge my voice probably rendered that a bit insincere.
   “What?”
   I looked back up and locked eyes with Carlson, saying louder, “I’m…I’m sorry, Sara. The inscription outside was too worn. I got it wrong. But, it’s repeated here on the floor and I can see my mistake, now.”
   I turned my flashlight toward the ground to indicate the carvings. She glanced down, skeptical, distracted.
   “What do you mean? What’s it say?” 
   “The rabbit didn’t die first. He killed first.”
   The report from the pistol was deafening. It seemed so much louder than when Davies fired it. My paw stung from the recoil, but I held the barrel steady on her and fired until the slide locked. It was only two shots, but it only needed to be. Carlson’s flashlight dropped to the floor and she followed, landing on her knees with blood pouring out of a dark spot in the pale fur of her throat and a matching spot low on the fabric of her shirt. The stoat coughed sending a red mist into the beam of my light, like the one she had coaxed from the ram’s snout. Her eyes went wide and her mouth worked, trying say something. She pitched over onto her side and some final convulsion pulled the trigger on the revolver. It fired uselessly, almost vertically, into the air. Amid the wails of our wounded companions, I was now left the only one standing.
   The sensible part of me demanded that I flee, but I remained rooted to the stone. The pistol slipped from my paw to clatter at my feet. A wild thought rose within me: maybe it was more than just a fable. I turned in all directions, watching the beam of my light for the change that must happen now. Would it be a walkway? Would water return to the chasm? Would the walls close in to bring the treasure to me? A loud, tearing crack, reminiscent of thunder, sounded in the gloom. A promising rumble followed, much like the tremor from before. It rose to a cacophony that threatened to burst my eardrums. I spread my legs and crouched, trying to stay upright amid the shaking. My eyes scanned the periphery to no avail. Nothing changed immediately, except the air. The scent of stone swelled until the air itself could have been rock. It was in my twitching nose, my ears, my lungs. I could feel it like sand in the fur of my arms and head.
   There was a blur through the still beam of a fallen flashlight off to my left and I swept my light and eyes toward it. Nothing. My eyes watered from the grit in the air and I coughed. Another blur and still nothing. Imagination twisted the speeding shapes into all manner of things. They were the long-dead cultists come to protect their treasure, the monstrous shapes of demons flying from Hell to drag our party down, the ghosts of other treasure hunters lost in the chasm. A shiver ran through me.
   My flashlight caught glittering movement, but it was only articles of treasure tumbling into the chasm, unable to remain on the ledges under the quaking onslaught. That was fine by me. The gold, the jewels, the speeding shapes in the darkness, and this entire fucking expedition could all go to hell as far as I was concerned. As the dark blurs became more frequent, they appeared to only be moving downward. I angled my light up and felt my legs give way beneath me. In the stark beam of my light the blurs had suddenly gained horrible form, far in excess of my frenzied imagination: stone from the unseen ceiling was falling. Stalactites and amorphous boulders in myriad sizes, no doubt dislodged by either Carlson’s parting shot or the vibrations of all the shots, were sailing into the abysmal chasm.
   I still, in my shock, entertained a modicum of crazed optimism. Perhaps, I thought, this is how the chasm was meant to be filled, granting access to whatever treasure might remain on the ledges. The treasure meant nothing to me now; I merely wondered if staying put might be safer than running. Reason grabbed my tattered mind once more and convinced me that sprinting for the exit was the only true hope. However, before I could fully turn to face the exit the causeway bucked violently, and that sliver of hope was dashed with it. A boulder bigger than my home had reached the wide bridge, shearing a massive section away and with it went any chance of escape. A smaller boulder, no bigger than a delivery van, struck the circular platform near the edge. Shaken and overburdened by the new weight, that area of the enormous disc calved off and dropped into the abyss. Fissures formed along the tile joints and I watched in horror from the central stone as the concentric rings surrounding me broke apart and dropped away, carrying my team down with them. I was then stranded on a tiny, shuddering island in the darkness, utterly alone. The stone beneath me sat at the apex of a natural pillar that vanished several meters below me, where the air was indeed darker than it had reason to be. The beams of my fallen teammates’ flashlights gyrated hideously as they reached the strange boundary and winked out. Craning my neck until I could feel my trembling ears against my back, I directed my own light and my gaze directly above me. My eyes stared, unfocused onto the great nothing from which our doom had fallen. No rays could penetrate the ichorous blackness, only reveal the stones as they continued to emerge from it. Then, I knew that it was Her.
   Perhaps I was driven insane by my circumstances. Who would not have been? Still, I found Her there, at the edge of the world and the end of all things. She was being in nothingness, substance in emptiness…Void: the dark, fluid haze into which no light could enter and out of which none could flee. The Lady Śūnya smiled down upon me, pleased with the gifts She had received. I could not see Her smile, of course; it was made known to me as a sense of joy that swelled within my heart but was not my own. Though I did not feel my lips move, I heard a muttered chant of “Oṃ śūnyatā jñāna vájra svabhāvātmako 'haṃ” in my own low, quavering voice. The syllables welled up within me and poured out into the devastation, audible to none but heard by Her. Sitting there on my heels, I let my arms fall limp at my sides and I smiled back at Her, repeating the chant until my voice failed me. Tears of joy and tears of terror mingled in the sodden fur of my cheeks. The flashlight in my paw slipped to the stone and rolled off the edge.
   Her embrace descended upon me in the form of a cold stalactite that was exposed when the flashlight tipped into space and its lens swung upward once more. The falling stone moved with a slow grace that was beautiful to watch. Its dry surface took on a soft, pink fluorescence that glittered faintly in the sweeping beam of light, bringing to mind the rose quartz I used to hunt in my youth. We called them “Pecos Valley diamonds” back then, and it came from Her as a gift upon my one and only self, the crystalline knowledge of nothingness. Mere meters above my head, the stalactite’s descent was cast into gloom again with the continued wheeling of the flashlight. I greeted its arrival with hoarse laughter that, even at the last, I could not discern from sobs.