To jump was, perhaps, not the most-helpful of new-thoughts. It may, in fact, have been a bad thought.

The air tastes of moisture and distant rot as it passes through the spiracles and over the antennae, flowing with speed she never thought possible.

The great-puddle comes quickly, and the body takes a course further and further from its wet-embrace with each passing moment— toward solid-earth. She flails, trying in vain to slow down or change direction, but it is futile; only the slightest adjustment is achieved.

She thanks Mother that even that is enough. She will hit the shoreline now, but even shallow-wet will cushion better than earth.

New-preserve-life-feelings urge her to tuck the limbs close to the body, to straighten and brace for impact.

This-action saves her from armor-crush-limb-shatter-death, but does little to save her from the feelings which accompany such an exchange of awesome force; spiracles refuse to contract, flooding lymph with wet and debris, sensory hairs ache and overstimulate, crush-pain diffuses through the flesh.

She flounders and drowns in more wet than ever she has seen before, caught some strange where between center, shore, and bottom. Even this close to solid-earth, the depths of the great-puddle are far beyond her vision. Only dark lay below her, and sudden terror joins burning pain as the spiracles clench tight-closed and the lymph screams for air. The eyes strain to see any-thing but false-enemies and strange-fear-shapes.

So she panics. The new-limbs, specialized as they are for digging, cut through wet like the driest of soft-soils, and she tries to move through it as if it were such— but the body is heavier now than before, and strength-flesh had yet remained unchanged. Worse, wet does not move as soil does; she cannot swim when she never has before.

Air-bubbles trapped upon hard-flesh deplete faster and faster as doom-panic rises. The spiracles covered by them open and close against the mind’s commands with such speed as though she were racing a sister home to bring back succulent-sweet-water freshly bled from a tall-plant.

She does-not-know for how long she struggles in the dark. She feels herself fading, soft-flesh burning exhaustion, starving-lymph slow-pulsing through her. All is surely lost; she had risked death, and now it would be hers for certain.

As her life-fire flickers, gutters, and dims, something unforeseen occurs. The blue-light appears before her, both taunt and salvation.

Worldwill plan updated. Audit in progress; major mutations unavailable.

SKILL ACQUIRED!

* Swimming (Beginner)

MINOR MUTATIONS BEING APPLIED TO ENSURE COHERENCY BETWEEN SKILL ACQUISITION AND BODYPLAN...

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BODYPLAN ALTERED TO MEET WORLDWILL SPECIFICATIONS. AUDIT IN PROGRESS; SOME CHANGES MAY BE REVOKED ON CONCLUSION.

The changes are not-great this-time. And yet, they give her a chance. She pulls herself through the dark-wet, the task no longer impossible as once it was. Her webbed digits move her through it with ease, and the antennae now feel the direction of the surface.

What little air and strength she has left in her seems almost to stretch, the body better able to make use of it. She swims with all her might toward the surface, pushes the flesh beyond its limits— she feels it tear free from the hard-skin. But… so long as she makes it to the surface, she can make it to shore. And so long as she makes it to solid-earth and finds a place to rest, she will live. The flesh will heal. Probably.

The bright-orb is low in the sky when she reaches earth. She is amazed no snapping-thing had caught her and dragged her deep below; she had seen some for certain below the surface, and she would have made great prey as exhausted and in pain as she was. It must have been another act of grace from Mother, a boon of luck; the protection which stayed with her always… recent events not included, she thinks. Mother is above-all, the most-mighty, but no-thing can see all-things at all-times, surely.

She shakes the water from the body as best she can, and takes stock of her surroundings. The great-puddle stretches on for quite some way, much farther than it had seemed from atop the sheer-stone where the flowing-wet fell from.

All around her, thin patches of scraggly-plants thrive in rich shore-soil. Farther off lies a sea of tall-plants, but none look as the ones which can be bled for sweet-wet. Few-things seemed edible, but Mother’s daughters were gifted with efficient digestion and many stomachs with which to sustain themselves with many-things.

She stops before a particular stalk-plant, one tipped with fuzz-balls of seed-things which gently break free and drift in the wind. It takes only moments to tear it free from the earth, and sample its flavor. The stalk is… crunchy. Bitter, bringing delicious-tingle-pain. She thinks in the mind of meat wrapped in stalks, to make them palatable. This-thought is of a new-type, brought with the advent of the blue-light; never before had flavor mattered much to her. Now, she cannot help but think such-things: foods mixed together dance in the mind, bringing hunger-pain to the forefront of her priorities. She tries the root next, and finds it delectable, needing no mixing. It breaks apart in fluffy-chunks, with smallest-crunch and smallest-sweet flesh. It tastes of earth, tinged with sweetness and full of saccharine juices that pour forth with every chew. This, she thinks, can be dried beneath the bright-orb, and kept for later. Perhaps it could be used as more than a snack, crushed to bits and used to flavor other-foods? She thinks it is best to consider later.

