Fiction: Group 2
Creatures
Western Academy of Beijing, McEwan, Zoe - 9, Fiction: Group 2
ailey squirmed in his nest as the rain pattered against the den. Bailey and I have been the best of
friends for a long time. Bailey had been a little too cautious lately, and I had started to get worried.
Here, let me introduce myself. I’m Flora and we live in a forest in Hong Kong. Even though we
live in Hong Kong, we are international animals. Our group is made up of lots of different kinds of animals,
too. We have rabbits, dogs, cat, snakes, koalas and pandas. I am a cat and my best friend Bailey is a dog.
Bailey had been a little too cautious lately because there had been these massive scavengers lurking around
our lake. They had been threatening us, picking us off one by one and the whole group was starting to
worry. Most of the rabbits in the group had already disappeared. That’s why most of us were worrying: we
thought we might be the next one to be captured by the scavengers. If you had asked me what the
scavengers looked like, I’m sorry, I couldn’t have told you. We’d never seen them. They were always
sneaking up on someone, and whoever was with the one who got captured was always too slow to spot
them.
The sun was shining through the den when I finally convinced Bailey to come out. He had been in the den
all day yesterday and I don’t want it to happen again. The prey in our forest had been getting scarcer ever
since the scavengers arrived. Bailey had been using this as an excuse to stay in the den. Spike, another dog,
was talking about preparing more hunting groups. I told him Bailey and I could go on one of them, and
Spike said, “Thanks.”
When I told Bailey, he whined, “Why? Can’t I just stay here and relax in the sunlight while it’s here?” But
he came anyway.
When our hunting group was heading back to the dens, the worst thing possible happened. “It’s them!”
shouted Spike. The scavengers had seen us and started to chase us.
Our hunting group pounded through the forest trying to outrun the scavengers. When we got to the dens
everyone there took cover in a mud puddle so our scents were disguised. The scavengers thumped through
the dens and I was terrified because I thought they would find us. My heart pounded as I peered through a
holly bush and found that the scavengers had disappeared. We were safe.
But for how long?
a voice was
asking in my head. Brook, our leader, said that everything was going to be okay if all the strong animals
were healthy, but I didn’t know if she was right.
The sun shone brightly as the animals in the dens slowly padded out. We could see little bits of frost and
snow on the ground. Winter was coming. The scavengers had captured many of our group lately. Some of
the remaining animals didn't even leave the dens anymore!
We have to get rid of those scavengers soon
, I
thought.
While I had been out with a hunting group, most of the other animals were curled up in the dens trying to
sleep. I heard that another rabbit was captured today during another hunting expedition. That meant we
only had three rabbits left! That’s why the rabbits stayed in the dens with the babies and other animals who
were too sacred to leave.
Sigh
…
more work for me.
We had been avoiding the whole side of the lake where the scavengers lived. I didn't know why we were
doing this because the only time they attacked us was when we were not looking, so I offered to go get
some prey with Bailey by the lake.
We were trying to be careful about what side of the lake we were on, because we didn’t want to run into
the scavengers when there were only two of us. But I guess we weren’t careful enough. Just at that moment
a group of them walked up to the water to play, so we hid in the undergrowth. We couldn’t see them
because of the shadows the sun made, but what we could see was that our rabbit friends were playing with
B
