You see a cave.

There was a reason you aren't given to spotaneity frequently, at least as far as potentially risky vacations went. Today, that reason was physically manifest a few yards behind you in the form of a stalled bus. Stalled: that was the adjective the driver used, carefully selected, lest a blightful two-word phrase beginning with the letter "B" be uttered.
	You remembered the last pleasant conversation you had before you felt the triple-digit heat hit you towards the end of a New Mexican afternoon. That last chat with your friend about traveling here only came in and out of your mind in fragments as your mind and body tried to use every ounce of energy just to not be dehydrated. You remembered something about art and culture, maybe something about an interesting restaurant a cousin of your friend suggested, too... you sighed.
The strange - but not unexpected - mix of hope of finding refuge, some frustration, exhaustion and fear was the actual thing pushing your feet forward, as any motivation to keep walking towards a small neighboorhood of run-down houses died about a hundred feet ago. While the driver tried to find a place he could get cell reception to call for help, your friend sauntered out of the vehicle that once carried you out here, but was now an oven. Since the sun was beginning to set at its own delicate pace, an even daintier shadow began to crawl over the shuttle and give what little protection it could to your friend.
	Why did you decide to walk over to those houses? To get a closer look at the golden plateaus? To try to find that perfectly-formed, stereotypical cactus for a photo-op? To get away from your pal, whose friendship you were now re-evaluating? It wasn't even a mile away, you told yourself. I've walked worse than that in the past, you boasted. But didn't you have more water in that time you "walked worse?" At the moment, you hadn't felt any effects of dehydration or heat exhaustion, but you knew it was coming, especially if hope of being rescued in the next hour or so continued to wane.
Being now a stone's throw away from some of the first houses of the settlement, you could glean from the infant shade coming down from a sizable plateau being one reason why people would want to live here. Well, here, compared to, say, down the road where any expectation of relief from the sunlight was exactly zero. Your sports watch read that it was about three. What your sports watch didn't tell you is that this town was looking more and more empty by the footstep. This was not a location marked in your tour guides, either printed or internet-based, and nobody had to ask why. Compared to the population of Santa Fe, this village of shacks might be of similar size, only the count of your current location would not include humans. Creatures from insect-sized ones to larger beasts snooped around you, stealthier than most soldiers.
	The concoction of emotions that once motivated you to come here now lost the "hope" part. No one was home. Not even secretly. You still had some water, but it was not to stay in the bottle long if the rate of your sweating continued to increase as it began to here. What you once saw as "giving up" in your friend staying by the bus now struck you as wise.
Since you had come this far and wasted this much wisdom, you figured you'd waste some more: a sliver of an opening in the side of the looming hill struck you as interesting. Maybe you were even loopier now, but now you stood by a crumbling house, staring at the entrance of a cave, thinking: why not? If I'm not getting water out of this trip, might as well catch a notable sight.
	Another hundred feet or so you walked, slightly uphill, to check out the little cavern. At least, you assumed it would be little, but by peering through its rather welcoming opening, you noticed that the formation stretched back a decent way, and light even dotted the inside of the cave through a significant portion of what you initially saw. The more shade the better, you said.
Stepping in some more, surprisingly, your curiosity had been rewarded: with desparate, heightened hearing you heard something farther in the cave... what do you mean, what was that sound? You know good and well what that moisturizing, sparkling, hydrating sound was. It was faint, but beggars can't be choosers. Especially not beggars in the wilderness. Not you, not Saint Antony - the desert plays no favorites.
	Though water was first on your mind, you couldn't help but pay attention to two other things. One, that the light streaming in and the ocassional visit by water apparently allowed some vegetation to grow inside here, of all things. Even a flower or two! Fragrant pink flowers in such an unlikely place...! You glanced around the rather wondrous sight, your desparate situation temporarily suspended by the beauty of the space. Streaks of golds and browns intertwined along the walls, the royalty of colors mingling with the commonors. Even reddish hues decided to join the fray along the naturally-formed murals you were admiring. Although you would've liked to look at these designs for some time longer, the second thing was something that caught your ears rather than your eyes: crying.
Distant enough to be nearly inaudible, you still heard intermittent sounds of weeping deeper in the cave. Is this where the village had gone? No, it was only one voice, it seemed - then, no - maybe that was another person. You couldn't tell if it was one person or the entire host of heaven crying. But it wasn't outright sobbing, which gave you some courage to try and find the source and comfort whoever it was. How often did you want to talk to strangers, much less crying ones? For some reason, you felt as if you had no other option, yet that this was still your own decision.
	The shape of the cave grew and shrank around you as you neared the crying, though never to where you had to crawl or climb. The light inside stayed somewhat consistent as you went, though as you reached something of a clearing, it got slightly dimmer. A dome-shaped room you'd almost expect to have been man-made finally greeted you. The woman expressing her sorrow inside of it did not, however.
You had only just poked your head into the area when she started to calm down some. Getting to a point where she could speak while only ocassionally being interrupted by a sniff or some tears, she seemed to wait for you to say something.
	You tried to think of the best thing you could say to someone you'd never met before who was crying. You eliminated some options: no howdy, no are you okay, no it's going to be alright. What does that leave?
"Hi," you began softly. "What's wrong?" Your voice was the same, but you felt that sounded too childish.
	The woman hunched over a bit and blew her nose in a rag. From her relatively intricate dress that covered her head-to-toe, you couldn't make out any of her features. In that way, she seemed otherworldly.