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She no longer has the safety of the new-home, and the bright-world is beginning to fade into the dark. Her stomachs are full, and she has survived the fall. She looks toward the falling-wet, and notices a strip of shore-soil leading behind it. It would be a good place to hide the entrance of a home. It is unlikely there is a cave there, but when has a daughter ever needed a natural cave? She thinks she will simply carve a new-new-home there. The falling-wet will mask sound, sight, and scent, and the sounds the wet makes are strangely pleasant to her. Soothing, almost.

Location decided, she begins her trek to the back of the falling-wet. By the time she reaches it, the bright-orb has vanished from the world, and she discovers much to her annoyance that she is not the only-thing to seek shelter here.

Sleeping before her is… a thing. Not a thing she has ever seen before. Lithe, almost lanky, but corded with thick bands of muscle and covered with loose, furry skin-flesh. It lies coiled in on itself, long body almost forming a pile, limbs resting on itself and each tipped with three wicked-claws. Its head is clearly that of a predator, she thinks, sharp-piercing-teeth just barely poking from beneath whiskered lips. The breath-holes capping its snout quiver as she draws near, but its eyes do not open.

This was… not-ideal. It is not as big as she, but it does not need to be to kill her. Its teeth would puncture deep enough to break the armor-skin.

However, she holds the advantage here; it is asleep, and she is not. The stinger throbs with the need to expend its venom, a strange-new-feeling which makes her squirm in places. The armor-skin, “carapace” as the blue-light calls it, is harder than ever before, and though they are meant for burrowing into rock, the claws are now longer and broader. Soft-flesh is not so different from wet-soil, she thinks.

She weighs the options… and begins to creep forward, the stinger-abdomen pulled as close to the front as it could stretch.

One breath. She comes within striking distance. Two. She readies herself and aims. Three. Her stinger shoots forward, right into its-eye, squirts as much venom as it can into its-skull. It leaps to wakefulness with a scream that rattles the mindx tearing itself free from her and taking the stinger with it in a lance of tearing-pain. That… will heal. Probably.

It chitters at her angrily, screeching and spitting, before it leaps for the throat. Two arms raise to stop its jaws, and two more fly for its belly. It screams again, and catches the arms in its-jaws, clamps down hard and shakes its-head quick-fast. The force it exerts…!

She is quickly tossed to the ground, two arms rendered useless for any-thing but the most basic tasks, bleeding lymph like rain falls from the sky. The fur-thing, though, fares little better. The claws left deep furrows in its-belly from which loops of organ-flesh hang, and the venom is taking hold. Already, its-jaw hangs open limply, dripping drool down to the floor, and its legs shake with the effort of standing. Its-eyes, hate-filled and frightened, catch hers.

Something about its-gaze hurts her in a way she can-not-know. She feels as though she has done a wrong-thing. This-thing had been in her way, yes, and likely would have hunted her if she woke it while digging. But would she not have done the same-thing, if some strange-thing barged into the new-home and began to change things? Turning the new-home into its-home?

This thought feels as though it twists the organ-flesh into knots. This-thing had been defenseless, asleep. The mind knows she and it cannot exist together; one has to die for the other to live and keep this place as home. But did this have to be the new-home? Could she not have found some-where better?

The fur-thing growls and tenses, and she forces these thoughts from the mind, to be pondered later. It is paralyzed fully, now, its-breathing slowing. Never once did its-eyes leave hers. Pained-scared-angry-eyes. She couldn’t stand to look at them any longer. Rage begins to build within her from some-where dark in the mind. She raises a hand and jams it deep into its-mangled-eye, scrambling the thought-flesh within its-skull. How dare it look at her in that-way? Her! Mother’s daughter! It is merely some— some— some lowly BEAST that cannot even think, does not have a true-mind as she does! Had it any-thoughts, it would have simply left this-place for her, the superior-thing! How dare it not-know the greatness of Mother’s daughters?!

But the rage is doused with this-thought. Shame replaces it. Was not she just like it, before? Are not the sisters just like it, even now?

She withdraws the hand with a sickening squelch that makes every bit of flesh in the body clench and seize. The organ-flesh heaves, and bile rises from the stomachs. She can hold it back no longer.

She vomits, the stalk-plant which she had just consumed ejected into the wet where countless tiny things pick at the scraps within. She tries to groom herself, but its thought-flesh and thick-lymph stick to the antennae and send another wave of nausea through her which threatens another evacuation of the nothingness within the stomachs. She fights it back, barely.

Is this how every-sister feels, after the hunt? She had butchered prey before, yes, but never killed. Never felt the life leave a thing at her hands. The snatching-thing had died in the fall, not to her.

She does nothing but sit, for a long-time. Washes her hands and antennae in the falling-wet, but never washes the feeling from her hard-skin. Blankly watches the small-things consume what she had already begun to digest.

She tries not to look at the fur-thing. Even missing its-eyes, she can feel its-hate-gaze upon her. She will have to butcher it, before it rots.

Instead, she begins to dig. She can pile the soil on either side of the path to further obscure the entrance to the new-home. She will expand this into a doorway later; for now, she excavates a simple larder, and a sleep-room. She numbly notes that the digging is far quicker and easier than before, a thing which, though good, means she will have to drag the fur-thing to the larder sooner than she wishes.

This… will be a long dark.