6. Hunting for Two (Patreon)

"I can't believe my pelvis unhinged itself," I mutter, too shocked to care very much about how I'm clearly suffering from shock. "A pelvis isn't even supposed to have a hinge, Mr. Mooshi."

And as intellectually interesting as that is, the process of experiencing it probably ranks higher on the Trauma Scale than nearly getting eaten alive, so it's probably best that I don't think about it even a second longer. I can just save all of that panic for my future nightmares.

So! Now I have this huge fucking egg. It's just under half the size of the one I came out of, sitting on the ground without a care in the world. There's a baby inside of it, presumably. My baby. So I'm going to have to take care of the child. That's fine, I'm sure it's fine. I got this.

Yeah, no. I don't got this. What the fuck am I going to do with an egg? I guess I could… make a nest? Birds lay eggs, and birds make nests. I don't think I'm any sort of bird, but I am willing to bet that birds still know a lot more about taking care of eggs than I do. Glancing over at my ovoid spawn, I do have to worry about the fact that it could just kind of fall over and start rolling around if I leave it as-is. That's probably bad. I should at least secure it in place.

Slowly, I wobble to my feet, carefully exiting my cave and creeping over to the treeline.  Snapping off bits of the odd, net-mesh branches is surprisingly tough, but eventually I get a nice handful of sticks.  Carrying them back to my cave, I drop them all in a big pile on top of my egg, letting them clatter to the ground.

I now have a really shitty nest.

I can't handle any more than this right now. Whatever, the sticks will make it harder to roll around. That's good enough. What I really need is food. What the hell am I going to do about food? Not only is my baby going to be hungry, but now I'm starving again after accidentally  putting all my energy into creating an entire other living being. What am I going to eat? The only food I've ever had on this damn planet nearly killed me.

"…Although," I mutter to myself, licking my lips. "It was totally fucking worth it."

"This is an exceptionally bad idea," Mr. Mooshi grumbles back, my Eeyore voice as perfect as ever.

"But Mr. Mooshi," I whine, "I don't have any other options! I have no idea what plants are edible, I'm terrified of those acid sloth things, and I could never ever harm a single bit of chitin on your wonderful shell!"

I start patting and pampering him, showering my bug buddy with affection and hugs.

"Isn't that right, Mr. Mooshi?" I coo. "You're my bestest fwend in da whole wide world and nothing bad will ever happen to you, ever!"

"Well, now you're just asking for it," Mr. Mooshi grumbles back.

"No, Mr. Mooshi! It will be fine! Those mean eels can't hurt you at all! We'll just lure one back onto land and then… ooh, a lure! Great idea, Mr. Mooshi!"

"I didn't even say anything."

I ignore that, hopping on his back and directing him towards the river. My egg will be fine, hopefully, but even if it isn't I don't really have a choice. I need food or else I'll die anyway.

Speaking of, while I'd never harm the perfect and wonderful Mr. Mooshi, the same does not go for this big empty shell I picked up yesterday that's probably from one of his dead relatives. I grabbed it in order to carry water, but now I'm wondering… eating the eel gave me super ultra biological knowledge about the thing, right?  And then I laid an egg. So I'm pretty obviously some kind of horrifying alien bio-terror, right?  I’m a little dense, maybe, but I’m not that genre-blind. I've played StarCraft, I know what a fucking Zerg is. In fact I pretty much only played Zerg since they're an entire species of adorable bug people, but I digress. Could I gain the perfect and infinite power of Mooshi if I eat this shell?

I have to try. I give it a nibble.

Hmm... I kind of feel something, like I'm breaking down compounds that the shell is made out of, but this doesn't give me any insight on how to make one. I have the end result, but I need a more complete picture. Maybe I need to munch on whatever the alien equivalent of stem cells is, or more likely I think I need a mostly-intact specimen of the entire creature. If these things have DNA (or an equivalent of it, I guess) I don't think I can read it like code and figure out the whole body from a single sample.  Just a hunch, I guess. Eating this shell is probably useless.

...It is kind of tasty, though.  Nibble nibble. Wait, no, I need this for water I should stop.

Thanks to Mr. Mooshi's somewhat sedate pace, I have plenty of time to search around for a nice long branch I think might be good for fishing. I don't have any idea how to make a fishing line, unfortunately, but maybe I can get the basic effect anyway? The whip eel's eyes are fantastic at seeing things outside the water from under the water. That's how it nabs its prey from hidden locations, and once it grabs onto something it instinctively refuses to let go. If I could just get something that looks tasty stuck to the end of this stick I should be able to lure it to nom on that instead of my weak, fleshy body.

