He woke to the sound of crunching leaves. His fire had burned to little more than blackened piles of ash and glowing specks of coal. 

The cave was dark, as was the world outside. He assumed that there were still a few hours yet until the morning dawn would eliminate the need for fire, so he grabbed at his wood stack and nestled a tree branch snug between some coals. 

The fire bit at the bark, which was slow to ignite, but the leaves were a different story. In the foggy hours of the morning, the bright flare burned his eyes and he had to look away. 

Instead he looked at the rock wall of the cave, his temporary shelter.

He had seen them the night before, after he had fallen from his tree stand and landed on his compound bow, mangling it and himself. 

After crawling for hours, he realized that he was as lost as an ant in a football field. No landmark looks the same from eight inches off the ground.

But the cave was a Godsend, and his lighter illuminated the ancient artwork in the black fog of the evening. He didn’t think on it until he had wrapped his legs in his t-shirt and two stiff pieces of oak.

The paintings were immaculate. Undiscovered, of course. It was even on his property, albeit a corner that he didn’t often roam through, especially when deer hunting. 

Great mammoths, giant sloths, too, he thought. Men with spears and women with children. Wolves biting at their ankles, dogs biting back. He was quickly awed with the ancient wall art, and found himself sobbing quietly in the dark of the cave.

Such great stock, and he was one of them. Man had come so far. 

Yet, here he was, a broken leg and a smashed bow, marveling at the tenacity of a bygone people.

The leaves rustled again, and he turned and looked to the entrance of the cave that was only a few yards away.

He fumbled with his bow in the growing light, fingering the cam and running the loose string through his hands. 

No good, he thought as he gripped the broken limb of the bow. No protection.

A footstep, near the mouth of the cave.

He quickly and loudly scraped as many leaves as he could towards his body, heaving them onto the immature flame.

The fire grew immediately, the smoke clouding the entirety of the cave, but it was enough.

He could see what was coming towards him.

It was almost a man, but not quite. Instead of two legs on which to stand, it had many. Not distinct, either, but rather like an apparition; a foggy idea of some human torso that glided towards him. 

Its skin was dark and held faded tattoos that danced in the firelight. 

He squinted his eyes, realizing that the tattoos were literally moving and interacting with each other. 

The headdress was large and crafted from black feathers that ran down the length of its torso, and black eyes peered out at him from underneath. 

It stopped a few feet away from the dwindling flame, still mostly draped in the darkness of the early morning. As the embers of the leaves floated on plumes of smoke and the fire once again became little more than coals, it slapped a black hand onto the wall of the cave.

He held his breath, shakily waiting.

The creature pulled his hand down the length of wall, leaving a black smudge. Then, its eyes flicked at the paintings on the wall before it disappeared instantaneously. 

He waited a moment, his heart pounding in his chest and ears.

Then, when the creature didn’t return, he crawled forward, inspecting the smudge left from its hand.

He ran his own hand through the black dust and carefully crawled back, setting to work, running his finger over the smooth rock of the cave wall. 

He picked a blank area, just under a rather small tale of a lion of some sort eating a hunter-turned-prey.

His tale started with the treestand, then the fall, the crawl, and the eventual appearance of this ancient spirit. He wondered silently, if this was a spirit from the natives, if it was evil in nature. 

Perhaps they, too, were compelled to write their history, under the threat of violence from a being that delighted in stories.

Maybe that was what genius art was at its core. Compulsion to please, rather than die. 

He smudged the last of the creature’s anatomy as the sun was coming up over the nearby Ozark mountains. Outside of the cave, the day was still incredibly gray and dim.

With the growing daylight, he felt he could make his escape. He wiped his hands clean and threw a heap of dirt over the last of the coals and crawled towards the entrance to the cave, looking everywhere for signs of the creature. Finding none, he began to try and stand.

Putting weight on his leg, he crawled up the side of a nearby hickory tree, quickly collapsing. As he lay in the dirt and leaves, breathing heavily, he felt his arms quake.

He hadn’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours, and his energy had drained with the blood from his leg. 

Then, he saw a flash of night. The black that surrounded the creature was darker than any night sky he had ever seen, and he gulped loudly as he watched it dash into the cave, dragging a dead coyote behind him.

The creature, although barely distinguishable, excitedly shuffled to the cave wall, placing its hand over the new story. It paused, unmoving, taking in the tale, but then began jumping, its hand still on the wall.

There was a flash of orange light, like a bottle of gasoline touching flame, and then the creature emerged from the mouth of the cave.

It looked at him as he sat on the forest floor, trembling. 

The creature ambled over to him, its black eyes coming to rest a few inches from his own. He could see his own reflection in the ancient spirit’s eyes, yet he could also see the cave directly behind them. 

They stared into each other’s eyes for what felt like years, and he felt tears on his cheeks.

The unchanging eyes stared back.

Then, it was gone, and a dead coyote rested at his feet. 

He guessed that he had passed the test, and as he slit the coyote open and field dressed the animal, he heard an owl hoot. When he saw it resting on a branch at the top of a cottonwood tree, it silently took flight, gliding westward as if evading the budding rays of sunlight.

He cooked the coyote’s hindleg, unsure of what a choice cut would be on a canine. Then he took the skin and tucked it into his hunting backpack, thinking he would dry it out and hang it on his wall back at home.

When someone asked what the story was behind the pelt, he’d tell them. Then, he figured, he’d ask for one in return, and slowly fill his walls with fascinating tales of adventure and danger. 

He chewed the cooked meat thoughtfully, the sun warming his back. 

And also, he thought, he’d never come back to this tree stand again. Not in 10,000 years.