Discover
by Ashley Cameron
Arizona State University
Ashley Cameron is an English Major at Arizona State University. She is expected to graduate in the Fall 2025 semester. She loves writing short stories in sci-fi, fantasy, and horror with a touch of romance. It is her dream to work for a video game company writing characters and expanding on digital worlds while also writing her own stories.
The flashlight illuminated the emptiness. The rock walls stretched like Daedalus’ labyrinth and Daya hoped to avoid the Minotaur. She was never afraid while on the job, she had been to far greater depths to find far greater mysteries, but this dive left her feeling particularly icy. Each breath caught and she knew it wasn’t because of the cave’s temperature.
In a fit of brave arrogance, Daya had told her team to wait at base camp some miles behind her. She regretted her decision more with each step away from the artificial lights planted around the cavern. The slow but constant decline made her knees cry out. Her sweat made her shiver, her homeostasis was a betrayal.
What was she even looking for?
The team had been sent here weeks ago and still they were no closer to the archeological find of the century that they had hoped for. Just because a place was unexplored didn’t mean it was worth exploring. Doubt about her luck, her patience, and her abilities crept in almost enough to make Daya turn back, but she would never quit when she was this close. She imagined casinos would love her attitude.
Daya rounded a turn. It was probably the one-thousandth turn of this hike. She was about to give up, test her chances tomorrow on a different passage with another set of a thousand turns, but her flashlight hit something that reflected.
Daya froze.
The light had passed over two small orbs in the air: eyes shining back at her, watching. She dared to turn the flashlight back over the anomaly. Please don’t be cave ghosts, she thought to herself, ever superstitious despite her scientific faith.
She should have wished for ghosts.
The reflections were indeed eyes, but they were too intimately familiar to be anything but terrifying. Daya’s pale gray eyes stared back at her through the cave wall. A perfect copy of Daya’s self, even down to her tan cargo pants and striped flannel jacket, stood trapped in translucent stone. The expression on her (its?) face was perfectly calm and flat but was unlike Daya’s resting face; she always had some worry furrowing her brow. The posture was passively military. The straight back, rolled shoulders, and elegant tranquility would have looked alien on Daya. Despite the discrepancies in personality, Daya was certain the thing was her. No one could have mistaken them.
She wanted to take a step back. She wanted to turn and run and pray to the God she didn’t believe in to wipe her memory and find her a new career, but she was an archeologist and a woman of science, so she did none of those things. Daya walked forward and put her palm against the clear rock. It was not cold like she had expected. She wanted to excuse the bizarre rock as ice but the total lack of temperature at all only gave her more questions. She wouldn’t meet the eyes of the thing inside.
The voices of every reasonable person Daya had ever spoken to screamed in her head. She was making a mistake. She was playing God. She forgot she was mortal. She grabbed a chisel from her pack. She hit the tool against the rock until a tiny piece came off, falling into her grasp. Daya turned it over in her hand, once, twice, five times trying to determine what it was. On the sixth turn, it burned her hand with the fury of Helios. The stone clattered to the floor with a hiss from Daya. She wrapped her hand in a spare blanket from her bag and bent to pick it up. When she returned to full height, she caught the gaze of the one looking back at her.
It blinked.
Interview with the Author
1. What inspired you to write this piece? What was your thought process throughout?
This piece was inspired by a fascination with the Earth and geology. I've always been interested in the possibilities that lay below the surface. Pictures of caves filled with giant crystals, prehistoric lava tubes, and massive caverns are absolutely beautiful to me. I wanted to explore a place like that and touch on the mystery in a way that discusses
human curiosity but also fear of the unknown.
2. What do you hope readers will take away from your piece? What effects do you want the piece to have on the person, community, or society?
I hope readers are left with goosebumps. I want them to see themselves in the protagonist's shoes and imagine what they would have done. I want people to wonder about the world and every part we haven't explored and think about if that's for better or for worse.
3. What is your favorite piece of fiction (short story, novel, flash fiction, etc.) that you’ve ever read? Why?
I think my favorite piece of fiction I've ever read was The Locked Tomb book series by Tamsyn Muir. The series hits so many of the fun sci-fi, fantasy, and romance tropes of a YA book while also containing some of the
most complex and beautifully written prose, stories, and settings that I've ever interacted with. I recommend that series to every fan of fiction.
4. If you plan on continuing to write, what are some goals/plans you may have for your future?
I want to keep sharing my stories with the world in the hopes of publishing my own novels. It would be a dream to have my short stories in an anthology as well as have YA novels, most likely fantasy, published with excited fans and an invested community. I am also interested in writing for video games or other visual media.