The morning seems much more vibrant than the evening here, as while the forest is mostly quiet I see flashes of movement and hear the occasional chirp or buzz. Things are clearly alive around me, so I very much hope none of them are large and hungry.

Eventually, we reach the river. There are maybe half as many Mooshians drinking this time around, which is disappointing. I also spot some other creatures, however. Some sort of bird- or maybe bat-like beast rests in a nearby tree, about the size of an eagle. It has no feathers, its wings being a simple membrane stretched across its forelimbs. It's kind of fuzzy, and has big, long ears, like a cross between a cat and a bunny.  I can't figure out where its eyes are, but the black, shiny dome of a head turns to follow me as I approach the water.  It's a bit creepy, but thankfully not aggressive.  At least for now.

None of that is important, though, because my eyes catch a tiny flitter of movement above the water. My well-honed instincts kick in, zeroing in my vision on what I excitedly know must be here. It is!

Bugs! Alien bugs!

I suppose I can forgive myself for missing these yesterday, considering the nonstop life or death panic my life has suddenly become. But there are cool space bugs on this alien planet that no human has ever seen before holy shit.

"Shhh! Be quiet, Mr. Mooshi!"

Mr. Mooshi continues to not make any noise, same as he always has, as I engage ENTOMOLOGIST MODE and approach the bugs immediately. I don't have my tools, and my fingers are not exactly the same as they used to be, but years of experience catching cutie crawlies serves me well and I acquire one of the creatures without issue. It reminds me somewhat of a robber fly, kind of a long-limbed dragonfly-esque creature that—oops I've already put it in my mouth.

...Mmmm.

Even on such a minuscule scale, life is obscenely complicated and endlessly beautiful. These creatures aren't quite the same as insects from Earth. They have four legs rather than six. They have no head, possessing two body segments instead of three, but parallels quickly start to be drawn from there. A dazzling compound eye structure grants the creature full 360° vision with phenomenal motion and depth perception, although its ability to make out details is borderline nonexistent. Muscles in the way I understand muscles are not present anywhere within the creature, its motion dictated by a pneumatic system of pumps and pressure. Needle-like claws designed to spear and hook prey tip its forelimbs, and its dragonfly-like wings grant it unparalleled mobility in the air. All of this knowledge oozes into me, bit by bit as my body carefully separates and dissolves each piece of the unfortunate insect in sequence, constructing a perfect mental model of its every detail.

The experience is delicious and educational, though not terribly filling. I quickly nab and eat a second one, just to savor the wonderful feeling again, but the second time around it doesn't really taste good. My body identifies the creature immediately, still dissolving it piece by piece but noting only the tiniest of variances, none of which are interesting enough to be pleasurable. Really, it just feels like eating a bug.

...Not, um, that I eat bugs.  Normally, I mean.  Who would do that?

I catch a few more of what I've decided to name the spear fly, because I'm discovering the species so I can name it whatever the heck I want.  ...Wait, should I name it the Evelyn fly? No, there's probably an even cooler bug that I'll regret not naming the Evelyn fly. I'll save that name for a special occasion, like that megaelixir I always save until I’ve already beaten the final boss.

Anyway, I don't eat my new catches, instead sticking them on the end of my... well, my stick.  Then I cast it out over the water to wait.  After the disappointment of eating my second spear fly, I'm starting to think that fishing for another whip eel just isn't going to be worth the effort. On one hand, the fact that it just isn't going to taste as good is apparently a deciding factor in my decision-making process which should probably be a warning sign. On the other hand, I don't really have any other good ideas. I suppose if there is a huge, person-sized predator in the river, there's probably a bunch of smaller fish I could try to nab instead. They probably eat the insects around here, since... well, okay, I guess these alien bugs aren't technically insects, but I'm going to ignore that for now. My priority list is still currently on 'don't die,' so taxonomy is way, way, waaaaay down below it right now.  Just, so far down.  In order to accurately categorize anything I'd need to study a huge variety of different species and try to figure out where they evolutionarily diverged, and which divergences warrant different phylum, classes, families, and so on and so forth, and then I'd have to think up some name for all of those things which is going to be really weird and different because I don't know Latin and actually this is sounding pretty fun now that I think about it, maybe I should do this.

Hmm.

Fishing is boring.

I'm just sitting on a rock, holding a long stick with a dead bug on it. Will this even work? I really have no idea. I went fishing once or twice as a kid, but I spent all of my time trying to free the worms when my parents weren't watching.

