Lieutenant
It had been a long, hard day for this ant nest. Lefttenant had overworked his ant muscles. He'd moved two hundred and nine aphids from the growing danger area. The danger was growing as the rain continued to fall, growing as the soil around their Mother Tree and the rest of the trees in the outer area began to turn into saturated mud.
The Mother Tree had a weird trait. Her lower trunk was the softest and somehow contained most of her nectar. My Ant General guessed that the food she bore must be under her trunk, since he never saw any on her branches, and he had been around for about twenty springs now. Therefore, the lowest part of the trunk was the best place to carry our aphids. This was topped off with the strange scent that the Mother Tree gave off that kept both my kind, our livestock, and predators away, as well as other animals or creatures. Our only enemy was the rain, and since the Mother Tree was located at the bottom of a gully, the moment it started to fall, the floods came racing in from multiple tracks. Rain, however, was not very frequent, which is why Queen Mother allowed us to carry the nest's livestock from the nest, which was about a quarter of a mile away from the trunk.
The Great Nest was at the top of the tree in the centre. I was carrying my last aphid. There was one last trouble we worker ants had to face while carrying the aphids up the trees in the rain: sometimes, parts of the tree would collect rainwater for a few seconds and then suddenly release it. Depending on the distance, if this water met us on the way, it would carry us down with it. While this happened today to a noticeable number of my fellow worker ants, it had never happened to me, and I was thinking the Queen's luck must have graced me today. I was too close to the top for that type of water to do me much harm, with my feet's grip, so I was one hundred percent sure I was going to safely carry in this last aphid.
I was deciding in my mind what food I'd choose to eat from my food storage in my hole. Then I'd definitely go to the nest's belly, where everyone gathers, and brag about my mighty deeds of today. I could probably use the Queen's mind network, that all members of our nest are attached to, and hustle a few fools out of some of their stored food in exchange for a map of the path I took the whole day, so that they could have my kind of luck the next time. My body buzzed with excitement thinking about it.
Then, suddenly, the tree shook very violently, like someone had thrown a mountain at it. By reflex, my feet gripped deeper into the tree. "Not today, ant luck-eater," I said defiantly as I looked down, realizing it was impossible for me to see what had crashed into the Mother Tree from this distance.
As I was celebrating escaping the ant luck-eater again, I looked up only to see a river of water coming down. The thing is, some parts of the trees store water for a few moments; some even for a minute, depending on the space. However, as I've just remembered and froze in fright in remembrance, there are some parts of the tree which seem to only store the water and would keep it even when filled; however, it was always possible for them to be unable to keep this water if the tree experiences a very strong shake. The fright had stopped me from digging my claws deeper into the tree; as a result, the water swallowed me and my passenger. With this force, it was good that I did not try to resist, or my six legs would have been left in the tree. Luckily enough, some of the water reached the ground before me, cushioning my fall. But the force still made me dizzy for I don't know how long; my senses seemed to not be working.
As they began to work, the water around me seemed to shine bright. It was a mixture of red and green, which seemed to be competing with each other, and a slight brown which seemed to not want to be there. My senses blared, telling me how sweet the substance was that I was in. I opened my closed mouth, taking in some of it. It was supernaturally sweet with a strong metallic taste. I felt a strong energy surge in my body, and the aches which my senses were just picking up on started to disappear. I looked at my front claws, and they were shining. Aghast, I started to look all over my body; I was shining like one of those light bugs. My maroon colour had changed to light green. All of a sudden, my senses increased tenfold and were still growing stronger. It was then I realised the sources of these colours: one was a woman bleeding from different parts of her body, while the other was a bean. However, this bean was glassy and was moving out of the soil. Maybe this was one of the fruits of the Mother Tree. And while I was staring, it was starting to blind my strengthening senses. I looked away, my eyesight on the woman. Her wounds were almost completely healed.
"Hah! A witness!"
I had a strange sensation in my mind; it was as if my mind was unraveling heights that it could not originally reach. I was understanding a communication that was not spoken by my nest and probably by any other ant nest. Well, Queen Mother had said that the Mother Tree had already changed us from other ants. But I knew I was now very different from even the ants from our nest—well, possibly except Queen Mother. Sometimes she'd allow other ants to join our nest, but she'd let them bathe in what she called the water of enlightenment before they joined, and even then, it took a while for them to adjust to our nest.
