Chapter 1: A First Morning

It woke up.

It then wondered about the world it saw.

Above, immense towering trees shadowed the forest floor with their collective canopy. Below, despite the shade, the floor was lush with many varieties of life. Bushes, ferns, and other plantlife ranged from nearly imperceptible to well over the height of an adult, and whilst largely unseen, the wildlife was so dense it was nearly deafening.

It sat upright.

It then wondered about what it was.

Its body was rough and brown, like the bark on trees. After investigation, however, it came to believe that it was more like the shell of the tiny insects that scuttled along the ground.

It wondered if it was an insect. Maybe.

It stood up. And the forest fell silent.

It did not like the silence, so it waited until the sound of the forest returned. Once it did, it took a step, pushing the waist-high shrubs out of the way. Again, the forest quietened immediately.

It was upset at this, but yet waited for the noise to return. After a couple more of these cycles, it noticed the forest getting darker and quieter. Unhappy, it waited until the light came back, which took a surprisingly long time, and then began its cautious journey again. Many steps later, the forest seemed to become accustomed to its presence as it no longer fell silent the moment it moved.

After many more of these light-dark cycles the thing noticed there were less great trees than before. This trend continued as it continued to walk, with the other plants and wildlife also becoming thinner. Then suddenly, it all vanished. Well, not really, but the forest abruptly ended, giving way to a massive open grass plain.

It stood on the border between the two domains, frozen in place by the new and overwhelming line of reasoning that just occurred to it: where does it go now? This individually confused the poor thing but what really shook it were the necessary following questions: where has it been going? Why has it been going anywhere in the first place?

It sat down, and for the first time ever, it took some time to think about itself. It found this difficult as there wasn't much to think about, but it tried anyway. It understood that it was living, and that it was like those tiny shelled bugs. It thought about how it didn't like the quiet, and was interested in not only all that it could see but also the things it couldn't see, to the point it would even quiet the forest just to see behind the next tree.

This caused the thing to spend even more time wondering if it was normal to have these contradictory behaviours. It had seen abnormal things in the forest; birds that didn't have a matching number of feathers on their wings, a beetle that kept flipping onto its back, a seedpod that never sprouted.

After a while it came to the decision that it wanted to see more.

Looking towards the open plain it didn't see much aside from the vibrant green grass, and a minute grey dot on the horizon. Focusing on the grey speck it came to the conclusion that what it saw might be a huge rock, similar to those under the waters of the brooks and streams that rarely crossed the forest, or the very small pebbles occasionally scattered on the forest floor.

It wondered if there was a really big stream next to the rock as it made its way towards it, looking forward to this new thing.