A slimy, tubular creature suddenly shoots out of the water like a torpedo, chomps a bug on the edge of my stick, and splashes back down into the water.

Ah. Yeah. I don't have a hook. The eel might get stuck because it refuses to let go, but a creature that size also probably isn't interested in eating bugs so I would have to use a whole fish as bait, but if I somehow managed to catch a fish I may as well just eat the fish.  Mmm... fish.

I put my stick down, slapping both hands against my cheeks. Which… hurts a lot, actually, since I have a partial exoskeleton, but oh well! Gotta focus! I need a new plan, but I'm hungry and tired and stressed and just… not really up to it right now. It's funny how I know I will literally die if I don't figure something out, but I'm still struggling to work up the attention span to get anything done.

And by funny, I mean altogether too expected for my bullshit mess of a brain. Things are just going to keep getting worse, aren't they? I have an alien baby, sitting in an egg in a cave. I am so insanely not ready to handle that I can't even comprehend how not ready to handle it I am. If I'm some kind of Zerg queen, for all I know the baby will turn out to be an aggressive warrior-hunter and start annihilating the environment, bringing me a bunch of food and making me make more and more creatures... gah!  I'm way too young to destroy a planet!

No, no. Calm down. Even if it was entirely by accident, and even if there is a chance that it's going to destroy the world, I still made a life and dammit I have decided to be responsible for that. It might not destroy the world! It might be super nice, or maybe it will be loyal, or maybe it will just be a normal baby! No matter what, I need to get food for myself and my freaky child aaaagh oh my god I have a child.

Stop!  Breathe.  Focus.  I need food, but I can't seem to catch any.  Other strategies. Trapping? It might work, if I knew how to make traps, but I don't even know how to make rope. Something about braiding fibers, I think? I can barely braid my own hair. I could dig a pit trap, maybe, but digging would require a lot of energy and therefore food. I have a limited ability to control the Mooshians, but I am pretty sure the only thing they hunt is grass. Can I eat grass? That would certainly be convenient. I don't have any idea what I can and cannot eat, I've just sort of been putting things into my mouth. ...I’ll put grass in the “maybe” category.

There is one thing I'm really good at hunting, though: bugs.  I am great with bugs. I know where to find bugs, and if this world is anything like the earth there are probably a gazillion of them, all hiding in plain sight. Bugs are not going to be very filling, but if I catch enough of them I can make up for that. It will have to do for now. If nothing else, it will prevent starvation while I figure out other plans.

Also, it means I get to hunt bugs, which is fun.

I start digging around in the mud and grass, skillfully snatching every bit of movement I see and swiftly tossing it into my mouth. The experience is… interesting. Although I get a wide variety of various species, most of them share a substantial amount of their fundamental traits with the spear fly. The bugs of this world have four limbs, usually, contrasting with the six limbs that the whip eel and the Mooshians have. It's kind of backwards, and six limbs feels like overkill for larger creatures, but perhaps they just haven't been removed by evolution yet. There must be some advantage I don't understand. Anyway, I pick up some interesting things. Different wing shapes, variations on compound eyes, a proboscis, a few toxins that probably won't work on anything larger than my hand... it's not super exciting, but it files itself away in my brain regardless.  As before, each kind of bug tastes drastically better the first time I eat it.

My body has a built-in incentive system to push me into consuming more species, huh?  That's not ominous at all. Eventually, I start running out of new things to eat and instead begin collecting and killing bugs to put in my bowl and bring back to my cave for later eating. I don't know when my child is going to hatch, but it will be best to have plenty of food when that happens. If they are going to turn out as the creature I designed in my head like I suspect they might, they're going to eventually be very big and they are going to need a lot of food. Way more than this pathetic pile of bugs that I'm amassing. Damnit, this isn't going to be enough! I have to do something else.

I briefly consider using myself as eel bait.  Then, I briefly consider that I briefly considered using myself as eel bait, and decide to stand up and walk around. Clearly, I need more blood flowing to my brain. Okay, I can't really hunt, but I can apparently eat everything that I do hunt. Whatever I am, my body seems to want me to eat as many different creatures as possible.  So this implies that my body is probably good at that; poison and disease, if they affect me, should at least be something I'm somewhat resistant to, right? The worst that could happen if I eat something I shouldn't probably won't be death, as long as I'm careful. And there are a few things I have seen in abundance that other creatures are eating without negative effects.

This line of logic is how I find myself sitting and holding a clump of grass up to my mouth. I sigh. Am I hungry enough to eat grass? Am I really this desperate?

Yeah, that's not even a question, really. Bottoms up.