CW: non-consensual
Chapter 1 – The Swamp
My abdomen rippled, the white fur of my belly and the thin iridescent scales of my chest working in ways familiar now. Pleasure bloomed, as it usually did, when the egg slipped free from its anchored place deep inside me. Sometimes they had ridges, painful all the way out, but this was to be an easy birth.
I hear Zyrax’s roar echoing through the warrens, a pained, almost metallic screech that threatened to crack the plaster in the hatchery that we had spread over the walls through centuries of death and birth – plaster made of us, of our eggshells. It was coming more often now, setting everyone in the tribe on edge. We knew he was no longer our protector when he could not muster the strength to even snap at us, trying to eat, or perhaps prove his might against a kobold a hundred times smaller.
My kind was built for this, though I had the misfortune to bear like a draushumbathal – a single egg each time, larger than normal. Bearing not one of the powerful warriors with dragon heritage, but rather one of my own pathetic kind, whatever Serene was.
Cursed.
A hunter came to the hatchery. A rare elder, perhaps 20 or even 30 years old. I did not know him.
He looked down at me, watching my body work the egg out, expressionless.
He knelt next to me, his scaled thighs powerful. “Serene, yes. Pink…” He said the name in Draconic like he was having trouble stomaching it. “Pink kobold. Hunt is planned, Serene will be joining us.”
I look up at him, gasping, trembling with unwanted pleasure as I continued to push the egg out. Tears dampened my light pink cheek fur knowing what was to come, though I felt a faint glimmer of hope. My eyes shut, I nodded, and my abdomen contracted again.
He set a marker next to me, a way to recognize and navigate to the cave they were preparing in. After a moment, he left me a small gift – a pendant, bearing the image of some beast. As he walked away I bore down again and I crested a wave that pushed the egg back inside me momentarily before I relaxed.
The clutchmother approached as the egg slipped free into the nest. “Please,” I whimpered up at her, watching her eyes. Her foot came down, unceremoniously, not looking at me, though I saw the flicker of her eyes watching how I flinched, the cruel smile.
I heard the crack, the wet crumble of my pink-freckled dun egg giving way. I laid back, panting, eyes distant. My breathing slowed, and I slept.
My eyes fluttered open. I wondered if I had missed the hunt. I sprang to my feet. The egg was gone, cleaned from the hatchery as if it was never there – I saw a male waiting, stupidly thinking I might want to mate…
I ran through the warrens, matching grooves and notches on the stick the elder gave me. Kobolds reached to sneak glancing touches of my soft fur, asking me with their eyes to come to them, to lay in the nests. I was not tempted as I would have been without the promise of the hunt. I shot them small, strained smiles as they chirped questioning noises, sharing my excitement though unaware of its reason.
My heart sank as I saw fewer kobolds and dustier environs. The warrens were not always so empty – the memory comes of Zyrax crunching through an elder, who offered himself to the great beast, but I also think of the hatchery, full as always. No humans were left on the border leading to the steaming lake or the villages of the city to the south to raid. All had fled in our desperation to find him food that wasn’t us.
To my surprise, there was no prank being played here. A contingent of hunters was there in the cave with the elder.
“Pink kobold,” the elder said, his voice low, “thought you’d missed your chance. Eager to prove yourself. Very well, pink kobold will join us on the hunt.”
“Tribe goes now to the salt swamps, for Zyrax.” My eyes went wide – the swamps were dangerous, far too dangerous for kobolds. Hunting it was an act of extreme desperation. They would bring me for this?
One of the younger kobolds handed me a crude spear, a pitted blade at the end. I hefted it in my weak arms, my shoulders already burning from the weight of its shaft. I gave a tenuous smile, my legs threatening to shake.
Their gaze lingered on my soft fur. I could sense the challenge in the elder’s words, who I came to know as Graze: “Warrens need you. Sees your true potential, not a mating kobold, a warrior. Want for a new name?”
The others chuckled but I ignored them, my eyes wide, the sharp teeth of my mouth all visible as it dropped into a genuine smile. I felt a surge of pride, though the chill of the mountain pass crept in here so close to the traps of the entrance.
I nodded eagerly, though I loved my name. It was a rare word in the chaos and grief that lay over the tribe. “Serene will be Sticker,” I say, my chest puffed out, trying to make a move with my spear.
It clattered to my feet and they laughed.
