30 days Writing challenge. Day 5: write a story from the point of view of an animal.
It was Boris who came with the news, his antennae twitching with excitement.
"There is a dump of sweet white on the brown height," he said.
Everybody became excited when we heard those words. It had been a while since we had the sweet stuff in our diet. It made for sweet tasting harvests on our farms. Immediately, we began making ready. Sunday ran to tell the Queen about the find and she ordered twenty soldiers to be our escort. It made us happy because it showed that she also saw the importance of getting that sweet white dump back home. Yet Charrissa stood aloof from our preparations. I was curious as to her silence and I went to her.
Every ant ignored Charrissa. She was old, one of the oldest in our commune. She had a scarred thorax from a war with termites many long moons ago. Her single antennae trembled on gasping my scent. I was the only one who still bothered with her.
"You do not go with them to their deaths?" She asked me.
"Death? We do not go to a war, Charrissa. We found food, the sweet one. We go to bring it back to the commune," I replied.
"You think the ancient giants are stupid? You think they are none existent? You think they are slow? Only one will kill you in your numbers and those soldiers preening with their sharp pincers and thick skills, will be nothing but an itch to them. Those demons do not give gifts, Sanko. They only take and if they give, it is death for the likes of you and me," she said.
Everyone knew that Charrissa had become mad after the war that destroyed her body. She used to be a great warrior, sister to the old queen, leader of many successful campaigns against our enemies. This weak, terrified, trembling ant did not fit into our opinions of ourselves. We are resilient, triumphant in the face of adversity and we never give up. It is the ant way.
"It seems you do not see this as a worthy enterprise?" I said just so I would not be rude.
"You go to your deaths," she replied and turned away from me.
I would have had more words to convince her but the shriek of the winged platoons filled the air; we were leaving. I scampered away to my team and in a file, we left the commune.
The journey was boring until we got to the place where Boris had seen the white dump. It was at the top, the flat surface, he pointed. We had to climb the smooth face of a tower that ran into the sky. This was easy. The winged ones flew up to do reconnaissance. They returned to say that the top was a flat surface that would accommodate all of us and it was indeed full with the white stuff scattered all over. Our juices flowed when we thought of what we would take home.
Soon we began climbing the tower in a single file, while the soldiers mixed with us at intervals, protecting and watching for any incursion from the flanks. The geckos, the spiders always took advantage of such excursions and we didn't want to be caught unawares.
After a time, we got to the top and we began to gather the white stuff. I had just picked my load when one of the winged ones gave a painful shriek. We all turned and as Charrissa had promised, the ancient giant had come. It carried a weapon with many long and sharp spikes. It swept it across the flat surface and gods! It was murder in a grand scale. The wind the weapon gave threw the winged ones away and the sides of the spikes swept us off with our forage.
We fell, those who survived back on the ground. For others, the weight of the weapon silenced them forever. The soldiers stuck on, their pincers stubbornly pinched to the surface but the ancient one was not done. It brought down its appendage and pressed each one on their neck, breaking them. With tears in my eyes, I watched the gallant soldiers of our commune, some childhood friends, stagger about, pinching at anything in death throes. We fled, without and with the sweet stuff. We hid ourselves in the crevices of the floor.
A thunderous sound filled the earth. Our antennae trembled with the noise then we saw a great machine flat and wide fall from the sky and began to squash us to the ground. I ran, I swear.
It was a broken, empty group that wandered back into the commune. The sweet white thing we brought back was not enough for the death we had witnessed. Waiting for me was the sad form of Charrissa. She said nothing. She led me into the darkness and sat with me as we mourned the fallen. We will not go out again for many moons. We will not dare the ancient ones for many moons until with out poor memory, we began to forget and one day, Salit came, breathless and said;
"I found the sweet white stuff on the brown height."
And I, old, broken and tired, sat and watched them prepare for their deaths. It would seem that we never learn.
Notes: I have been ill. So the 30 days stretches further. I hope this satisfies day five. For this, I have considered insects as part of the animal kingdom, sue me. Good morning lovers.
📷: photo is a picture of the challenge.