The Cub woke to the light shining on him. 

“Ahh it must be a new cycle” 

The Cub unconsciously muttered to himself. The Cub then started to move and by doing so started to feel the pain coming from within him and how heavy he felt. Suddenly he coughed a few times causing a large amount of swaying liquid to come out of him and spray onto the floor.

The Cub now couldn’t feel anything but fear and revulsion towards this swaying liquid. Finally after staring hatefully at the swaying liquid in front of him he decided to look around. As he had expected he was once again within the transparent layer, just like the start of every other cycle. The only thing different is the large hole leading towards the swaying liquid that was leaking in far more light than the transparent layer.

The Cub also noticed that the light coming from the hole was different in that it felt warm where it landed on his body. He quite enjoyed the feeling of warmth coming from this light so he struggled up onto his feet again. As soon as he managed to stand he felt weak, just like when he had first managed to stand. This was a feeling The Cub hadn’t experienced in quite a few cycles and caused him to be slightly alarmed.

“This must be because of that hateful swaying liquid” 

He growled, feeling his irritation come back to him. But after he said that he suddenly became extremely alarmed by a sound that suddenly appeared behind him. He realised that he never did check for any changes behind him since he had woken up. After considering why he hadn’t known there was anything behind him for a few moments he finally decided to turn around and see what exactly it was.

He turned only to see a creature on the ground next to him. He calmed slightly as he already knew about these creature things, at first he was worried it would be some completely new object. Taking a closer look at this creature he noticed that unlike many of the creature’s he saw before this one was of a different shape.

The Creature’s color was black with stripes of red randomly scattered around its body. It had four legs like the small brown creature he first saw, it also had a head and tail but their shapes were very different from the small brown creature’s head and tail so he couldn’t help but have misgivings about whether they really were the same thing.

Shaking his head to concentrate again The Cub looked closer at the creature. Strangely the creature seemed to lack any eyes and its red stripes seemed to leak out a red liquid that The Cub couldn’t help but hate as it reminded him too much of the swaying liquid. The creature’s body was slowly lifting up and down for some odd reason and it was entirely stationary causing The Cub to be rather miffed. 

“Ugh…” 

Suddenly The Creature let out a strange sound and two eyes suddenly appeared on its head. The Cub couldn’t help but lean closer to its eyes to figure out how they suddenly appeared and how it made such a noise. The Creature’s eyes quickly seemed to change from large to small and its entire body suddenly moved causing it to create some distance between The Cub and itself. 

“What are you doing!”

Came out from within that creature’s mouth causing The Cub to once again lean closer and lower making The Cub essentially have his face to the ground looking up to see how that mouth made noise. The Creature’s eyes continued to be small but its body seemed to become soft and collapse.

The Creature was now breathing very heavily yet The Cub couldn’t seem to figure out why or how no matter how long he observed this new creature. The Creature’s eyes continued to be locked onto The Cub causing him to feel like he needed to do something, but once again, he had no clue what it was he was supposed to do. 

“Can you understand me….. Say something”

The Creature seemed to see the confusion in The Cub’s eyes as The Cub tilted his head, but as he just kept staring The Creature seemed to once again urge The Cub to do something. The Cub couldn’t help but start to become irritated because The Creature was obviously expecting something yet it wasn’t letting him know what it wanted.

“Sigh, well I guess you can’t talk…. But I swear I heard a voice coming from you when you were in the water…. Maybe I was just imagining things, either way why the hell did I even save you? I don’t even know you let alone have any relation to you worth risking my life.” 

The Creature seemed to deflate even more and make more noise, but this time The Cub felt it was about him but not to him. The Cub, finding that he couldn’t seem to learn anything about this creature no matter how much he stared at it he decided to just stop bothering and look back at the hole in the transparent layer. The Cub then remembered the original reason it even stood up and moved his body into the light from the hole only to find that the light didn’t cover his whole body at once.

He couldn’t help but feel disappointed and thought about what he could do to fix this. The Cub was stuck in thought standing there for a long time before he heard a sound from behind him again. The Creature was now standing again and was looking out of the transparent layer to the swaying liquid. The Cub noticed some kind of longing very similar to the longing he felt when he was urged to go to the swaying liquid.

“Swaying liquid bad, Painful, Ends cycle”

The Cub couldn’t help but attempt to warn The Creature of how bad the swaying liquid was but for some reason he couldn’t think of exactly how except just saying what he experienced.

“What? You can actually talk? Then why did you never respond to me when I was trying to talk to you!?”

The Creature’s eyes became small again and started to make noises again. The Cub knew he couldn’t get what these noises were about so he just turned away and started to think about what to do about this warm feeling.

“Really! Now you just go back to ignoring me! Ugggghhh, fine what do I care, but what is swaying liquid?? What cycle??”

The Creature continued to make loud noises interrupting The Cub’s thoughts about solutions causing him to be annoyed. The Cub decided that he wanted to get away from this noisy creature so he went through the hole to get some distance. After a few steps in annoyance he suddenly realised that he felt the warm feeling from the light out here as well causing him to forget his irritation and feel delight. The Cub also liked the cool feeling coming from the soft substance below him and decided to just lay here and enjoy the warmth. As The Cub lay there he closed his eyes as he noticed he felt tired once again, he was a little reluctant as it would be a new cycle after, but he just felt too comfortable and decided to just let the cycle pass.