I watched as the hare hopped off into the distance.
'The world is both beautiful and terrifying huh?' I thought.
Like the story of the frog that spent its full life in the well, I was a snail who spent its whole life on a small part of the tree. I was the snail who didn't know anything about the world and the even the forest that he lived in. I was the snail who had never seen such gigantic creatures fight before its eyes. I was the snail who thought that it had already fought some hard battles within the few days that he had been alive only to learn that he hadn't at all touched the surface of a true battle.
I was the snail who witnessed a true battle that day.
I looked at the devastation wreckage of what used to be a green expanse - the aftermath of a show of power, speed and quick reactions.
Fallen trees and crumbled rocks were littered the forest floor.
Dozens of nests and homes were destroyed. Hundreds if not thousands of lives were taken.
Trials and crevices traced the path of flying bodies. Craters: the evidence of missed hits and shows of force.
I looked to the sky. A beam of light shone through the dark clouds from where the hare had kicked previously. A single ray of light lit our dark world.
The Hare. A powerful creature that used its body to fight and cleverly so.
The Hare. The last words it left still fresh in my mind.
[I feel good today. I'll let you all live.]
'I'll let you live? With a swipe of its paw, you could have crushed us without a second thought.' I thought to myself. Befuddled, I rubbed my head with my eyestalk. Its phrase didn't sit well with me as it muddled my mind. 'It would have just turned around if it wanted to leave us alone. So, why? Why did it have to phrase it that specific way?' I asked. 'Why out of everything it could have done, why would it speak to us in the first place?'
I recalled in my memory the brief moment we met each other's eyes. It's dark brown pupils and bloodshot eyes appeared in my mind. I relived the scene like a movie as it looked at us. I saw its pupils widen as it saw us, if only briefly. 'Surprise... like it didn't expect that we were there.'
'No... it knows something. It knows something about us and was surprised... to see us on this tree.' I suggested to myself.
Clearly, paranoia had infected my thoughts at this point as I analyzed the hare's speech even more deeply within my head.
I looked around to see if 7 had an idea, but then I looked back down again. I snapped out of my deep thought and decided to keep my ideas to myself. 'There is no use to recklessly speculate and make the other snails worried with my ideas.' I concluded.
Instead, I chose to look at the snail that was lying beneath our tree.
Its body was completely spread out over the green plants and grass below our tree. Its shell was barely recognizable - shattered in thousands of pieces and dotted its body. Its eyes were closed. Streams of blue dotted its body and the grass below. Deeper in colour now, the blood had begun to solidify and clot over its wounds.
A movement. A small muscle contraction.
Surprised, I looked at it more closely and stared at it for a few minutes.
No movement.
Like an idiot, I turned down below and started yelling.
"ARE YOU STILL ALIVE?!" I cried out.
No response.
'It's most probably dead.' I thought as I continued to stare at the ancient one that laid there. 'It's too bad... It probably knows something about us or our parents...'
I marvelled at its size for a few minutes.
'How long did it take to get that big?' I wondered.
I was 20 days old and was probably a 50th of the size of a leaf. It, however, was the size of multiple trees. Just try to put that into perspective. If I was a human, it would have been Mount Everest! Or something like that... I don't know what Mount Everest is but, it's probably big.
...
Time passed and another question came into my mind.
'Did it become that big because of the "Seeds" that it was talking about?'
'...But what are seeds?' I questioned myself.
I paced about the branch as the other snails watched. I was in deep thought and didn't seem to notice 7 who tried to approach me to ask me something.
He said something about a plan, but I couldn't hear him.
Inside my head, I was recalling the entire battle. Scene by Scene, action by action, the whole battle seemed to replay in my mind as if I was watching it in person once more.
'The seed... the seed may be the shards.' I concluded when I recalled the two coloured shards that the hare seemed to act hysterically about. 'And these shards... they have something to do with the flowers. The hare knew where they were and had specifically pulled them out of the body of the snail from within the giant flowers.' I thought to myself. 'So are the "Seeds" the snail was talking about, the seeds of the flower?'
'Yes.' I concluded moments later as there wasn't any other explanation for it as I thought about the flowers some more.
'The flowers... they seemed to have unique traits of their own.' I thought as I recalled the violet and red flowers of the ancient snail and the beige and red flowers of the hare.
'Types... they seem to have different types as well and different functions. They either light up or grow larger when they are in use...' as I paused to look at wilted flower petals of the ancient snail below our tree.
...
'Violet... The violet flower ejected tentacles. It's probably very desirable as it's like an extra set of limbs. Could the hare have been after that flower?' I questioned. 'It also had a red flower that could eject dust which caused decay and rot if touched, a defensive flower. But it probably had drawbacks... if the host touched the dust.'
Then I thought about the hare.
'The beige flower of the hare... it seemed to let it compress the air and use it as a platform... or it let it do something to the air or to the ground as it glowed yellow when it was active. Its red flower that it disguised as another beige flower seemed to let it alter its body... but it seemed to have some sort of drawback because it seemed to bleed from all over its body and tire after using it.'
'Flowers are indeed useful.' I concluded. 'Colourful and powerful. Colour...But what about the colour of the flower?' I pondered.
'The colour of the flowers seemed to have something to do with its ability. But... it seems like flowers of the same colour may not have the same ability...' I thought to myself as I became more and more confused.
Then I recalled the text that I saw appear above the snail's and the hare's head.
[LV.???** became LV.****]
'The star shapes next to the squiggles seemed to indicate the number of seeds that a creature has. Can everyone see them or is it just me?' I thought to myself as I remembered the hare's stars seemed to increase from two to four once it inserted the ancient snail's seeds into its body.
'Interesting...' I thought to myself as I slid back and forth. 'But wait... didn't the snail originally have three stars?' I asked myself as I looked downward at the ancient snail who remained in its comatose state beneath the branch.
The blue text above the snails head seemed to update before my eyes. "LV.???*" it displayed.
'Does this mean that the snail still has one more seed on its body?'
More questions. No answers.
I shook my head.
'I'll go look for it in a few days... When I get a little bigger... if it is still there.' I decided.
I turned my view towards 7 and the other snails.
I spend the afternoon discussing our situation and our immediate plans for our colony. We were out of house and home once more. We also didn't have any food source. At the end of the day, we decided to move towards the fruit.
"Hopefully, we would find more leaves past the silk forest," I said as we closed our discussion.
That night, we slept in our shells on the cold, hard branch.
Summary of day 20: A battle raged in our forest as I tried frantically to rescue my siblings and I watched the ending moments of that battle. Our second home was destroyed.
+2 wit
+2 intelligence
[Skill acquired: Recollection LV.1] (discovered)
+ look into memory briefly for a short period of time.
Current time limit: 30 seconds daily. (stackable)