by Simon Archer
The girls were playing at the waterline, splashing each other and laughing endlessly. Jack and his wife, Lorraine, were strolling, hand in hand, down the beach. That left Lottie and I relaxing under the umbrella together. She was reading some seedy romance novel she’d found at a gift shop at the resort, and I was admiring the relaxed glow she had about her. She lowered her book and smiled at me.
“You’re staring again,” she joked.
“I’m not even looking at you,” I lied pathetically.
“Oh, well, good. If you’re not looking at me, then I can take my swimsuit off, and you won’t notice!” She stuck her tongue out at me.
“Nothing short of a lightning strike to the brain could keep me from noticing you without your swimsuit on. Let me assure you of that!” I stuck my tongue out back at her. She dog-eared her book and set it on her little table.
“Want to go for a walk?” Lottie asked me after rolling her eyes.
“I’ll go wherever you want me to,” I said, as mushy as I could sound.
The two of us got up and strolled down the beach in the opposite direction Jack and Lorraine had gone. Lottie stepped close to me and slid her hand into mine. Her skin was warm as it brushed against my arm. My entire body tingled when I was next to her.
We walked in silence, enjoying the salt air and the comfort of not needing to talk to enjoy each other’s company. Our feet squished into the hot sand with each step. I glanced behind us and was surprised to see the umbrella and chairs were out of sight. What seemed like five minutes by her side had gotten us far enough away from our perch on the beach that it was no longer visible to us.
“Ever get the feeling you could spend a lifetime doing this and be perfectly happy?” I asked her.
“Definitely,” she replied as she wrapped her arm around mine, cuddling in close. My heart jumped a little. It was the first ‘lifetime’ question I’d ever asked her. Although I hadn’t intended it to be a ‘feeler’ question, the moment she answered, I felt even more confident that I wanted to marry her. Courage surged through me, and I made the decision to ask her, right then and there. I stopped and turned to her, ready to drop down on one knee and not let another minute pass before making my intentions clear. However, when she saw me turn, she turned as well, putting her back towards me.
“What do you see?” she asked. She’d assumed I’d spotted something I wanted to show her.
“Nothing,” I chuckled. “Um, Lottie, turn around here.” She began to turn towards me but stopped. She held her arm out and pointed up the beach.
“What is that?” she asked. She turned her head and looked at me, her eyebrow raised. I followed where she gestured with my eyes. About one hundred feet ahead, there was a large, raised mound of sand that looked completely out of place. It was flat on one side.
“I’m not sure,” I answered. Her attention was far too gone for me to continue with the alternate line of questioning I’d had planned.
“Let’s go find out!” she winked at me and started jogging toward the mound. I shook my head for a moment and chuckled to myself. I felt like I’d just lived out a scene in a comedy of errors.
“Come on!” she yelled back, so I started jogging to catch up. When we reached the mound, we saw that the flat side was an opening. It was only a few feet in diameter.
“Is it an animal’s burrow, maybe?” I asked.
“I don’t see any tracks. I’m not an expert on animal habitats, though,” she answered.
We got down on our hands and knees to crawl close to the opening. We were going to stick our heads inside with hopes of seeing what was inside. I reached in front of where her hand was and put my hand down. The sand immediately shifted, and we started slowly falling downwards.
“Ahh!” Lottie yelled out. “Bennett!”
I threw my arm around her body but couldn’t do much since I was going down with her. Suddenly, we stopped. Sand covered the two of us as we tangled up together. I looked around to see what had happened and determine whether it was safe to move.
“Look,” I pointed above us. “The ground under us just sank a little.” We were still in front of the opening we’d found, we were just five feet lower than where we’d started. The black hole in front of us had gotten larger as well. It was more than big enough to crawl into. I glanced behind us and noticed a slant in the sand.
“It looks like we’ve pushed down on some kind of ramp or something,” Lottie said with awe. I started brushing away at the sand under my hands. It didn’t take long before an old, warped board appeared.
“A ramp is exactly right!” I told her. “Check this out!” She looked at the board and furiously started brushing sand away as well.
“What the hell? This looks like it’s been here for centuries!” she called out. She looked over at me and smiled. “What did we just find?” Her excitement was contagious, and my heart started racing.
“Let’s find out.”
The two of us went back to brushing sand out from under us, exposing more of the old, wooden ramp as we went. It took us twenty minutes before we finally stood up and examined our handiwork. The ramp was close to ten feet long and seemed to disappear into the sand at the top. It sloped down at an impressive angle and led directly into what now looked more like a small cave. We stared at the black hole, both wondering if we were thinking the same thing.
“Wanna go?” I asked quietly.
“Hell yeah!” she answered enthusiastically. “It’s not every day you find some camouflaged hole in the beach!”
