EXTRACT FOR
Below
(Anna Mann)

Hidden in the darkness he watched her as she debated her next move. His colouration had adapted to the cave system over the hundreds of years that he had been trapped there, but that was to be expected because his species had already begun to evolve from their original form. He remembered his mother explaining how his people had spread around the planet as a series of interlinking tunnels opened. He was descended from the Olitiau, a bat-like species that over time had lost the ability to fly. His mother had told him that in one region the Olitiau had remained unchanged, but at the time of his separation from his kin those pure-bred creatures were rare.

Persecution had made his clan flee from the caves that they had called home for millennia. Settlers had slashed the forests surrounding their caves, they had driven away the prey animals on which his people fed, and so, close to starvation they had risked raiding the small farms that had sprung up. Their predation had initially been blamed on big cats... but then one of his clan had been spotted carrying away a small goat.

Torches had blazed in the tunnels and passages, arrows had struck the rock surrounding them, and so his clan had travelled deeper into the tubular maze that tectonic movement had opened. And it had been that tectonic activity that had trapped him, alone, separated from his family, as the tube behind him fractured and shook. The ceiling had collapsed, and engulfed in dust he had run.

And for five long years he had wandered the tunnels, always looking for a way back, and never finding one. Finally he had arrived at the lake and decided that it would be folly to wander further, the lake offered him food and water, around the edges were bubbles, captured in the molten rock, then exposed years later. Safe places where he could curl up and rest. He knew every nook and cranny in his new home, every dead end, every tight spot that led to other caverns, and even a path to the surface, a tube that opened up behind a raging sheet of water. Several times he had stepped through that waterfall and out into the cool night air, but fear always drove him back into the darkness. Moonlight hurt his eyes and the overpowering aromas of the forest confused him, his senses bombarded with too much information and stimulation.

I am better remaining hidden he told himself as he watched his prey staring up to a recently revealed passage to the outside world. Down here I am safe... down here I am in control. And as he revealed his frightful fangs in a form of grin he gently scratched a long claw against the floor, and watched her freeze.