Vigor Mortis

“Claretta! Claretta!”

I scream as loudly as I can, barely choking the name out between sobs. My blood drips on the earth and I know I have to run, I have to go eat something or I’ll die… but Claretta! They’re taking my Claretta! They’re taking her, and she’s helping them, and I don’t understand why!

I don’t understand any of it. Water pours from my eyes, just as it did for Claretta and the Fulvia so many times. Is this why? Is this what that meant? Is this how they felt?

I don’t understand.

An arrow flies my way, stabbing through my belly. I have to go. I have to go! No, they have my Claretta! No, no, no! I’m barely even thinking when I turn and run, fleeing to my closest stored meal, hateful instincts pulling me to survival, to food. I have to heal, I have to go back and kill them all. I have to save Claretta! She’s… she’s silly, and she doesn’t understand that she’s leaving me! Right? That has to be it.

I tear into my meal, flashes of joy flowing through me as the gnawing hunger within is abated for a glorious instant with each bite. I ignore the feeling, the water running down my cheeks being so much more right for the circumstances. Over and over I and the humans repeat the dance, but my increasingly desperate and panicked attacks only leave me worse off with each engagement. I land hits, I know I do, but… Claretta heals them. If I don’t get her back soon, they’ll be out of my territory and I won’t have any trapped snacks to heal up with. My odds of saving her will just get worse and worse until she’s gone forever. I can’t let that happen, but I don’t know how to stop it.

It doesn’t take long. Soon, they’re beyond the reach of my webs and it only helps them move faster. I follow. I have to follow. What else can I do? I need to calm down and think. Think. I can’t go ahead of them and make traps because I don’t know where they’re going. What else can I do? How else can I beat a bunch of humans? I don’t know how much time passes, but I’m eventually given my answer: an island starts to pass overhead and I remember that humans have to sleep.

These ones don’t. They keep pressing on, knowing I’m following them. But they can’t do that forever, right? Lots of creatures I’ve seen are like that. They eventually run out of energy well before I do. As long as I keep eating, I can keep going. Humans can’t, though. There’s a limit to how much food Claretta can eat at once. There’s a limit to how long she can stay awake before she loses consciousness. The same should go for all humans, shouldn’t it? It does. It has to. Otherwise, I’m doomed.

I follow them. Night and day I keep on their trail, tracking them by sound and circling their position. They know I’m here, the Vita can sense me from further than I can hear them. It doesn’t matter, though; as long as I keep something between me and them they can’t do anything about me. I will outlast them.

Another day, and they start to slow down. Another day and I attack, prodding at their defenses and testing their strength. Half of them seem exhausted, but the other half are fine: the Seong, the Bently, and the Vita still fight with the same vigor of the first day. Not the rest of them, however. I’ll keep waiting, keep wearing them out. I’ll get you back, Claretta.

Finally, another day later, when the sky-ground comes they finally stop. I grin, lying down to wait and rest myself. The island above is massive and the night will be long and dark. Let them get comfortable. Let them sleep. That’s when I’ll strike. I lie silently and pick my moment. I can’t see them, only hear and smell them, and the sounds from their camp are quiet. I can only guess when the best time to attack is, but I am an experienced hunter and my guesses are very, very good. I move forward.

“Go away!” Claretta suddenly shouts into the darkness. “Don’t get any closer!”

“Claretta!” I call out, breaking into a sprint. What are they doing to her!? Is she okay?

“Fuck you, Lark!” she shrieks. “Get out of here! Leave us alone!”

Wait, me? I skid to a halt.

“Claretta? What—”

“LEAVE! Go back to your fucking spider nest and dunk your own head in a lake for once! Just go!”

I don’t know what it is that made me take a step backwards at those words. The raw, hoarse terror to her voice, perhaps. The Claretta I know is always… calm. Measured. She chooses her words carefully, always putting me at ease. She knows better than to do otherwise, which is why she’s so much better than the Fulvia. She’s smart. I barely understand tone anyway, and she knows that too. I’ll always respond better when she’s calm. This sound, though, this tone… it isn’t calm in the slightest, and I absolutely do understand it.

