Just behind the green wall there was a natural hole in the rock. Emunah  entered  and made a torch with an old branch collected from the ground. I entered too, following the fire and watching around our shadows dancing and moving on the stone walls. At the end of it there was a large room. Emunah stood by me and left the fire on the ground.

"Look" she said, pointing the finger on the walls.

To my surprise all around there were carvings, paintings and drawings that were ancient and new. Even writings were everywhere, but the symbols in which they were written were too old and different from the letters I knew. I stayed a while looking with my mouth open just staring at this beautiful work of art. Scenes of people fishing, hunting or dancing were represented in different shapes. Great animals with human bodies or the way round were carved and painted. Everything I saw during the previous days in the camp was well described by the walls around me. Then I stopped when something caught my eyes. There was a kind of lake and a woman was coming out of it. All around her there were strange plants that she was carrying in both hands. Rays of light were coming from the hands. Could it possibly be the cure we were searching for? I decided to keep my toughs for myself.

"What does it mean?" I asked.

"It just mean one thing" she answered "This is the key to our tribe and to the future for all existing beings. We hid this message into many symbols and drawings that represent our lifestyle and our ways. The power of chaos connects life to revelation"

"I can't understand" I protested.

"I know, nobody does at first" she said polite "Soon all will be clear. There were once one other civilization that was believed to be better than us. That's not completely true, they simply could not lie to each other. They were in another form different than ours. We are connected to the material plane and by to a physical reality that is simple to change and diverge. We isolated from the rest of the world to find a way back to that moment of simplicity and to detach from the physic part of ourselves. Did you know that the word saint means isolated?"

I did not.

I stayed there wondering about all the things she told me. She added then about the reincarnation and how the karmic law worked. In her opinion we were all in a dream, based on suffering. It was like a game in which the main rule was to understand our suffering and connect it with the rest of the sentient beings or whatever form of life. If people could feel the pain for other creatures they would reach a new point, a new level. Once done that, the only way out to solve the game was through compassion avoiding to create other suffering from it, but trying to shift it into kindness.

All those ideas were chaotic in my mind, but maybe that confusion was what I needed to connect  to a new reality, a new possibility. In that case, kindness to one another, was the main revelation of that experience in the cave.

"Someone said that fear is a lie told by the fearful body hoping to be wrong" she said in the end

"Would you like to conquer your fears and see beyond what you can feel with the five senses? If you base your expectation only on what you see, you blind yourself to the possibility of a new point of view.

I opened my mouth, remembering Uram once said the same thing.

"If you want, I can teach you all I know, so you can be more aware, but I won't force you to follow my guide. It is up to you"

I did not know what to reply or how I could possibly integrate all that I heard with my life. I was confused but I would not be for very long because all my plans were about to change in a way I could not possibly predict.

A week passed after the experience of the cave and I decided to take what Emunah had to offer, so I began my training. We were not far from the eagle nest and we had been walking around the mountain endlessly. During that time I could learn to meditate, to hunt and to see things as they are. I learned the art of observing closely at the surroundings. She even introduced me to the dream yoga and to the way of the lucid dreams like John had done. He had told me that this practice helped him to survive but I was very skeptic. Even though I was trying hard, I did not believe in that very much, so I had made no progress.

Farther more she taught me everything about the knowledge of the past with symbols and stories. These came from all over the world: from north Europe to Africa all the way to America and Asia. Even though separated and different they had something in common.

To begin with, she taught me the ancient stories from the north Europe, their gods and their meaning. These stories came from the Edda, the book of the Vikings. The character I loved the most was Tyr, the god who sacrificed his hand to hold down the giant wolf Fenrir saving the humanity of that time, or the wise Odin who hanged himself nine nights and days to get the knowledge of the Runes. She explained all the symbols and their meanings.

"You don't have to think to Gods like real humans but like qualities and principles that became human and were represented like them to be more easy to understand for common people" said Emunah "it's a simplification" she added.

After that she taught me the Hebrew letters and the old hexagrams of I Ching, the book of change. I learned new points of view and new ways of seeing things. She introduced me the sacred geometry and the basic structures of life. All the letters and symbol were a map that anyone could follow to improve him or herself and walk towards his or her true self.