We headed to the entrance after some preparation, the faint light of spots of bioluminescent lichen all we needed to navigate the deadly traps laid to guard the entrance. We cleared fallen rock as we came across it towards the more weathered exterior, a routine act of maintenance that any in the tribe could do. I looked up at the mantlets, locks, murder-galleries and winding palisades my tribe had built with pride, the stone chipped away expertly to form joints with logs and branches that had stood sturdy against human intrusion for hundreds of years.
I waved happily at the kobolds that manned the defenses, my spear planted in a heroic stance, and they gave faintly heard squeaks back. They were happy to see me – I would occasionally visit them, to see how they moved, to ask questions about the world outside, and of course to mate and touch the strong warriors. I wondered if I’d get to join them after I had shown I could do more.
The rest of the group had robes and boots, with a few having a patch or two of scavenged plate or leather armor sewn into the clothing underneath. I was struck by the cold of the night air, though the wind is blessedly slight against my nude body. I felt a pang of regret for my choices, though in truth I was better insulated against this than my companions.
My long graceful feet padded through the snow as we made our way down the mountain into the foothills of the Farther Mountains, leaving four-toed footprints behind. I looked around me in awe – this was the longest I had been outside. I realized quickly my stubborn aversion to clothing wouldn’t kill me after all – the others had offered but I had become increasingly panicked as they insisted the tight, warm bindings would be necessary, until finally they ignored me.
I felt exposed among the heavily-clothed tribe members in a way the nests couldn’t match marching with the group, though few bothered with clothing in the warm piles of stolen fabric and hunted furs, the younglings at the very least always eager to cuddle. It felt strange to me, I felt out of place, though I tried to maintain the bravado and determination of Sticker, not Serene. My head jerked at every sound and movement in the world around me.
The silence of the warrens outside the chittering, yipping, and chatter of kobolds was deep and steady, a comforting press of the mountain peak above. I realized how badly Zyrax’s roars were affecting us at that point – I remembered a time when it was special, a moment of fear in a background of peaceful chatter, rather than a constant press of his agony. The sun came over the horizon as we found our way to a switchback, carefully disguised with a cover of brush cultivated over centuries by our tribe’s wary gaze coming back to Zyrax with food and shinies.
I looked out at the landscape below, eyes widening, tears streaking my furred cheeks. My breath left me.
The hunters allowed me this, at least. They understood, they had felt the same awe and yearning at the expanse that opened up here outside the tunnels, though eventually it would be tinged with terror at realizing how small they were. How anything, even an owl, could kill a kobold. I stood for several minutes taking in the view, one kobold running her fingers through the fur of my back and side as she watched as well.
“Serene… Sticker. Thinks world is large. Will get to see, will get to feel in legs. Too large for kobold,” she said quietly.
I heard a tinge of sadness in her voice, mistaking it for my own pangs at suddenly feeling trapped in the warrens. Safe enough, but held in place. I turned away and started walking again, and the hunters led me down into the hills, the vista lost in a treacherous moraine that absorbed our attention for the rest of the day.
Finally, we reached our chosen campsite, the air growing rapidly warmer as the hills dipped into the alpine meadow below.
None at first would lay with me that night, and I was baffled. They explained they did not mate on hunts, that it would be harder to spot predators if they were occupied with me. I saw a few slink off over the ridge, heard their grunts, laughs, and yips.
Why would they lie? Why was I left alone, untouched? I shuddered and shivered on the ground for hours, the campfire a scant warmth in the chill, humid air.
The female from before, Tracer, came to cuddle. She dipped her long arm and slender fingers down to my genital slit to help. I relaxed, though I felt a tension in her as she worked me to climax, my body shuddering and pressing back to her in a way she would not, frustratingly, respond to in kind.
Still, her warmth was better than none. My fur settled down from the afterglow, and her touch through it was kind but chaste after. I closed my eyes, enjoying the pets.
I slept, and we worked our way to the cold salt swamp in the distance in the morning. Beyond it lay jungle and savanna the tribe preferred to hunt. Going through was a tense nightmare, avoided by venturing further north to where the highlands met warmer plains instead.
The edge was a dense, wet, muddy wetland of reeds that hid sinkholes and ice that gave way if we didn’t move as if creeping over Zyrax’s hoard to snatch a trinket. I learned quickly what ground would be stable, though my lower legs were a mess of clinging, freezing mud. They stopped to help bring me water to rinse it clean and warm themselves after we were through it enough to make another fire.
