Thoughts and Voices

Eat, drink and sleep; that has been the cycle for a while now. Father sometimes goes outside then returns sometimes with new prey as food. I've noticed that the scales on his tail are often broken or cracked when he returns; these scales eventually fall off and get replaced with new scales.

Mother has been taking care of our food and showing us how to move better sometimes; she goes outside while Father isn't out hunting, though I don't think she goes out to hunt; since she never comes back with any food.

Meanwhile, my siblings have shown interest in different things. One seems obsessed with Father and his tail, while the other spends a lot of time by the small pool of water; it enjoys seeing its reflections. The two have grown quite a bit longer, as have I. Overall it has been pretty uneventful compared to my first day.

Today has been a bit unusual, Mother and Father ate a lot more than what they'd usually eat. Now Mother is completely covering the food with rocks as opposed to the partial covering she used to do. Now she can't get the food without removing the rocks. Father is also more active today.

The ground and walls vibrate all around us and small rocks fall from the roof of the cave. Mother and Father cover us with their tails till the shaking stops. The entire cave is shaking and while it lasts only a moment it feels like an eternity.

Once the shaking stops Father makes his way to the only entrance and exit of our little hideout, while Mother gathers all of us and places us at a single spot.

Father takes a peek outside then while leaving motions with his tail to follow. Mother pushes us forwards to tell us to move. I don't understand what's going on, but it seems that our parents don't think this place is safe enough anymore.

We slither through the narrow path and follow Father's tail. We emerge on the other side to find another enclosed pathway, one with a much higher ceiling. We continue following Father's tail while Mother follows us from behind to make sure we keep up.

The narrow corridor gradually widens to a broader area where I see multiple insects flee as we make our way through.

Suddenly Father stops, he signals Mother to see something. Shifting to the side I see a bright light, not blue as the light from the countless illuminating crystals but bright yellow with its source not having a well-defined shape from what could tell.

Before I could try and make out the surroundings of the yellow light, Father scoops us up on his tail and quickly moves towards a different direction. He's moving too fast for me to be able to tell what's going on. The only thing that I understand is that was "Fire".

Zooming through the cave I notice the area getting darker and darker, the multiple giant crystals that were scattered around in the previous areas of the cave were nowhere to be seen, only the smaller and less bright crystals remained.

At some points, it was pitch black where I couldn't see a thing. Father stopped again and this time looked straight into one of these areas. His eyes clearly show that he sees something in there, something that is moving and he is tracking.

He hisses sharply and Mother grabs the three of us off of his tail. Father readies his sword-tail and I see his head and eyes slowly track something through the darkness.

Something flashes past Father just as he swings his tail through the darkness. Father immediately turns his head to face it just as it bounces back at father from the wall. Unable to get his tail to face it in time, Father blocks the creature with a part of his body.

The creature bites through the scales and hops off when Father tries to bite it back. It's a Lepus class!! It's much bigger than the one Father hunted and it's body is a dark shade of blue that makes it hard to see in darker areas. It's teeth... no fangs would be more accurate to call them, long but distinctly sharp. The wound it inflicted upon Father was only a few scales wide, but it was very deep judging from how much he was bleeding.

Father put some distance between himself and the Lepus and used his long bodies advantage by only attacking with his tail in shorter swings. The Lepus would hop over thrusts and swings easily, but would always be forced to fall back by Father's tail whenever he tried to get close to his's head.

The Lepus's behavior was strange, it's eyes had a tint of red and didn't seem to be focused on us or Father, rather its long ears were much more responsive to Father's movement. It's speed made it hard to follow and it didn't seem to have much trouble dodging Father's attacks. It rarely stay in one spot and continuously darted around.

Father meanwhile remained mostly motionless and only moved his tail to attack and defend, while keeping the rest of his slender body between the Lepus and his head in order to block it from getting any closer. The Lepus was getting tired from dashing around and as it started breathing heavily, it got much more aggressive and started grunting every-time it was forced to get away.

Father hasn't been able to hit any of his attacks, while the Lepus has bitten father multiple times, though none of them have resulted in Father giving any type of response to the pain despite the bleeding.

Mother hisses strongly, not at the Lepus but at Father whom speeds up his attacks while getting his head lower and closer to the Lepus. He got close enough to get within biting range while guiding the Lepus towards his head then hissed which it noticed and after hopping over a slow swing, immediately speeds up and goes for his head getting right above it, while Father watched, but didn't turn his head to face it, instead just as the Lepus was about to bite down on Father's vulnerable head, his tail swings right above his head and strikes the Lepus into the wall.

The strike feels like it shakes the entire cave as dust and debris flies in every direction. The strike sent a huge crackling sound throughout the cave and left a huge crack in the wall.

Father takes his tail out of the wall, leaving a Lepus bloodied and almost cut in half in the wall. Father and Mother take a moment to survey our dim surroundings, while us three siblings still have our eyes glued to the Lepus, the creature so quick we had trouble keeping up with it, now motionless with blood dripping down from it's once living body.

As the blood spilled down to the ground and formed a pool, I saw tiny sparkling objects littered around the area. They were more concentrated in some areas, specifically in areas where there were cracks or weird holes in the wall. Many of these holes have broken crystal remains. So there used to be big crystals here, but were either destroyed or taken away.

Mother and Father slowly start moving as they both notice something. My shier sibling also notices something and points towards the direction we came from. I start hearing something like several rocks hitting the ground in rhythm that are slowly getting louder. Something is coming! Immediately Mother and Father continue zooming through the cave as I see the yellow light, fire appear before us.

While continuing our journey through the cave, Father again stops in his tracks and looking at the ground, spots multiple sets of footprints alien to me. While the cave had many different paths and corridors, these footprints seemed to be in basically every single path. Just how many creatures are there?

With the sound of footsteps getting closer and louder, Mother points at a small hole in a wall just thin enough for us to get through; Father barely fit, but got through. After getting to the other side Mother surrounds us with her tail in order to stop us from moving; Father too stays motionless as the sound of footsteps stops on the other side of the wall.

I hear many different noises, probably the sound of the creatures that were chasing us. They're communicating... After the multiple inaudible voices quiet down. I am able to hear two clearly.

"?there over hole that through went it think you ,follow to blood more No"

".fit barely would weapon its even ,big this something for small too ,Nah"

Mother lightly taps Father's tail, now covered with dirt with few traces of the blood from the Lepus remaining. Did she understand that?

After not understanding these voices or their intent we heard their footsteps getting quieter and farther away till I couldn't hear them anymore. I think my shy sibling and parents could still hear them for a bit longer and only started moving after they felt it was safe to do so.

Father starts exploring the area and after examining the path ahead, turns to Mother and nods.

Mother nods back and then... 'Nel, Kal, Saf, Follow.'