Right. Prisoner. Got it. The word echoed in the sudden, oppressive silence left by his silent refusal. My brain felt like sludge, trying to process the sheer impossibility of it all. Giant tree-man kidnapper. Check. Helplessly injured ankle. Check. Trapped in a cave behind a waterfall. Double check. Fantastic. My life had officially gone off-roading into crazy town, population consisting of Groot’s grumpy cousin and me.
But, okay. Panicking wasn’t helping. Trying to escape hadn’t worked. Maybe talking? Like, actual communication, not just demanding to leave? It felt monumentally stupid, like trying to teach quantum physics to a rock, but what else was there? Sitting here waiting to become compost wasn’t exactly appealing.
Taking a shaky breath, I focused on the towering figure still blocking the light. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t made a sound since his ‘stay put’ mime routine. He was just there. An enormous, patient obstacle.
“Okay,” I said again, my voice still annoyingly thin. “Okay. Look. If I’m stuck here, can we at least… you know?” I waved a hand vaguely between us. “Introductions?”
I tapped my chest firmly with my index finger. “Sienna,” I said, enunciating clearly, feeling like an idiot teaching a toddler. “My name. Si-enn-a.”
I held the gesture, looking straight at where I presumed his face was, hidden in the shadows and the mossy contours of his head. Nothing. Just that unnerving stillness.
Fine. His turn. I pointed toward him, a small, hesitant gesture compared to his earlier commands. “You?” I asked, keeping my voice level, trying to project calm curiosity instead of the screaming terror clawing at my insides. “What’s your name? Do you… do youhavea name?”
The silence stretched again, thick and unresponsive. He didn’t react. Didn’t twitch. Didn’t give any sign he’d understood or even heard. It was like talking to the cave wall itself, only this wall occasionally brought you nuts and berries. The sheer alienness of him, the utter lack of common ground, hit me anew. How do you communicate with something that might not even understand theconceptof a name? The chasm between us felt vast, unbridgeable, and terrifyingly deep.
Just as I was about to chalk that up as another spectacular failure in interspecies diplomacy and resign myself to being ‘Cave Lady’ forever, the airvibrated. It wasn’t just sound, it was a physical presence, a low rumble that seemed to emanate from the very stone around me, resonating deep in my chest cavity.
Then came the voice. “Kauri.”
If rocks could speak, if ancient trees could form words, this is what they would sound like. It was impossibly deep, guttural, laced with the scrape of stone on stone, the rustle of dry leaves, the groan of deep roots shifting underground. It soundedold. And profoundly unused, like an engine kicking over after centuries of silence.
I froze. Literally stopped breathing, my hand still hovering midair from where I’d pointed at him. Did I imagine that? Was I finally cracking, hearing voices in the geological formations? But no, the vibration had been too real, the sound too distinct.
He spoke. He actuallyspoke.
And he had a name. Kauri.
My mind scrambled, trying to fit this new piece into the already impossible puzzle. He understood. He wasn’t just some mindless beast, some force of nature. He was abeing. With a name. Who could apparently choose when, and if, to communicate. The silence before hadn’t been a lack of comprehension but a choice.
Suddenly, the situation felt infinitely more complex, and somehow, even more terrifying. Talking to a wall was one thing. Being held captive by a thinking, speaking entity who looked like he’d wrestled dinosaurs? That was a whole different level of screwed. The name, Kauri, echoed again in my head, no longer just a sound, but a label for my captor, my silent, watchful, and now demonstrably sentient warden. Great. Just great.
The first thing I noticed was the light softly shifting. It wasn’t the harsh white of the sun or the cool silver of moonlight. This was different, something richer, deeper, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat.
Kauri hadn’t spoken again since dropping his name like a stone into the stillness. Instead, he’d turned and moved with that same fluid, deliberate grace, stepping aside from the cave entrance. For one wild, stupid moment, I thought he was letting me go, until he paused, looking back at me, and gestured with a slow sweep of his massive arm, beckoning, not demanding but leaving no room for refusal.
I hesitated, every instinct screaming to stay where I was. But curiosity, a trait that had gotten me into trouble more times than I cared to admit, stirred against the fear. Maybe this was an opportunity, an opening. Maybe I could learn something useful. Or maybe he’d just decided it was snack time, and I was the entrée.
Clenching my jaw, I pushed myself upright as far as my body would allow, leaning heavily on the wall. Kauri waited, patient as stone, until I hobbled close enough to feel the cool mist of the waterfall against my face. He stepped forward, parting the cascade like a curtain, and the world beyond the cave came alive.
It was like stepping into another planet. The first thing that hit me was the glow. Patches of bioluminescent fungi clung to the gnarled roots twisting up from the ground, their soft blues and greens casting an ethereal light onto the forest floor. The plants weren’t just plants, they werewrongin the most mesmerizing way. Leaves shimmered faintly, like they were dusted with crushed gemstones. Thick vines hung low, heavy with flowers that pulsed faintly, opening and closing like breathing lungs. The air smelled sharp and sweet, a mix of damp earth and something almost electric.
Kauri didn’t look back to check if I was following. He moved through the grove with the same quiet authority, a hulking shadow against the strange, glowing backdrop. Every step seemed deliberate, as though he were part of this place, not just moving through it.
I trailed behind, half limping and half staring, my mind spinning in a dozen directions. Whatwasthis place? How could something so beautiful exist, hidden away like this? And why show it to me now? My earlier terror hadn’t gone away, but it was tangled now with awe and confusion, a dizzying cocktail that made my head spin worse than the pain in my ankle.
Kauri stopped near the base of a massive tree, its bark carved with deep, intricate patterns that seemed to shift and shimmer under the glow of the fungi. He turned, one hand gesturing slowly to the grove around us, as if to say,Look. See.
I didn’t know what to say. Words felt too small, too clumsy for the enormity of what I was seeing. But one thought rose above the rest, sharp and insistent—this wasn’t just a forest. It was something more. Something ancient, something alive in a way that made my skin prickle and heart pound. And somehow, Kauri was part of it, as much a piece of this place as the glowing fungi or the breathing flowers.
I swallowed hard, my voice barely above a whisper. “What… is this?” My words felt absurd, meaningless in the face of it all, but Kauri didn’t answer.
Silence answered my question, thick and heavy as the humid, glowing air. Kauri just stood there, letting me soak in the weird, bioluminescent beauty, his silence somehow more profound than the impossible word he’d spoken earlier. He’d given me his name, shown me thisNarnia-meets-Avatarlight show, and then clammed up again. Typical. Just when I thought we might be getting somewhere, maybe establishing some kind of bizarre rapport, he retreated into being an enigma wrapped in bark and moss.
Then, just as the awe started to curdle back into anxiety, he moved. He turned from the shimmering, patterned tree and took a step back toward the waterfall cave, his gaze sweeping over me, then pointedly down at my still-throbbing ankle. Message received,Show-and-tell is over, cripple.
He didn’t herd me, exactly, but his presence was a clear signal to follow. Hobbling back through the curtain of water felt like returning to reality, albeit a grim, damp version of it. The cave seemed darker and smaller after the luminous grove outside.
Once we were back inside, Kauri didn’t just block the entrance again. He did something different. He raised one of those massive hands, fingers thick as branches, and drew an invisible line in the air, a semicircle starting from one side of the cave mouth, arcing outward maybe ten feet into the glowing area I could still glimpse past his shoulder, and ending on the other side of the entrance. He held the gesture, his shadowed face fixed on me, ensuring I understood.
