The ground shook. Stabilising herself by bending her knees and jutting her arms open, she looked around. Mierann was still surrounded by grass, the blades towering over her, closely together, each only about 5 of her steps away from each other. The ground kept shaking at a regular interval now. She did not like this.
Quickly activating her spikes—a purple cloud puffed up around her, sharp protrusions appeared on her fore arms, shins and feet—she easily climbed up a grass blade. The one she chose was one of the tallest ones in sight so when she got to the top she had a good overview of the area. She did this several times a day, in hopes of seeing something familiar and to keep track of the golden sky orb. This time she almost retracted her spikes in shock of what she saw.
After a moment she did retract them, and used the grass blade as a slide, both falling and sliding back down. She started running as fast as she could, away from the source of the shaking ground. She bounded through the grasses, going left to right, trying to get the easiest and swiftest path. The tremors were getting even louder, and seemed to come faster too.
Something shot through her vision on the left, a large cylindrical, deep purple thing. It ended in a tip-form, the point almost as large as her head. The whole thing was covered in slime, leaving its trail everywhere it touched the ground in strings of translucent sludge. The thing moved to the right and she managed to take a huge leap over it. It gathered a lot of dirt and flattened out the grass blades, which always sprung up again, but never as high as before.
She could see the slimy substance on them. She couldn’t get a closer inspection in—running for her life and al—but she had no doubt that the slime was sticky. If it caught her, she would get stuck and that would be the end of it. No more lost one. Instead, a dead one. She kept running and dodging all the blades, jumping over hobbles and holes in the ground.
Wait, what. Holes? Holes! Groaning, she turned back on her tracks and stared her pursuer in the eye. Fear froze her solidly to the ground. She couldn’t move. She never before heard herself make the sounds that were coming out of her mouth right now. The pursuer was huge, with large grey and black hairs all over.
The small mouth opened and Mierann saw the slimy, sticky thing come out. It’s a tongue. For the love of the Queen, it’s a tongue! She did the only thing she could think of doing.
She ran towards it.
The tongue shot out.
She let herself fall and the momentum made her slide a bit further. Suddenly she felt the drop. Yes! Her aim towards one of the holes had been perfect. The fall was very short lived. No! No no no no. The hole wasn’t deep enough. The tongue would come in and catch her. She would die.
She refused! Feeling around, she furtively looked for a solution. The darkness vanished for a second, light entering her hole, only to be replaced by shadow again and this time she knew the tongue was coming out. She also knew it could easily reach into the hole and take her out. Not knowing what else to do, she pushed herself against the wall as well as she could and huddled down.
The tongue retreated, accompanied by a shrieking of hurt.
She didn’t realise she’d shut her eyes tight, until she opened them to a jaw-dropping sight. In her moment of huddled panic she had thrown out her hands in an act of unconscious defiance. But what she saw before her weren’t hands. Where those were supposed to be, she instead saw some kind of serrated knives.
Her hands were gone and there were serrated knives instead! What!? What is going on! This freaked her out even more than the predator. Luckily that one got scared away now, the knives seemed to have cut it enough to make it retreat. She twisted her hands, being careful not to hurt herself. What in the word was this. How? They were obviously sharp enough, by the retreat of the pursuer and the blood on the knives. Not to mention the drops on the floor. The knives were surrounded by a fading purple cloud.
That seemed very familiar to Mierann. The same cloud that appears when she used her spikes! Then it struck her. She just became one of the protectors!
*********************
This is an excerpt out a work in progress. I’m not working actively on this novel, for the moment, but I do sometimes revisit it, and thought it might be nice to occasionally use pieces of them as a standalone flash fiction story. At least, I hope it makes sense when taken out of context. I also have to admit that it hasn’t been edited properly yet so it’s pretty raw. I hope you enjoy nonetheless.