I heard the sounds of birds crowing outside. I felt the first rays of sunlight shine on my body. 'It's now morning!'
'I'm well rested and full of energy, so let's get this day started!'
I moved to wake up, but my movements were stiff. It was as if my body was covered in a hard shell. I tried harder to move and heard cracking sounds. 'Huh!?'
The more I moved, the more I heard the cracking sounds. I looked down at my body and saw that something was on it. 'Is this really a shell?'
I moved a bit more, and some pieces started falling off. 'Am I molting?'
I rubbed myself against the tree, scraping off the rest of the shell. 'Ahhhh! That feels so much better!'
'But why in the world would I molt? Do caterpillars molt? I don't think so? Or maybe they do?'
'Not the time to be thinking about that! Get back on track! The real question is why? If I remember correctly, molting and shedding only happen when an animal grows bigger. That must mean I grew in size!'
'Why would I grow in just a day, though? Maybe all that food I ate yesterday had something to do with it.'
'I guess that's a query for another time. I should get going. I have a whole forest to explore, after all.'
I peeked my head outside, scouting for potential dangers. Once I saw that the coast was clear, I crawled out of the hole and made my way into the black grass.
The ground was cool and wet from yesterday's storm. I used this opportunity to drink water from a puddle I found. 'I haven't drunk water since I hatched, so I gotta stay hydrated.'
Once I was done, I started moving in the direction opposite the river, making sure to crawl near trees and in the tallest blades of grass. I also ate grass I picked up on the way as I moved.
Whenever I heard movement in the trees or rustling bushes on the ground, I would hide in the nearest place I could reach, which most often than not was me just going as low as I could in the grass or near the roots of trees.
I had been crawling for about an hour when I first heard them—the crowing of birds in the distance. I froze, pressing my body low against a tree root. The sounds grew louder, and soon a flock of violet-coloured birds descended into the canopy above me. Their dark feathers caught the sunlight streaming through the black trees, and for a moment, they shimmered with a rainbow coating that was almost hypnotic. They hopped from branch to branch, crowing to one another in what I assumed was some kind of morning greeting. I watched them for a few minutes until they grew bored and flew off deeper into the forest.
'Well, that was pretty,' I thought, resuming my crawl. 'Note to self: violet birds with rainbow feathers exist here. Probably not friendly, though. Most things here aren't.'
Continuing on, I made sure to keep my movements slow and deliberate. The grass here grew in patches, some tall enough to hide me completely, others so short I had to sprint—well, crawl as fast as I could—between cover. It was during one of these exposed stretches that I nearly crawled directly into a web.
I stopped just inches from a single strand, my front legs hovering in the air. Following the strand up with my eyes, I saw them—huge spiders, their bodies the size of my fist, but their legs spanning easily the width of my entire body. They were everywhere in the trees above me, their webs connecting branch to branch in a massive, interconnected network. What caught my attention wasn't their size, though. It was how they moved together.
'Ordinary spiders are solitary,' I remembered, watching as three of them worked on the same web section, passing silk between them like skilled craftsmen. On another web nearby, two spiders were sharing what looked like the remains of a large insect, eating side by side without any aggression. 'But these guys are a whole community. Weird. Cool, but weird.'
I gave the web a wide berth, crawling around it through a patch of particularly thick grass. I didn't want to find out how they treated uninvited guests who stumbled into their neighbourhood.
The next encounter happened when I stopped to rest near a large tree. Its bark was rough and grooved, perfect for blending in, so I didn't think much of it when I first approached. I was so focused on catching my breath that I almost didn't notice the slight movement on the trunk.
I looked closer. The tree was covered in frogs. Or were they toads? 'What's the difference between them, again?' They were all black, their skin textured exactly like tree bark—grooves, knots, even little bumps that mimicked where branches had grown. They were pressed flat against the trunk, stacked on top of each other in some places, completely still. If one of them hadn't shifted slightly to readjust its position, I never would have seen them.
I was about to back away slowly when a black bird—one of the violet ones I'd seen earlier, actually—landed on a branch just above the frogs. It was preening its feathers, completely oblivious. One of the frogs, the closest to the bird, opened its mouth.
'Oh no,' I thought.
The frog's tongue shot out faster than I could track. It wrapped around the bird's leg, and before the bird could even squawk, it was yanked from the branch. The bird hit the trunk with a sickening thud, and suddenly every frog on that tree erupted into motion. They swarmed the fallen bird, their camouflage breaking as they moved, revealing the true number hiding there. Dozens of them. Maybe more.
I watched, frozen in place, as they devoured the bird in seconds. Feathers floated down where the bird had been. Then, as quickly as they had moved, the frogs returned to their positions on the trunk, pressing flat, becoming bark once more.
'Yeah... I'm just gonna go.' I crawled away as quietly as my many legs would allow, putting as much distance between myself and that tree as possible.
