Cave shelter, though!

Merrin's theory, from her fragments of geology knowledge recalled from earlier schooling, is that these caves formed in several stages as sea levels fell and rose, and most recently there was some geological uplifting of the plateau, and some regions of the cave system that were once eaten away by acidic groundwater, and more recently enlarged and reshaped by tidal flooding, are now high and dry all year round. 

Actually getting up to the dry part from the wet part is pretty annoying at low tide! But doable, safely, for an unladen Merrin in power armor. 

Hiking up a cave - alone, for once, with Estha occupied walking on the wind - is a great time for Laeirthe to remind Merrin to think! With her brain! She has one of those! 

Sure, she's waiting on information. They're always going to be waiting on some kind of information. Either Estha's "executive" got the message or she didn't; either she and Estha's [god] will spare the resources to retrieve him, or they won't; either the two of them will find the Bag, or they won't.

But Merrin should think in advance on what sort of update that information, that she's so impatiently waiting for, will actually nudge toward, no? 

Mrrgllbglll he's so annoying but FINE

It would be pretty hilarious if Merrin found the Bag here, after all that. 

That doesn't even make sense, for one the cave is dry which means no tidal flooding, and two, it's absolutely within Locate Object-range of the surface and they have absolutely Wind Walked over this spot. 

Also, 'funny' is not how Merrin would describe it, if it happened anyway, she would describe it as REALITY MESSING WITH HER and be KIND OF MAD ABOUT IT. 

Laeirthe would muse on whether Merrin having just had that thought has any impact on the narrative logic of finding the Bag by sheer accident, BUT he has a feeling that Merrin doesn't actually need any additional reasons to be incentivized not to think about things. 

Fortunately for Merrin's SANITY, the cave does not appear to contain an easily-stumbled-upon Bag. 

It does, however, have an open area that turns out to be even larger and a lot more pleasant-to-be-in than it could have been from the limited spatial data Merrin was able to download-from-Estha's-brain when he had his geography spell up. 

She loves it????? It's so perfect??????? 

...Admittedly that whole crevice situation does NOT look very stable on geological timescales. Merrin should definitely ask Estha to use his geography spell to make sure it's not due to collapse in the near-term. Also, like, they'll definitely get rained on, though it looks like the crevice must open at a fairly high-ground point, there are water marks from previous rain-drainage but it doesn't look like it collects a river from all the surrounding runoff every time it rains in earnest. It rained a bit four [days] ago, one-and-a-half planetary days, and any runoff from that is already dried up. 

It's so spacious compared to her tiny sinkhole shelter! It has ADDITIONAL ROOMS! It has NATURAL LIGHTING! Despite the natural lighting dumping in solar radiation, it's only 17° C! There's a breeze coming from deeper in the ground, and her sensor isn't picking up on any radioactivity at all. 

What it doesn't have is a feasible direct transport route to the surface. Neither a storage crate nor a Merrin would actually be able to wriggle down that crevice.

But you could totally pass a cable down that way, and she could keep her solar panels up top – she'd want to build a windbreak or something, they wouldn't be accessible without backtracking all the way out and down to the river channel and back up to the plateau – and keep the battery storage down here, where the controlled temperature will get her much better performance. 

There's probably enough unused plastic to extend her (recently defunct and unused) still to run from the surface down to the cave. If Estha stops getting [cleric] [spells], they'll need a way to make freshwater from saltwater again, and to access it without ever needing to leave the cave system in the afternoon. A big enough saltwater pool would be fine to refill the annoying way every couple of planetary days, early in the morning when it's still cool...

And while it's technically a longer trip out to the ocean, if she needs to start harvesting snails and bulbwrack and other foodstuffs again, it's - not actually a harder one, Merrin doesn't think? She can still ride the river current out, and once the tidal bore is safely through she can still catch the gentler current in and swim halfway to their cave rather than needing to walk. She'll have to start being properly careful again, if Estha stops getting healing spells, but it should be doable.