"Queen mother?" I said. A strange noise came out of my mouth that was equally strange to me. I could always communicate, but it was always through my connection with Queen Mother, which was in my mind. Except for chopping and eating, I could do nothing else with my mouth.
"Well, you could call me Queen, one of the many titles bestowed upon me. But I am not that Queen Mother you're referring to, neither is she your Queen Mother anymore either."
"What do you mean?"
"You must have realised that you've evolved above those of your nest by now! You're now, hmm... OK, I've been told just now that you're now a Metamorphosing Greater Ant. While your former Queen is just a Great Ant."
"What does this mean?"
"Since you're evolving, your mundane ant life has changed; therefore, your destiny and lifestyle have also taken a different path. Your purpose now is to serve me, first and foremost, and by extension, this young lady."
I had now realised that the voice was coming from the bean. Something that my now more advanced brain still calculated as strange. Another, more concentrated green light pulled me out of my thoughts. The young girl, whose limbs were twisted in many directions, was glowing with this strong green light. All of a sudden, her limbs straightened, and her features became fairer. Even her muscles seemed to thicken. The light eventually faded, then concentrated in her eyes. Her eyes were like green light bulbs. However, in the midst of it, I saw a purple light which shone for a few seconds then dissipated. The green light, while still very bright, receded from her entire eye to her iris.
She then got up, towering above me like the earth to the sun. In no time, the water was filled with water grass. Like a straw, all of it was sucked up, and in a blink, I was on dry ground. I looked up, and the surprise of me being able to see so far was killed by the view of her holding that water in her hand, surrounded by the water grass. Then a stranger thing happened. Her iris got very small, and where it was, part of her eye receded, and it seemed as if a few of the trees in the surroundings started to weave together, forming a wall around them. It grew so tall it covered over even the Mother Tree. Her shrunken iris became an intense purple. Her hands around the water ball pushed together until it moved from being football-sized to being cricket ball-sized, having a strong reddish-brown colour. Her hands became an intense purple, and purple energy from it poured into the ball. It reshaped into a purple bean without a seed coat; then the purple energy became green, and a green seed coat was formed around the once-naked bean.
Her purple eyes glowing, she stretched out her hand to the ground, and the dirt parted, forming a hole about twelve feet deep. She tossed the bean into it. It stopped from free-falling just before it hit the ground. She gestured again, and the hole disappeared. The wall created by trees split, and the trees receded into their original individual forms. The purple energy dissipated, and her green, regular-sized pupil returned, then filled her entire body, which flared like a fire around her, and the trees bowed; then the energy receded again to her iris until it disappeared. The place became eerily calm; then she fell heavily, but before she reached the ground, a bundle of grass bearing myriad flowers formed into a fluffy, very perfumed bed, cushioning her fall. A little more silence, then she began to snore.
A voice in my head dragged me out of staring. "Leave her, let her rest, and go choose a mate that will evolve with you from your nest."
I looked up at the trees and sighed, knowing the distance I had to walk. Then, just like that, wings grew from my back. I flapped them, and in one go, I had already reached one third of the way up the tree.
Reaching the entrance of my familiar nest, I felt strange. The moment I entered, I was faced with the Queen Ant and all the upper-class ants. There was silence and stares. The pause became almost physical, the sensation of a tapestry starting to hang in the air around me, and just when it was going to statufy me, the Queen bowed, and everyone followed after.
Her hive mind, which I had just realized I was no longer alert of, crashed toward me like a tsunami. My mind flickered, and a tidal wave of energy poured out of me. It intertwined with her hive mind energy, and for a moment, I could see the entire nest through the eyes of all the ants in it. I became not just a part of her hive mind like the rest of her underlings. Communication for an ant isn't words and symbols, but pure energy that conveys a certain message. The Queen Ant didn't send an alert signal to her underlings that I am a threat but understood that I was a part of her nest and that I had evolved. This shows that my insinuation was right; even while I was not this evolved, I was always aware that our nest's ants were wiser and were defying the norm simply because we lived on the Mother Tree, as if the natural energy alone was evolving us, though very slowly.
"Since you understand, you must know that you personally have reached the height of your advancement. So I'll have to do a deeper search of the bodies of your young queens and see if any of them is worthy," I conveyed in her way of communicating, in a certain length that only she could understand.
She sent me a wavelength of agreement and allowed me to access the deeper reaches of her mind, and what I saw left me flabbergasted.
