Chapter 466 So Bohemian like me (1/2)

I have to wonder what the minders are doing whilst Sarah and I engage in a mental conversation. I mean, are they listening in? I suppose it's possible. I can't sense them at all, but I suppose that isn't any sort of guarantee, considering their higher Skill levels. Perhaps this is all just part of their research, learning about people like me and our monstrous transformations. I can't afford to care too much about it, since this is such a rare opportunity.

Perhaps I've been away from the colony for too long. It's nice to have a conversation with someone who is able to reciprocate my human culture. I've still spent longer as a human than as an ant after all, and the humans I've met here on Pangera have been … a bit odd, let's put it that way. Sarah on the other hand, seems quite normal, all things considered. Despite freely acknowledging being a bit unbalanced, she comes across as well spoken and measured.

[I wasn't always this steady,] she confides, [in the first few years it was rough, as I'm sure you know. After my … death … on Earth, and being reborn here… It's hard at the start. You know what I mean.]

[You're referring to the terror and existential dread of having to fight for survival in a strange world of death?]

[Exactly that.]

[Yes, I recall. I mean, I was a tiny little ant monster. Just about every monster I saw was able to rip me apart. You started out as a bear! It can't have been that bad.]

It's odd to think of a bear giving you the stink eye, especially a giant, elephant sized bear with a distended maw that housed teeth as long as a human forearm, but here we are.

[Look, Anthony, I didn't start this size. I didn't even start as a fully grown bear. I was a cub! A little harmless bear cub!]

I'm immediately suspicious.

[Just a cub eh? A harmless little fuzzy ball of fluff, with the claws, and the fangs. How large were you exactly? Somehow I don't think you were just an average, Earth sized cub…]

[I … might have been a touch larger than normal.]

[Just a touch, huh?]

[It's not like you were a normal sized ant!]

[How the heck would I have survived if I was a regular sized ant?! Not to mention, I was born outside of my colony! Without it's colony, a regular ant will die in a day!]

[Is that so? I wonder why?]

I will never turn down the chance to educate someone about the glorious world of ants!

[You need to think of individual ants as cells that make up a larger organism when they work together. One ant is not capable of surviving, it needs its brethren to work together to provide context, decision making and safety.]

[So… ants are weak?]

[No. Ants are sophisticated social creatures who are mutually dependent on each other!]

[But an ant on its own can't survive…]

[Not the point!]

[You're a bit weird Anthony,] Sarah laughed at me.

It'd been a long time since I'd heard such a relaxed, earnest laugh. Something about it just helped the tension to unwind a few notches in my non-existent shoulders. It helps a lot that Sarah is such a friendly, sociable person. It's hard to believe that she was deemed nuts enough to have her soul ripped into this planet.

[I don't know what it is, both you and James have such weird pets. No wonder you both ended up in such odd species when you were born here.]

[Odd? He's not another insect is he?]