She'll climb back down the annoying slope and search the wet cave area for a nice tidepool storage area. Maybe it'll even be less radioactive than the one in the danger cave!

Whooooooa new lifeforms! Merrin hasn't seen the spiky urchin ones or that exact variant of armored arthropod before. But they clearly survive in here. It's high enough that it probably only floods at true high tide, gently, with the earlier more violent tidal bore wave too attenuated to make it up this far. The lifeforms that live in here must have something to eat, too, maybe the limestone-chemotroph slime? ...Wow, Merrin is somehow only putting together now that if she's right about what the wall slime is and what it eats, then it must by itself be a significant contributor to cave formation and expansion.

Huh. 

She'll meet Estha back at the existing shelter at the time she expected him to be out of Wind Walk duration, with tons of video footage clips to show him on her electronics screen, and a tentative logistics plan that should have everything moved and set up in its new position within two planetary days. 

(On the bright side: longer days and a higher sun angle mean she's now getting over 4000 Wh on a clear day. If they're still alive and still trapped here and no longer have Estha's [cleric] spells come summer solstice, they might have to stay cooped up in a cave for most of the planetary day to avoid heatstroke, but at least she can be extravagant with electronics use.) 

...Unless he's used his own uninterrupted thinking time to come up with a brilliant idea for the Bag-search that Merrin can contribute usefully to, in which case that is arguably still the highest priority. 

Esta used his first prayer session, after using up the Sending, to request a Purify Food and Drink cantrip, which can extend the lifespan of Created Food.  He can start to build up a stockpile, and Purify it regularly, three times a day, say.

There's a scroll of Plane Shift in the Bag of Holding -- it being the sort of spell that you don't need to fight demons every time, but that you do sometimes need suddenly and unpredictably.  If Esta does get cut off from new spells, he might yet find his way to Hell living.  So long as he can someday find his Bag of Holding and its tuning forks, by still casting Detect Magic...

So long as he hasn't lost the ability to cast cleric spells entirely.

He'll ask for a 3rd-circle Stone Shape the next time he prays, he tells Merrin.  It trades off against a Locate Object, but will get 22 cubic feet of rock each time.  Which is, yes, not a lot of stone at all.  And it won't do moving parts.

But by using Stone Shape repeatedly -- if it goes on being refreshed, and while his magic holds out -- he can smooth floors, seal leaks in a storage pool, create rough but flat stairs that are good for climbing, make sure rainwater gets channeled away from the living area, or maybe create a new easier surface entrance if one of those already exists and only needs a couple of casts to be realized.  Assuming that isn't redundant with Merrin's nonmagical armor-cutting technology; stone is not harder to cut than magical armor, Esta is pretty sure.  He can by now conceive of the notion that a nonmagical cutter will blunt if it cuts too much, but they can do that while Esta still has Greater Make Whole.

He should shift his cantrip loadout toward Detect Magic, Purify Food and Drink, Create Water, and Mending, he's thinking.  If he gets enough audible prayer sessions to make the changes.  But they should not stake their lives on Esta keeping the ability to cast even cantrips or stored-up spells.

This Esta will not say:  He does not know if Asmodeus gets some sort of refund, on the number of allowed clerics, if He entirely drops Esta.

But, but Asmodeus should at least hesitate to do that, if He's not paying for Esta's daily spells.  Should not do it right away, not in just a few days or a few weeks, while there is still some hope of Esta finding the Holding Bag and getting back, 6th-circle clerics take so much time to make and empower.  He shouldn't throw one of His away while there is a little hope of getting back a useful 6th-circle cleric in weeks rather than decades...

Esta does not actually know how the Compact of Creation works about clerics in fine detail.  Maybe some other 5th-circle is already there, really, in terms of combat-earned vitality, and Asmodeus is only lacking the intervention budget refund to promote that one.

(All of these are allowed thoughts.  Terrifying yourself with the fear of what Asmodeus will do to you for your previous and future failures is not heretical.  It is indeed the central nonheretical thought.  Other thoughts are what ought to be heretical, really.)