It’s the same sort of scream I made when I begged her to come back.

“I… Claretta, I like you!” I remind her desperately. “We were going to do things together! We—”

“Shut up! I don’t care! Why would I care? You stupid fucking child! You ate me!”

Another step back. I’m terrified and I don’t know why. I should just rush forward, kill the other humans and take her back, right?

“I was going to let you—”

“Lark,” Claretta seethes, an unbridled hate oozing through her words, “you made me choose between torturing my friend and watching her die. People are going to come for you, and they are going to kill you, and there is nothing in the entire world I want more than that.”

I turn and start to run the other way.

“I hope they bring me your corpse,” Claretta murmurs, “but I don’t deserve that kind of closure.”

I run and I run and I don’t stop. I don’t understand. I don’t understand. I don’t understand. I don’t understand. I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand—

I don’t know how long I flee for. Days, maybe. At some point my terror shifts to anger, pushing me to follow my baser instincts. How dare she hate me? After I spared her, after I made her special to me! With these thoughts I tear my teeth into everything I come across, not bothering to go for limbs or consider my approach. I’m just a whirlwind of death and fury, ripping apart my prey like any other stupid member of my kin. Darkness forms in the day, dropping water on me like the sky itself is crying.

I don’t even know what I’m fighting when the rain falls. Rain. Claretta described it to me once, but I’ve never seen it before. Gloomy, dreary, and cold. A perfect mix for my battle with this… five-legged bug thing? Why am I even trying to eat this? It looks gross. I don’t want to look like that.

I jump away, making distance until it stops chasing me. The anger is gone and nothing replaces it. What do I do now? Where do I go? Should I bother going anywhere?

Where am I?

There are no landmarks in the forest, not when every inch is covered with dense layers of bushes and trees. It’s part of why I marked and webbed such a huge territory; the only other way for me to even tell what direction I’m going is to find a clearing and look up at the sky, orienting myself with the islands above. Those change, however, and after many days of… whatever I was doing, I don’t recognize any of the ones close enough to tell me what direction I’m pointing.

Does it really matter, though? I have nowhere to go. I need to find water, I guess, if I want to live. ...Do I want to live? Do I want to do anything?

…

Yes. I decide yes. I want to live. But what will I do? I’ve lost my Claretta, and she’s the only Claretta there is. Not the only human, though, I suppose. Claretta was kind, Claretta taught me things, Claretta sang for me. Maybe there’s another human like that as well. I don’t know how to find any, though, so I just keep wandering. Ambling. Eating anything in my path that looks powerful or interesting. I have no plan other than to keep walking in the same direction until I find a human or something kills me.

...Or I walk off the edge of the island, I suppose. Claretta said we’re on an island, too, just like the ones in the sky.

More days pass like this, and I once again don’t bother to keep track of how many. I suppose I could count them all if I wish; I don’t forget things like the Fulvia did. I don’t really want to think too hard about the past however-many days, though. Not now, and probably never again. It hurts too much. It scares me too much, though what exactly scares me I’m still not sure. Eventually, however, my non-strategy lucks out and bears fruit. I find a human.

“Damn,” a deep voice swears. “It ran into the forest.”

To my left I hear a scuffling in the underbrush and quickly pounce on it, grabbing a small animal between my claws and pulling it into the light. Brown and fuzzy, the creature’s long, floppy ears and powerful hind legs seem like decent enough traits, though the thing is so tiny and weak I suspect it spends more time running away than catching any prey regardless.

“Well… fuck. I guess I’ll catch it next time.”

Oh right, the human! That’s a human voice! I found one! I quickly bind up my next meal and carry it under one arm as I scurry towards the sound.

“What were you trying to catch?” I ask.

I hear my quarry pause. I’m so happy to have found one! Either it’s wonderful like the Claretta and I’ll get to keep it, or it’s not and I’ll get to eat it.

“Um, hello?” it asks. “Is someone there?”

