Nature and Nurture

by questionmark

CH4: Preliminary Exploration

I have avoided death for one more sleep, waking up the next day at around sunrise, the light filtering through the canopy casting a dusky warm glow. The little newborn creature that I now felt the need to protect was up and scuffling around, digging little holes into the dirt, likely, as far as I could tell, bored and mimicking my behavior from yesterday. I couldn’t blame the thing; I wish I had any toys to help occupy it and keep it enriched. I wondered how I could possibly raise this baby such that it would live the best life that it possibly could. The odds were stacked against me, but I at least had to try and step up for its sake.

I stood up, stretching my aching chitin, before piping up. “Stay here,” I was not confident that it could understand this order just yet as it stared back at me with big wide shimmering eyes, but I could only hope that it understood the message as I moved to leave our little den. It tried to follow me, pulling itself along with it’s front (and only) spindly legs, but I pushed it back and gestured to the ground, vaguely, reiterating the command to stay. Physically communicating this seemed to help, as it sat still now as I left.

I needed to investigate myself further, as well as this new world I found myself in, motivated by this new life to not just survive but thrive as well. First, I spent a few moments carefully looking over my body. Like a bug, I was composed of several segmented parts, each expanse of near black chitin smooth and markless except for the clean holes poked through them. My midsection was lighter in coloration, with some sort of harder carapace on my back. I thought this body part was intended to protect the wings, but my (hole filled as well) translucent blue wings were atop this shell instead of covered by them. Just out of the corner of my eye while turned to check my body I could see the end of what might be a mane; I checked with a hoof, feeling the... whatever was coming out of the back of my neck. It wasn’t exactly fibrous or soft like hair, while not exactly rigid like chitin, and I did not retain enough insect information to hazard a guess on what the material could be- it seemed like I had a tail I could flick back and forth made of the same stuff, though likely this part of me wasn’t important. My hoof followed the path of this “hair”, eventually hitting an expanse of nothing at my cranium (unfortunately, it appears I am bald) before hitting a horn. I wondered if I was more like a unicorn or a horned beetle. The thought of fantasy unicorns was a bit exciting; maybe I could wield some magic, or had a natural fantastical quality about me. I was not sure how to experiment with that, however, not without someone else here. I sourly recalled the moment when someone else was here; the colorful creature I had killed had become surrounded in some blueish aura and remained stationary and floating despite thrashing around. Perhaps I could...?

I stared at a pebble at my hoof, narrowing my eyes and focusing hard. Miraculously, I could feel something from within me, some sort of power extending outwards and towards the rock; I could feel the force hitting the ground I was staring at, then surrounding the pebble. I raised my eyes, and the pebble followed. Losing concentration with giddiness and promptly dropping the stone, I reared up in an expression of glee and laughed to myself, overjoyed with the full revelation of my new power. As destructive as I was (and I was surely disappointed in myself for my follies), I was a miraculous magical creature! It was so novel, so quaint, despite the circumstances, of course.

Maybe magic wasn’t too crazy a thing for me to have; I already knew I could fly, despite the laws of aerodynamics. Reminded of that, I once more focused on getting off the ground, my wings automatically buzzing in earnest; every time I focused on my wing beats, trying to get a grip on the rhythm, I’d only fumble and drop a length in the air. I seemed to instinctively know what to do, but the conscious knowledge eluded me. I could only fly without thinking too hard about it, and so I turned my attention to the little green eggs on the tree above me.

By my count, there were about two dozen green orbs firmly attached to their branches, each in little bunches. Some were a vibrant green and about the size of my eyes; a handful (hoofful?) were larger and more milky white, just barely transparent green enough that I could see dark shapes within them, though they were hard to parse behind the wavey patterns naturally appearing on their shells. As I now perceived these as children, I no longer felt an extreme hunger or want to consume them; I knew they were full of nutritious substance, but I was very consciously revolted at the thought of harming any (more) life.

Since I was up here anyways, I decided I should get a better look at my surroundings. I flew further upwards, eventually moving to climbing once the canopy became too thick to easily instinctively flitter through, finding it exceptionally easy to cling to branches with the natural hooks of my arms and legs. In mere moments I had breached the foliage and, sitting atop the leaves and covered in the delightful warmth of a sun just risen, could see pretty far in each direction.

