Thinking On Caves
—A thought experiment that examines published literature on the caves through Pale Shores.
It has been much time since we last thought of the caves that dot our coasts and adorn the landscape of Pale Shores with any serious effort. Wisely, many have followed the warnings of other academics but that does not prohibit continued thought on the matter. Much like Le’s true abilities were lost by the time but are carried on by healers across the shores, I believe that there are other abilities of Davoto or early Avotoc carried on by the avoc in caves that would otherwise be lost. In reviewing Caves and Our Captivation, Respect for the Mystic, The Lost Caves of Ouadevti, Ypxe the Forbidden Cavern, and A Waterside Curse my belief of these other abilities is strengthened into a strong thesis that we will examine through thought alone, for safety.
The earliest writing on caves to be found is Caves and Our Captivation, written in 436 A.T. and underscores how little we’ve known about caves, even dating back several hundred years. At this point, we knew that caves had a mystic quality to them, enticing the youth but rendering them uncooperative to our efforts to learn more. We recognized this quality in Respect for the Mystic so aptly named when written just over 100 years later. By this point we had recognized some of the iconography left in the caves as referencing abilities not found in the Dav. As referenced earlier, I believe these abilities to either be what we now consider mystic qualities of Le, or similarly forgotten or purposefully hidden abilities from the Dav.
In quick succession books on caves were published, and The Lost Caves of Ouadevti details a village finding out that there was a cave system that had existed under their homes for likely centuries once the entrance hidden in a thicket of trees was revealed. Then too, like many other villages and cities across Pale Shores, it seemed the young avoc were drawn to the farmer’s land and into the cave. They had not been drawn to the cave before it’s discovery so it is a safe assumption that there is nothing drawing them through magical means, only something buried deep within all avoc psyche that if we know of a cave, we must go. Similarly the writing in Ypxe, the Forbidden Cavern details a village’s struggle for generations to keep the young avoc out of the cavern outside city limits. From the outside, it appears to be a perilous sinkhole but the writing reports that once several young avoc returned from a different exit that the cave system was no different from others.
Most recently A Waterside Curse details how the author was cursed by an avoc dwelling in a cave due to their prying. These kinds of powers, if bestowed to cave dwellers or those that continue to practice what has been lost, would be beyond the difference between Le’s known and purported abilities. If that were corroborated or otherwise bore true the ability to manipulate the water within an avoc, we might start to understand why the mystic abilities associated with the caves have been kept secret.
From limited excursions to these caves we have iconography similar to existing worship motifs, and similar to those that we know are used to invoke magical abilities of the early avoc. Because of these differences, it can be inferred that they served similar purposes to what we relate these artifacts and icons to but with a different subset. An educated guess is that since each early avoc – each of Davoto’s children – have distinct magical abilities and have distinct iconography or symbols of their own that there could be a child or multiple children of Davoto that have disappeared from the record. It cannot be known whether this has been an omission of time and error in recording – such as Porrair and Lo’s lost conversations – or if this was intentional.
I believe many of us know of an avoc we all suspect is different. We might think of them as aging early, embracing the word slights and puzzle-speak of elder avocs much earlier into adulthood. Some would even say they know an avoc who goes further than that, speaking in fully contradictory sentences and phrases though they may think otherwise. For their safety – and perhaps the safety of those around them – I will speak only of the planet-stars we know these avoc reside on. Many live in the edge of the community, self-outcast and lonesome.
I have tracked through correspondence between other academics across Pale Shores many of these avocs. If we think further, we have seen these avoc on the same edges of town that we known caves to be. We have seen them “live” and exist in the vicinity of caves. In fact, I believe that they do not live near caves, but use these locations as cover to hide that they do live within the caves themselves in most if not all instances. Since we know many more of these avoc by my count than we know of the existence of caves, I believe that we will find caves where these avoc dwell. However, in line with the warning of A Waterside Curse I recommend we exercise caution rather than hastily approaching these caves.
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