Here’s something I wrote for the writing group some time ago, taking a well known tale or story and looking at it with a different perspective:
The Other Others
The forest is no longer safe for me and my kind. My family and other families like us have lived among these trees for as long as they have grown here. For generations this place has been our home, has given us shelter, has been a larder for us, a place to play for the young ones, and a place to learn as they grow. There are others in the forest, some fear us, and some we leave to their own ways. Whatever the season we can find all we need here beneath the trees but only take only what we need.
Then the Other Others came, and our lives and those of the forest dwellers changed forever. We retreated, we left our familiar places, and some of us dead, murdered for no reason. Over the passing years, over the generations, there were fewer of us, and we lived quietly, always alert for danger, always alert for a sound, or sight, or smell of the Other Others.
I learnt my own lesson early about the threat they posed, an encounter which became a story my tribe remembered with some pride.
I was young, foolish, too confident in my hunting skills, my speed and my sharp senses. Maybe I wasn’t concentrating, maybe there was a smell of a deer ready to be taken, maybe I was just too bold.
I strayed too far, and when I scented the rank smell of an Other Other, being young and probably over confident, I decided to see if I could find it. I’d heard tales that their flesh was soft and sweet, their viscera delicious, and their marrow rich indeed. I licked my lips, drooling at the thought.
I followed their smell, drifting on a light breeze, keeping low, moving slow, and then I saw it – I’d only ever heard tell of their rocky dens, and I never thought they’d be so big. I was overcome with curiosity, stupid young whelp that I was.
I approached through the undergrowth, and then I saw it, one of the females, moving slowly, a scraggy old thing. I could take her easily, but I waited. She crept along and disappeared behind her rocky den. I crept along too, keeping low, I could take her easily, rip her throat, crack her bones.
froze – I heard the call of another Other, and there was a small Other, a plump sweet thing. I’d heard tell of them having two skins, one to cover their bones, and one they could remove without losing blood. This young Other had a second skin over her head – that wouldn’t save her from me.
It didn’t. I took her swiftly, silently, and holding her in my jaws I retreated back into the trees.
As I loped away, I heard the old Other crying out. My prey was silent, and I ran and ran until I found somewhere safe to take my fill.
Lois Elsden 