Herbivore

The hours went on. Maybe they were days. Even if the slime knew what the sun was, down where he was there no such thing as a day night cycle. There were no hours. The moss that illuminated the cave didn’t stop or dim at any point. Therefore, without anyway to gauge it, the slime had no idea what hours or days even were. It just carried on like usual, eating when it was hungry and wondering about things when not.

It began to form something like a list of things it wanted to explore and do. It had eaten a couple of other organisms at this point, gaining nothing of real value in the process, but it hadn’t tried eating what they ate yet. Well, except for the scraped together gunk. It had tried that.

The slime had not been aware that it had the ability to be disgusted, but that was horrendous to its taste. Because there was an ample amount of it and it was a basically uncontested source of (somewhat poor) nourishment, the slime still had to consider it as a food source in less advantageous times. Those hadn’t come about yet, though, for which it was grateful.

It was in a moment like any other, with the slime just invisibly sitting nearby a clam bank where it was quiet, that an enormous shock went through the pond. Something had just dropped in, something large. Most animals darted away from the source, pure instinct to stay clear of large predators that only their ancestors had to content with, but their genetic structure still primed them to flee from. The slime, however, had the ability to learn, observe, and reach conclusions. Creating the long tail of its very first prey, it dashed towards the source.

The large stalactites overhead were still in the slimes memory from its spawning, including the moss covering some of them. That knowledge combined with the shape of the object that was now slowly descending to the floor of the pond told him that this was not a predator. Indeed, it was clear that soon enough other of the herbivores sharing this ecosystem with him would begin to approach the falling mass of moss and rock and begin disassembling what they could digest.

Being the first there would prove to some advantage. For a start, the slime could try to find the freshest pieces of the plant, albeit it didn’t really have the tools to do so other than tasting around. While it could have replaced its tail with a pair of eyes, that would be a sacrifice of its mobility for the minimal gain of seeing things it had no idea how to judge in the first place. It didn’t know what moss was fresh or old. Would it turn paler or darker with age? Were there other factors? It, therefore, decided that right then was not the time to bet on eyesight.

The second thing was that, if the plants proved to be indigestible for some reason, it could hide within the moss for one of its standard prey animals to come along and ambush it. It was a win-win situation.

The odd sight of a single insect tail attached to an almost invisible, fingernail sized blob would have met anyone who would have been able to observe the happenings and probably caused some confusion. With the water around still clear, the slime went to smaller strokes, instead of continuously using the heavily stamina draining dash.

Landing on a barren piece of rock that recently settled, it sensed around. If there was one reason why the slime didn’t like being blind, it was that it had a hard time tracking things that were not in motion. If only it had the ability to generate some sort of vibration that returned to it without alerting anything else. That would have been a genius application of evolution.

But alas, the slime was not capable of aimed evolution, it could only acquire what already existed. So, unless it one day found something that had echolocation, of which it knew not that it was real, it could not get it. If it could have sighed and knew what the general agreement of such a motion’s meaning was, it would have. Instead, it sat there slightly annoyed with its lot in life, of which’s start it had stopped pondering about as it was an endless circle without answers.

Thankfully, a nearby piece settled in a slightly more cushioned way, indicating that there was moss on the downside of it. The slime made its way over. The range of sensations was interesting, the water sliding over its surface, then the hard and rough texture of the rock as it landed again and crawled on, finally the soft and fuzzy feeling of the moss.

There was a lot of it, several times the slime’s current mass in fact, and so the slime began feasting. It did find that it could indeed digest these plants. As it did, a new pocket of its instinctual knowledge unfolded. Eating animals gave the slime a large boost in new tools it could develop, but did the increase in its body size was marginal. On the opposite end of things, eating plants increased the slimes body size by quite a lot, the fibre was quickly digested and converted into the viscous liquid that made up most of its body, while granting minimal or useless evolutionary tools.

It was vaguely aware that it could now change something minor about its substance. To an outside onlooker, its colouration changed from just translucent to whitely translucent. The slime struck this as useless.

The other thing, slightly less useless, was the ability to act like the moss did and grow roots and leaves to absorb water, air and light from the surroundings and create nourishment for itself that way. Problem was that the slime had to go on land for that, which it still hadn’t even attempted, and have two different growths active at that time.

Although, maybe now that it was a bit bigger, maybe it should try that again? The slime had earlier decided that having eyes wasn’t worth slugging around for, but if it could have both, why not try? If it failed, there was an absurd amount of food around, as the prey animals finally closed in as well.

It formed the shape of the eyes and willed the organ into existence. It was a process that it was aware was deeply more complicated than that but, much like a human flexing a muscle, it didn’t really think about it how it functioned while doing it.

Suddenly, it could see. The pale moss surrounding it, the beige limestone it was attached to, and the clear waters surrounding them. The floor was made out of the broken down remains of former stalactites, slowly ground down by animals trying to ripe the very last roots out of the stone and then just naturally dissolving further.

The slime wagged its tail to confirm it was still there and it was indeed. If it had known that was common expression amongst dogs and dog people it would have wagged its tail harder. Anyhow, it now knew that an increase in size meant that it could maintain more evolutions at once. If it grew bigger, maybe it could start eating some bigger, more interesting stuff. The gargantuan clams that lay totally defenceless but were too large to encapsulate sprang to mind.

Or the shadow that descended over the surrounding area at that moment. The slime hid under its rock as it saw the pale body of what it perceived to be a water dragon swim through the water. The gilled antenna that grew out of either side of the creature’s head were of a light red. It was this pond’s apex predator and it dropped down on one of the slow, shield shaped herbivores that had come out to consume the plant matter.

Then the herbivore was gone. The water dragon had opened its mouth and a sudden suction had transported it right into the beast’s jaw. Thankfully, these monstrosities had very predictable behaviour and were short-sighted, relying mostly on their sense of smell. As long as the slime stayed aware, which was quite easy with its ability to sense vibrations, and kept its distance, it was safe from them, smelling mostly like the water. Just to be safe it dissolved its tail though. It had enough moss to feed itself, so there was no need to move around for now.

Instead, it began to feed with utmost fervour. There was no telling when the next load of moss would arrive and it had to grow as big as possible in order to rise up the food chain. The quicker it was at the top, the less time it had to spent being afraid.