Poison Dart
Prologue

Two blue frogs stood guard over a small pond in the rainforest. The gloomy light that penetrated to the forest floor was giving way to night. The raucous daytime cries of bird and beast would soon quiet down, and a more sinister symphony would take over. But this was just background noise hardly worth paying attention to for a pair of poison dart frogs watching over their first clutch of eggs. Most animals knew better than to mess with the black-speckled amphibians. Their eggs, however, were vulnerable.
The male frog, Roar, pounced on a beetle and held up the wriggling morsel to show his mate. "Hungry, Ree?"
Ree eyed the offering. "It's a green harlequin, your favorite. You have it."
"I don't mind giving it to you."
Ree scrunched her eyes thoughtfully. She knew how to settle situations like these. "How about this- throw it up in the air and whoever catches it gets a snack, and loser gets first watch tonight."
Roar laughed. Typical of Ree to turn everything into a contest. Roar was just as happy to share, but it was always fun to play her games. And it was even funner when he won and Ree pretended she had lost on purpose. He didn't often win, though. "Okay, deal. Ready?" Without waiting for an answer, he tossed the beetle into the air.
The dazed insect sensed freedom and had just enough time to unfurl its wings from its shiny metallic carapace when a blue tongue put an end to any thoughts of escape. Ree swallowed and launched into a celebratory flip. "Yum! Tastes like I win! With a slight aftertaste of you lose!" She stretched her arms and yawned. "Well, I'm tired, I guess I'll have a nap."
Roar laughed again. There was never any malice in Ree's boasting, and it was just another of the things Roar loved her for. He obligingly pretended to be miffed at losing. "Alright, alright, enjoy your snack and your nap. I'll wake you up in a few hours." He kissed her and she fell asleep. He was always amazed at how easily she could just nod off. Roar was more of a night frog, himself. He enjoyed listening to the sounds of nocturnal predators and prey. Not to mention the frog chorus.
He tore a piece of grass and stuck it in his mouth to chew, looking like a cowboy with a stalk of wheat in his mouth, though such imagery meant nothing to him. He looked up at the moon. Usually the forest canopy blocked out views of the heavens but there was a gap in the foliage over the pool. He sighed contentedly. A few more days and the eggs would hatch, and the tadpoles would begin the struggle to survive long enough to turn into froglets. And then Roar would be a dad! He couldn't wait.
Perhaps it was just as well that Roar didn't see them coming.
There were two of them. If Roar had seen them, he would have thought that one had far too many parts, and the other one, somehow, not enough. The first was a confusion of spikes and fangs and legs and seemed to be armored with, bizarrely, a snail shell. The other looked like a decaying lizard missing its head.
The first snuck behind Roar and impaled him with a spike. He died without feeling a thing. The spike was from the head of a rhino katydid, and the creature didn't even bother to retrieve it, allowing the entire head to detach from its mishmash body with an audible squishing sound.
The other thing clumsily sidled up to Ree's sleeping form. Standing directly above her, it lowered itself on its legs and enveloped Ree within its ribcage, which was open to the air along the bottom, and only partially enclosed by dried-out skin above. Ree awoke with a start to find herself caught in a prison cell made of ribs. She tried to squeeze through the opening but the ribs snapped shut with a sickening breaking sound. She called for Roar, but there was no answer. Again and again she called as she was carried away into the night.

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I'll try to post a chapter once a week or so, and each will have a dedication and a suggested soundtrack, as well as some director's commentary, like so:
Dedication: The entire thing and today's prologue are dedicated to my wife Michelle who Ree resembles in passing- not that Michelle has poisonous blue skin, you understand.
Soundtrack: What else, Kermit the Frog's trademark song, It Ain't Easy Being Green. Or, in the case of Roar and Ree, blue.
Director's Commentary: The seed of this story began more than two years ago with this story, which thought would be the prologue but as I wrote the first couple of chapters I realized I needed to completely rewrite it. I changed the unwieldy names which were meant to sound like something a frog would say, but kept a kernel of the old ones. Simple is better. Also, I decided it would be better if there were no supernatural monsters, just native flora and fauna . . .
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