On day ten, Pancake and Pep encounter a mysterious cave in the mountains they’ve been traversing, just beyond the ice cream trees. The light gleams off the key, and shines into the cave, and there are mysterious noises coming from within…

I think we all know how this story goes.

You may recall H. P. Lovecraft’s tale, “The Beast in the Cave“. In this story, a man who was part of a tour group in some caves gets separated from the rest of the party, and gets lost in the caves. He encounters a MUTANT GIANT ALBINO PENGUIN, of all things (always a source of great amusement to me), and then is stalked by a creature, the titular Beast, which is apelike, hairy, all white, and blind, hunting the lost man by sound alone. In the end, we learn that the best stalking the narrator was once a human being who had gotten lost in the cave himself, many years ago!

Spoiler warning for a story that was published over a hundred years ago and that resides in the public domain.

You can tell that Pancake and Pep are probably going into the cave, since there is a Pancake-shaped opening in the front. My theory is that they go in, Pep finds a nice pond to swim in, and Pancake becomes the penguin that stalks the narrator of “The Beast in the Cave”.

That probably won’t happen, exactly in that way.

Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

Fun fact: Lovecraft wrote this tale at age 14.

A Scary Tale of Holidailies for You!

Today’s entry in the Episcopal Advent Calendar centers on the theme of rest and reads, “Set aside 30 minutes to spend in silence with your best friend today. Sure, it may feel a little weird to be silent on the phone or while sitting next to each other on the couch or across the table. Just give it a try. Make sure to set aside time after your silence to pray for each other and to say thanks for the time of rest.”

This would be easy if my best friend weren’t Jennifer the Agnostic. We do sit in silence quite often, reading or snuggling the cats. But praying for each other afterwards might be hard for her.

Awkward.