I woke up this morning to a warm leaf. After so many days, I was finally able to enjoy my natural alarm clock: a good old warm leaf. Our new leaf was giant and way larger than our birth leaf ever was.
I poked my head out of my shell and stretched my body towards the sun. 'Today will be a good day' I thought.
I looked around at my sleeping siblings like I always did every morning. Sleeping, their shiny shells gleamed in the sunlight. They were smaller again which means that I had grown bigger. I slid up next to one of their shells and tried to compare our sizes. 'I'm four times taller than they are now' I thought. 'Weird. I know I'm growing, but aren't I growing a little too quickly for a snail?'
I shoved my thoughts into the back of my head as I had a plan for today. After checking if the damned cloud was in the sky, I moved off of our new leaf.
Why?
I needed to check out our new surroundings. I needed to make sure there was no danger to my snail baby brothers and sisters that probably see me as an overbearing giant. Anyways, I had to make sure it was safe. I didn't want to lose anymore of them.
So I trudged on towards the other leaves.
After an hours of trudging, I reached the leaf that was closest to us. It was barren. 'Onwards!' I thought as I moved towards the next leaf over. The adventurers blood that I had running through me urged me on.
Another hour later, I had reached the second leaf.
The leaf had life. Can you believe it? Life! Oh the miracle of life. And can you believe what I saw? Shells! More shells! More colored shells!
With huge excitement I slid my way towards the snails and approached one of them. As I got closer, there size and shapes became more clear. Their shells were not smooth like my shell, no. They had spikes like one of those spiked bracelets that an edgy emo teenager would wear.
They were also all slightly bigger than me, but I wasn't scared. I mean snail kind is snail kind right? We all eat leaves so at least we have that in common.
Oh boy did I not realize that I could eat more than just leaves. But hey. I had no memory of what I ate on day 9 okay? I didn't know I could eat anything I wanted to.
...
I shamelessly approached one of the snails there and snailed up next to him. "Hey brother from another mother!" I called out as I took a bite of the leaf it was enjoying. "Nice day to enjoy some fresh leaves isn't it?" I asked.
Without realizing that I was there, that spiky wannabe ignored me. 'Maybe it didn't hear me.' I thought as I called out to it once more.
No response.
I tilted my eyes upwards and looked at the snails face. The snail looked unamused and it stature towered over me like it was all high and mighty. 'Rude.' I thought. 'I need to teach it a lesson for ignoring me, their neighbor from another leaf.'
I pulled one of my eyestalks back and twirled it around in the air. Like a pitcher winding up his arm before throwing a baseball, I pulled back my eyestalk and bopped the snail right in the gut.
"DON'T IGNORE ME!" I yelled.
Oh had a made a mistake. Why is it that whenever I had taunted someone and used violence in anyway, I always end up regretting it in some way? Well except for that one time that I beat up 7, but seriously though. Did I ever learn from those mistakes back then?
...
As soon as I hit the spiky snail in front of me, it reacted. It was as if I set up a car alarm. Beep. Beep. Beep. Well not that. More like it went. REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE as it screeched.
Wait... Can snails like me even screech and do I have any ears to hear them? We can feel vibrations in the air. So they didn't hear the snail screech, they felt it.
...
More and more spike-shelled snails turned there heads towards my location. Suddenly from a distance, a snail of gigantic proportions began sliding towards our location. As it moved, it knocked other of its own snails out of the way. Torrents of mucous spewed out below it.
It was clearly very happy to see me! It was excited to see a new snail!
"I'm sorry I bopped your snail brethren, but your buddy over there was being rude and ignored me." I said as it was quickly approaching me at a fast pace.
As it slid closer and closer, I felt droplets of mucous blast towards me from its direction.
'It's coming at me way to fast!' I thought.
Instead of standing my ground I turned around and slid quickly in the other direction. Luckily, I was slightly faster than it. It looks like the strength and speed training I gotten from the migration had benefited me greatly.
What? No. I wasn't running away okay? I needed to freshen up before I met their snail leader. Clearly I didn't commit a hit-and-run and I wasn't running away from the po po that was chasing me.
...
After sliding my body off the leaf, the snail that was chasing me stopped. However, I didn't. I continued to run at top speed all the way back to the new leaf.
When I finally reached our leaf, looked back and sighed in relief. The larger snail hadn't followed me.
I ate and pooped and did snail things the rest of that day.
That night, I thought about the spiky-shelled snails before I fell asleep. 'I'll try talking with them again tomorrow.' I told myself as I closed my eyes and fell asleep.
...
What? Why didn't I react to using unknown words?
Because I'm tired of wasting my energy trying to understand things that snails shouldn't. I'm just going to embrace my vocabulary from now on. Even if I don't even understand what I'm saying, I'm sure you understand right? Maybe?
What? Do I know what "hit-and-run" is?
No. I still don't understand.
What? I used hit-and-run improperly? Well how should I know? I'm just a snail.
...
Summary of day 11: I found an empty leaf and met a new species of snail!
+ 1 speed
+ 1 strength
- 1 confidence
[Spike-shelled Snail Colony] (updated)
Relationship rating: - 2*
Status: Annoyed