Genes determined that by the age of 19 Karina was very slim, with a fragile skeleton, narrow skull and lantern jaws. The bones of her arms were visible reflecting the little volume of her muscle mass. Karina’s legs were slender with knees touching each other when she was standing straight. She had a friend Rachel whom she thought she knew perfectly well because together they did their homework, went to lectures, and were friends on Facebook and Instagram.
On one day Karina woke up in the night and sensed not a bedsheet underneath herself but a rigid fur. Her nostrils took in a damp air of a cave. She sat down and her heart sank when she did not see the ceiling and walls of her dorm illuminated by reflections from streetlights. The impervious darkness that was surrounding Karina made her hands shake, her heart beat speed, and her head spin. She collapsed back on the fur and pressed her eyelids together as tightly as she could.
Karina woke up again when it was already the morning. What she saw first made her gasp. The cave not only remained the part of surrounding reality, but also obtained definitive shapes due to beams of sun that were getting inside. Through the entrance an endless sea was visible.
Suddenly Karina realized she was not wearing any clothes. Her cheeks turned bright crimson. This color intensified when the girl noticed that she was surrounded by naked people. One man with large muscular arms was sitting nearby and striking two rocks together. Repetitive clashes were routinely intensified by echoes. He had large brows and hair all over his tanned body.
Karina covered herself in the fur trying to relax the muscles on her face that immediately contracted in a grimace since the fur was covered in drops of dry blood. The girl remained motionless. Meanwhile, there was a constant whirl of activity around. Some women were producing diverse sounds that did not make any sense for Karina. The females organized themselves in a band and left the cave presumably to search for food. Children were restlessly running around and shouting so loudly that Karina’s head started aching. She was shifting her eyesight from the kids to a man in the middle of the cave chamber who was patiently grinding two wooden sticks together.
Eventually Karina felt that she could not bear it any longer. She stood up and headed towards the entrance of the cave. As she passed among men and women who remained in the cave, they all resumed their activities and did not stare at their uninvited “guest”. Outside of the cave in a distance Karina saw people walking along the marine and perhaps collecting seafood like turtles, seashells. However, the girl did not join them, but wondered away along the sea.
She was strolling bare foot in green grass under burning sun and gazing at the wild landscape. Her hands were still clutching the fur skin wrapped around her body despite of heavy drops of sweat that appeared on her forehead and back of the neck.
Suddenly Karina froze. In a short distance she noticed several large and extremely thin hyenas each reaching her chest. Her hands were strongly trembling as she crumpled the fur in a measly semblance of a shield. Ugly muzzles were approaching; robust canines were glittering in the sun. The closest hyena attacked. Karina screamed in a high-pitched voice she never thought she possessed; felt how the jaws closed around the fur skin. It seemed that the canines have pierced her hand. Simultaneously she experienced pain and suffocation as if her spine crashed as it hit the soil…
Loud calls and shouts resembling those that Karina heard in the cave arouse. The girl felt that the hyena let go of her arm. She opened her eyes and saw how several strong and muscular men and women with large stones and wooden spears were fighting against the hyenas. Karina collapsed.
She regained her consciousness in the cave. A woman who could hardly be described as gracile with a scar across her cheek sat nearby consuming mollusks whom she extracted from shells that were burned. Behind her back a fire was flaring, and other members of the band were holding mollusks in their hands waiting for them to open up. The woman noticed that Karina was looking around and made a strange sound, simultaneously stretching her arm and dropping a mollusk on the fur beside Karina.
Karina sat up, deeply sighed and started to slowly move her eyes towards her right hand that was still hurting. “Phew,” she breathed out, noticing that her arm still consisted of three parts and only deep scratches covered by the blood that dried out were visible. Her spine was aching, but this was a tolerable pain.
Karina realized how thirsty she was. She caught the woman’s look and imitated drinking from a bottle, then made a pleading sign. The woman frowned, took the mollusk and threw it on Karina’s lap. The girl shook her head and scratched the back of her head. Then in an inspiration she performed a gesture she would make when drinking from a brook.
The woman repeated the gesture, then stood up and headed in the darkness of the cave. Karina followed, wrapping herself in the fur – the farther they went from the hearth, the colder the air was getting. The large round shoulders of the “guide”, her strong arms still visible for the girl due to the glow of the fire did not mind the frigid condition of the cave’s intestine.
Finally, Karina shaking from head to toes heard the sound of streaming water. At the same time, the silhouette of the “guide” vanished in the darkness and the girl’s heart started skipping beats.
Suddenly someone’s hand grasped Karina’s wrist making her gasp. It took her several seconds of desperate panic to convince herself that she was grabbed by the woman and not a cave bear.
