The first day of spring is meant to be a day of joy and rebirth. For our colony, however, it ended in distress, pain, and death.

The late winter rains had called us to build our new homes, and we had built our settlement in two separate domes atop two wooden plateaus. From the top of the domes, you could see the vast bladed forest stretch out before you, slowly growing taller as it absorbed the sun and rain. But that vantage point would soon prove fatal.

Doom came as an immense titan of plastic and steel, roaring slowly on four round legs, with two long legs of cloth and skin supporting its head at the back. It was an abomination of an insect, one that had grown larger than even the legendary beasts from eons ago, one that simply should not be. Before we knew it, our first dome was trapped in a spinning maw that ate the forest around us, sending shards of the long leaves all around us and tearing the dome apart. We scurried to rebuild, but five minutes later our second dome, the one housing our newborn brothers and sisters, was hit as well. Rushing to get them out of reach of any of the immense beasts that sought our demise, we thought the day's troubles were over.

We were wrong.

Two brief sprinklings of snow-white dust hit our domes: one smelling of chalk, the second smelling of sweetness. The first one shredded our bodies, leaving us too weak to work; the second was pure poison, leaving us dying where we stood.

To whatever god is out there, please. Wipe that abominable insect from the earth, and allow us to have our revenge. But alas, we will not be the ones to see it done, for we are broken and dying, and we will not see summer.