The Boy and the Bat by Julie W.
He could see clearly, even if it was dark in the cave. It was a pretty bland thing, not too much going on. A surprisingly little amount of spider webs, evidence of bats hanging from the high roof, but nothing more. He didn’t remember why he was there, but he knew it had to do with running from something, or even someone. He poked around a bit, seeing if there was anything hidden that couldn’t be seen at first glance. There was not, at least not at the level of sight or feeling, which was, admittedly, not very high in relation to the height of the cave. So he went outside to get more of a bearing on where he was. Or at least, tried to.
There was a giant waterfall, and no path through it. He didn’t have too much of a desire to see what was there, so he just waited to see if someone came.
And waited.
And waited.
And then got tired of waiting and poked around a bit more, trying not to get scratched on any of the hanging stalactites. He tried to climb the wall of the cliff and accidentally stuck his hand through a large crack in the wall.
There was something in the crack.
He immediately pulled his hand back out, not too enthusiastic to see what the smooth surface was.
After some more contemplating, he stuck his hand through the crack and pulled out the thing. It was a little glass jar with a label like you would see on your average pickle jar, not too clean, but he could make out the label.
And- what language was that? Why were there so many triangles and circles?
— — — — —
Something about being alone was strangely comforting to this one little bat. It went against all laws of nature, for a bat to not want to be with its colony, but that didn’t stop this one from doing exactly that. It had found a wonderful cave, if it may say so itself. Not too big, so it doesn’t have to worry about anything too big coming in and destroying everything. It even had a nice little waterfall. It had lived there for just over 8 moons now, so a substantial amount of time, it thought.
It had a basic Routine. Sleep, eat, poke around places nearby, sleep, eat, repeat. It was nice! There was the part about the ‘having company’, but- hey, there was company outside at night! …sometimes.
It didn’t really care, though, the cave was nice, nothing out of the ordinary, except, of course, for that one weird jar in that one crevice. Something about that jar was wrong. It felt wrong, therefore it was wrong.
So, when it went to sleep, it didn’t expect anything out of the pattern when it woke up. Of course not! Why would there be?
It woke up, did the normal inspection of the cave to clear all superstitions. Check the Weird Jar, the one spider web it can never seem to reach in the crack, see if any of the stalactites had fallen, check the floor.
Everything was normal. Nothing had changed! The Weird Jar, the spider web, the stalactites, the floor, and that one human on the floor, were all- wait. WHAT HUMAN?!