After the cave with the pool of water and invertebrates, Söl was quite happy to find himself in a cavern without too much water in it, unlike the cave of desire he had so aptly named the previous cave he explored. It was moist for sure and the fungi loved it. It lined the walls. Every single crevice that it could fill had taken over completely. He kept his distance, he wasn’t afraid of spores. In his notes from his father, mostly held in his head and memory, these were not particularly dangerous fungi. In fact, you could eat them if you either cooked them or boiled them. He had never tried, and he had never seen his father try it either but he could still carefully pick a few.
He was curious to know if the bioluminous colour could be used for paint quite like flowers could  It would be helpful if it could be used like that, but when he snapped the fungi from the wall the fungi shone more brightly than before, as if it was begging him to stop, before it stopped shining. The light slowly flickered out. Söl looked intensely at the fungi before raising his head. The high ceiling was glimmering with fungi but they had started to act strangely. It wasn’t a constant light. It seemed as if the light from the fungi was pulsating. And in waves it was pointing him up towards the high ceiling. He couldn’t see anything, but the hair in his back started to stand up, not unlike a unsure cat.
There was something frightening about the way the fungi had gone from shimmering in their own way to pulsating in unison. He could not climb the walls to follow where the pulsating light was going. But as it pointed him upwards it also drew him forward. He looked behind him. Perhaps the fungi wasn’t showing him the way, he realised as he saw it pulsating away from him behind him. It was more likely that the fungi was pointing him out.
The bay Courser moved forward. Testing his hypothesis. The Fungi’s waves moved with him and he kept going. He walked carefully through the cavern. Following the light as it was emitted from his position in waves. It was mostly blue but he could see a few hints of both orange and green. He wondered if they were just different colours of the same species of fungi or different species all together.
He slowly made his way forward. Carefully keeping eyes forwards as upwards. He could feel eyes following him, or maybe it was just the way the fungi announced his position that made him feel that way. It made him feel slightly vulnerable.
Eventually he made it to the end of the cavern. To his surprise, and dismay, it was a dead end. He had hoped that it would lead somewhere. The fungi on the wall had slowly gotten slower as he made his way to it. It was still emitting a wave of light, but it was so slow that it was almost hypnotic.
Söl turned to the dead end wall. There were no fungi that grew on it, but in front of it there was a bunch of big fungi that rose in a circle. It was big enough for him to step into, but he kept himself still as he looked around. He could see well in the slow moving light emitted by the fungi on the wall. At some time there had definitely been something written on the wall but by now it was impossible to read at all. He looked up at the ceiling. There was a vast, empty space above him where the light seemed to end. An eerie space that glanced down on him. He slowly stepped into the circle. The big fungi lit up as he stepped in. It did not pulsate like the fungi on the wall but as Söl touched one of the stones with one of his hooves it emitted a music tone. He touched the other ones and listened to the echoing music. They were differently pitched. Somewhere deeper while others were high pitched and as the last mushroom grew silent they all slowly faded in their glow.
It was eerily quiet until the mushrooms lit up one after another. It slowly faded away again. And then it lit up the same way. It took Söl two more times before he tried pressing the glowing mushrooms in time with how they lit up.
He failed the first time, and barely failed on the second but by the third time he managed to keep up with the mushrooms. It played a beautiful tune he had never heard before that echoed throughout the cavern. The fungi waved in time with the tunes. And then it all grew completely silent as the light slowly faded away.
Söl kept still. He didn’t dare to move. When the mountains seemed to move. He couldn’t see anything, but he heard the stones rumbling against each other. Then it stopped. And he waited. Slowly the fungi around the walls lit up. They shimmered as they had been doing when he first entered the cave. Almost carefree. The wall that had marked the cave as a dead end for him had opened. It wasn’t big, and it had clearly been a while since it was opened last given the scores it had carved into the ground. But it was open. He moved forward, looking back as the stones slowly closed up behind him.
It was his imagination, he was quite sure, but it looked as if something was watching him. Those eyes, beckoning him to turn back. The same eyes that glanced up at him from the depth of the water in the Desire cave. Söl couldn’t help but stare as the stone closed off the fungi cavern and the creature inside it. He could only see the eyes of it. As the fungi turned red around it. But he knew those eyes had marked him.