“Let’s do it!” I took her by the hand, and the two of us walked down the ramp. We got down on our hands and knees and slowly crawled into the blackness of the opening. I went first, feeling my way around. Once I was fully inside, I stopped.
“Keep going, I’m not in yet,” Lottie hollered forward to me.
“I can’t see a single thing,” I yelled back.
“Can you feel anything? I want to see!” she called out to me. I let out a small laugh.
“You want to see pitch black?” I joked.
“You’d better believe it!” she yelled, laughing. I started moving forward again, inching along as I felt out in front of me. I could feel my heartbeat in my throat and my breath shallow. I never would’ve imagined crawling in a small black hole could be so exhilarating. We moved along, feeling instead of seeing. Packed-down sand replaced the ramp underneath us by about twenty feet down. The slope gradually got steeper the further we crawled. Feeling around the walls surrounding me, I could tell the opening was broadening as well. Soon I couldn’t reach anything above me.
“The hole is getting bigger!” I yelled behind me.
“I know! I can almost stand up!” I looked back but couldn’t see her. I’d thought she’d be crawling still. I crawled another twenty feet and decided to see how big the hole had opened up to. I slowly stood up until I was completely upright. I lifted my arm. It was almost completely outstretched before I touched the top. Just then, Lottie bumped into me.
“Well, hello there,” I said to her.
“You didn’t tell me you were stopping!” she laughed. “I feel you are standing too.”
“Yes, this is no longer a small opening in the sand,” I replied.
“Keep going,” she instructed. The thrill had her breathing hard too. I put my arms out in front of me and slowly walked ahead. I stopped instantly when I felt a wall in front of me. I felt around, and the wall spanned the entire size of the tunnel. I turned to tell Lottie right as she ran into me again, this time with more force. She shoved me forward, and I turned my head to avoid hitting my face on the wall in front of me. However, instead of me hitting the wall, my hands pushed right through it. I fell forward, and Lottie landed on top of me. The wall had apparently been made of sand.
“What happened?” she hollered.
“You just pushed me through a wall!” I told her.
“Did you just call me fat?” she yelled. She broke out in laughter as she crawled off me. Her laughter
was cut short. “Do you see that?” I blinked as I got to my knees and stared straight ahead.
“Yeah!” Directly in front of us was a faint blue light. It was more of a glow than an actual light. It got brighter as my eyes focused on it more. We moved towards it, and as we did, it got larger. Ten feet later, we stood with our mouths dropped open, staring at a cave of blue.
“What is this?” Lottie breathed out in wonder. We were standing in a cave, thirty feet in diameter, and there were rocks hanging down from the ceiling and off the walls that were all glowing at varying intensities.
“I have no idea,” I whispered. “Maybe stalactites?”
“Those are usually only on the ceiling of caves, and multi-colored. This stuff is uniform, and everywhere but the ground!” Lottie answered.
I looked down. She was mostly right. There were small stones of the blue rock littered on the cave floor. It looked like various sized chunks had fallen over time. I bent down and picked up the brightest one near me. It felt exactly like quartz but was three times heavier than I expected.
“Feel this!” I said. She turned and took the rock from me.
“That’s heavier than concrete!” she replied.
“Have you ever read about anything like this?” I asked her.
“Nope, never,” she whispered. “Maybe Jack, or Andi, or one of them has! Should we go get them?” Her excitement was mounting again at the idea of sharing a secret discovery.
“Absolutely,” I agreed. She handed the blue stone back to me and headed back out the way we came. I put the rock in my pocket and followed.
The trip back out the tunnel was a little easier than going in because we could see the light of day as we climbed toward it. It took less than two minutes to get out a hole that took us ten to get into. When we emerged, we both blinked to adjust to the brightness of the sun reflecting off the white sand. Lottie waited for me to get upright and grabbed me by the hand. She took off running, pulling me along behind her. The rest of our group was sitting in their loungers under the umbrella when we ran up, panting against the heat and exercise.
“You guys… have to…” I tried to talk while catching my breath.
“There’s a… hidden… cave…” Lottie wasn’t having much more luck speaking than I was. Jack lowered his sunglasses and raised a brow at the two of us.
“You guys have too many pina coladas while we were strolling?” he joked.
“No! We found something,” Lottie blurted out as soon as she caught her breath.
“What?” Andi and Vila asked in unison.
“A cave. We found a cave,” I added.
“There are caves all over this island,” Jack replied. Lottie started shaking her head furiously.
“Not like this one! You guys have to come to see it!” she said, looking around at everyone. She reached in the cooler, grabbed a bottle of water for herself, then threw one over to me. We both drank until the bottles were empty and set them on one of the little tables.
