Chapter Text
==>sweeps ago, but not many
You are a mighty huntress and you are out with your lusus, a beautiful white furred fang-beast. You are the best hunting team ever. You are tiny but fierce with your knives, even if sometimes your lusus has to snag you by the tunic to keep you out of harm's way. He doesn't have to do it that often!
You don't eat much, but your fang-beast lusus does, and you go hunting many times per perigee to get enough food for him. You've learned how to cure skins as well, and make things from the remnants of such beasts.
When you come back from curing skins and disposing of blood and guts, your lusus, sated with food and happy, will pounce on you with his huge paws, holding you down as he cleans you with his warm, raspy tongue and you laugh because it tickles and it feels good after a long, weary day. He spends a lot of time on your long, tangled hair, then carries you to your recuperacoon, dropping you into the sopor slime to sleep.
You always fell asleep giggling.
Till that night.
The horrorterrors come early and strike hard, so badly that you struggle up from your sopor-sleep.
But the screams you hear are not horrorterrors. Something has crashed into your hive, and your lusus is dying on the floor, his yellow-green blood decorating the walls, and you rush over to him, tears already starting, “No, no no, please, no...” He mrowls and tries to lift his head. You put your arms around him and try to move him, to lift him in your arms, but while you are strong, you are not that strong. He butts his head against you. He can't speak, of course, but you know what he's saying.
Go.
You can't go. You cry and cling but there's more noise and you pick your head up, looking towards the door. You can hear growls in the next room.
The lusus who has killed yours has blue blood, and is wounded, weak on the floor, but not dying, like yours. There is a voice. There is another troll in your hive. “That'll teach your lusus to snag a highblood's kill.” Both the troll and his injured lusus leave your hive, preferring to let the culling drone have its way with you.
Moments pass. You stay huddled and hiding in your lusus' fur.
There is scratching at the front door.
Your lusus is wheezing. He lifts his paw and whacks you weakly.
Go.
You shake your head, trembling and your lusus growls at you.
GO!
You burst into tears and run, grabbing your knives and heading off into the forest.
==>run
You are hiding in the trees. You know that at any moment they could come for you. You know that you should run while you can.
But you have to look. You have to see.
The culling drones are destroying your hive, leaving your lusus' body to disintegrate in the open. They're knocking down you hive, your shelter, your home. You're young enough to believe that some day you'll find a home again, but when a drone takes the name plaque off of your door and smashes it, you do truly believe they've destroyed your name once and for all. And just to make sure you know that, they cross your name off of their list, large black lines through the yellow-green of your name. And then one culling drone looks up and though you cannot see its eyes you know it's looking right at you.
You run.
==>be culled
It looks like you will be, even though you are very fast, and you are running. But the drone is so much faster. And you are terrified and the terror makes you stumble, which you do, landing in the water. You leap up to your feet, but you're not fast enough. Not fast enough by half to escape.
You see the blade in front of you before you run into it, and turn around, trembling. The culling drone is tall, thin and dark hooded, with a scythe that is taller than it, a scythe that is poised on your shoulder, and it is so very
BIG
and you are
so
very
small
and you back up and back and back till you can't go back anymore and there's a culling blade at your neck.
Your knives, clutched hard in your hands, will not help you. You are too little to even reach the drone. You are five sweeps old and you are looking up, up, up at your death.
But no, but no! This is not how the story of a great huntress ends! Your brain is screaming at you to do something, to move, to run!
You are terrified but there's a moment where you can escape in the split second moment before the scythe swings towards your neck. The culling drone draws it back and you move in the same direction. You end up taking half the skin off of your shoulder but you keep running and running.
And then you hide. You are small, so small, and you hide in the cleft of a rock, heedless of your bleeding shoulder, ignoring the pain, closing your eyes against the brightness of the day. You can hear the roar of the culling drone, and you're terrified it will smell you out, find you in your hiding place and kill you here, leaving you to rot, and no one would ever find you...or care much, if they did.
You curl up in on yourself as tightly as you can, and cry till you pass out from blood loss.