She wasn’t sure why she cared so much. Honestly, her siblings had been nothing but annoying. They were hissy and short-tempered whenever she’d tried to do anything with them, and never showed the slightest interest in any of the things she found amazing.

It was almost like she was a completely different creature. That didn’t seem likely though. They all emerged at the same time from identical-looking eggs, and they looked basically identical to herself when compared to the other animals she’d seen.

Not to mention her instincts that she constantly had to contend with. She could see her siblings in herself through those urges. She’d felt lured to do all the things she saw them doing, or for that matter not doing. It felt good to just laze around after a run, resting rather than messing about with the latest thing she'd found. It felt so easy to swarm over the ground and eat whatever you came across. She’d felt the urge to drive a sibling away when one would pass too close to her resting spot.

She could see it in herself to become one of them. She only had to stop thinking. If she gave up her mind, and wonder, and all the things she actively enjoyed doing, she'd fit in perfectly. She'd be exactly the same as them. Well, except for the acid spit.

Is the acid spit related to thinking? I was thinking before the acid spit came though. Maybe thinking causes acid spit?

She wasn’t sure, and none of that answered why she cared. They were similar, but not in the ways she really wanted them to be. Maybe she valued their usefulness? The swarm certainly made hunting food easier, and there was security sleeping in the cave with them, knowing that anything that intruded would probably be torn apart.

Was it really because they made her life somewhat easier? That didn’t ring true either. It didn’t account for the dread in her chest as she ran, or the barely controlled panic she was fighting down while trying to think up a plan.

No, she just... she just had hope. Hope that one day a brother or sister would wake up and come look at her shells. Would smell her minty leaves, would play around balancing rocks with her and stare in awe at her glowing crystal.

She wanted kinship, to have another that was truly like her, that she could share the wonders of the world with. Perhaps they just needed some more time. Another night might see a sibling come to their senses, to have the light of curiosity shining in their eyes as they looked out on the world.

She’d clung to that in her heart, too scared to even think about it for fear of putting out that small light of hope, because the alternative was that she was unique, with no others like her. And she would be alone forever in all the ways that really mattered.

And so she ran and struggled to come up with a solution.

How can I stop them from attacking it?

The issue was that the swarm went where it would, with no sense or reason, flowing like water over the landscape. She considered it.

Is that really true?

Obviously the swarm wasn’t a thinking thing. There were no thoughts in it, but it wasn’t necessarily without purpose. They were out to hunt, to find things and eat them for sustenance. Maybe they wandered about randomly but that didn’t feel right.

I’m part of the swarm when I’m out there. I know where I’m supposed to be. I’m a part of a group that is likely feeling the same things, but why do I know where to go? What’s driving me?

She tried to remember. What made one spot to put her feet righter than another? She stopped running and looked around, finding a shadowy nook by some tree roots and squeezed into it before shutting her eyes to focus on the memory. Getting back to the cave wouldn’t be helpful if she didn’t know what to do once she was there.

She thought back to her last hunt, running with her siblings. One spot was more right than another because... because it was the right distance. She wasn’t too close or too far from those around her. She was also facing the right direction, landing sideways would be wrong. But that wasn’t all. The group was turning, despite the want to continue forwards. It was turning because… she smelled something. And so must the others. She smelled meat.

Her eyes shot open and she scrambled to her feet, running again.

How have I never noticed that?

She’d been so focused on everything other than the actual act of swarming because she didn’t want to get lost in it like she had the first time. She’d never really explored the instinct itself.

Now she knew.

I can work with this.

She needed to find something that smelled tasty. Unfortunately, the types of animals that smelled the tastiest tended to also have the most meat on them. Which in turn meant they were large, and generally dangerous to fight. Armed with her new knowledge about how the swarm decided to move, she was starting to understand why they ran into so many deadly animals.

Why do the big ones have to smell so good?

If the small animals smelled good instead, she wouldn’t have lost so many siblings.

No use thinking about it now she supposed.

It did make her immediate task much harder. She might get away with hunting something easy, but the swarm would just ignore it if they smelled something better. She needed a scent that kept their attention.

She wracked her brain, trying to come up with some way to make her plan workable. She didn’t like her chances of killing anything big enough to pique the swarm’s interest. She suddenly paused, her pupils dilating as a novel idea occurred to her.