The hunters were worried now, I could tell, their eyes darting at flickering shadows. I heard several arguing over something. Though I couldn’t make sense of their chatter, I sensed it was about me.
I felt shame creep in, at how the fur seemed to be even more of a curse here, where the clinging wetness could sap my heat so quickly. The dry reeds they cut and heaped on the fire were not enough to warm me through completely, but removing the mud helped and I felt my own body-heat replace the chill.
I got up and they took this as their signal to leave as well, an urgency towards the hunt filling them.
Travel now was easier, though slow, as we hopped between withered old trees and over channels in the mud. A few slipped, laughing, their small, tough frames absorbing the blow easily. I wondered what we hunted.
A nightmarish, spindly creature suddenly loomed in front of me, a great shoebill hiding in the brush waiting for the giant rodents I saw skittering away from us. I brought my spear up, shaking, and Tracer leapt forward with her own, far more confident.
The bird’s beak came down and snapped her up, her scream cut short by the closing of its beak. Other hunters threw their spears into its flank and it was thrashing on the ground. I stumbled back, horrified, and fell, watching helplessly as they extracted the mangled kobold out of the stork-like creature’s throat, dead.
Distantly I felt myself sobbing at seeing her die for me. The others seemed angry, now, restless – none came to comfort me. A few got to work stripping the bird’s carcass for what it could provide.
I heard them yelling, in the pidgin we used with the gnolls now, something they never pushed me to learn and that wasn’t spoken in the nests. They settled down, looking at me before nodding to each other. One came to offer me a flask, silvery and of human make.
I drank, greedily, the human liquor warming me quickly and dulling the horror. I saw them begin to set up camp for the night. I relaxed against a tree, my long legs trailing down, blame and doubt building inside me.
It had been disastrous to bring me. I should have been happy to be a mating-kobold, was happy if it weren’t for them crushing my eggs, the pointlessness of it creeping into me sometimes as I laid with the males. Why couldn’t they just let me be?
Sometime during the night the elder came to sit with me, offering me another drink. Dazed, listless, still recovering from the last but unable to shake the thoughts of Tracer, I accepted. I felt myself pulled under, rapidly, his long fingers stroking my fur.
I awoke to rain, and a dull, burning ache in my stomach. I turned and vomited, shivering, my body dangerously cold. I heard nothing around me but the gentle patter of droplets against leaves and the ground.
I stood, shakily, to see that they were gone. By my feet was my spear, snapped in half. I knelt by it and saw it for what it was – a toy, a worn and pitted kitchen blade wrapped crudely to the end of an old stave.
Enamored by the idea of the hunt I had not questioned it or looked closely enough to see. The pendant hung around my neck, forgotten. I looked around me, confusion being replaced by despair.
They had brought me here to die.
I jerked the binding on the knife free, tossing it to the side. I didn’t realize I could have used it, I only wanted a weapon that wouldn’t collapse the moment it met resistance. I looked around, panic building, trying to work out what direction they could have gone.
I was not a tracker, I had no natural instincts to survive here. I only knew the stories the hunters would tell me and the younglings, cuddled in the nests, my eyes wide with gentle shared fear easily erased by the warmth and mating of the nest. I gave up quickly, their measured and practiced care in leaving the swamp and the blank unfamiliarity of the wild growth around me easily defeating my efforts to find my way back.
The trees loomed higher now, the steel gray of the sky above threatening. I knew I had to be as wary of attacks from above as below here. I moved aimlessly, shivering, through the cypress and birch stands, watching my feet always for pits into cold, deadly dampness.
I heard running water, stumbling towards it, throat parched. A shimmering brook, with fractured, dissolved stone beneath, wound its way between two huge hillocks – I looked up at the looming mud and reeds and moved forward, drinking from the clearer water.
Where I knelt, a small, emerald-green flower shone like a gem in the moss and thin grass, the ground oddly warm here. The orchid struggled against the gentle current of the brook, the roots of the plant that had cast out the blossom bare where they touched the water. I reached out a paw for the shiny, my eyes wide, pupils dilated.
I stopped. The wooden pendant dangled under my neck, turning in a wind coming from downstream of the brook. I left it alone, rising to my feet, staring down at the flower before tearing my gaze away and continuing on down the brook fed by the meltwater behind me.
