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She could smell it. It had to be around here somewhere. Somewhere in these twisting passages that never seemed to end, the deadly puzzles that she made it through again and again. She hadn’t heard or seen any other sentient creature for who knows how long. Time had no meaning here. The only things to keep her company were the ancient recordings of a long dead man, and a vegetable that had ceased to speak after she dropped it into a vat of acid. She kept it with her just in case she got hungry (she didn’t).
Suddenly, a crashing sound broke the comforting silence. She eased around the wall, heart racing, only to find a piece of the wall had come loose, and was lying on the floor. Underneath the tile, smooshing out from between the edges was white icing. Her stomach wrenched. NO! Not after she’d come so far, done so much! Tears filled her eyes, and when she blinked them away, the killer tile, and the icing, were gone. She sighed in relief, and sat down to take a nap for a few days.
When she woke up, she saw that she had idly sketched an arrow pointing to the left in her sleep. Oh well. She continued on, making an arbitrary decision to follow the arrow. Every time she had a choice, she took the left-hand path, until she reached her destination, a pile of paints by a white wall, randomly strewn across the floor. Bored, she began to draw, painting whatever came to mind. She tried to draw box with a heart on it, but the vegetable didn’t like that, so she stopped. By the time the whole wall was covered, she was tired, so she fell asleep to the sound of silence. When she woke up a couple months later, it was to the sound of explosions echoing through her head. Lemons, she thought hazily. They did that sometimes.
Suddenly, she remembered what she was looking for, and she knew exactly where it was. She raced through the halls, solid walls and vertical floors not slowing her down. This was her turf. She could almost taste it on her tongue, its creamy chocolatey goodness melting in her mouth, the cherries popping in between her teeth. She slid to a halt before a large, black pit. She was strangely reluctant to jump. She wouldn’t be hurt by the fall, she knew that, but she didn’t want this life to come to an end. She was comfortable here, and she knew everything would change as soon as she reached her destination. The vegetable chimed in, and the voice in the ceiling gave an encouraging statement, punctuated with deep, racking coughs. Deciding to listen to them, she took a running leap, and jumped into the hole in the floor.
She fell for hours, or years maybe, it was hard to tell. There was nothing but unending blackness below her, and a quickly receding light above, so she began to count the striations on the wall. After roughly 343,962, she saw a dim, flickering light below. At least, she thought it was a light. It had been at least 250, 028 stripes since she last saw light, and she couldn’t remember what it looked like. By the time she had crossed 400,000 striations, she was pretty positive it was a light. Also, she thought there was a floor, too. She thought that was kind of odd. Floors were useless, and strange. They slowed you down. The light was getting bigger, and the space she was falling in smaller. Despite her trying to wish it away, she hit the floor. Hard. Hard enough to send her skidding a few feet, even though she tried to roll with it.
After checking her legs to make sure there was no damage she couldn’t feel, she stood up and limped quickly over to where she could see shelves. After getting close enough, she gasped. Thousands and thousands of friends lined the walls, and were stacked three deep on each shelf. They all murmured their congratulations, and whispered how glad they were to see her. She grinned, and ignored the vegetable’s unhappy sparking in her pocket. After all, what did it know? She skipped over to the table where upon its marred surface, her destination lie. Finally. After all these years, she had found it. She grabbed a cone hat from on top of a nearby crate, and served some out to the Oracle who had made it down here too, and a few of her friends who were nearby, and even to the vegetable in her pocket. Then she sat down, and cut herself a slice. It was still warm.