/Aug. 21, 2024 // 6:39 AM
Entering Baba Yaga’s Cave, Alone
“There is a crack in everything. That is how the light gets in.”
I’m standing here, at the mouth of it, staring into the jagged edge where the world ends and something else begins. The air is thick, alive with the presence of something older than anything I’ve ever known, older than myself, older than thought. Baba Yaga’s cave, they call it. A place where the rules twist, where time folds in on itself, and your sense of reality starts to shed like dead skin. They say not to go alone. But I have to. I always have to.
I’m not afraid of the dark—not the way most are. Darkness isn’t the enemy, it’s just the space between things. What I fear is the mirror this cave is about to hold up to my face. There’s a crack in everything. And I’ve learned that those cracks don’t just let the light in, they let the truth out. There’s no light without some form of fracture. No realization without destruction. So here I am, standing at the threshold, preparing to step into my own fractures.
Baba Yaga herself? She’s less a woman, more a force, a manifestation of all that is unknowable, uncontrollable. She doesn’t live in this cave as much as she is this cave. Every twist of its walls is her laugh, every echo her whisper. Entering her domain feels like walking into the core of the unconscious—no sense of direction, just the overwhelming pull inward, deeper into yourself, where the forgotten parts fester.
I can already hear the crackling of the fire in her hut, though it’s miles deep in the belly of this place. She’ll be there, stirring some foul concoction in a pot. She always is. Waiting. She doesn’t speak when you arrive; she doesn’t need to. She just looks at you, and that’s enough to peel back the layers of armor you’ve spent years putting on. She sees through the mask, through the persona, through the layers you use to convince yourself that you’re whole. She sees the cracks, every one of them, and she smiles. Not out of cruelty, but out of understanding.
You’re here because you know, deep down, that you’re not whole, and the only way to heal is to accept that brokenness. She’ll show you the cracks you’ve hidden, the ones that pulse in the shadows of your mind, and she’ll show you how the light enters through them. But the light isn’t soft or warm—it’s harsh, blinding. The kind of light that burns away all the comforting illusions you’ve built up around yourself.
The cave breathes, and with it, I take a step forward. Alone. Into the mouth of the unknown. Into the cracks.
That’s where the light waits.
And that’s where I’m headed.
∆Remember Us∆ 