Prose
Well, said Frankie, shall we, as she fished the flashlights from her bag. She gave Rebecca one with a red plastic casing while she took a larger metal flashlight. The girls switched them on and cautiously entered the cave, Frankie leading and having to duck a little. She looked totally at ease but perhaps her heart was racing as much as Rebecca’s for she reached back and took her friend’s hand. Immediately a mineral scent reached Rebecca, and a welcome coolness. Except for their scuffing shoes the cave was perfectly quiet. Shining their lights along the walls and ceiling and floor, they could see the cave was simply an empty space— there were no bats or dark-dwelling insects. Its emptiness was a relief to Rebecca. The cave was so small their lights reached its farthest corners. You see, said Frankie in a whisper, there’s nothing here. Yet she still held Rebecca’s hand. Rebecca continued to shine her light along the cave walls, the fear slowly leaving her. What’s that? Her light had illuminated an odd feature of the far wall. They approached it while using their flashlights to expose the form in the rock more fully. It was the shape of some creature fossilized in the wall but mostly exposed to view. It had a horselike head except with sharp teeth in its jaw. Its spine and ribs appeared in the girls’ moving lights, as did its strangely short arms, stranger still in contrast to its large legs bones. In life it must have been a fearsome thing. It’s a dinosaur of some sort, said Frankie—there’s your Lucifer. The girls continued looking at the prehistoric animal, seeing it one small piece at a time. Neither girl was inclined to release their clasping hands. In a way that did not require words they knew this would be their secret. They alone would smell the cave’s primitive scent.
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