She was being pulled down, so she kneeled and felt how her hand was plunged into… “Ahhh!” Karina screamed withdrawing her hand as quickly as possible from the water cold as hell. The echo was still repeating “Ahhh”, while Karina heart was pounding in her queering chest. She heard the woman beside her drinking. It took the girl a while to regain control over herself and manage to satisfy thirst by lapping the water like an antelope.
On the next day Karina woke up both thirsty and hungry. After she has rubbed her eyes, she began searching for the woman who took care of her yesterday. However, all the women around were unfamiliar. So, Karina ventured to go and find the brook on her own. As she was kneeling near the stream, she kept glancing into the depth of the cave and imaging how a bear would attack her and tear to pieces.
When she came back to the camp, she took several stones and approached a man who was in the process of making a tool. She sat opposite to him and waved. The man ignored her gesture, however, all people nearby started staring at Karina. When she exclaimed: “Hey!” others made themselves scarce. The man still did not rise his head. However, his lips became curved downwards and a frown appeared on his wrinkled forehead. “Could you, please…” Karina began when suddenly a man roared, grabbed a bone lying next to him, stood up and hit the girl’s head with it.
A stream of tears rushed out from her eyes as she ran away and hid behind a stalagmite. A half of the day passed before she gained enough courage to approach a group of women who were busy striking stones together and possibly making tools. She anxiously observed their reactions: nobody frowned, nobody roared. On the contrary, one of the women – in whom Karina recognized her “guide” – immediately turned towards Karina and started showing where to strike the stones. Her fingers were dirty and with long broken nails.
Karina spent four days manufacturing her weapon. During this period, she fed on mollusks whom other women brought to the cave. The polish on her nails was wiped off and a nail on index finger got broken. Still, she felt warm gratitude towards the woman with the scar while she was giving the final touches to the spear.
On the fifth day Karina departed from the cave with a group of female gatherers. Her friend was among the band. They wondered away so far from the cave that Karina became terrified as to how they would find their way back. While she was anxiously looking around, her companions were calmly collecting seashells and turtles and dropping them into fur skins. She made an incredible mental effort to memorize the route as they walked back loaded with seafood. This habit of memorization saved her life when one day she went to the savannah with her scarred friend and several other women to hunt hedgehogs and collect ostrich eggs.
Hunting and gathering required a lot of patience and endurance as the band roamed the landscape under the heating sun. Suddenly, Karina felt herself sick. A loud buzzing noise invaded her head which started spinning uncontrollably. Everything became blur. Then darkness…
Karina awakened still in the savannah in the high grass. She must have been lying there for a long time since the sun was closer to the horizon and the unbearable heat receded. The girl’s head was bursting with pain and she needed water. Nobody was around. Holding back tears, feeling hatred to the woman with the scar whom she considered her friend, the girl staggered back to the cave. She was recollecting the way with enormous efforts. By the time she reached the entrance of the cave she was not sure if her head was aching due to the heat stroke or mental work. Surprisingly she managed to get to the brook and drink despite of her exhaustion. Then she curled up in her corner of the cave and fell asleep immediately.
Karina woke up in her dorm and heard knocking on the door. “Phew,” she breathed out and wiped away the sweat from her forehead. She sat up. Her blanket was lying on the floor and her bedsheet was craped. Knock, knock, knock!
“I’m coming!” Karina exclaimed and walked to the door feeling herself as light as if she got into zero gravity.
“Hi, Rachel,” she said smiling and immediately felt shivers down her spine – Rachel was frowning.
“I’ve been waiting so long for you! Did you forget that we arranged to have breakfast together?” Rachel grumbled.
“Oh, I’m so terribly sorry, Rachel,” Karina folded her hands in the pleading sign, “Let’s go to drink,” she folded her hands as if drinking from the brook, “and have something to eat.” She imitated sucking out a mollusk from a seashell. Rachel’s eyebrows raised, her eyes widened, and her mouth opened.
“Aren’t you going to get changed? How about brushing your teeth?” she nearly screamed in a high pitch, staring at Karina’s nightshirt.
“Where are they!?” Karina exclaimed looking around for hyenas and immediately felt that her cheeks turned crimson color.
“In your room. What’s the matter with you?”
“Oh, that dream…” Karina mumbled wondering whether to describe it as a nightmare or not. A hundred of questions were whirling around in Karina’s head: Rachel, what are your hobbies? What makes you most annoyed? What makes you most happy? What are you most scared of? Would you ever abandon a friend? If you would, why? What do you value in people the most? and so on. She was trembling with jubilant excitement as she looked forward to getting the answers.