July 07, 2023, 10:20 PM
dusk settled over the patchwork moss of their camp. sobeille had explored each nook of the den, her attention now divested in the gnarled roots that made the face of their den.
by day leagues of ants marched across it. they carried sediment and stones, glittering as their mandibles raised as if offering it to the sun. sometimes they carried whole beetles or body parts, the latter violent and eerily naked as it was seen marched across the boughs.
miette smashed them with a heavy paw, decimating a generation's worth of drones in a single blow.
beyond the wolf den whole kingdoms rose and fell. ants in their thousands waged war, made encampment, reared larval young, slaughtered anything on the forest floor.
scars of their progress lived in the leaf litter, on the little lines in birch bark made by their piercing jaws. in the movement of lesser order of things like grub and leafhopper, the ants made their world and razed anything they could not subjugate between their eviscerating teeth.
but now a babe caused their kingdom ruin. flanks of cohorts were extinguished in seconds. reinforcements were squashed and the scent left by those dying warned all ‘do not come here’.
the ants moved, legions carting their young between their teeth. their progress was noted by one intrepid sparrow — his black capped head tracking their movement as they climbed from branch to bramble.
the ants had little defense against aerial assault. this beast that strode among their ranks could not be overwhelmed; his thin legs walked over the head of many while his black eyes and svelte head bobbed from side to side in search of their next victim. in his wedge beak he plucked eggs by the dozen; it was not until his hundredth cream-colored egg was ripped from its caretaker (sometimes at the cost of the caretaker’s head) did he move on, his crop round and ripe with the squirming bodies of those who would never taste sun on their antenna or moss underfoot.
down the thin branch he hopped, evading the heavy teeth of fighter drones in favor of the milky clutch held in the smaller ant’s mandibles. when he had his fill, he spread his great copper tinged wings, the force of his movement a gale against the struggling commune below.
he leapt from the branch and it sprung back in a plucky pounce. ants in the dozens were uplifted, raining down on the pinestraw to start their climbing journey again. they moved unthinkingly over the crushed bodies of their sisters, some which lay in piecemeal segments that would never move again.
sobeille woke to the sound of rain. hurriedly she visited the aerial section of root where just twenty minutes before an army amassed. now the bark was dark with rainsplatter, a petrichor settling into the air. beneath the thick aroma of damp wood and rot, sobeille scented the pheremones that announced a massacre.
by day leagues of ants marched across it. they carried sediment and stones, glittering as their mandibles raised as if offering it to the sun. sometimes they carried whole beetles or body parts, the latter violent and eerily naked as it was seen marched across the boughs.
miette smashed them with a heavy paw, decimating a generation's worth of drones in a single blow.
* * *
beyond the wolf den whole kingdoms rose and fell. ants in their thousands waged war, made encampment, reared larval young, slaughtered anything on the forest floor.
scars of their progress lived in the leaf litter, on the little lines in birch bark made by their piercing jaws. in the movement of lesser order of things like grub and leafhopper, the ants made their world and razed anything they could not subjugate between their eviscerating teeth.
but now a babe caused their kingdom ruin. flanks of cohorts were extinguished in seconds. reinforcements were squashed and the scent left by those dying warned all ‘do not come here’.
the ants moved, legions carting their young between their teeth. their progress was noted by one intrepid sparrow — his black capped head tracking their movement as they climbed from branch to bramble.
the ants had little defense against aerial assault. this beast that strode among their ranks could not be overwhelmed; his thin legs walked over the head of many while his black eyes and svelte head bobbed from side to side in search of their next victim. in his wedge beak he plucked eggs by the dozen; it was not until his hundredth cream-colored egg was ripped from its caretaker (sometimes at the cost of the caretaker’s head) did he move on, his crop round and ripe with the squirming bodies of those who would never taste sun on their antenna or moss underfoot.
down the thin branch he hopped, evading the heavy teeth of fighter drones in favor of the milky clutch held in the smaller ant’s mandibles. when he had his fill, he spread his great copper tinged wings, the force of his movement a gale against the struggling commune below.
he leapt from the branch and it sprung back in a plucky pounce. ants in the dozens were uplifted, raining down on the pinestraw to start their climbing journey again. they moved unthinkingly over the crushed bodies of their sisters, some which lay in piecemeal segments that would never move again.
* * *
sobeille woke to the sound of rain. hurriedly she visited the aerial section of root where just twenty minutes before an army amassed. now the bark was dark with rainsplatter, a petrichor settling into the air. beneath the thick aroma of damp wood and rot, sobeille scented the pheremones that announced a massacre.