Night Eyes

My back legs were sore when I woke, sore enough that I took the morning off. I stayed on my ledge, cleaned my scythes, drank from the dew on the leaves, and caught one grasshopper that was careless enough to land within reach. It wasn't a hunt. It was more like picking up a snack off a counter.

Hunger Clock: 74% → 76%

I spent the rest of the day watching. Not hunting, just watching, the way I used to sit by a window at work and watch the street. Birds came and went. A line of ants carried something across a branch below me. A Root Rat poked around the base of my tree and left. By late afternoon I'd learned one useful thing. Most of what I'd been hunting moved in the daytime, and the daytime was getting crowded. Every good spot by the stream had something already in it.

But I'd noticed something else on the night I molted, hanging from that branch in the dark. The forest at night wasn't empty. It was just different. Different things were awake.

So when the sun went down, I didn't settle in to sleep. I climbed down.

The first surprise was how well I could see. In my old life, the dark was just dark. Now it was gray and soft, like a photo with the color turned down. I could see the shapes of trunks, the shine of the stream, and the small movements in the leaves. It wasn't as sharp as daylight, but it was a lot more than I'd expected. I blinked a few times to be sure, and it stayed.

The second surprise was the noise. Things I'd never heard in the day were clicking and chirping and rustling everywhere. Frogs I'd never seen were calling from the stream. Something with wings went by over my head, and I felt the air move.

Then a pale moth came down out of the dark and landed on a leaf not far from me.

I knew it at once. It was the one that got away from me on my second day, or one exactly like it. Its wings were the color of old paper, with the same faint gray rings, and it sat very still and seemed to look at me. My scythes twitched. It would have been an easy strike from here.

I didn't take it. I couldn't have said why. It was too small to be worth much, sure, but that wasn't really the reason. It just felt like the wrong thing to kill, and the longer it sat there, the surer I was of that, without knowing where the feeling came from. After a while it lifted off and drifted away over the water, and I let it go.

I went on along the bank, and that was where I heard the shrew, before I ever saw it. It made a fast, high ticking, almost too high to hear, as it moved through the dead leaves in quick little bursts. Then it came out onto the mud, and I saw it. It was small, smaller than the rat, with a long pointed nose that never stopped moving and tiny eyes that hardly seemed to matter. It was eating something, and it was eating fast, like it hadn't eaten in days.

[Sense]
Target: Night Shrew ~ Lv.4
Threat: Moderate

I was still deciding how to come at it when it lifted its nose and turned toward me.

It had smelled me. And it didn't run. It came straight at me, ticking, fast and low, and I understood just in time that it wasn't afraid of me at all. To it, I was a big juicy insect. I was the meal.

That had never happened before. Everything in this forest had either ignored me, run from me, or fought back because I attacked it first. Nothing had ever just come at me to eat me.

It hit me before I was ready and bit, small sharp teeth on the joint of one of my front walking legs, and the pain was bright and real. I struck down at it and missed. It was already gone, circling, coming in again from the other side. It was faster than anything I'd fought. Not stronger, but faster, and it never stopped moving.

I felt the heat come up in my chest, the same heat I'd felt with the centipede, the one that wanted me to stop thinking and just tear. For a second I let it rise. It felt good. It felt like the right answer to a thing that wanted to eat me.

Then I remembered what I'd learned with the centipede. That heat made me sloppy, and sloppy got you killed. I put it back down.

[Will check]
Frenzy resisted.

I didn't chase the shrew. Chasing something that fast was a losing game. I planted my legs, folded my scythes, and let it come to me. Every time it darted in, it came in low, aiming for my legs. Every time, it had to stop for a split second to bite.

So I gave it a leg, the same trick that had worked on the centipede. I set one of my front walking legs out a little farther than the others, like a mistake, and waited. The shrew took it. It darted in, stopped, and bit, and in that stop, I brought both scythes down at once.

I had it. It thrashed and squealed and bit at anything it could reach, but my hooks were set, and the new strength in them held. I pinned it to the mud and finished it.

[Kill] Night Shrew ~ Lv.4
XP gained.

[LEVEL UP]
Nestling Mantis ~ Lv.4
All stats +3
Skill points: 4

I sat in the dark mud with my bitten leg throbbing and read the notice twice. Then I looked at my stats.

Nestling Mantis ~ Lv.4 ~ Mantara
Might 15 | Agility 19 | Shell 14
Sense 18 | Will 13 | Insight 16
Skill points: 4

I didn't need long to decide. The shrew had been faster than me, and that couldn't keep happening. And for a second there, the heat in my chest had almost made the choice for me. If it ever came when I was really in trouble, I wanted to be the one in charge.

Agility 19 → 21
Will 13 → 15
Skill points: 0

The shrew was small, but rich, and I ate every bit of it.

Hunger Clock: 76% → 90%

I climbed back to my ledge a little before dawn, slower than I'd climbed down, favoring the bitten leg. The frogs were still calling. Somewhere over the stream, I thought I saw a pale shape drifting, but it was too far to be sure.

Lying there, I thought about the shrew coming at me out of the dark, so sure of itself, so sure I was food. I had been a small thing in a big forest since the day I woke up in it. I'd known that. But I'd always been the one doing the hunting.

Tonight had shown me that the forest didn't see it that way.