Letters from a Caveman, Part 1: Time Travel

Letters from a Caveman Part 1: Time Travel
Letters from a Caveman Part 2: The Great Food Hoard
Letters from a Caveman Part 3: The Dwelling of the Lost
Letters from a Caveman Part 4: The Tribe of Hunters
Letters from a Caveman Part 5: The Shaman
My Lost Two Weeks and Blog Hijack

Can you hear me, my tribe?

Something very strange has happened to me and I find myself in a place far away from you.

The last thing I remember is the gathering when we feasted and the men consumed the dream drink prepared by the Shaman. Instead of awaking in my dwelling with my woman, with memories of dancing with the spirits, I instead awoke here, in a vast and confusing territory where dwellings stand as high as a hundred men and people roam like herds of animals.

I think this must be the work of an enemy shaman, who has used dark magic to send me here so that our tribe has fewer young warriors to fight them. This place must be far beyond the mountains and it would surely take me many days to find my way home. I fear for you in case the same fate has befallen other young men in our tribe and the women and the old are not protected from the savagery of our enemies.

Perhaps they sent someone in the night to add his own magic our dream drink.

Something else is troubling me. I am not myself. I do not mean this in the way that we are not ourselves when we have taken the dream drink. I have thoughts and knowledge that I did not have before. When I awoke in this strange dwelling with bright, flat walls, I immediately knew where to find the food store. I was able to communicate with the strange woman who lives here with words I have not used before and recognised the name she gives me, which is not the same as my own.

It is with this knowledge that I discovered this tool. I am sure it is used to communicate with tribes, and when I sat before it, I knew the magic I needed to do this. It is like the animal hide we use to draw messages on, but much thicker. And this one has been cut and folded once, and is now so hardened by time that it could not possibly be folded again. There is surely great magic involved, because I can draw my message by pressing pictures already drawn on the hide and my own pictures then appear, lit with fire.

I hope our Shaman is able to understand this message. If you can hear, me, Shaman, I beg you to use your powers to bring me back. I am frightened by this place and by the magic around me. I feel like I am a spirit possessing the body of another. I am using magic and many new words and do not know if this is the work of good or evil. Sometimes I suddenly understand the magic clearly, then it is lost, like when the dream drink trance comes to an end.

I must end my message now, my tribe, as the woman is growing more angry. When I awoke I found many eggs in the food store and she was displeased by the manner in which I ate them. I understand that I must now go with her to another place. I will communicate with you again soon.

Letters from a Caveman Part 1: Time Travel
Letters from a Caveman Part 2: The Great Food Hoard
Letters from a Caveman Part 3: The Dwelling of the Lost
Letters from a Caveman Part 4: The Tribe of Hunters
Letters from a Caveman Part 5: The Shaman
My Lost Two Weeks and Blog Hijack