When Hara opened her yes again after finally falling into her bed, she instantly knew she was dreaming.

Curious, the girl looked around, it was dark, but not dark enough to render you blind, and the only thing she saw was a blue little mantis sitting at her feet.

She blinked and looked at her bandaged palm, a bit of red staining the white bandage around her hand, and then back at the creature, the beast, at her feet.

She wondered why she was dreaming about this, sure she got hurt, but this was by far not the first animal attack she had been through, and she had scarcely dreamt about the animals after the encounters.

Confused, she looked around the vast emptiness around her, there was nothing to see.

She wondered how she could wake up as she felt something, an emotion of confusion, that she knew didn't belong to her, now befuddled, she snapped her head back to the beast at her feet, she knelt down in front of it, looking down silently.

There was a whisp of childish excitement after being acknowledged.

Hara stretched her hand out to the beast and watched as it climbed up, another surge of whispy emotion surfaced in her mind.

Joy and... acceptance?

The absolutely clueless and befuddled girl felt something settle in her head.

It was nothing more than a feeling, a sensation at the back of her mind, barely there, that she could scarcely put into words.

Was the closest translation Hara could muster.

There was the odd feeling of rejection niggling in the back of her mind, but she didn't know what to do with it, the whispy feeling settled deeper after a short moment and the surges of foreign emotions became more prominent.

The next sensation could only be described as a shy greeting, and the girl knew whom it belonged to, the little beast now settled in the palm of her hand.

"Hello there..."

Hara felt speechless, feeling a sense of closeness to the beast that she hadn't felt for anyone except her mentor for years, it was faint, but clearly there.

They were...partners now, she just knew it, like you knew what light and dark was, it was just there, no explanation needed.

It felt odd, not a bad kind of odd, but still foreign and new.

For a long while, she just sat in the black darkness that now felt like home and traded sensations with the beast in her palm.

__________

The forester woke, early as always, and instantly sat up in bed, standing up and trodding downstairs, the set-up from the day before was still in her living room.

She stepped before the tank and took a long look at the beasts inside, the blue mantis that had managed to cut her and worm itself into her dreams was looking at her with a look of pleading, she also felt the same whisp of emotion in the back of her mind.

Yesterday had not been a dream then.

Hara didn't wait long to verify her theory and dream before she opened the tank and let the mantis climb onto her hand, she lifted it out and closed the tank again.

She walked over to her table and switched the Tv on, letting the morning news fill the house with sound, her partner looked at the Tv with a new sense of intelligence that it hadn't had the day before.

The news anchor on screen talked about new bug nets and ways to kill the beasts, droning on and on about the importance of calling for backup and not face larger groups alone.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Hara rolled her eyes, sometimes these days, that was literally her job, she still shivered thinking of "the roach incident" as it was so lovingly called by every poor sod who had to deal with that.

A feeling of inquiry niggled in her head and Hara looked at the beast now looking at her, the rather big mantis as tall as a glass.

"Just a nest of annoying roach beasts that just wouldn't die." She explained and felt a quick feeling of understanding, the beast turned back to the screen after giving her reply.

The human girl gave a soft huff and took out an empty notebook from underneath the table, simply labeling it "Beasts contract (???)"

She knew she had done something the day before, and as this was something big, she wanted to report her finding to the Chief.

_________

"Give Blood (???) to beast."

"Sleep (???), dream.)

-A black nothingness and the beast.

"-Communicate with beast (???) "

"Agree to the contract???"

__________

The ideas were abstract at best, but it was the best she could offer.

Her little beast send her a range of emotions, and Hara now knew that she could recreate what she had done before, but it was too hard to put the vague feelings into words.

_____

"Offer blood to potential beast"

"Sleep and enter mindscape of the beast"

"Offer contract/ agree to contract"

____________

Her notes became more understandable after a good hour of deciphering the slew of feelings her partner had offered her.

Hara momentarily wondered where this level of intelligence had come from, this time giving the question directly to the blue orchid beast mantis.

A wave of feelings washed over her not seconds after.

She wrote this down on another page.

__________________

"Benefits of contract (?)"

"Beast offers service to the "Master" "

"The beast and human split attributes."

" Case 1: Beasts gains intelligence of a young adult (15-18)"

______

Her partner had gotten a large part of her intelligence, this did not mean that she gave it away, but it meant that it... duplicated, itself and became something the mantis could own, although the duplicate was not perfect.

Some things had gotten lost, or not managed to be replicated, such as personal memories that were not pure knowledge, the emotions and the private thoughts of the memories were removed, in essence, the beast had only gotten the pure basics, making it very hard to judge how smart it had gotten.

Hara debated keeping this secret, but remembering the fact that mammals had started to mutate and turn into beasts as well gave her a sense of urgency, this was only reinforced as she saw just how strong beasts could get, and someone could always get a lucky hit in.

If, for example, the blue little beast had, instead of the glove and hand, cut her throat, she would have died as the cut had been deep enough that she had wondered if she needed stitches.

Mantises were beasts that hid in the wild and waited for their prey to come to them, attacking them when their guard was down, they hunted small bugs but could also hunt things twice or thrice their size, such as scorpions and mice, now that they had turned into beasts, who said they wouldn't attack humans from behind?

Her beast was fully capable of killing humans, coupled with her new knowledge, it would be easy for her.

And mantises were not the only beasts humans had to beware, Hara hoped that ants, especially bullet ants, didn't mutate into smarter or bigger beasts.

That was to mention beasts on land, the sea was unspeakable, for now, they had found the swift mouse, but the sea must be swimming with beast fish, they were small enough not to be a worry, but Hara knew that soon, sea travel would be impossible once sharks and larger sea creatures such as Kraken and whales transformed.

It had reached a point where Hara would soon fear entering the woods, or even staying in the village, they were in the middle of nowhere, hours and hours away from a small city, surrounded by both water and forests, as they were now, they were waiting ducks.

Once, the government had passivied the populace by proudly claiming that the energy responsible for mutating the beasts was not potent enough to mutate even the smallest of mammals, but as seen on live TV just yesterday, that was a load of bull.

Once the news got out, it would be a catastrophe and people would want to move to the larger and safer cities as soon as possible.

Hara didn't want to leave her home, and she knew her Chief, stubborn old man he was, wouldn't leave until someone took his corpse away.

No, the information had to be shared, if others could make contracts and command their beasts to kill others, as was their nature, then they could protect themselves and stay safe.

Hara could never be selfish enough to hide such important information if the lives of her precious people were threatened.

With a decisive growl that rumbled in her throat, she picked the phone up and was about to dial her Chief, but decided against it, preferring to go there in person and demonstrate that her partner listened to her commands, as she knew she would.

"Come on, love." She called softly, wanting to place the thing on her shoulder to leave, but soon found, to her amusement, that the little thing would get blown away by the wind.

She grinned and went into the kitchen, getting an empty and clean jam-jar, setting soft cloth to the bottom and tying a cord around it, making a makeshift beast-carry-bag.

She felt the dead stare from her beast, "Oh, come on Lyth, you'll be carried away by the wind."

She joked, although it was true, and gave the beast a name, the newly named Lyth chirped in agreement, both to the name and the transport.