Something Beautiful

A Story by PhthtaloGreen

I made a competition ( ) And although I can't enter it myself, my friend asked me to write one. So here's what I'd write if I could

Everything is beautiful to a child. There's no evil to be found in the hearts of children, that's the beauty of childhood. It's only once we have left it behind that we look back and wish we could forget the horrors of our raging machine world.

She was a girl of no more than 8. Delicate, gentle and innocent to the world. Up until this very day she'd lived with her mother in a small hamlet surrounded by fields that stretched on for eternity into the distant horizon. On this day though, things had begun to change. Today she and her mother stood atop a lonely cliff somewhere along one of the coasts of England, beside them a dilapidated cottage stood, hunched against the ocean winds, threatening to launch itself from the cliff into the hungry black sea below. The girl turned to her mother, the pout of a tantrum settled firm on her lips. She didn't understand why they had to do this; why they had to leave everything behind. Her friends, her teacher; Mr Ripley, their neighbour's cat, her little pink bike. It wasn't fair. She just wanted to go home, curl up under the duvet and sleep and when she awoke it would have all just been a bad dream.

This was when things began to change.

Her mother had left the girl to play alone in the strip of rough pebbles the British might have named a beach. It was as she stood up to begin the hike up the cliff home that she spotted a dark dent in the cliff face, curious, as young children usually are, she crept up to get a closer look.
Before her stood a cave, larger and wider than her height about four times over each way. Ahead of her, the cave floor was filled with large pools of water, glowing a gentle pink with the sunset behind her. Stalagmites rose from the floor and hung from the ceiling like some gruesome, dripping chandelier.
The girl took a step into the first pool of water lining cave floor, her shadow dancing across the ripples her foot created with its movement. The water was not, as she has expected, cold, but in fact slightly warmer than her ankle. After this first step was initiated the rest came easily, until she found herself face to face with a large stone wall. It didn't look entirely out of place, except for the occasional cracks in its face. Her eyes travelled its length and settled on a small hole near the bottom, no bigger than a small dog, perhaps.
She knelt down on her knees, disregarding the pretty summer dress her mother had picked out for her this morning. Face to face with the cramped tunnel she could see a faint glow about 3 metres in. Closing her eyes, she sat there on the floor hugging her knees as she contemplated her options for a moment.

On the other side of the tunnel she found herself confronted with a large, dim cavern.