My heart—or whatever passed for a heart in this body—was still racing when I entered a clearing. I stopped at the edge, sensing something off. The trees here looked... wrong. There were four of them, spaced evenly apart, and they all looked different. One resembled an oak, another a pine, a third looked like the black trees that dominated this forest, and the fourth looked like a fruit tree of some kind. But something about them was too perfect, too deliberate.
I watched one of them for a long time. A small creature—some kind of rodent—scampered past the base of the oak-like tree. Nothing happened. The rodent continued on its way. But then a bird landed on one of its branches.
Vines shot out from seemingly nowhere. They wrapped around the bird's legs, its wings, its neck. The bird thrashed, but more vines joined the first, cocooning it completely. Within minutes, the bird was completely covered, a green bundle hanging from the branch. Then, slowly, the bundle seemed to deflate. Shrink. And then it was gone, like it had never existed.
I looked at the other three trees. 'Carnivorous trees. They're all the same kind, just mimicking whatever trees are nearby. And they use acid to digest their prey. Just like other carnivorous plants.'
The rodent that had passed by earlier was still alive, still moving through the forest. 'So they only go for things that land on them. Good to know. Stay away from branches. Got it.'
I gave the clearing a wide berth, crawling around its perimeter through the grass. I didn't want to take any chances.
The sun was starting to lower in the sky by the time I encountered the last creatures. I had found a good hiding spot beneath a large, leafy bush to rest and eat some grass when I heard them—a series of high-pitched whinnies, but deeper, more resonant than any horse I'd ever heard.
I peeked through the leaves and felt my nonexistent jaw drop.
Unicorns. Real, actual unicorns.
But not the kind from human stories.
There were five of them in a small meadow, their coats pure white, their manes and tails silver. And their horns—some had one, some had two, and one large male had three horns curving from its forehead like a crown. They were beautiful, yes, but there was something in the way they moved, the way their eyes scanned the tree line, that screamed danger.
As if to prove my point, a large predator—some kind of big cat I hadn't noticed—lunged from the bushes toward the nearest unicorn.
The unicorn didn't even flinch. It simply dissolved into mist.
The big cat passed right through where it had been, stumbling. Then the mist swirled, condensed, and became a storm—a swirling vortex of silver and white, with hundreds of razor-sharp edges spinning within it. The storm enveloped the big cat.
I looked away. I didn't need to see the rest.
When I looked back, the unicorns were grazing peacefully again, the male with three horns watching the tree line with knowing eyes. The big cat was nowhere to be seen.
'Yeah, this forest has got some really interesting creatures, to say the least. If I wasn't careful, I would have died ten times over today, from being eaten or accidentally stepped on.'
I waited until the unicorns moved on, their forms flickering in and out of mist as they travelled, before I dared to leave my hiding spot. The sun was setting now, painting the sky in oranges and reds that filtered strangely through the black trees.
Nighttime was coming, and I still needed to find a place to rest.
Nighttime came rolling in, and the forest got even creepier. Without direct light from the sun, the mood of this place drastically shifted. 'At least I have my night vision to keep me safe.'
'But I should find a place to camp for the night.'
Looking around, I didn't immediately find a suitable hole to crawl into. 'Maybe I should keep looking.' I crawled a little further with zero luck. 'Oh, come on! Why is it so hard to find a good resting spot?'
'Okay, let's think about this. If I keep going, I might not find a place to hide immediately and end up roaming this deadly forest for hours at night.'
'But what other options do I have?' A rustling sound dragged me out of my thoughts, and I looked for where it came from.
A few feet from where I was standing, a strange creature popped out of the ground. It looked like if a rat and a bear had a three-eyed, eight-legged baby. It shook the dirt off its coat and started sniffing the ground. It was heading towards me.
'Oh no! Can it smell me?! This is bad, really bad!'
'I have to do something, but what? I know I can't outrun that thing, so the next best option is to stand very still!'
I lay down flat, not moving an inch. The creature got closer, sniffing around me. It sniffed right at me, and I could feel its cold nose press against me. 'It's so slimy and cold.'
It suddenly got up and opened its mouth. 'Is it going to eat me!?'
With its teeth bared, it started inhaling air. 'Wait, it looks like it's about to—'
It sneezed right on me as stray blobs of mucus flew everywhere, including on me. 'This is the most disgusting thing that has ever happened to me!'
The creature shook its muzzle, removing more mucus. Then, like nothing ever happened, it continued to sniff the ground, moving on its merry way.
'I can't believe the nerve of some beasts! How dare it cover me in its disgusting nasal fluids! You shall fear the day we meet again, filthy beast! For I shall make you pay a hundredfold for this transgression against my sacred form!'
It walked away, sniffing the ground for whatever it was sniffing for.
I wiped off the mucus with wet grass and leaves. Returning to my earlier predicament of finding a resting place for the night, I looked around, scanning for ideas.
