As she walked around, she couldn’t help but appreciate how different things were when the light was here. Not only did things look different, but everything sounded and smelled different too. It was even getting warmer! She figured it had to do with the giant ball of light. She could feel the heat coming off that thing whenever she poked a limb out of the shadows.

It just kept getting brighter. It seemed to be moving upwards and as it had the light was getting even more intense. She thought she was getting more resistant to it though. She still couldn’t leave the shadows, but despite the increase in brightness, her eye pain wasn’t increasing. She counted this as a win.

Another thing she’d noticed was that all sorts of animals were waking up. She saw quite a few kinds that she’d eaten in their burrows awake and about, and plenty that she’d never seen before.

Now, what are you up to?

She’d taken to darting from shadow to shadow, following around one creature with a large, bushy tail that she was particularly enamored with. It looked so fluffy and soft she really wanted to touch it. The squirrel darted about, nibbling on things or storing them in pouches on the sides of its mouth.

Cheeks. They’re so stretchy!

They also looked really useful for carrying stuff. She rubbed a paw along her mouth to the side of her face and sighed. She didn’t really have cheeks. Her mouth was so wide it very much intruded on the cheek area. Better for biting things she supposed, but having cheeks would have been cool. Not that she could have carried anything around in said cheeks even if she had them.

Stupid acid spit.

She refocused on the squirrel. She was content just watching it go about its business for now. Which was surprisingly something she’d needed to work at. She'd found herself getting ready to pounce forward to try to catch and eat it on a couple of occasions.

She wasn’t even hungry! And watching it was fun, she didn't want to ruin that. She filed the impulse away as another thing she had to keep aware of.

So annoying.

She did, however, want to try catching it to feel that fluffy tail at some point.

She was pretty sure it’d seen her during an overridden pouncing attempt, but it seemed content to leave her be and continue with its business as long as she didn’t get too close.

It was fascinating how different everything was in the day, without the swarm. Her experience with other creatures up to that point was coming upon them sleeping or seeing them running from or fighting the swarm.

She was enjoying this new perspective.

It has its own little life.

Interestingly, it seemed to be eating plant bits as its primary food source. She’d never actually seen an animal eat a plant for real before, what with all the aforementioned running and fighting. She had licked plants before but that didn’t really count. None of them had tasted particularly good, and one particularly nasty specimen she was sure was the cause of many an hour of digestive distress.

She’d had to rinse herself in the stream many times to get rid of the smell. The less she thought about that the better. She was a lot more careful if she wanted to bring an interesting mushroom back now.

It seemed to be a common trend though. Lots of things were moving about in the day and most of them seemed to be nibbling on one plant or another. Bugs also seemed to be a popular meal, which she was more in favor of than plants. She would eat those when she found them herself, unless they were particularly pretty. Some of their shells gleamed beautifully.

Her vigil was abruptly interrupted when a form plunged down from sky and pinned her squirrel to the ground with sharp talons and a tearing beak. She’d seen things like it resting in the trees before during previous outings with her swarm. It seemed a lot more dangerous now that she’d seen it move so fast, and from the sky no less.

She thought about assisting her little observee but it was quite clearly very dead given the blood and general state of manglement its body was in. Another couple of seconds and the large bird took off, taking the squirrel with it. Seemed at least one thing out here preferred meat too.

I guess I’m adding the sky to the list of things to watch out for.

Easier said than done, unfortunately. Looking up caused pain and she’d been trying not to do it. She forced herself to anyways. Better some eye pain than ending up like that squirrel.

Guess I won’t be feeling that fluffiness after all. I’ll have to find another one at some point.

At this point the bright spot, the sun, was about halfway through the sky, hanging almost directly overhead. She was starting to get a headache from all the light, and was pretty exhausted if she was being honest. She would have been long asleep by now normally. She’d had a lot of fun but decided it was time to head back and rest.

Right up until she started hearing deep, booming thumping sounds in the distance.

At first, she thought she was imagining it, but as she made her way back to the cave the sounds got louder. They weren’t that frequent, a few would come one after the other before stopping for a while. She could tell the sound was coming from quite a distance. By the time she was at the cave, she was way too curious to just give up and go to sleep. Not to mention she was a little nervous about what was causing all the booming, and figured it’d be good to check it out.

So after dropping off her new cobalt scale patch in her stuff pile, she darted off towards the source of the noise.