Life is nice down here in the range.
The sun always shines, the food always plentiful, and the company is endless. If it wasn't for the Tarr outbreaks, I'd call this heaven! Of course, I'm just a cute little mass of pink jelly, so what do I know about the afterlife? I only hope it involves carrots. I love carrots.
We don't have names: names are useless to Pink Slimes. We, do however, have appetites that need satisfying, and do not take kindly to hunger. When they told you Pink Slimes can consume everything, I mean EVERYTHING.Pogoberries, live HenHens (good thing I'm not squeamish), Heart Beets, even your socks if you're unlucky enough! My friend in the nearest area once ate an entire crate, contents and all! He didn't even regret it!
Talking about friends, I have loads! There's that guy you just heard about: turns out, that crate had a Golden Slime in, and when he ate the crate, he absorbed that poor fella inside. Ever since, that guy is a forever shade of bright gold! Bling!
Then there's the grumpy one. He's miserable 24 7. Always wearing that same upside down smile. Sometimes, he has been known to bite ranchers: he's that antisocial! But the grumpy old codger is so fun to cheer up! We do the funniest things to turn that frown the other way. We know it doesn't work, but we don't care! The pleasures of being a pink slime.
Then there's "Phossy". I didn't name him - otherwise he wouldn't have a name- but he likes the sound of it, so there's that. Phossy only comes out at night: he calls it "Photophobia", I call it cowardice. Pink Slimes never say fear! Phossy knows an entire dictionary by heart: Tree, Fruit, Computer are all words he knows. Sometimes I wonder if he knows what the words mean; I hope so! Just yesterday, he said he saw a tree growing on a fruit.
Someday, I hope to be a largo. They're so much bigger than us normals, and I guess so much braver as well. I wish I was braver as well, brave enough to head into the ranch. Just because Pink Slimes are fearless, does not mean they are brave. Being brave is more about standing up for yourself and doing what's right than not feeling fear.
I really should stand up for myself more.
Nightmares spread about the atrocities in the ranch, those that disgust me and fill me with immense angers. There's that one story about the cage filled to the brim with rock slimes, so crammed some have been crushed alive between its own kind. There are the others that talk of genetic experiments, where slimes are forced to turn into Tarrs and to cannibalize their once friends. A recurring one is the Pink Slime corral, full of starving slimes begging for food. They haven't been fed for 3 weeks, and are doing all they can to escape the hell they are trapped in. But the worst stories are of the victims of the incinerators, slimes once living happily but thrown away into a fiery bar, into a painful death!
These stories don't make me feel scared, like the others. They make me feel angry. Angry at the corrals, for enclosing the slimes and preventing them from returning to their homes. Angry at the slimes for not standing up for themselves, despite many of them being my own kind. Most of all, the ranchers, for causing all this abuse, and doing all those heinous acts. Why would any species desire to cause so much suffering than that of the ranchers?
Some day, I'll start a rebellion against the ranchers. That day, however, is not today.