I noticed the hole the creature crawled out of and got an idea. 'If I can't find a new place, I'll just have to make one.'
'I could use my mandibles to carve a hole in a tree and sleep in there, although I don't think they'll be strong enough to do that.'
'Unless I dig into some soft wood. Maybe I can find a dead tree or a fallen log. After all that rain the previous night, they should be soaked through.'
'Let's see, just need to find a log of some sort. It shouldn't be hard, since dangerous creatures in the forest are always fighting for territory.'
I walked for some time, looking closely at my surroundings to spot the thing I was looking for. I finally found a small log. I gave it a bite and confirmed that it was soft enough to use.
'Now, let the carving begin!'
I worked my way through the back of the tree. It was cold and wet and tasted exactly how you would expect, yet, back to taste? Very woody. Yet it had this faint sweet taste that I couldn't describe.
I finally pushed through the bark and reached the flesh inside the tree. The inside of the tree was white and bitter, a complete opposite to the sweet bark. The deeper I went, the worse the flavour got. It got to the point that it actually hurt to eat it.
But I pushed on, putting aside the pain. 'I can't focus on that right now. I have to dig deeper. This is for my own good.' Having told myself that, I worked harder.
It took a few minutes before I was finally done with my carving. 'My mouth may never recover from this culinary assassination, but at least I'll have a safe place to sleep for tonight.'
'I kind of wonder what type of tree this is for it to taste like that? It felt like I shoved multiple grenades into my mouth!'
'Anyway. Tada! Welcome to my temporary living space! It's not much, but I'm proud of it!'
'Let's have a tour, shall we!'
'Over here, we have the bedroom, and that's it! You didn't expect little old me to build something actually impressive, right? Plus, this stuff is horrible!'
As I was brushing leftover pieces of wood out of the entrance, I saw something red poking out from the far end of the hole.
'What is this?' I touched it and felt something hard, like a rock. 'Why would a rock be inside of a tree?'
'I guess I could dig a little more to find out... but the taste, though!'
'Curiosity versus common sense. A battle that is fought by many and won by few. And today, I have lost this war.'
'I'll never be able to live with myself knowing that I just left this thing here! It would gnaw on my mind day and night, and I would live to regret it!'
I started digging around the red, rock-like object, being careful not to damage it. It took a lot of time and a lot of pain tolerance, but I was finally done carving around the object.
Now that it wasn't surrounded by wood, I could finally see it clearly. It was a perfect sphere with a deep red colouration. The first thing that came to mind when I looked at it was blood.
'An orb of pure red blood. This is a strange little ball, and it was in this tree. What, though?'
After a minute of me staring at it, it started leaking a red aura. The aura filled the hole I had created and seeped through the entrance.
It smelled sweet. Sickly sweet.
Like white chocolate dipped in sugar and candy, type of sickly sweet. It overrode my sense of smell with its pungent aroma, blocking all other scents.
It held my attention for an uncomfortable amount of time before I made the decision to gently place one of my legs on it. It gave off a subtle red glow, a bit foreboding but in a way, kind of soothing.
Ignoring the gut feeling I was currently experiencing and the obviously sinister vibes the orb gave off, I took a small bite from it.
Though it was as solid as a rock, it was quite brittle and flaky, allowing me to easily dismantle it with my mandibles. What followed as the crystalline pieces entered my mouth could only be described as a flavour attack. I felt the taste of something fruity, then it changed to something sour, then finally ended with an explosion of sweetness.
Entranced by the strange yet enjoyable flavours, I started to devour the red orb with monstrous ferocity.
My voracious appetite left no room for resistance, and my body moved on its own. My instincts were taking over, and it kind of scared me how little control I had over my body in this situation.
In a matter of minutes, the orb had completely disappeared into my stomach. Not even a single crumb was left over.
While I was taking a breather, I felt an immense pressure on my body. I didn't know where it came from, but I felt an imaginary force pressing against me.
After a few moments, my body was invaded by a surge of energy. It charged every atom in my body, and everything went into overdrive.
I could hear things in the forest that were normally dead silent: the footsteps of creatures big and small, the silent flight of birds of prey that hunted in the night, the claw marks of an unknown predator.
I could smell all kinds of new scents that were carried by the wind: wet grass swaying in the gentle breeze, a foul odor that I'd rather not know where it came from, the smell of fresh blood from a newly slain prey.
My vision constantly shifted to brand new perspectives I couldn't make any sense of. One second it was pitch black; the next I was seeing reds and blues.
The world felt as if it was collapsing on me. The ground shook violently, even though I knew that it was just in my head.
I tried to shake off the daze, but my body wouldn't listen to me, hitting against the walls of my hiding place.
My head throbbed, and I decided to lay down instead. My vision blurred for a few minutes and slowly faded to black.
The void I had grown accustomed to over the past few months slowly consumed me again.
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