Spite

Chapter One

Birth

It's a wonderful thing. To be born. Now, what you do with your life is a completely different subject. Being born is beautiful, but living could be quite the opposite.

At first, everything was dark. There was nothing to do but sit there. Every once and a while there was muffled noises, sometimes even vibrations. As if there was something outside. But that couldn't be possible, right? There couldn't be anything other than this strange void. But apparently, I was wrong. After a while there was this strange urge to get out of this abyss, to fight it. To scratch, to claw. And eventually, to defeat it. Light began to pour into the enclosed darkness. This encouraged me to kick at the crack, and thrash my limbs until more cracks began to collect against my void. They grew bigger, and bigger, until I was able to squeeze my limp body through one.

Everything was blurry at first, and bright. It was overwhelming, all the new vivid colors and sounds, and unfortunately all my senses were dull. I wiggled against the membrane, squeaking with effort. Soon I felt a rough tongue pressing against me in a repeated fashion. Nothing made sense at the time, but as time grew on, I came to understand that the owner of the tongue was my Mother. And I had two other siblings, a brother and a sister. I, myself, was a male. My Father, a bulky male, rarely ever came, only stopping by to provide us with food. We were all different shades of crimson red, I was a deep shade. My sister was pale, and my brother was almost black. My mother was nearly the same shade as I, while my father was a completely different color, a smokey gray.

My siblings and I were only a few months old when we first left the nest. It was set on a hollowed patch of dirt and was made mostly of branches and soft ferns. But every once and a while I would lay on a harsh piece of bone. It was incredibly uncomfortable, and I would end up moving and laying on one of my siblings. My brother, who I called Whine, because of his wimpy manor, was always victim to me and my sisters antics. Whenever Whine was dozing, I would throw myself across him and bite his ears, while Snap, my bossy sister, would tug on his tail. Whine would thrash and growl and wail until Mother grabbed one of us by our stubby wings and separate us.

Page one

Life continued on as normal, play, eat, sleep. Nothing out of the ordinary, Father would bring us deer and elk. Mother would intervene fights, and we would wrestle each other and pull-on Mother's ears. This went on for several days, but once we hit a year old. Everything changed for the worse. We were racing around the clearing, as usual, when a mysterious scent drifted toward us. We paused, sniffing the air, taking it in. It smelt like an animal, but not any known forest creature. It was unfamiliar and had a slight tang to it. Apparently, our Mother smelt it too, and she came bounding off of her log perch and standing over us. Immediately we knew something was up, and we crouched under Mother's protection. Her back spines were raised, and a thick smoke rose from her nostrils.

A small group of two legged creatures emerged from the brush. They each had a single tuft of hair on their heads, and they wore strange sacks on their backs. I later came to find out that these aliens were called 'humans.' The pack of humans abruptly stopped when they saw Mother's spiteful snarl. These creatures must be bad, I decided, if they got Mother so worked up. Flames began to flicker in Mother's mouth as she let out another warning growl. The humans booked it, hollering and tripping over every single stick and twig that was in their path. They were ridiculously clumsy, these things.

Mother must've thought that the danger was gone, as she quenched the fire with a single ragged sigh. She padded back to her perch, apparently satisfied that the mystery creatures were gone. Does she have no sense of adventure? Why couldn't we just follow them? They obviously posed no real threat, as they were easily chased off. Snap and Whine began playing again while Mother rested her head on the rough bark of the log, and seemed to doze off. Without her looking, surely I could follow the humans for a bit without her noticing. I took a few bounds forward, before doubling back. Mother showed us that they were bad, I shouldn't be following them. But what if they had tasty things to eat? I turned back toward the direction the humans took. They couldn't be that bad, right?