CHAPTER 1
Porrim shifted her carrying sack to a more comfortable position on her hip and glanced around the large cavern, looking for the special mineral she had been sent to collect for the grub mother. 'I need to return with this soon, where is it?' she thought to herself. She walked on in several miles, still searching, with no sound to accompany her except for the occasional squeal of a grub facing it's trials and the steady drip from the stalactites above. Porrim glanced up in irritation, as a drop of water hit her nose, wrinkling it in irritation. Then she stopped. 'The mineral! It was right above my head the whole time!' she thought gleefully. Porrim glanced around for a stalactite with a sufficient stalagmite beneath it, and scampered nimbly across the rocks towards it. She was beginning to climb when she heard a high, keening wail, one that shouldn't be heard this late in the season. She froze. If a lupus came by now to collect the young grub, she would be dead.
The wail continued for several minutes, despite the fact that a lusus sympathetic to this grub's blood color should have come by now. Porrim glanced around warily, looking to see if there was one waiting to kill her. When it was evident that there wasn't one, she climbed down from the stalagmite and jogged over to the edge of the pit where the wailing had come from. She peered down into it and struggled to make something out from the shadowy depths. The grub stopped wailing when it noticed her, and stood very still. Porrim glanced around one last time, and slid into the deep crater. the bottom was sticky with viscous fluid, but relatively flat. Porrim searched the crater for the grub, her Jade eyes adjusting to the dim light quickly.
It was finally a small squeak that alerted her to the presence of the grub. It was hiding behind the shattered remnants of it's own dirty egg. She tenderly reached out and picked it up, careful to not squish it. She brought it up to where she could see and gasped, almost dropping the grub. At first it had seemed to be a rust blood but, upon further investigation, was a bright red hue that Porrim had never even heard of. "No wonder no lusus came to you little one." Porrim murmured to the grub. "What'll I do with you?" the grub didn't answer, just looking at her with wide, ruby eyes. "Well I can't just leave you here…" she hesitated, her maternal instinct kicking in. "but I can't keep you either."
The grub's aural canals twitched, and it's head glanced up and looked towards the direction Porrim had come from, towards the Mother Grub where all of the Jadebloods resided. Porrim whipped her head around and listened intently for anything that the grub's heightened hearing could pick up that she could not. After a moment of the usual silence, a quiet rumbling of footsteps became evident. "Fuck. Looks like my decision has been made for me." Porrim looked back at the grub in her arms, and then back up at the rapidly approaching footsteps. She deliberated for a moment longer, but the threat of what would happen just for coming near the grub was too great. Tucking the grub carefully into her carrying sack resting comfortably at her hip, she turned away from the caverns she had lived her whole life in. She ran out of the crater and towards the exit. The footsteps behind her sped up, but Porrim was fast and had a head start. She was close to the exit to the outside. The one that only grubs who've passed the trial and their lusii are supposed to pass through. The one that she was about to escape through.
Porrim saw it and put on one final burst of speed, leaving her pursuers in the dust. Even if they had been able to catch up, once she was out of the caverns she was safe. Jadebloods weren't allowed to leave the caverns for any reason no matter what on pain of death. She pushed out of the opening into the dim moonlight, and a chill rand down her spine. "What on Alternia have I just done?" she asked the night sky. Looking at the moon for the first time in her life, she only sighed. "Mother Grub forgive me." Porrim pulled the grub out of her bag. it curled it's legs together, and looking at her with wide eyes it purred. "What am I going to do with you?" she asked the grub. It, being a grub, didn't answer. She sighed again, not having expected it to. "What am I to call you?" Porrim searched her mind for a suitable name. "How about…Kankri? Yes, I think Kankri sounds good. Don't worry baby kankri, mama Porrim's gonna take care of you." She held the grub tight and looked towards the horizon. After glancing back at the caverns one last time to last her a lifetime, she began walking towards the horizon. "I'll be your family now…"