The Fall

Star was an average, albeit scholarly burrower, going about her day-to-day quietly reading as many books as she could scrounge up from her burrow's deeper quarters. She followed the rules, having learned them better than some of the very officials that signed them into law, and lived with her loving father and younger brother, both of whom she loved in turn. Never once had their home been threatened by the dangers from above ground, and they had all assumed that it would stay that way. The rules had protected them for so long, after all.

Then, one day, the ceiling gave way to sky.

Tashichu, the monstrous apex predators that dominate the surface and have a taste for human lives, ripped up her home. Her father didn't even have the chance to scream. And though she managed to escape with her life, she lost half her arm and only caught a fleeting glimpse of her little brother's fate before being chased away into the remnants of the surrounding burrows. The final memory she has of his sweet, kind little face an image of absolute horror screaming from the top of his lungs, going silent as he's taken away in a rodent cage piled high with living bodies. Maybe it's just some naiive vestige of her human spirit, what little remains after all else was ripped apart beneath the shichu's soul-rending claws, but that memory calls to her.

Star has to find him again, and not even the monsters can scare her from trying.

Please please *please* feel free to offer critique on this story! I'm trying to improve my writing skills and could really use some feedback :)