The Boy in the Cave

The Boy in the Cave (Burenian: Gùbfìh Łtékanátłù) is a book by the Lovian-Burenian writer Erfÿra Zírq'onër. It was published in 1927 and has since been translated into several languages.

Plot
A man named Ixkúpèr who is hiking in the mountains when he finds a boy sitting in a cave. Ixkúpèr tries to find out where the boy lives so he can take him home, but it turns out that he had always lived in the cave, and that inside the cave there is a spring of eternal youth with a village with only children around it. The boy, whose name is Qsäta, on the other hand, learns about the world outside the cave, where people apparently decay with the years. As neither can live in the other world, they are soon separated again.

Years later, Ixkúpèr remembers Qsäta and tries to find him and the spring of eternal youth again. At the same time, Qsäta leaves his cave to look for Ixkúpèr. They don't find each other and end up swapping their worlds, Ixkúpèr becoming a child and Qsäta ageing. The book ends with an old Qsäta finding a young Ixkúpèr sitting by the opening of the cave.