I Am A Carnivorous Plant

Ah… I’m a dead-man. Oh no, wait, I mean, I’m a dead-plant.

 

What can I do? Should I just live in hiding now? I doubt I’ll camouflage very well anymore now that I have an obvious ‘head’. Maybe I can just… hide it? Or maybe my body is right, and I’m actually stronger than I think now?

 

…I suppose the only thing I can do is run a test.

 

I bid goodbye to the cozy cave that had taken care of me these past few days. Maybe once I’ve done a good enough job being a carnivorous plant, I can return there again someday for some more R&R. …Or maybe I should just steal some of the dirt? I might just have my own house one day, and it would be lovely if I could have that special dirt as my bed. Or maybe I’ll find a place with even better dirt someday! Well, it wouldn’t hurt to remember this cave just in case. Anyways, I have more important things to care about for now, so goodbye.

 

Alright, let’s take a little trip out into the forest, and I’ll keep the cave nearby just in case. Worst comes to worst I can hightail it back there and set up some kind of defense! I’m sure nothing would be happy to walk into a cave completely filled with my poison, so I think I should be safe? Perhaps there's a chance I won’t be leaving my nice little temporary home just yet after all. Ah, but I’m going to need food eventually, so I can’t play everything safe, and I’m sure nothing too terribly filling lives nearby the cave, since the bear lived there for a while.

 

Should I… Should I call the food to me?

 

I still have this lovely little camellia flower of mine. It’d be easy to call all the furry little creatures here and set up a stockpile of food. But then I’d have to fight them all off like last time, and my whole ‘fill the cave up with my poisonous fumes’ thing isn’t going to work at the same time as my flower… Guess it’d be just as difficult to get a whole bunch of tiny herbivores at once as it would be catching a few wolves, huh? Ah, I’m so confused.

 

Ok look!

I’ll step outside and take a little stroll.

If I don’t end up finding anything, then I’m just gonna have to make them come find me!

 

It’s morning time anyways, I have plenty of time until the sun tries to make its escape. The lake isn’t crazy far away, and I haven’t really been getting very much sunlight over the past few days… Also it wouldn’t hurt to restock on water, and I think I could handle myself a little bit better in the lake if I have to run away, since I’m basically the size of a twelve year old now, and-

 

Yeah I’m making too many justifications for it, let’s just go to the stupid lake like I clearly want to.

 

~~~

 

Maybe I was actually being a big baby about my whole ‘Ah! I’ll attract predators like crazy!’ deal. I made it all the way to the lake without even a single dangerous thing trying to jump out and say boo at me. I admit, this is still pretty close to the bear’s territory, and it also could have just been a fluke, but I still feel a little bit better about all this anyways, so who cares? And I also discovered that I was forgetting a very important point. If I’m rooted and my mouth opens up, that means my ‘head’ opens up, too. If it’s like that, then I just look like some kind of grotesque flower, although that’s more of a distressing blow to my beauty than it is to anything else... At the very least I don’t look terribly ‘human’ like that, so it shouldn’t draw any extra attention from predators, I don’t think. And yet another point in my favor: My poison seems to be coming out even more potently, and in a wider zone. I guess I really did evolve or something? If I were a pokemon, I suppose this would be my secondary form, right? I wonder what I’ll look like once I’m all grown up.

 

Anyways I’ve been terribly safe over here at this lake.

 

In fact I almost feel like I’m too safe, you know? I kind of really need something to show up so that I can try to eat it. This water’s nice and all, but I need food. Food! I’ve managed to snap up a few frogs and fish that stupidly wandered near my edge of the lake, but those are hardly enough to keep a growing plant like me going. It’s only been about a week, so I guess the deer are a bit skittish to return here again, too. I’ve already been here for hours~! Something, anything, please show up and get in my digestive sac! Waaaah~!

 

…If it’s going to be like this then I might just need to take a few more drastic measures.

 

I’ve already sipped up enough water and soaked up enough sunlight; Let’s retract my roots for now. No more poison, don’t wanna scare anything away at the moment. Let’s have my feet look like feet and my face look like a face. I can even make my tendrils try and look like arms and hands, although I’ve got to hide a little bit of the excess behind some of my petals. I’ll circle around the lake and see if I can’t spot anything filling along the way.

 

Ah~, look at me, wild creatures!

I am but a small and fragile little girl!

I am defenseless, I would make an excellent meal!

Ignore my leaves and petals, I’m quite meaty and juicy, I promise!

 

