The oliveblood stared in horror at the blood at the foot of the cave. She reeled with a wordless, spinning terror, thinking over and over no, no, please, not yet, not yet. The cave was empty. Her lusus was missing, and in its place was a smear of blood the same shade as her own.
The olive was very young, too young to lose her lusus. She couldn't see her life without her, without someone to care for her and feed her and help her live quietly and unassumingly at the edge of civilization.
She was cold, she realized, but she was usually cold. Her lusus used to lick the top of her hair and curl around her when she was cold. Her lusus used to always seem to know when the she would wake up, and would greet her by nuzzling her and wiping the sopor slime from her eyes with a rough tongue. The olive felt something hard in her throat come up from her stomach. She decided to stop thinking about her lusus.
She'd always known there was a danger living this close to the ocean, where The Orphaner's menace reigned over young trolls and their lusii. Yet, she had never expected he would come this far out of the sea — bitterly she chastised this oversight, swallowing the rancid taste of grief down again.
She squeezed her eyes shut to stifle tears, and knelt before the puddle of blood to began to reluctantly pray. If the Orphaner took her lusus, then he fed her to the monstrous Gl'Bgolyb in the deep sea to keep its hunger sated, that it wouldn't send out a psychic scream to kill all the Alternians in the galaxy. She knew it was important that the Gl'Bgolyb remained fed, but she was a child, so she thanked the god sourly for her existence at the cost of her lusus.
The olive stood and turned away from the entrance to the cave. She had to find somewhere else to live. She had to find some other way to live. Now that the Orphaner had robbed her of everything, she needed to learn how to hunt, to forage for food, to mine the naturally occurring sopor from the deep caves beneath the mountain. Everything her lusus had done for her.
She wrung her small hands and looked around, seeking a direction, any direction, to go towards to make everything go away. She looked up at the night sky and sought the pink moon. It was bright tonight. She took a step towards the moon, hesitant, then she took another step and started her trek.