I moved past the hillocks to find a view of the swamp below and a glimmering hint of the ocean to the south. A series of drops lay in front of me, the muddy, torn soil oddly dry under my paws and feet, making passage quick and easy as I slid down to the talus of oddly smooth boulders below, feet-first down the slump. I felt little cuts where the pebbles and dirt worked their way between my scales, but my desperation to find shelter overrode any desire to clean them.
As I descended the air became startlingly warm, stifling almost, though my fur still clung to me wetly, draining my heat. I could smell salt and sulfur mixed with the mud of the mangrove forest of the lower wetlands.
I knew then I was moving away from my tribe, but it was far too late to turn back. The brook joined with other sources forming a larger stream that finally fell over a thin patch of soil that masked a larger limestone formation underneath.
My eyes widened with hope and recognition. I scrambled down the rock, finding purchase easily with my sharp claws and long, nimble arms. My arms and legs ached with exertion, but adrenaline carried me the last steps towards safety.
Underneath the waterfall formed by the stream, overlooking a pond that formed from its crashing into the softer muck of the lower wetlands, a small alcove had been worn away by its passage. I climbed inside, ignoring the stinging cold of the waterfall or the possibility I might not be the only one trying to escape the morass.
I rubbed my fur dry, my limbs working furiously to slough out the damp. I shook with cold and terror that I had made it this far only to succumb to it. My muscles burned but I worked until I could not, the dampness never quite fleeing but my pelt thick enough that I started to feel some warmth creep back.
I lay down, exhausted, staring out at the water flowing past the entrance. Safe, not quite warm but approaching it. I shut my eyes.
I awoke to frantic scrabbling. I backed into the alcove, the stone pressing into my fur, knife forgotten on the ground until I saw it pulling its way into the opening – a huge rat, half my size, seeking shelter from the rain, food, or both.
I lunged forward but it was faster, diving at me in desperation, mouth sinking into my thigh barely missing an artery. My mouth fell open in silent agony and then the screeching came, my paws thrashing uselessly against it as it clamped down harder. I felt it try to shake me, and though I was too large the force of his movement and the pain I felt drove me to my hands and knees, horrified wailing coming as I knew I was as dead as Tracer.
It backed off, its eyes black and cold, watching me. My paws had bruised it more than I realized and it wanted to be sure I wasn’t a threat before investigating further. I lay limply, tears coming freely, gasping in pain.
My paws clamped to the wound, the blood drenching them as I scooted back away against the side of the alcove, keeping as much distance from the creature as I could. I eyed the knife, tantalizingly close, though my limbs were too weak even to lift me up. It sat, as if judging me like the hunters had, gauging my weakness.
It began to groom its fur free of the water as I had, its paws working the damp out in a way that would be cute if it weren’t covered with my blood. I watched it, my breathing growing more shallow, my head drooping and vision blurred. It got up and I felt, once more, the certainty that I would die here.
It moved forward, sniffing at me, nosing my legs, confirming my helplessness. I lay still, my throat dry, too weak to cringe away as it snuffled into my genital slit, curious. It pushed itself over me and began to hump, excited by either the blood or the smell of me into rut.
I submitted, baffled and terrified, his thin member pushing warm and wet between my thighs. It did not find its mark, and it pushed me roughly, frustrated, until I lay on my back. My tail splayed limply in front of me as it fucked me, fear keeping me conscious through the bloodloss before it finished grunting inside me and nestled close between my legs and on my thick tail for warmth.
I used the last bit of strength I had to reach out and stroke its fur, gently, hoping it would endear me to it, and I gave in, my mind blanking as it healed itself. The rat mated me a few more times as I recovered, going out to hunt in the warmth that rose over the swamp after the rain. I roused enough to drag myself to the waterfall and put my head underneath to drink, still nearly unconscious as my thirst drove my body for me.
I lay back down, eyes weakly gathering in my condition – the rat had groomed my fur down, cleaning the blood and the wound with its tongue. The pendant hung from my neck, and my paw went to it in a brief moment of confusion feeling a slight, unreasonable warmth. My vision adapted to the darkness – more important than the pendant, then, was the tattered remains of a bird carcass, left for me by the rat as a gruesome gift.
I ignored it, repulsed but relieved. I slept and once more the rat took me, this time by waking me and pushing me until I got into position for it, weakly. I looked down at it, wondering why it had chosen me for this – like the tribe, its passion was spent inside me each time without hope of offspring. It must feel some pleasure from it, like the males, must be as cold as me.
