It happens suddenly.

Unexpectedly.

One moment, I’m patrolling around my siblings, protecting them from any predators that may want to harm them.

The next one, there is a gust of wind and one of them disappears entirely from my perception.

The whisper tells me.

What took my sibling is big.

Strong.

Fast.

And it flies.

We’re under attack from a bird.

My rounds have placed me at some distance from my siblings. Inadvertently, it might’ve saved my life.

Then again, being alone might also make me a target.

I don’t run away. Despite how much I want to—and fuck, how do I want to—I don’t escape. No. If I move too much I might be seen. But I can still hide.

My hairs aren’t exactly discrete. But at the very least I had the foresight to make them green to camouflage amongst the leaves. I curl into myself, gripping one of the branches and hanging in the air by a few legs. I have done this countless times before and I know that I’m in no danger of falling, but it’s especially nerve wracking now.

Just in case, I secrete poison all over my body. If anything, I’ll go out in petty revenge.

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I listen to the whisper and wait. My siblings disappear, one by one. There are more than one of the critters flying about. I count three—no, four blurs of whispers preying on us. It must be a small family; one of them is bigger by far. Although in my eyes, they are all invincible giants.

Time crawls tortuously slowly. At any moment, one of them could look this way and see me perched on the tree, waiting to be devoured. But my siblings fall instead, and finally it seems that they’ve had their fill.

The birds fly away. I keep waiting. When it looks like they won’t be coming back, I carefully climb out of hiding. I expect a sudden whisper and a flash of wings, but no. They’re gone.

Not all of my siblings have been eaten. We were a fairly numerous group, and we had been getting bigger. There had been different clusters that fed on multiple branches. Finding them all would be a high task. But now our numbers have been decimated. I listen to the survivors with some regret. I had gotten somewhat attached to the dumb eating machines that followed me.

But they have fulfilled their objective, callous as it might sound. I live, and the undefeatable predators are gone. I approach the caterpillars that are left and stand on guard. They don’t even seem to realize what just happened.

Days pass. Dark then bright.

My fears about another massacre remain unfounded. I keep protecting the few siblings I have left. It has become easier with the smaller area I need to defend.

In my dreams, I mourn.

I sit on the dining table, looking at the chocolate cake. The house is silent and bereft of life. When I close my eyes and focus, I can almost hear the laughs and the groans, the tears and the excited screaming. But they dissipate with the elusive ease of memories. Somewhen in time, I know that the house is brimming with care. I am playing and getting my clothes dirty, joints complaining from age and disuse but being ignored. And I tuck them to sleep, a goodnight kiss and a lullaby sung with that voice trained from a dead dream that became a nice story. Those things happening right now, in some other instance of time. But I am here, with an empty house and a whole cake, a past too heavy to bear and a body that often feels like an insult.

The whisper warns me of a threat and I change the course of my siblings, resigned. Someday, perhaps it will be others who fear me and evade my path as much as possible. Perhaps I’ll be able to protect everything that I want to, people and their happiness or just a warm house full of affection.

But that day is not today.

And I change course.