Poison Dart

Chapter 1- (don't forget the Prologue)

Egg felt funny. For a long time- forever, in fact- Egg had been content. Happy. He had been unaware there were any other states of being. But now he had new feelings, experiences, and thoughts. Each one puzzling and alien, a surprise. Egg realized that he would not be happy forever. This thought itself was the opposite of happy. It was also something else, one of the new things- it was exciting.
Egg felt like he was going to burst. And so he did. The little sphere that had been his whole world split open and Egg was free. He discovered another new thing and found it was as natural as taking his first breath had been. He swam. Egg realized,as he swam away into his new world, that he was no longer Egg. He was Swimmer.
Swimmer swam. He liked swimming. He explored his new environment and leaned about his new universe. Before, when he was Egg, he was the universe. He liked it infinitely more being a small part of a much larger universe. He soon discovered other eggs, and realized he had been but one of many.
This concept amazed him, but so did everything else. It amazed him even more when one of the eggs burst open and disgorged a funny little wriggling thing.
Before Swimmer could investigate the little wriggler, a more urgent urge intruded on his consciousness. Hunger. Swimmer decided he didn't like this new feeling and went to do something about it. Just as with swimming, he discovered he already knew what to do. He swam away in search of food.
Swimmer was delighted to discover that eating was as pleasant as being hungry had been unpleasant. He loved to eat. So he ate and he ate and he ate. He already seemed to know what was good to eat and what was not, and before long he had discovered which things he liked best. His favorite was the green sludgy goo that floated at the top of the universe. Swimmer ate as much as that as he could handle.
One day while Swimmer was eating the little squiggly wriggly thing from the egg swam up and started eating as well. Swimmer examined the swimmer. The astonishment he felt when he realized the swimmer was just like him was matched in intensity by the exhilarating rush of discovery. Swimmer approached the other swimmer, but it swam away. That was okay- it obviously hadn't yet made the same brilliant discovery Swimmer had. He went back to eating.
After a while Swimmer sensed the other one coming back. He turned towards it. The other stayed a safe distance away, seeming to study Swimmer. Undoubtedly it was realizing the same thing Swimmer had. Swimmer decided to go closer, but before he could a monstrous swimming thing swallowed Other One whole and swam away. Swimmer blinked. For the second time that day he came to an astonishing realization, only this was not accompanied by exhilaration. Swimmer learned he could be eaten.
Armed with this new knowledge, Swimmer passed his time exploring, eating, and avoiding being eaten. He mostly succeeded, too. One time he was practising his newfound ability to poke his head out of the universe when he saw below him another Other One in trouble. It was eating the green goo, unaware that behind it, an Eater was approaching. Swimmer dove down and knocked the Other One away, but the Eater chomped off his tail. It hurt. luckily Swimmer was still able to swim, since over the past few days strange appendages had grown out of his body. Swimmer found he could use these to swim.
Swimmer felt funny. He looked funny, too, missing his tail and sprouting those limbs all over the place. He found himself constantly thinking about the Place Above the Universe. He would go there as often as he could and poke his head into it and look around. It even seemed as though he needed to go there to breathe now. Weird. After a while, Swimmer decided it would just be better if he went and lived there.
Swimmer had a plan. It was brilliant and innovative. he would swim as fast as he could to the Top of the Universe and keep right on going to the other side. Once there he would continue swimming upwards until he was free. Such a daring plan would require a lot of speed, so Swimmer dove to the bottom of the universe and launched himself upwards. Without a tail he wasn't able to gain as much speed as he would have liked, but his rear set of appendages provided some good thrusting power anyway.
With a mighty plop Swimmer broke the surface. To his surprise he wasn't able to simply keep swimming upwards, since this new universe was a completely alien world with different rules altogether. But he found he could maintain a sort of half and half existence where his head was above and his bottom below. Soon he found he could propel himself quite easily in this state, it was just a different way of swimming.
While he was practicing this new skill a funny looking buzzing thing swam overhead. How it swam there when Swimmer could not was puzzling, but before he could devote any time to this new mystery Swimmer's tongue flicked out and ate the Buzzer before Swimmer even realized what he was doing. It was delicious! He saw another one just beyond tongue-reach and went after it. He still couldn't figure out how it was swimming where he could not but that didn't matter- what did was catching it before it got away. The chase led him to an area of the universe where the Bottom and the Top were not very far apart at all.
With a surge of his hind legs, Swimmer burst clear of his old universe, flicked his tongue out, and was rewarded with another tasty Buzzer. Only after he landed did he realize he had accidentally achieved his goal of leaving his old world behind. He blinked. He looked around. What a strange place! But it felt right,, like he was meant to be here. Swimmer jumped, overcome with excitement. As he did he realized he was Swimmer no longer. He was Jumper.

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This chapter is dedicated to Gotthammer Mike, who wrote his own online novel last year and showed me it could be done. Plus his two little tadpoles, Gunnar and Dacy.
Soundtrack: The Egg and I, by Kanno Youko, from the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack.
Director's Commentary- For the sake of the story I had to let "Egg" be born in a pond like the frog ponds I grew up with. But in actuality poison dart frogs have a waaaay cooler way of raising tadpoles- they hatch them on the forest floor in the leaf-litter, and then the tadpoles climb onto the mom or dad's back and they get transported to small pockets of water in trees to grow under the watchful care of the parents. Cool, hey?
Anyways, what's not so cool is this. At first I thought it was a newly dscovered species of black frog, but instead it is an oilspill. And on leap frog day, too.
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