𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕣𝕕𝕤 𝕠𝕗 𝕄𝕖 (𝕊𝕥𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕟 𝕌𝕟𝕚𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕤𝕖 𝕩 𝕄𝕒𝕝𝕖𝕆ℂ)

Welcome

5,050 years ago…

The steps of feet. The murmuring within the throats of the small group, uttering unintelligible phrases and croaks, it may as well be grunts.

The creatures stood on two legs, naked and bare with sticks and stones as they wandered about in a group, a natural kinship formed between them. More instinctual than anything.

The drive to survive. To reproduce.

They were the last of the barbaric groups left in this rapidly advancing world, keeping to themselves in mountains, untouched by other civilizations.

They were nomads, to be precise. Endlessly wandering the plains, forests, and deserts of their planet, ripe with all sorts of organisms.

One in particular, was fascinated. It was a man, standing at a tall height, but lanky. Its shaggy hair covered its body and forearms, like small bushes. The neanderthal inspected the trails of beatles that crawled along the branches they were surrounded by, amazed by its colors. Before he could admire any more, they were snatched by another’s hands and thrown down their gullet.

He didn’t exactly like that. He bellowed out in anger, and the other responded in kind. Naturally, they scuffled for a little while, until they all caught sight of a massive deer. It stood tall, its ears twitching as it peered at the small group. They all stood deathly still, as one from the group pulled up a spear, a stick with a sharp flint edge laced to it.

Hunger was starting to set in.

He immediately chucked it, missing terribly as the deer took off. The woman in the group yelled out, stomping her feet before taking off after it. The rest followed suit as the tall one… hesitated.

It didn’t know what made it hesitate, but it had a feeling something might change, it was odd. He felt the hair stand on its ends. He panicked at the odd sensation, scraping his skin with his sharp, dirty nails. Blood was drawn, but the feeling stayed. It didn’t know what to make of it, and it couldn’t.

And so he followed the group, not wanting to be alone, after all.

He ended up in a small, deserted field, watching as the group attempted to wrangle it, all of them poised and ready to jump the deer.

He came up upon the group, before yelping at the stinging pain on its feet. In curiosity, he looked to see a… colorful shard. He looked around and noted that there were other shards scattered around the ground. Hearing the sound of a wet squelch, he looks to see that they have killed it. They raised their arms in triumph, before taking apart the deer. The tall one was still curious, however, and wanted to share this odd discovery. He rushed up, showing the shard to the woman. She stared in awe, watching the shard shine in the sun as she snatched it out of his hands. The others caught wind of this as they rushed up.

He felt odd. Like this was weird. It was a weird sense of weirdness that he felt weird feeling this weirdness.

Out of place.

One of them tried snatching it, but was quickly bashed back by the woman, before she jumped from behind, crashing down to the ground. They wanted the shard for themselves, it was too shiny, if they had all of it… it would make them better! Powerful! Like a row of dominoes, it descended to pure chaos as they all fought for the shards on the ground, even using them as weapons.

He was horrified. Before he could even notice, one snuck up behind him and stabbed him straight into the chest. He stabbed over and over and over, mistaking him for his supposed foe. He watched and yelled in absolute terror, feeling the crimson bleeding out of his chest as they all fought to the death. He just… sat there, feeling the sharp pain in his chest as he tried to achieve some type of calm as he heard the ravenous screeches surrounding himself.