It was dark: as aphotic , as Cimmerian , as stygian , as tenebrous as something very, very dark .
The dear, warm, little golden egg cast a tiny glow a few inches from its nest upon my palm. I clutched it high and peered into the inky dark, trying vainly to assess into what sort of hole I had fallen. Shadows flew up and onto a wall ahead of me. Stepping closer, I saw that strange shapes had been dug into the stone. A moment's study and I knew that a frieze of some sort stretched before me, along the wall into the gloom. Holding my light source as close as I might, I peered at the carvings and followed them into the dark, seeking their meaning.
The shapes nearest me were crude, blocky and rough hewn. Vaguely human figures clustered within a roundish conveyance upon what looked to be a rough sea as frightful creatures rose out of the sharp tips of the waves to menace them. It seemed it was a long journey until the travelers came upon land and left their boats before a mighty forest. I held the egg higher and crept along the wall, searching the carvings under its comforting luminescence. The voyagers entered the wood and were met there by other people, into whose rudimentary society they were welcomed, their lives represented in tiresome scenes of primitive domestic stereotype, generation after generation after generation until I almost fell asleep. Suddenly, the carvings changed: an invading force was represented. Now, the domestic scenes were replaced by visions of hurried and desperate flight before ominous and foreign figures and, oh, the sorrowful tale they told! The brave little figures fled and suffered such privation, plague and all manner of pestilence that I nearly wept to see it. As I reached the final panel, I saw that their journey had ended, the survivors lay together with all their pitiful belongings, as though dead and laid out for a primitive burial, and I knew that this pathetic scene had been their end and I did weep!
Unfair, unkind, unfeeling fates! Were these not men, just as I? Did not their blood flow and their hearts beat, just as mine? What god could look upon such a scene in indifference, permitting, indeed perhaps omnisciently orchestrating, such injustice and not intercede? How could I or any other mortal man trust, or even continue to believe, in such a being?
I leant my head against the cool surface of the panel, to close my eyes against the weight of feeling and, as I did so, the panel swung inward!
