Chapter 3: Chapter 3 - Curiouser and Curiouser

Diary Entry – 11th of Julioaugust

I had a dream that I dug down real deep and a beating heart was there and every time it beat took slightly slower than the last. Told Donny about it but she didn't say anything that impressed me.

Sid is being a proper dickhead and not responding to my texts and I think I’m going to pull my hair out. Couldn’t sleep last night and everything is pissing me off!

--

It was getting warmer, the sun was above. “What’s that?” Asked wings, to a resounding “I don’t know” and an ‘I don’t know.’

“Its light is very hot isn’t it?” Noisemaker was surprised,

‘Yes you’re right, as it gets closer it gets hotter.’ Everyone’s digging efforts slowed as they turned to one-another. “What if it gets too close…” Arms seemed perturbed.

“A nesthome will hide us from it, do you think?”

‘I think so.’ Answered Noisemaker, hurriedly carving a wall. ‘It hurts to look at it, something tells me it probably hopefully won’t get any closer than this.’ They began on little struts to hold up the hive’s wall. Watching for weaknesses in the structure, intently placing and stretching and pulling up rafts and beams until something like a dome was beginning to enclose around them. ‘Could you please help me keep the floor wet ?’ But when Wings spat on the ground both the hole in the floor and Noisemaker hissed like cats.

Arms wandered outside, no-longer needed, they rested against the nest-home, listened to the tip-tap of Noisemakers’ claws, carving, and the buzzing of Wings’ wings. One of those flying creatures, with the feathers and the beak, flew down onto a log nearby, twitching its head to one side before being snatched backwards with the force of a bolt tongue impaling and retracting it into an enormous maw. The bird popped juicily with a satisfying smack of pleasant flavours, not so sweet as the fruits, but richer, the feathers were bad though and with their tongue Arms struggled to remove them, best take those off before swallowing the creature, bones and all.

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The hulk rocked out of their sitting position, an imprint still remaining, depicting in full the arse-end which was smaller than the front-end, like a backwards triangle. Cylindrical, elephantine back legs were shown vividly, with the cracks in the joints, and the thick tail, the two rows of slates converging at the spine, it was all somewhat impressive. ‘Uh oh’ thought Arms, unable to stop a sprinkling of pheromones from following them, clumsily crashing away.

They shambled into the grass, feeling green tendrils stroking carapace, such a softness. The Earth itself was soft here, knuckles sunk deep, Arms had to splay out their whole hand to walk, giving them a weird gait. When they knocked into the log the bird had stood on, they stopped. A broken brown-claw? They’re so big, but they can still break, are they alive or are they just objects?Arms leaned closer, heaving their body on their left arm so with their right arm they could push the soft and rotten wood, a worm was inside which Arms sharply recoiled from. The worm was eating the log! Small things eating big things… most unsettling...

Leader ambled through, not so tentative nor careful of the grass and the birds despite their greater fragility. “Be careful. There are creatures.” Arms chimed through vents in their plates.

‘What are you doing ?’

“Just exploring.” Arms turned back towards the worm, creeping in the soft bark, ants were attacking it, even smaller things eating the small, but relatively-big, thing. “What are the brown-claws?”

‘You mean the trees?’

“Yeah, what are they.”

‘They’re plants.’

“What’s a plant?”

‘A living thing, they...’ it paused… ‘they eat sunlight.’ Arms turned upwards, squinting through armour, they grunted. “Where is their mouth.”

‘They eat sunlight with the green leaves.’

“Oh.” The hulk pointed further into the woods with an obselisk-arm, where the trees cleared away, where green fields began, where a collection of large cubes and rectangles and weird shapes existed. “And what are those.”

‘That’s a village. A nest-home for people. Our most dangerous food.’