Its enthusiasm drove a hesitant laugh out of me. The grunts came with each thrust, its fur rubbing against my sensitive scales, his paws clamped around my torso. I felt a small, surprising heat spread out from my nethers, though it could not reach my clit protected by the scales of my outer opening.
It finished, pushing its hips into mine with a satisfied thump. I got up after, weakly, my hunger overriding my fatigue.
I slid out of the alcove, ignoring the chill of the water for the moment to try to catch some fish in the pond below. I cleaned my wound there and then tried to lunge forward, to no avail. My splashing drew the attention of a pair of predatory birds, and I was fighting for my life before I knew what hit me.
I stumbled back as one clawed at my face, the soft fwump of its wings my only warning. I screeched, batting at it bare-fisted, knife forgotten in the alcove. I managed a lucky strike, breaking its wing and sending it hobbling away flapping helplessly.
I ran back to the alcove and luck was on my side again as the other dove into me and missed, slamming into the ground in front of me. Fear turned into fury, I dove on top of it and used my weight to push it into the dirt, my paws around its throat and beak trying to restrain its thrashing and biting at my face.
I hit it against the ground until it stopped moving. I quickly dragged it to the alcove, panting, leaving it there for a moment as I scrambled inside. The rat hopped down, gracefully, to clamp it between its teeth and bring my kill in for me before some other scavenger dragged it away.
My arms burned from beating it to death and I stared at the corpse as the rat fed, so unlike the shoebill my tribe had taken down earlier. I had barely survived this small threat – it made Tracer’s death a little easier to bear, the shoebill had been a threat to all of them. I moved forward, hesitantly pulling at the limp body, feeling the muscle under its skin – like grubs, I reasoned, and ripped at it with my knife until I had a piece I could chew at mechanically, its taste dull and metallic.
I decided just eating it was enough work that a fire was worthwhile. I scraped together all the deadwood I could find, poking it through a small gap in the waterfall until I had a pile I could light up in the back of the alcove. I found a flint and made enough tinder from my fur and shaved wood that I could start sparking my knife into it, inexpertly coaxing it over an hour into a small flame that I fed carefully until I had a small blaze to sear the meat on.
It didn’t last more than half an hour before sputtering out to smoke. I resigned myself to eating it uncooked. The bones crunched under my teeth, and I spat them out, my tongue bloodied at trying to chew the marrow free.
I thought about the fish, and after resting for a while I set to making some crude hooks from the bones, using torn strips of vine for a line. I skewered sinew too tough for me to chew through on the ends and dangled it into the water from inside the alcove into the pool below, not expecting much. To my surprise the fish came at it without hesitation and I pulled my first catch into the alcove, bashing it on the rocks.
The rat came to me, excited for more food – the bird was unappetizing to us both, it seemed. I tore it in half with my knife, giving the head to him, and slurped down the other half after gutting it. I looked at the pitiful fishing line I had made – I couldn’t expect it to last for long, the nets my tribe used were much more effective and efficient at feeding us, so I set about collecting some vines and sticks for a frame to weave one for my own use.
I found a spot I could dry more wood under, and I dragged several likely branches underneath. My body and muscles were weak from years of leisure in the warrens, sheltered from the hard work of mining or hunting that the others endured. I eventually gave up, bringing a load of the vines back through the swamp to the alcove, collapsing on the ground with them and sleeping with my head rested on them.
Later the rat woke me again with its insistent humping – I parted my legs and let him slide into me, his thin member so strange compared to the tapered cocks of the males of my tribe. Unsatisfying, but I was coming to enjoy his warmth, to be less afraid of him, and thought the little grunts he made urging himself to climax were funny.
“Should find girl rat for you…” I said into the stillness, stroking its back as it came, shuddering in me. “Not make rat babies with kobold. What is name, Serene wonders?” Of course it didn’t understand, but it broke the silence – I missed the constant chatter and noise of my tribe.
It pulled away and I cleaned myself in the pool below, the fear of the chill receding as it became clear the alcove was safe enough for now. I fished for breakfast, taking longer this time to pull a catch in, sharing with the rat as I did. The remains of the bird were beginning to smell – I stripped what I could of it, taking the bones and feathers into a loose bloody pile before bringing the rest out to the swamp, throwing it deep into the trees.
I heard a rustling and poked my head above the brush, curious.
