Light. A soft, greenish light.

That was the first thing it saw.

It was trapped. Something was covering its body. It needed to get out.

How could it get out? It was covered. It had to break the thing covering it.

How could it break it? It had mandibles. It had mandibles!

It bit through the thing, but could only make a small gash. It needed to bite harder!

It bit and bit and gnawed. The hole grew bigger and bigger.

The thing tasted bad!

Finally, the hole had gotten big enough. It was time to escape!

It squeezed out of the thing that had trapped it. Membrane. 'Membrane'? The word had appeared in its mind.

It felt weak. It needed something. Should it eat the green light? How could it eat the green light?

It could not eat the green light. But where did the light come from?

It looked around with its tiny eyes. They could not look very far.

The light came from the ground! The ground was soft. It opened its mandibles and bit on the ground.

Tasty. Tasty! It was tasty!

When the green stuff reached its digestive organ, it felt a sudden burst. It felt energized! The energy flowed through its body.

Moss. It was named moss. The moss was really tasty!

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

It needed more. It began biting down again on the moss, but soon found out it was easier to eat if it used its two limbs to pull a bit on the moss first and then bit down.

It crawled and combed through the moss, eating as much as it could. But soon its belly was full and it had to rest.

It laid down and slept.

When it woke up, it felt slightly bigger. It was hungry again. It needed to eat!

But there was not much moss left. It had eaten most of it. It tried biting down on the grey ground, but it was not tasty. It did not emit light, and it had been hard. Very very hard.

The grey ground was called 'Rock'.

What should it do? It was hungry. It wanted more moss.

Its eyes were not very good, but there appeared to be more green light far away! It needed to get there.

Extend one leg, and pull! Extend the other leg, pull!

Slowly it made its way toward the other source of green light. After a long while, it arrived. More moss!

Om nom nom nom nom. Moss was really tasty.

It kept nibbling on the green goodness until a shadow entered its vision. There was a small patch of darkness, as if something was covering the moss. Curious, it approached the small dark spot. Its eyes were not very sharp yet, and it had difficulties seeing things that weren't close.

But as soon as it got close, the spot moved!

The long way crawling had tired it, but it was now intrigued. What was that thing?

Trying to chase, it started the laborious process of moving, or rather, crawling, after the thing again, with its two frontal appendages. It tried to move less jerkily and instead more smoothly to not alert the dark thing, but when it got too close, the patch escaped again!

Resigned with its fate, it started to munch on the moss again. After all, there was a lot of moss. And the moss didn't move!

It continued with this cycle for a while. It would graze on the moss for a time, and when absolutely full it would just lay down and rest. Then it would wake up again, and nibble on the moss. Sometimes it saw the dark patch in the distance, but trying to get close always resulted in failure.

It watched the small dark spot with resentment. Some day it would catch it!

After some cycles of filling itself with the shining moss and digesting, it began to feel tired. Very tired. This was not like when it went to sleep, this was something else. It felt like it needed some secure, secluded place to rest this time. For some reason, it felt it would be vulnerable. Vulnerable to what?

It had seen a big rock on the way to its current patch of moss, and so it made its way towards that rock.

Crawling through the darkness with its two legs, it slowly got closer to its objective. Finally, it reached the big object.

Tired, it lay down inside a small nook the uneven rock formed and went into a deep slumber.