To one side, mountains rose from the earth and high into the air, though being so far away I was not able to tell how tall they might be in actuality. They might be small and I might be near; or they might be massive and I’m very close. In all other directions there was nothing but trees; I seemed to be in large forest, both in absolute length and in the size of the flora within it. The tree I made my home in seemed to have stood for at least a hoofful of years, or as much as I could estimate if I were in the human world and these were human analogous trees. There was a nonzero chance that the plants or time itself here was strange.

For a moment I enjoyed sitting there, feeling the warmth seep into my chitin and watching the clouds idly move by before I started to pay attention to the minuscule shapes in my vision. I’d originally thought I was just seeing things, little waverings in my compound eyes, but on further inspection these were real, actualized dark spots in the air. I squinted, though I was far enough away that this did little to help; they were formless little flying specks. Unsure of how far they were and, by proxy, how big they might be, I decided to play it safe. These could easily be large predatory birds who would certainly love an insectoid snack, and I did not want to figure out if that was the case, so I descended once more to be covered by leaves.

I spent a moment waiting for my eyes to adjust to the relative darkness, realizing that remaining up in the treetops could be advantageous while exploring this world further. While visibility further down past the branches was minimal, I found myself intrigued by what I could reach; there were (as far as I could tell, literal, actual, non egg) red berries up here, and I wondered if my body could process these.

I figured trying to grab little berries with my hooves would be more trouble than it was worth, so instead I maneuvered closer and bit off a berry straight from the branch, careful and waiting to see if the taste was bitter or sour at all, hoping if it was poisonous to me that I would figure that out before swallowing. However, the ripe berries strangely tasted like nothing at all to me; even as juices splattered onto my tongue, I parsed it as total blandness. Compared to whatever I had sucked out of the creature before, this was less than nothing. Swallowing despite how little it seemed to do for me, I felt no fuller than before, and surmised my body simply couldn’t make use of vegetation, at least.

I was about to descend back into my hole before hearing in the distance yelling. My ears swiveled in the direction it came from and I started moving slowly towards the source, doing my best to remain hidden above the branches and in darkness.

“Daisy!” The voice yelled; it seemed I could understand the language perfectly. “Daisy!” It called out again. This was clearly some attempt at getting the attention of another being; as the voice got closer and closer, I narrowed my eyes, focusing on what I could see beneath the trees. Eventually, spotted in light and otherwise obscured by darkness, I saw two shapes similar to the creature I had destroyed, pink and green. As far as I could tell from above, they were larger, but I could not interpret any further details.

“Do you really think we’ll find her?” One of the creatures asked, voice hushed and wavering as if they might break out into tears at a moments notice, if not already crying.

“We have to,” the other said, voice quivering just as well, before continuing to call out; “Daisy!”

I felt the pit of dread and guilt opening up within me once more. There was always the chance that this was coincidental, but odds were that I had caused this. I had not killed some random thoughtless creature; I had taken the life of someone who had formerly been alive and loved, and without a second thought. I could no longer hear the yelling from below as I descended further into my mind, hearing nothing but a rising ringing in my ears.

I was of two minds about the whole thing; one was the human portion, horrified by my actions which I could do nothing to fix. I had acted on impulse and as such had ruined numerous lives, doing something totally against my conscious for a meal. The other animal side of me was confident and unwavering; I had done what was natural, I could not be blamed for my actions if I had not thought through them. I was just an animal, I could not help myself.

By the time I was drawn back to reality, the creatures had gone away, and I set myself to returning to my little burrow, feeling far too depressed to continue on this train of thought and preferring just to shut all my thoughts down.

I dropped down to the ground, my segmented joints absorbing much of the shock despite the height, sighing as I entered the hole I now call home.

I stopped suddenly at the opening as, even as the sun was setting, I could see a dark figure, hovering over my little grub.

Author's Note:

once more no art because i am still busy with finals :P
thank you all for putting up with the kind of boring exposition and exploration portion of this story. the interesting stuff id been dreaming about is about to unfold and chapter 5 is 4x the length of these earlier chapters and i think sets the tone and communicates the moral way better than all this ambling around

Comments

[Aiwhisper]

Not the little buddy! Can’t wait for more.

[ericson03]

I hope future chapters will be a journey of self discovery but I sense it will be more about the progression from human to little more than a love crazed animal following pure instinct.