“Yes,” I confirm. “I am here. My name is Lark. Hello!”

“Um, miss… Lark?” the human asks, confused. “You sound way too young to be playing this far from town, you’re going to get hurt if you do that. Come on out of the forest now, yeah?”

“Okay,” I agree.

Seems sensible enough, I do get hurt all the time. But what does it mean by ‘out of the forest?’ Into a clearing, probably? There are patches of forest all over without the otherwise ever-present bushes and branches. Sometimes it’s because of bodies of water, sometimes it’s because of rocks, sometimes a huge monster recently smashed the area and sometimes I’m not sure why the trees are gone at all. The areas are never particularly large, but they’re welcome places to rest, collect one’s self, and…

My train of thought screeches to a halt as I push through the thick brush into… not a clearing. Or perhaps the ultimate clearing? I can see so far! There are so many things out in front of me I can’t see the forest on the other side! There might not even be forest on the other side! It’s too much at once. I’ve never seen this many new things at the same time since the day I was born. I have to… oh, wait, the human is running away.

“Help!” it screams, sprinting towards… I don’t even know. The long, yellow grass? The odd square stones? The tiny, tiny creatures… no, the far away creatures that I can barely make out moving between them? It doesn’t matter, really.

“Quit running,” I command, shooting webs out of my fingers and catching it in the back.

With my other hand I shoot webs into the ground, anchoring my smaller body down to manage the weight difference before I tug. To my annoyance, I only manage to yank the human’s cloak off. Right, the detachable skin thing that they do. Whatever, I just shoot more webs and grab it for real this time, pulling it back towards me. The human lands on its back with a heavy thud, and I quickly web it up before showing it the other animal I just caught.

“Question. What’s this?”

The human is silent for a while, looking around in a wild panic for a few moments before hesitantly answering.

“A… rabbit?”

“Rabbit,” I repeat, memorizing the word. “Okay. Thanks.”

I sit down on the human’s chest, biting off the first of the limbs on the ‘rabbit.’ It screams in distress, which I’m used to ignoring by now, even with my sensitive hearing. It’s a pretty normal reaction for my food. I web up its mouth a bit more.

“W-what are you?” the human asks. “What are you doing?”

“I’m Lark,” I say, slower this time so he can understand easier. “I told you that already. And right now, I’m deciding whether to keep you or eat you.”

I bite off the rabbit’s other leg, swallowing immediately. Not that big or tasty, but food is food and I kind of like how it looks. Like the Katzels, but a bit deformed? And smaller, which is... appealing somehow? I don’t know, I just kind of like it even though I know larger creatures are more likely to fare well in combat. The human, meanwhile, seems to be thinking rapidly, its panicked mind coming to a decision that would define the rest of its life. It takes a deep, deep, breath, and bellows as loud as it can.

“MONSTER ATTACK! SOUND THE ALARM! MONSTER ATTACK! SOUND THE ALARM!”

“Hey, quit that,” I grumble, getting up and kicking the loud human in the head. What is it even doing?

“HELP! MONSTER ATTACK!”

“I said stop!”

“HELP! HELP! ALARM! PLEASE, SOMEBODY!”

The human’s voice is already hoarse, each scream bellowed with the fullest extent of its lung capacity. Face red, body sweating, the terrified creature does… what? What is it doing? Surely it understands that annoying me will get it killed?

I glance around, eyes catching on the faraway moving blobs. I’m still struggling to interpret what I’m seeing. I’ve never seen so far without looking up, and there’s nothing to see when I look up except rocks! Yet I think those might… be… more humans? I think a bunch of them might be coming this way.

People are going to come for you, and they are going to kill you, and there is nothing in the entire world I want more than that.

...Shit. I guess this human is choosing to be food. I web up its mouth, dragging it into the forest and out of sight. On a whim, I take the cloak, too. Maybe it’s big enough to hide me. If not… it might at least be good for rain. I glance down at my prey, seeing water leaking from the human’s eyes.

Damnit. I hate when they do that.