The cave swallowed sound. The cold pressed in like a second skin. That tiny candle by the wall flickered and spasmed, fighting for its pathetic little life, staining the dark in trembling amber. Shadows crawled up the stone like living creatures, and the air tasted of smoke, damp earth, and old fear.
You crouched in that dim light, knees pulled up, breath held tight, thinking the thoughts that always came creeping back when the night got too quiet.
Humanity. Never stood a chance.
(A glacier splitting open like a cracked tooth; the sky bruised purple with storm; pawprints larger than your skull stamped deep into the snow.)
There were so many of them.
(A herd of bison-people marching in formation, shields of hammered bronze catching the sun.)
They were everywhere.
(Wolves in iron coats patrolling the treeline, eyes burning like lanterns.)
They were bigger, stronger, faster than us.
(A bear blacksmith swinging a hammer the size of your entire arm; sparks raining down like fireflies.)
They could eat anything. They ate us. We had nothing but our hunger.
The candle guttered low, shriveling like it, too, knew it was outmatched.
There was no time to adapt. There wasn't really anything we could do.
Humanity was smothered in its cradle. It never had the time to evolve.
You pressed your forehead to the stone wall, letting the cold seep in.
Everyone around us… the other animals…
(Fox scholars writing on parchment; lynx stonecutters carving temple doors; mammoth caravans dragging entire houses across the tundra.)
They were all in their own iron age while we hadn't even made fire yet.
What chance did we have, really?
You let a humorless breath escape.
We could cry, scream, pretend we were invincible. Reality has a way of spitting in your face.
A drop of wax slid down the candle, slow and resigned.
This wasn't some grand epic. This was the rules of survival. It was natural selection.
And maybe, in some far-off distant star, maybe in another universe, we could have won.
You watched the flame quiver.
But not in this world…
You shifted deeper into the shadows.
All we had left was the darkness.
We had to hide in it. Fade away from the walls of history.
We disappeared without a fight. The world barely remembered us.
Why would it? There were so many other important characters.
The candle crackled, then steadied, weak but stubborn. That was when the rambling started, the memories that came flooding whether you wanted them or not.
You tried to make sense of it, tried to put the chaos of your life into something readable, something that wouldn't knot itself into a choking mess in your skull.
You remembered creeping out of caves at night, moving like a ghost through frostbitten forests. (Hiding behind a split pine as a procession of deer nobles passed, their antlers capped in gold.)You watched their massive cities rise from timber and stone, spires of carved ice catching the moonlight. (Elk masons hauling beams with ropes; beaver architects directing crews atop scaffolds.)
You scavenged battlefields after the wars between their kingdoms—stealing scraps of armor too big for you, dragging away broken spears like fallen branches, tugging food from abandoned camps.(A discarded wolf helmet large enough to swallow your torso; antelope cavalry lying scattered in the mud, the dying calling out in languages you didn't know.)
You followed trade caravans from the shadows, trying to decipher their endless tongues.Wolfish consonants. Bear-deep bass. The musical clicking dialect of the otter clans. A dozen more. Too many to learn. Too many to even catalogue.
It wasn't your world.It never had been.
i wonder… how it would be if we were the only sentient animal in the world.(A silent valley with huts built by human hands; a bonfire where faces looked like your own; a future you'd never see.)
i can barely imagine a world where the only art, literature, clothes, and architecture are made by humans, and not… everything else that walks and talks.
that world sounds lonely.but this one… feels crowded. with enemies everywhere.enemies that want to get us. consume us. erase us.
Your voice cracked in the dark.
i just want some place to call my own. somewhere to build up. prepare to fight. or at least die with dignity.
Your hands tightened on your knees.
would it be a fair fight? no. obviously not. but humans never fought fair.how could we? we were the weakest animal in nature. apart from the rodents.
for our size, we couldn't even take on the big herbivores. the medium carnivores could tear us apart. even scavengers gave us trouble.
if we were a bit more equal… if we both had bows and clubs… then maybe…
You swallowed the frustration clawing at your throat.
but it wasn't like that.they had armor.we had flimsy pelts.they had iron.we had sticks and rocks.
it feels like we were set up to fail. like this was the bad timeline, where we got humiliated by creatures we could've eaten if we'd just had a little room to breathe… if we'd evolved a little sooner…
we could've won.
Your chest tightened around something bitter.
but i'm just a bitter loser.i don't take losing well.i think about it for days and days and days. it never stops.it replays in my mind over and over. i can't stop thinking about it. and neither could our ancestors.they passed down these stories with their teeth clenched. all that rage… all that shame.
when i close my eyes, it replays like some mocking humiliation. sometimes i even see visions of someone else's life—how they lost, how they barely escaped.
maybe they're memories in my blood. maybe i'm broken. i don't know.
but i've learned from my mistakes. and life's too short to only learn from your own. so you learn from others. from their failures. from their catastrophes.
The candle sputtered, fighting the dark like a tiny warrior.
Outside, the wind howled.And the world of giants kept turning without you.