This story is the result of a plot bunny that has been bugging me off and on for two years. Ever since I saw the Trolls movie, I've been wondering what effect the Bergen's predation could have on how the Troll species. How would they adapt over time? My thought was they would get very good at that hiding trick they do with their hair, and that trolls with more hair would have a bigger advantage when it comes to not getting eaten. I also wondered what sort of parent could give birth to something like Cooper. This story was a result of those ponderings. The story starts out in a different location, but with the ultimate goal of joining up with canon at some point.
For as long as she could remember (though that wasn't saying much), her whole world had been the inside of a tank. Beyond it she could make out a long wooden shelf with other identical tanks. If she looked up, there was another shelf just like the one her home was sitting on hanging far above her head. She could see other trolls in the tanks close to her, but never in enough detail to make out their faces through two layers of grimy glass. She could hear them though. Sometimes they talked to each other, voices raised to be heard in the large, echoing cavern they all lived in. Offering reassurances, harmonizing, or simply passing on messages from other families living further down the line.
When all the voices went quiet suddenly, then it was time to for her to be silent as well. That meant the enormous grey things were here. Mica never got a good look at them. Her home was low to the ground, so all she ever got to see was knees and feet. How did they balance like that on only two legs? Didn't they get cold without any fur to keep them warm? When she tried to ask questions about the monsters, she never got any answers. All she was told was that when they came, it was time to hide and be very, very quiet. Some trolls weren't very good at being quiet when the big things came. They would yell and weep and moan while the big things stood in front of the cages doing… something. No one would tell her what.
That was okay. Things that happened outside the tank were exciting, but everyone she loved was inside the tank with her. She loved her mother, with her pretty yellow-orange fur and her orange mane, who would hold her at night until she fell asleep. She loved her father and his gleaming copper coat, and how he would tickle her with the tip of his long, silvery tail. And she loved her grandfather and his silver-white fur. Even if he did say strange things sometimes, he would always sit beside her when she was sad and hum softly until she felt better.
Her family all had such pretty fur. It was a shame her own coat was black. At least her mane and tail were pretty. They were the same color as her father's fur. She was proud of her copper hair, and did her best to keep it clean. As for her black coat, she left that alone. At least when the wood chips from the bottom of the tank got stuck in her fur, it added a little more color. Mother and father didn't like her fur either.
"Maybe the next one will be better", her father had said once.
"This is from your side of the family, you know," her mother had replied.
Her grandfather was different. He often told her he loved her fur. "It's just like your grandmother's," he would say. Mica wasn't so sure about that. If he liked it so much, why did he always cry when he said that?
That wasn't the only weird thing her grandfather would do. For the past several months he had been waking her up before she was ready to get up out of the nice, soft nest, stuff breakfast in her face, and drag her off to the other side of the tank while her parents grumbled sleepily. There, on the other side of the rock that sat in the middle of their home, he would teach her strange things, until mother called them both over for lunchtime.
He would have her stretch out her fur in odd ways. Sometimes she had to match the shapes he was making with his own fur, using every hair on her body. Other times he had her move just the fur on one leg, or only the tip of her tail, and leave everything else perfectly still. Then he would have her change the color of her fur to match whatever color he changed his own fur to. It was hard when she had to do more than one color at once. Lately, he had been teaching her how to combine the two. He called it "mimicking". It was worth having to learn all of the weird things. It was a lot of fun to look like someone different, and she practiced a lot on her own at the back of the tank where she could see her reflection in the glass.
Well, mimicking was fun until today. She looked at the rock in front of her. Then she turned to look at her grandfather behind her. "What do I do?" she asked.
Grandfather sighed. Unlike mother, he never yelled when he got mad. He would just sigh and look very disappointed. Sometimes that look hurt as much as the yelling. "I want you to look at the rock. I want you to study every detail of the rock, every crevice, every bump, and every speck of color until you can be the rock and imitate it perfectly," he replied.
Mica nodded and stared at the rock. She stared at it so hard that the spot in between her eyes started hurting from all the squinting and frowning. Then she looked at her grandfather again. "Grandpa?" she asked, "Why are we doing this?"
He sighed and lay down in the wood chips, tucking his back legs under him and stretching out his front legs. Tilting his long neck, he invited her to rest between his front paws. Mica was more than happy to oblige. After she settled in and looked up at him, Grandfather cleared his throat and began to talk.
"I guess you're old enough to know now, even if your parents don't think so." He snorted. "In my book, three is more than old enough to learn how to keep yourself safe. The Bergens don't care how young you are. They will eat you anyway."
"E-eat?" Mica gasped. "Who? Why?"
