Claws and paws and hooves all beat the same song of fright and peril as they grappled for purchase on the desiccated ground. Lungs heaving the arid, stale air of the valley in unison before emptying in shuddered half-spent bursts. They rushed up the perilous slope, knees knocking against the golden faced glitter of fronds and spores lining the long forgotten road. Aching shaking limbs wept for reprieve, but the distant urgings of their acquired guide beckoning haste ushered them on just a little bit further.

It was an age ago, settled upon idyllic fields of red and plenty where the tribe grew fat hunting herds. Lean senses softened in the swell of safety in numbers. A dozen strong spears easily forgets the desperation of one. But no quantity can prevail in the face of changing times. Plenty was a poison when the herds thinned. It was a betrayer when the horizon grew gray with the hushed arrival of the Mold. Her children swept across the sky in a silver blizzard whose settled flakes propagated without cessation. Enslaving spores chained chitinous beasts beneath her sway. Mycelious fingers stretched beneath the soil and tainted the very earth with its discoloration and toxin. She was a foe that could not be fought any more than the wind or the earth could be battled.

More sinister than the Mold was the derision of the tribe itself. Splintered solidarity claimed camps of the divided few. Poisoned logic, driven by hot egos and serrated pride permitted inaction. It tore at the seams of family and friend, injecting bitterness where once sweet camaraderie dwelt. Fangs and claws and spear points brandished with murderous intent; it was the toxic climate of contempt that drove this band of hunters from their fellows.

Trekking across gray wastes, they battled beasts and earned their tallow – but living off stolen lymph while the eternal fluorescent suns beat upon their brows was no way to live. Thinning water skins drove them towards the hills and mountains. There at least, could be found passages in shade. Sunken expanses where once golden pits glitter prominently had long since rotted away. Landscapes of crimson flesh sunk in upon themselves – dehydrated by skyward stalks and spore seeding caps. So prominent were they, that their thousand-thousand fingers stretched across the earth – their roots perhaps the sole thing still holding the rotten mountain range together.

The valley air was still – broken only by a constant snowfall of particulate that wept from faceless peaks and mushroom crowns. Waist deep in some places – the pack kept to the shallows and the shade. But here lurked a populous brand of scavenger. Great jawed and squat eyed – they were myriad and feasted on one another as keenly as they did the hoarfrost laden landscape. Their squat shaped shells deflected spears and arrows, and their bulbous frames moved with unerring swiftness on six scuttling legs. None-too easily dispatched and bitter tasting even over a fire; they were a unnecessary trial, and such things were best left avoided.

But possession of a moral compass leads keenly into trouble without err. Such was the case when the pack encountered a loner being chased by a frightfully sized swarm of scavenging mites. The shade afforded no safety to the dashing figure – whose tail had an natural glow-gleam to it. The same sort that wreathed the mushroom sky and the sickly walls. Whether by accident or design; its glow pierced all safe shadows and attracted the scuttling approach of many limbed hunters. Where wisdom might have dictated silence and thanks for the opportunity to avoid a mite too many to engage head on; valor demanded otherwise. Gallant action can drive a spear through chitin and the precision of practiced wrath can separate a leg from its joints. Their roars echoed in the valley as they routed the assault with their own. Swinging, slaying, foes flush and fraying - against all odds the swarm dissolved into stragglers.

Their rescuee identified himself as a native – and his gratitude was paid in directions through the pass. The glitter gleam of his tail was a sore point; its luminous abnormality kept them awake when they sheltered and its hypnotic sway drew attention from the scavengers who wouldn’t have accosted them otherwise. It was a poor feature for a wanderer to sport and open questions of the merit of his guidance versus the risk he proposed bred murmurs in the camp. But he earned his keep in secret passages and avoidance of hidden dangers otherwise masked beneath blankets of flake-snow.

But no more prominently was the worth of his console exemplified than their current trial. Trapped in the snow drift – heaving limbs staining against the knee seizing mire, he had jumped to attention and lunged for the shadows. Crying to the wind behind him like a madman, he bounded and called warning. It was an unnatural hazard this – beyond comprehension or reckoning. When the sky itself turned hateful. Where before they might have chuckled at his superstitious ways, the distance shifting of the world above moved in tandem with his pleading to seek shelter. A great green-blue gleam whose starry wonder might have rooted them to the spot in wonder, had the tugging cries of their guide not ushered them on. And so they pulled their gaze from the artificial aurora, ran with all the haste they could muster.

Teal light flittering through the snow fall narrowed into a spectral blue even as they fled. Backward peeks observed its transformation into a white so bright it hurt to chance a glance upon. Beams of it pierced through the clouds and dragged its heated touch over mountainous and ridges. Hissing whispers of moisture fled from its touch. Plumes of vapor detonated from unseen shallows – launching little puffs here and there while the intensity continued to mount. That unfortunate surface snared beneath its fierce gaze blanched – color bleached away while fronds sizzled and withered before their very eyes. The mites, lazily grooming themselves in its path did not have time to hurry from its approach – they were eclipsed and overtaken; bodies disintegrating as the heavens punctured their frames with lances of light. In quiet they distilled an appreciation, that were it not for their newest pack mate; the same fate that would have awaited them as well.

---

Lifting her finger from the trigger of the hand-held UV lamp, the dichromatic gaze of a collie scanned over the subject. Its unseeming, moldy surface was a rainbow of colors – but her eyes were keen to observe just one band. The strain was a curious sort. A unique insecticide – as fungi were wont to cultivate. In this case it the micro-cellular struggle for fructose – a war fought in ever strawberry patch on the westward coast had led to the aggressive evolution of these chemical warfare committing colonies. Would be farmers be so keen to spray broad spectrum anti-fungal agents if they knew the trouble the occasional gray patch was saving them in locusts and lady bugs?

Of course, that depended wholly, upon her ability to prove the beneficial qualities of such unsightly fungal heroes. A white paper if she was lucky. A footnote in the table of another if not. Her eyes narrowed as they prepared another irradiation dose; when the slightest hint of orange-yellow glow in the wake of her UV-light interrogation sparked below. Perchance, the compound of interest had a fluorescence at roughly 580 nm, and the slow gentle bloom of it beneath her gaze murmured inklings as to its concentration. So much easier to assay than agarose seas and piled high test tubes – whose aggressive interrogations often destroyed the compound of interest. No, this sample was coming along nicely.

Soon it would be time for harvest and extraction.

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Artwork by the lovely and talented  KernelDecoy - whose original submission you should view, favorite and comment on here. where alternative versions are also available.

Nanofauna adventurers are, left to right
 Mentova  holdenwrite  Kaitain  Fumei with appearance by the glow bug himself,  KernelDecoy