“Here,” I said, reaching into my pocket. I fished out the blue stone and held it out for everyone to see. “The entire cave is covered in this rock!” The group leaned forward to examine the rock. Lorraine sat back first.
“It’s a really pretty rock, but Bennett, it’s just a blue rock,” she said, sounding confused. I looked at my hand. The rock didn’t appear to be glowing as it had in the cave. Lottie and I looked at each other.
“The dark, maybe?” she asked me.
“Could be,” I replied. “Let’s see.” I closed my other hand around the rock and peered in between my fingers. The rock was glowing. “Yes! It’s the dark!” Lottie jumped up and down and clapped.
“Now look, you guys!” she squealed, pointing at my hands. Andi hopped up first and put her face to my hands. She immediately stood up and flipped around to Vila.
“You want to see this,” Andi told her. Vila got up and looked next. After she saw it, she looked back at Andi, and the two of them sat down without another word. I didn’t have time to analyze their strange reaction before Lorraine and Jack took turns peering into my hands.
“Now, that isn’t normal!” Lorraine said loudly. “What is it?”
“We have no idea, but you have to see the cave! It’s absolutely gorgeous!” Lottie called out.
“Alright, alright, let’s go see this cave,” Jack agreed. Andi and Vila stood up. They were both smiling by then, which made me feel better for some reason. Lottie turned to start back to the cave, but I caught her by the hand.
“What?” she asked as she looked back at me. The excited smile on her face, the shine of the sun off her tied-up black hair, and the energy she exuded was intoxicating to me. I dropped down on one knee and pulled on her hand. She stumbled forward, and I caught her, sitting her on my upright knee.
“Lottie Harris, will you marry me?” I asked. I hadn’t planned on a public proposal, but I just couldn’t wait any longer. With her excitement and the surrounding beauty, I couldn’t stop myself. She stared at me, eyes wide with surprise. I held my hand up and presented her with the blue stone from the cave. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that I didn’t have a ring for her. My heart pounded in my chest, and I couldn’t breathe, but I remained composed somehow. She picked the rock up off my palm and grasped it in her own.
“Only if you’ll marry me back,” she answered. A dazzling smile lit up her face, and she leaned in to kiss me. The group of our shocked, but happy friends clapped and cheered behind us. When we parted, I took the deepest breath I’d ever taken, let it out, and kissed her again. Then she leaned back and bit her lip slightly.
“Wanna go be all engaged and such in the cave we found?” she whispered excitedly, thumbing over her shoulder.
“Yes, ma’am!” I called out. Lottie and I got to our feet and started running toward the cave, the others following us. When we made it to the entrance, Lottie went in first. Jack and Lorraine followed. I was going to bring up the rear. Just before Andi and Vila were headed in, they stopped in front of me.
“A couple of things,” Vila started. “Congratulations on your engagement!” She bounced up and down and threw her arms around my neck. “We are so happy for you!”
“I can’t wait to see how beautiful Lottie makes your wedding!” Andi added happily.
“Thank you, ladies,” I told them. I was actually happy that they were there when I asked Lottie to marry me.
“Next,” Andi said, in a slightly humorous tone. “Have you ever heard of the Legend of Lightning Stone?” She tipped her head while she waited for me to answer.
“I can’t say that I have,” I replied. “Why?” She and Vila smirked at each other.
“You’re gonna want to remind us to tell you about it later,” Vila said and winked at me. She and Andi darted into the cave, leaving me standing outside. I took a long look around at the sand, the water, and the sky. I smelled the salty air and felt the sun on my face. I slowly smiled to myself as the intoxication of my life flowed through me.
First, I had completed innovative software programming, helped thousands of people after a disaster, thwarted an insane madman, and gotten the girl of my dreams to agree to marry me. Second, I was about to head into a secret cave with two genies that, according to them, had a legend attached to it. Lastly, I still had one wish left!
Author’s Note
Hey, if you got here, I just want you to know that you’re awesome! I wrote this book just for someone like you, and if you want another one, it is super important that you leave a review.
The more reviews this book gets, the more likely it is there will be a sequel to it. After all, I’m only human, and you have no idea how far a simple “your book was great!” goes to brighten my day.
Also, if you want to know when the sequel comes out, you absolutely must join my Facebook group and follow me on Amazon. Doing one won’t be enough because it relies on either Facebook or Amazon telling you the book is out, and they might not do it.
You might miss ou
t on all my books forever, if you only do one!
Here’s the link to follow me on Amazon.
Here’s the link to my Facebook Group.
Here’s the link to my mailing list.
And if you are looking for more stories like mine, check out these great Facebook Groups for more authors and suggestions: Harem Gamelit, Harem Lit, and GameLit Society!