"The big grey things you see outside. Those are the Bergens." He groaned and shifted slightly before continuing. "For as long as we have kept records, which is a very, very long time, they have been hunting us. We learned how to hide. Because if they ever found you, they would snatch you up and you would never be seen again."
Mica's brow wrinkled. She didn't like to think about never seeing her family again. So she focused on something else instead. "Grandpa, how did we hide?" she asked. "The tanks aren't very big."
Grandfather laughed. It sounded odd to her, like he wasn't really happy. "Little Mess," he said picking a bit of food out of her fur and making her giggle, "We didn't always live in tanks."
She stopped laughing and her eyes went wide. "Really?" she asked in a tiny voice.
He nodded, then turned to look outside of their tank, his eyes sad. "When your father was a baby, even younger than you are, we lived out on the Savannah." He turned him mane a tan color and extended it so high it brushed the top of the tank. "We lived in grasses that looked like this, hidden in houses amongst the roots." Grandfather let his hair go back to normal as she stared at him in wonder, hanging on his every word.
"We were masters at stealth. Blending in with the grass and the rocks, or pretending to be different animals entirely. Whatever worked to keep you from being eaten." He grinned and puffed out his chest. "I myself was very good at it. They called me 'the Sabercat' since I was as good at hiding as that great beast." He moved his fur up to make the snarling face of a huge tawny beast, with long white fangs, whiskers, and glaring green eyes.
Mica gasped and hid her face in her paws. Her grandfather chuckled as he returned his fur to normal. Mica couldn't help but laugh as well, though they both sobered quickly. "Then what?" she asked.
Grandfather's face fell. He looked up, simply staring into space. "We got so good at hiding, the Bergen got tired of looking for us. They burned the whole place down to get us to come out."
Mica wasn't really sure what that meant, but it sounded horrible. She wanted to ask, but her grandfather looked so sad that she was afraid she would say the wrong thing and he would scold her like father did when she asked too many questions. So she simply waited. She waited for what felt like an awfully long time before he spoke again.
"I was on patrol, scanning the borders when I smelled the smoke," he said.
Mica wrinkled her nose. She knew what smoke was. Sometimes the cave was filled with it. She didn't like that. It made her head fuzzy, and the big things (Bergens, she corrected herself) always came by after the smoke.
"I ran home as fast as I could, yelling the whole time. 'Fire! Run, get out!' I yelled as I went and everyone ran with me, away from the flames. I found your grandmother in our house, with your father on her back trying to pack up the family journals. I grabbed them and we ran. We run and the fire is on our heels and smoke is in our lungs. The soot burns my eyes and I drag her along behind me, tying to dodge all the other souls who are also trying to get away. I am so focused on running that I don't notice Obsidian tripping until she collapses beside me. I reach out to her to help her up, but her leg is facing the wrong way and she shoves Copper onto my back and tells me to run. 'My leg is shot and you know it,' she says, 'Now go. Protect our family.' So I run," he whispers. "T-that was the last thing she said to me."
Grandfather was crying now, great sobs that shook his whole body. Mica didn't know how to help. She snuggled closer to him, her ears pressed flat against her skull. She started humming. The same song he would use whenever she felt bad. Grandfather's breathing slowed a little, though tears were still flowing down his cheeks. "That was her song, you know. She used to sing it for your father. I will never forget her, or her last wish." He nuzzled her gently. "I will honor her last wish and take care of our family until the very end. And maybe someday, you will get to see the Savannah yourself."
Mica opened her mouth to respond.
"Hey! Enough with the weird lessons, Old Man. It's time for lunch!" Mica's mother yelled, coming around the boulder.
Grandfather sighed and stood up. "Charming as ever, Sunshine," he replied, ambling up to her.
Mother just snorted and turned away. Mica got up and trotted along after them, lost in thought. She lay next to her father and gnawed on a pellet, ignoring her mother's offer of one she had already chewed soft. Grandfather said she was grown up now, so she didn't need help eating. That night as she lay in the nest, her jaw hurting from eating hard pellets two meals in a row, she couldn't falling asleep. She pawed at the tangle of shed fur that made up their nest, pulling at a strand of her grandfather's hair. She kept fidgeting and thinking until her mother gave a deep sigh and pulled her into an embrace.
"Go to sleep already," Mother said.
Despite her mother's warm embrace and steady breathing rocking her soothingly, it took a long time for Mica to fall asleep. Her dreams were filled with long grass waving high above her head and the smell of smoke in her nose.
Early versions of Cooper's character design came with a tail, and I couldn't resist adding it in. I am hoping for a lot of feedback with this story. Please let me know what I can do to improve it.