"Oh... I have a lot of things on my mind."

A pause, as you thought about how to respond.
	"Do you want to talk about it at all? I know we just met, but..." and with that, you realized you hadn't actually met yet.
She still faced away from you and towards the wall as she replied. "I've tried talking about it... that hasn't made much difference. I don't look harshly on people that I've interacted with, but it's hard for me to communicate myself well, I suppose. So I've often come here to express everything."
	Despite the fact that she had been crying for who-knows-how-long before you arrived, it's almost as if her demeanor was elegant and composed not in spite of her intense emotions, but somehow due to them. Her clothes were made up of a significant array of colors, but they didn't seem gaudy. Amongst those colors, the majority of her garb was white. You tried to figure out some more about who she was without asking, and so far the only thing you could be confident about was that she was up there in years. Her tears continued to trickle out.
A full minute or two passed while you stood behind her and she cried some more. In that moment, you tried to sort out the facts: what kind of a stranger cries in a cave? Who wouldn't face a potential threat while in an enclosed space with the only entrance blocked by some random person you just met? Maybe some kind of... hippie? Wanting answers, you were only more confused upon locating the source of the sad whimpers in the cave.
	"You don't have to stay here and help me or anything like that," the woman said. "I'm not alone."
Taken by itself, that almost sounded like a threat. You half expected some burly husband to show up behind you to make your life even more miserable. However, according to her tone of voice, she only said it as a fact. She meant what she said and would not be offended if you left.
	You hesitated for a minute as she resumed crying and, now being in the room, she was also saying things under her breath that you could not comprehend. Another language, you guessed. There's probably more languages in New Mexico than there are people in South Dakota.
After that minute, you whispered some pitiful farewell to your new friend and decided it was time to leave. Maybe the bus driver had finally phoned for assistance. Your conscience screamed to do something else, especially for such an innocent and friendly-seeming lady, but it seemed she was not very eager to converse. You started to leave.
	The inquiry about the water was resolved, at least, when you left her meager throne room. There was indeed water in the cave, but you traced it back to its source once, and then twice to be sure: there was a small stream of water coming out from her room so that it seemed she was crying up the beginning of a new brook.
With a newfound and greater pity for the woman, you decided you had to do something more. When you were young, your mother told you to pray for people in distress, and this you did now, almost instinctually, in whatever way you could. Your mind began to deduce potential solutions to the issue at hand and it was coming up short. Almost as short as your personal water supply now. What about that? ...No, it might be offensive to offer such a small amount of water, now with only half a sip left at the bottom. Considering every possibility, you finally landed on one.
	If she was familiar with this cave, hopefully she wouldn't mind your somewhat destructive idea.
Upon re-approaching her room, she sounded like she prepared herself to say more. You crouched down slightly on her left side and put your arm around her, just for a moment.

In that moment, no tears fell and no cries were heard.


After that brief embrace, she looked at you for the first time. "Thank you." She smiled slightly. She was the most beautiful person you've met on your vacation, and it would likely stay that way, despite the dimmer lighting here still not affording a clear view of who she is. When you tried to describe her to your friend later, you couldn't. If the lighting would not describe her, she would: "people call me Miriam."
	You couldn't help but smile back, only a little, given that tears were the most prominent thing in the room a few seconds ago. You said it was nice to meet her and you told her your name. She said she would remember you.
Another thing you couldn't help is to ask more about her situation, perhaps seeing if you could help. She took a minute to think and respond, switching through a variety of emotions on her face before finally saying, "if you knew the things I knew, you'd be crying too. But your kindness makes up for all of that... even if only for a moment." The way she looked at you made you think she knew about the flower in your hand now even though you hadn't shown it to her yet.
	As your encounter ended so she could begin to remember you, you took your time making your second exit better than the first - for her sake. You said some goodbyes and she thanked you for bringing some of heaven with you. Whenever you began to walk out the exit, you left another piece of heaven, freshly picked, in the entrance to her room and began your trek back.

Halfway back to the bus, you went to take what was likely to be your last drink of water for some time.
	You couldn't help but notice that there seemed to be more in your bottle than you last remembered.