It started as a minor incident while he and his girlfriend were camping.
He thought a lot of her and felt they were made for each other. It was going to be a brief getaway for the weekend. A couple of nights in a tent, going for long walks, enjoying nature. It was when they were on one of these that they discovered the cave. He was the first to go in; she followed slowly.
He commented as they entered, “You’re being very brave.”
“Am I?”
“Oh! Yes.”
“And you know this, how?”
He looked around, “I’m not sure, but I know you’ve been afraid of caves since you were a toddler.”
She was startled by the statement. “How could you possibly know that? I’ve never told you about it.” She thought about it for a while and said, “You’ve never met my parents, so you couldn’t have found out that way. How did you find out?”
He wasn’t listening. “There’s something very special about this place,” he said, running his fingers over the bare rock.
She looked around. “It’s just a cave…”
“No. No, it’s not,” he said, jumping in. “I’ll prove it.”
He stood still with his eyes closed for a full minute. He opened them to find her staring at him with raised eyebrows and a grin.
Not to be put off, he said, “Around that time, when you were a three or four, you fell over behind the shed, where your mother kept all her fancy flower pots and saucers, together with lots of glass pickling jars. You were told not to go there. You knew how angry she could get. Your knee was bleeding. You wiped the blood off as best you could and made sure it stayed out of sight. You kept it clean until it healed, but you never told your parents.” He dropped his head to one side. “You’ve never told anybody.”
Her look was something he hadn’t seen before.
That’s how it started. He couldn’t help thinking that this could open up a great future for him as some sort of modern day oracle, like the Greek thing, with people coming to him. He could put a mat down and sit cross-legged. He could charge for his services! He thought about all this in the hours that followed.
However, that night he woke abruptly with the realisation that people didn’t want to know about the past, they wanted to know about the future!
He tried to snuggle back down into his sleeping bag, but it didn’t work. He had a bad night.
The next morning they packed up and returned to their respective homes. It was late when they arrived, so he only dropped her off, then made his way home, situated in the next town.
Naturally, he was pretty upset that his grandiose plans had come to nothing on reflection.
He was equally upset when he never heard from her again…