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There it sits. Alone. Cold.
It lies still within the garden, a frail thing standing tall for the first time in its life, no longer hidden by what once protected it. Smaller snails, its fellow denizens, now make room for it and avoid getting in its way. It was but a pest for its whole life, and for that long, brief lifespan, the law of pests were all that it had needed to understand the world, and every inch of its undeveloped brain was branded by the simple, fundamental truth:
You're small, and those that are bigger will kill you. You're weak, and fear is your only friend. Be an opportunist. Watch your surroundings. Eat what you can, and hide in the dark.
Everything that diverted from those laws ended up dead, one hour or another, and under the ever-watching eye of the Neo, everyone that was a little too small was an inevitable criminal, always close to growing just a little too comfortable. At ease. And then you break one of those small, imperceptible laws, and the judge of all delivers his verdict: Death. The executor? A bird. By your flesh, him and his kin will live for another day. Enforcers were to be rewarded, and then, upon committing a crime, immediately punished by their own executor. It was a self-sustaining cycle. It was life itself.
The frail thing calculated. Pondered, as pests do. He knew he'd die, but was it today or tomorrow, or the day after, as hard as that distant time was to imagine? He smelt, and listened, and looked, propelled by that question as he had been his entire life, yet a simple fact had not occurred to him. Through cowardice, and time, and luck, he had grown too big. The cowards often did, and when they do, they're no longer bound by the laws of the pests. When they're large enough, another law takes place for those of his kin. A law that did not come as instinctually, and needed to be taught.
For most animals, the only way to learn came through blood, and pain, and food. But though blood was shed to enforce it, the frail thing wasn't taught that way. An incomprehensible impossibility in nature.
The law of men.
A figure stares at him. Executor-shaped. Murderer-shaped. Fear-shaped. Bird-shaped. Neither the juvenile nor the figure felt the same instincts that a father and his child would. Why would they? Mammals do, birds do, reptiles occasionally do, but they weren't subjects of that, because they were none of those. They were something else. The bond they shared couldn't be enforced by instinct and lineage.
The figure examined the young one, and then glanced at the sky, eyestalks flexing slightly to tilt upwards. No, it wasn't instinct. They owned that garden, therefore, some of the responsibility befell them. One could say they had tacitly agreed to it, by not weeding out the pest. And, they needed an apprentice for their trade, after all. One more mouth to feed would be nothing compared to the reward of molding someone into something better. Mentoring a juvenile was akin to making things, but instead of crafting materials into something better, you took their empty vessel, and filled it in some small part. They would always remember you.
And, if perhaps what could be called 'talent' was there, sometimes the individual was worth all the effort you put in two-fold. Maybe more, though of course, it's important to not teach the craft *too* well. It'd be embarrassing for the student to quickly overtake the master in a short period, the rare times you get one who's just too smart. Better they find their own path, in that case.
The figure approached slowly, broadcasting their intent, talking to themselves and the juvenile. The words sounded like meaningless babble, but they triggered a latent part of the brain, one that had grown over these past few years of his life and now tapped him on the back and told him, listen. Learn. Cooperate. A new category of interaction opened up. He would come to understand soon.
There were questions of how fast to remove them from the home they knew, how much disruption was necessary. The gardener believed in a slow transition, personally. They spoke, and after speaking, they left a scrap of meat. Food. He snatched it up before any other creatures could claim it, and digested it slowly as he lay thinking in the night. The next day, the same thing happened, and the next after that. He grew quicker, fed by this new supply of food, and began to recognise the sounds his feeder made as they were repeated. He made his own, and the figure seemed pleased. On the day his body no longer fit into the shell that had once kept him safe from the world, they wrapped him in something thin and soft, and carried him away from the garden he knew, and into another place that was hard, and strange, and warm, along with his shell.
Another day, after that, the figure began to teach him of their practice. How to plant a seed, how to water it, how to keep it safe from bugs, and how to be patient. He struggled with the final of these the most, for which they chided him gently.
Another day, after that, his teacher would look over the thin, flat tendrils emerging from his back, and tell him with approval that he was no longer a child. He didn't understand what they meant, but they told him to be proud in his growth, and so he was.
Another day, after that, he met others like him, youths still developing under the care of their elders. The adults spoke to each other and compared their progress, while their wards stared and argued and played. He ended up fighting another one, bigger than he was, and there was a flicker of the fear that still had not left him. The law of the pest reared its small, wary head and told him to run. Yet there was something else, too. A swelling in his stomach, an internal pressure pushing outwards. The thought of *winning*, of being not just victorious, but The Victor. In the end, he was badly bruised, and his mentor spoke harsh words to him. Yet he felt a warmth that remained until he slept that night.
So on, and on. Days ran down him like water, carving grooves along his self, building the story he told himself. Just as they all did.
Did he remember? After growing into maturity, after creating the vessel that would clothe him, did he still think of those days in the garden, when he was small, and shaped by base instinct and survival? And the eyes he looked into, as he gained peers and friends, did they recall the same?
Maybe; but it was impolite to mention. They were no longer faceless pests, after all. It was the only experience shared by the whole species, one could say, so there was little need to speak of it.
So he lived as a man, and one day, when he was working in a field, he cleared the new spawn from the green stalks and left them for the birds, and that was that.