I realized that during my life I never learned so much in so little time. It seems she could see everything through these symbols and I started to do it too. Things changed and it was like seeing things with different eyes. The net of a spider became full of symbols and even the rocks and shapes of the trees could talk and give me insights. I reached a new level of consciousness and I moved, walked and talked in a new way from the moment these teachings came to my heart.I could speak nature language.

Emunah warned me many times.

"You must be open to these teachings and always ready to change your point of view endlessly. If you think you have learned something you would be fooling yourself. There is no end to learning and to movement. The only thing that never change is change itself. Take for example the structure of the eye. It's micro parts are little baskets that vibrate and move a little to collect the light and give you the sight in color. Did you know that if these little structure didn't move you would see just the color grey?"

Emunah had the ability to move from one story to another, to make beautiful metaphors and always  connect these teachings to the things around us. Then, to test the things I had understood, she asked me weird questions that made sense to me later on.

She explained that the human kind became more and more complex so we needed more and more complex methods to realize ourselves , to awaken our potential and to see things as they really were without judgment.

"Do you know what's the purpose of a glass?" she asked suddenly.

I hadn't have the slightest idea.

"To hold something inside" I tried.

"To be empty" she replied back.

"That's the only way it could be filled again and again with wisdom, like the eye. People are afraid of what they don't know and they hold on to their knowledge like it were something real to protect. If you are empty you have nothing to defend and you can only be filled with new water, trust and love to those around you . Look how many people they compete and fight nowadays for a degree that is simply a piece of paper, worthless, without wisdom.

Having nothing to defend brings you to have nothing to be afraid of because whatever happens can't take anything from you. There was a man in Italy who lived by this principle. He left everything he had to the poor"

After a while I could learn the hieroglyphs of the ancient Egyptians , the myths of Babylon and the meaning of the tarot. She told me that all this knowledge had been saved by the population that nobody could stand: the Gypsies. It has been decided to keep the ancient tradition for better days to come hidden through symbols among common people. This delicate mission had been given to the best qualified people to travel and share this knowledge that would have been lost otherwise.

"God, the divine or whatever force greater than us always chooses the last population on earth to deliver his wisdom. He operates in a paradoxical way, always. Wherever you see a paradox, there is his mark, there you can find his signature. Sometimes people  considered crazy, with mental illness or even physical problem may be the sign of a gift hidden in the curse. From this point of view a special character was Moses, who needed to guide an entire population, but God chose him even if he stuttered when his role was to talk to the pharaoh and convince him to let his people go. Many times people are afraid of this and God's ways. Those who understand his laws usually wears a mark on their forehead and they are feared by their fellow men. They call them unpredictable or incoherent, but in truth these are the people chosen from God to work his schemes"

"The mark on the forehead doesn't refer to the episode of Cain and Abel? Shouldn't be the way around?" I asked.

"Many times stories are written by the victors, and it is a representation of what truly happened. Why do you think Cain couldn't be killed if he was so bad? Why does God protects him? Why whoever tries to hurt him will receive seven times the damage?"

That left me with the mouth wide open. I never thought with my own head about all this stuff.

Suddenly I looked at my feet and I saw tiny little frogs, so I asked Emunah:

"How come there are so many tiny frogs nearby?"

"You are asking me the wrong question" she replied.

"Look where we are"

"We are walking around rocky ground and under a really hot sun" I replied

"Look from above" she said.

"We are on a mountain trying to reach the top"

"Yes and no. Try to see the connection between these frogs and the rocky soil. I will give you a hint: these frogs stay in warm waters"

"Okay but that doesn't help unless..we are on a giant mountain that hides water in his womb..I can't believe it! This is a volcano!"

"Exactly Scott, this is an ancient one no more active. The remain lava make hot springs nearby. Why are you interested in these frogs? "

"Just curious I guess" I replied with a smile.

I would have not been so curious if Ashley photos did not look exactly as this place described by Emunah, an underwater cave. I could not guess the connection between everything but I was closer to solve that great mystery.

In that precise moment, Emunah fell on her knees on the ground and turned to me.

"Look what I found!" she cried.

She was holding a feather in her right hand. Was it a sign? Maybe coincidences didn't exist, but that moment I would have believed in anything just if I could have found the others shiny furred precious hairs of the most majestic bird living on the planet.