Creatures From the Deep

Prologue

Nearby Chiba, Nihon

You could hear the silence dominate.

Sure, there were a couple of birds nearby, and the occasional trees swaying back and forth in their never-ending dance. But it all came back to the dominating force, like a vacuum sucking up all the crumbs away. The peace. There was no chaos, only order. Order and peace. It's a good way to see a forest, even if there aren't any animals around...

Wait, where are the animals anyway?

"Rin!!!" A voice came from ahead. She could be seen from far away with her lavender-highlighted bangs, a complete contrast to her dirty blond hair. The grin on her face has been on for about a half hour. "What's the holdup?"

I waved at her, put off by the current realization I had. If there are no animals, where would they go? It's not like they could sneak into Chiba, this entire forest is fenced off from the city. Unless some poachers somehow stole all the animals in a week, there's no way–.

"Rin."

"Sorry, sorry, sorry!" I chuckled while staring back at the girl. She knew I did this often, and it was either her or my big brother to snap me out of it. "I was thinking to myself a little bit... Livia, have you seen any animal at all?"

I already knew what Liv would say, but there's no harm in asking, right? Her hair moved around as she shook her head. "Nope." She said back to me. "That's, uh, not that good, right? Cause I miss my dragonflies flying around here..."

"Well, I have a working theory," I said starting to walk towards her. The silence was momentarily broken with every twig I stepped on, breaking it into two. One of them was already broken by Liv's footsteps, and with my step, the branch broke into thirds. "There's no way they could've escaped this forest. Someone would've seen something."

Liv knew where I was going with this. "So all the animals are gone, possibly because of some random new predator. Which means we might be hunted down by that predator because we're inside this forest."

I nodded back at her, realizing it that way. "Yeah, I guess you can see it like that."

"Alright then!" She said with a new pep in her step. "Let's go deeper!"

Wait, that's not what I meant when I said–and she's gone... I could hear a collective sigh come out of me as I started moving again... I guess I should introduce myself while walking.

Hi there. The name's Rin. Rin Solis. I moved to Nihon a few years back with my brother Airim, cause the place we were last in basically didn't work for us anymore. Did it suck at first? Of course, it did, we had no idea what the future would bring in such a new place like this. Over time luckily, we found a home in Chiba. It was pretty amazing to see the community accept us as one of their own. I met Liv, and my brother finally was comfortable sharing about being himself with me, finishing school...

What about me? Well, I kinda haven't changed, as far as I know. Still the same person, same personality, with a brand new culture and home. I dunno why, but it feels like something's wrong with that. Maybe I'm missing something or I haven't found my purpose yet. I could just be overthinking it like I always do, so who knows?

"Livia! Wait up!" I yelled while running in the direction she went into. With every step I took, the silence started fading away, the trees dancing even faster now, buzzing noises coming from small bugs, and some native squirrels running around for food. My feet finally stopped to notice a girl–not Liv–sitting on one of the roots of this hundred-year-old tree. She had a black jacket, light blue hair–yes, people do that here, a gray-ish tail, black choker–...