I polished off part of the first chapter to my liking today, but here's a little teaser from book 1 subject to later changes:
Raelyn pulled twigs and leaves from her matted hair, a daily activity since she'd started venturing out from the tunnels more. Ardella would throw a fit if she knew how far out she’d wandered from the village. That was something you didn’t do, wander out far from Fandujon. Not with the gibbs about to pick you off.
She'd discovered today that just a ways downstream there was a rocky ford where she could cross the river with a valley just on the other side. Here she’d found a few unique plants she hadn’t seen before: purple flowers with large bulbs, a type of fern, and a red berry bush she’d never encountered on the side of the river they inhabited. She collected a fair amount of samples from each of them in a bindle and slung it over her shoulder to return with.
This was a usual activity of hers: researching plants. It wasn't her job, per se, but everyone in Fandujon had to do their part to pitch in one way or another and her role in the society seemed to be getting into enough trouble that new discoveries were constantly being made about the forest around them.
These were plants not even mentioned in The Scouts, a book that practically everyone had read, which was an allegory for what lay in the forest of the surface world around them around them, written for children. The story covered everything from the dangers to the fantastic in way that wouldn’t keep anyone up at night.
She had found nearly all the plants mentioned in the book over the years and confirmed their alleged uses save for a few too far out to trek to before nightfall. They all had gimmicky named that would lead you to believe they weren’t real if you didn’t come across them yourself, scattered about the forest. She wasn't entirely sure who the author was or nor how they’d safely made it that far out their self.
Their world was mostly covered in a dense rainforest, with some trees seemingly as old as the planet itself, towering above and forming a second canopy over the underlying, more reasonably sized trees. Down below, soft yellow light poured through both canopies in dappled patches and danced about the forest floor. It was peaceful, but at night things got unsafe fast.
The predators of Yaoul were nocturnal and ravenous. At the top of the food chain, you had gnashers and gibbs. Gnashers were muscular black felids peppered with silver-grey hairs like quills, that could rear up on their hind legs to use their massive and razor-sharp claws. Gibbs were a bit like oversized gitts, but instead of pecking at berries and plants on the forest floor, they would pick off anything they could catch with their massive beak.
The surface was too harsh and any structures built would only stand temporarily against the will of nature. The forest belonged to the gibbs and so the people of Fandujon lived in tunnels where they could hide away safely when night fell.
As such, Raelyn made her back over the rocky pass towards the tunnels well before the sun began to set. She’d test these new plant specimens out on the gitts before trying to eat any herself, but she had very little window left in the day to do so.
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