A snake lunged out of the shadows to clamp around my leg, quickly gathering itself to coil there, turning. I yelped, and slashed down at it with my knife, cringing at the pain of its fangs buried into my hock, stabbing until it whipped itself away. I jammed the knife down one last time, pinning it to the ground, my hand slipping down its bare tang to cut my fingers on the blade.
I scrambled away from its thrashing until it lay still, my breath shallow and rapid, eyes wide, paw clamped down. I looked down, horrified, to the injury, slowly opening my paw to see a gash in two of my four fingers. I pulled my knife free with the other, and after kicking the snake to make sure it was dead, dragged it back to the alcove as well, blood dripping into the mud as I went.
I rinsed my wounds in the waterfall, and the rat hovered nearby, as if concerned. It nosed the snake and tried to chew it, but ambled off after a moment of contest against the tough meat to forage elsewhere. The icy chill of the water turned the pain into a dull ache, and the bleeding slowed.
After a long time just clenching my fingers, making sure they still worked, I cut away at the snake. The knife was too dull to do anything but saw away at the skin, and it was hard work, but I managed to peel it away – I set it on the ground, disgusted by the sight of the animal laid bare to muscle, but I tore into it with sharp kobold teeth anyway.
I decided the swamp was too dangerous to venture into much then until I was healed – I cleaned myself up and dried myself, resting. Eventually the rat came back, muddy, to groom itself in the alcove. I looked up, vaguely surprised, as it settled in next to me to sleep.
I had the knife next to me, and I could jab it then into its side, be rid of it. The temptation was strong, the terror of our first encounter still gnawed at me. It snored quietly and I backed away gently to sit up and go to the bundle of vines.
I worked into the night on the net, stripping the vine into lengths that I could tie around the sticks to make a crude frame, stringing it between each side. It was difficult not to reopen the wound on my fingers, and blood dotted sections of the soft bark. I ran out of usable vine quickly, and resolved to find more, as soon as I could sleep, as soon as I could get more food to quell the gnawing pain building in my stomach.
Again the rat woke me to mate, a rhythm to its needs developing in my mind, and I pushed my body against it, grinding, urging it to finish quickly. “Just want food and sex, food and sex. At least you don’t want to leave Serene in swamp to die,” I said as it pulled away, chuckling with dark humor but a faint blush of arousal blooming over my scales.
The next morning there were more, larger fish in the pond. I could see their dark forms, so tantalizingly still, though I knew if I dove after them they would be gone before I could react. I resigned myself to dangling the line in front of them, eventually pulling a few from the water to eat whole, giving some to the rat.
I wondered where they came from – the stream was small, as was the pool beneath the waterfall. I thought about the warrens, how limestone like this was carved by the water in deeper caves, how I had known there might be caves under the stream when I first climbed down from the frozen lands above. I set out to explore the scarp, following the rivulets that joined to create the waterfall.
Eventually, pushing aside some vines and brush, I found an entrance into the stone. Pushing myself through the narrow passage, scrambling over fractured stone and mud, it opened up into looming domes and then a wide, low chamber with the sound of dripping water echoing off its walls. My wide eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness, drinking in scant light from the bioluminescent fungi that dotted the soil and walls inside as well as a crack to the outside in some chamber at the far end, discovering a huge, still stone well whose bottom I could not see near the edge. Inside, softly glowing fish, huge snails, and a smattering of eerily pale water weeds stirred, slowly, in the scant light of the chamber – a small world in the deep.
The limestone walls of the pool were smooth like the flowstone of the deeper parts of the warrens, where an underground river had been carving its way through the stone for millenia. I yipped as my skin crawled at how ancient this place felt – it echoed, the depth of the cave promising but terrifying to me. Despite its closeness reminding me of home I wanted to push myself as fast as possible out of the closed-in space.
Surely I was not the only creature to have sought shelter here? My mind conjured predators that could swallow me whole, huge bears or spiders that could be lurking in the unknown darkness. I turned and scrambled out, breathing heavily, the pendant’s string catching on a rock, before emerging into the humid air outside.
My eyes adjusted to the light of the swamp and its threat became more real to me than the mystery of the cave, my thigh and leg aching from the bites of the rat and snake. I decided it was far less exposed than the alcove, and the entrance narrow enough that I didn’t think large predators would enter, if it were the only one. I brought what I could up the scarp to the cave from my old huddle, and the rat followed me to my new home, chirping for attention as it scrambled next to me in the darkness.