~~~

 

It wasn’t until it was almost afternoon that I found something. A small pack of wolves were all surrounding the corpse of something relatively big that they’d taken down, and were eating it. I won’t lie, it somehow looked like something out of a zombie movie to me with all of them eating there at once. It looks like there’s only about four of them? That doesn’t sound too… unreasonable, does it? I think I could take that many of them down, right? My tentacles are a little bit stronger since that time with the bear, so maybe?

 

Alright then!

Two of them I’ll just snap up and remove from the picture I suppose, but the other two…

Let’s reel a few of my tentacles back and snake the rest towards the others, aaand~

 

The moment I was ready, I hogtied the legs of the first two wolves, and whipped the rest of my tentacles against the heads of the other two. It was like I hit them with a bunch of clubs; Their heads and necks were, um… in an unrecoverable state, let’s say. I wouldn’t need to worry about them anymore, that’s for sure. And so that meant I just had to deal with the remaining two! They’re pretty harmless now that my tendrils have them all nice and wrapped up!

 

Let’s see… There’s kind of something I want to try, now that I’ve gotten so strong. The tips of my tentacles are actually quite solid, you know, and they’re a little pointed as well. What would happen if I, say… pretended that they were spears? So far I’ve mostly been using them for their blunt force, so let’s see how their stabbing does! Now’s the best time of any to try and test it out, right?

 

I’ll just point the tips at them as directly as I can, and…

Pull, pull, pull~

Aaaaand-

Loose!

 

I threw my tentacles with maximum force like they were arrows. Or maybe it’s harpoons in this case? Javelins? I don’t know, if they get any wider than they already are then I’m going to have to start thinking of them like jousting spears, haha…

 

Anyways they totally did it.

 

The tendrils that went for the body easily pierced it, but anything that impacted bone only managed to crack or dislocate it. I guess that would be deadly if it broke something’s skull in the right place? Or at the very least I could slow my opponents down by crippling them. But wouldn’t my tentacles bashing their heads in be much more effective? I suppose it might depend on the situation. Food for thought, huh?

 

Ah, this is getting a bit too morbid, excuse me.

 

Let me just get to eating these poor creatures already.

Oooh and look, I even get to finish off their leftovers~!

Lucky me!

 

~~~

 

It might just be me, but I think big carnivores might be more nutritious than herbivores? Or maybe that’s just my plant body encouraging me on a job well done. The bear was particularly packed with goodness, but that might just have been that amazing mineral cave swaying my thoughts. Welp, either way I’m satisfied! That was a whole lot easier than I thought it would be, and I’m stuuuffed. I had to drag two of the wolfy leftovers back with me to the cave because I was too full to even digest another bite. …So now what do I do? It’s already well into the night, and I’m way too full and already have breakfast prepared for the morning, so I don’t think I need to hunt anymore tonight. Bathing in the moonlight is nice I guess, but it doesn’t really get very good results. Besides, I don’t know if I’m ready to grow more just yet; I still need to adjust to hunting bigger prey.

 

I guess… Should I just go explore?

 

I could wander around and see more of this forest. I’m much faster than I was when I just started out, so I think I could cover a bigger area at the very least. And I might stumble upon something even bigger for breakfast along the way, which would be nice. I do prefer to have a stockpile of snacks waiting for me it seems. Depending on whatever I catch’s size, it wouldn’t be so hard to just use a tentacle or two to bring it along with me on my journey, along with those two wolves I have waiting next to me.

 

Yeah, I think this might just be a good idea!

Let’s set out, once again!

Wanderlust, my name is plant!

 

Oh, huh, guess I actually don’t have a name, do I? I’m sure whatever I am has a name, but that’d be like seeing a dog and only calling it ‘Dog’. A name would certainly be nice! However, I’m not very good at naming things, and also somehow it feels wrong for something to name itself, doesn’t it? Besides, who would even call my name in the first place? Hmmm… Maybe if I wander around enough I might find some humans. Humans love naming things! Ah, how exciting! I wonder how the humans in wherever the hell I am look? Is it very similar to Earth? I remember thinking that my mother’s corpse that I grew on was quite pretty, and I immediately recognized her to look like a human, so humans shouldn’t be too crazy far off from what I expect, right? I was just a little bud then, so my vision could have been a bit off… The forest creatures looked a tad wonky and different sometimes, so maybe the people will too, once I get a good look at them…

 

…Actually maybe I wouldn’t want that, it might be a little scary to see.

If my plant body could shiver then it totally would have from the creepy people I just imagined.

Let’s, um… Let’s hope that my imagination is super crazy wrong.

Maybe I should take my time before meeting these humans, just in case.