[solo] No food for the hungry

[Lirilei]

You're walking through the swamp at late dusk when you see it looming in the shadows. A shaggy, dark figure towers over you from a distance and you get a glimpse of a pair of glowing red eyes from under a skull. Before you can respond, the figure is gone. It was over as soon as it began but that night you have a strange dream... or is it more of a nightmare?

[imgleft]https://matope.pixel-blueberry.com/imag ... uncert.png[/imgleft] Feed the Need had done as he did every day, he'd spent the time gathering up various foods and plants to store in his cave. There was berries, meats, plants, fish. He'd been busy for weeks. He was busy every day setting in stores of food to give to kin who needed it.

Hoard was there, protecting the food as the grumpy badger was known to do and Feed was okay with that. He'd stopped to check on a small growth of mushrooms he'd found a few days before to see how well they were coming along in their growth when he caught sight of something though he didn't quite know what.

It was a dark figure, and had red eyes, and he saw a skull. Before he could back away, cry out or anything it was gone. In the whisper of a breath and he was left wondering if he'd seen things. Still, he was so unnerve he decided not to continue the way it'd been and cautiously turned around to head home, checking behind himself often yet finding nothing following him to his relief.

Once home he busied himself storing the spoils he'd brought back before he found the spot he tended to sleep and within moments had drifted off. Feed dreamed sure, but this was more nightmare than a dream. His cave had been ransacked, all the carefully stored foods were gone, barely a crumb left. Angry kin were gathered around the entrance to his home, demanding food for themselves, for hungry mouths waiting for them to return and he had nothing for them except apologies. Which did nothing to feed empty bellies.

The angry kin yelled and cursed at him, calling him all sorts of names before they broke off in small groups to go back to where they'd come from, disgusted that he was unable to help them. Looking around at the emptiness of his home, he felt an echoing one inside of him. He had nothing, for no one. Not even himself. He felt absolutely terrible, and even his ever grumpy badger seemed grumpier than usual snarling any time he came near Hoard.

Feed's stomach rumbled in his nightmare, and even going on a hunt for food turned up nothing. Everything had been stripped clean of edible food as far as his eyes could see, and so with an empty stomach he filled with water he returned home and curled up on to try to sleep, to try to ignore the hunger, the shame, and ever other emotion being felt just then. He felt like an absolute failure, unable to live up to what he felt what his purpose, his calling in life. To feed those who needed fed.

Now, he couldn't even feed himself, let alone any other kin who might come to him for food. Weeks and months of careful collecting, foraging, hunting, fishing, and most of all preserving was lost. All he had to show for his hard work was bits of no longer edible food smushed into the ground where what, or whoever had taken his stores had dropped and then trampled bits into the ground in their haste to be away before being caught. Which was to say he had nothing to show for all the hard work he'd done for so long.

(554 words)