“…So anyway, that’s about it. Now you know all about me, or at least the thing I can remember. But enough about me, tell me more about yourself!”

“…”

“Not really the type for talking, eh? Don’t worry, I can appreciate the silence sometimes, especially on mondays, god I hate mondays. Who doesn’t, right?”

“…”

Gaia sighed. The daisy in front of her still ignored her attempts at friendly chattering, even after a week had gone by. And what a boring week it had been.

Gaia’s world was limited to a small circular area of dirt surrounded by grass that was significantly taller that her, making it impossible for her to see further that a few centimetres in each direction. The grass was too thick to see through, and the only other thing inside her confined space was the purple daisy Gaia had used as a frustration vent for the past week.

At least Gaia had the time to figure out more about where she was now. After a few days, she had eventually concluded that she wasn’t on earth anymore. Of course, after waking up as a sentient plant, she had her theories about being on another planet or maybe even being inside an entirely different universe, but the things that had finally confirmed her suspicions were the insects.

At some point, Gaia had attempted to measure herself by comparing herself to the daisy and a few other things around her she could see. She came to the conclusion that she was a lot smaller than she had initially thought, about seven centimeters tall from bottom to top. That meant that the grass around her around thirty centimeters tall, but that wasn’t very spectacular on its own.

No, what had made her mentally gulp was size of the ant from earlier. According to her earlier findings, the creature must have been four centimeters tall, with a body length of at least sixteen centimeters! The cute little ant she had so calmly observed had been as long as a human hand, bigger than most insects on Earth! Gaia could only imagine how big the queen of the ants must have been…

Apart from the ant, she had seen a few other insects as well. Centipedes with large pincers on their backs, brightly blue ladybugs flying in groups of around ten, and crickets with glowing behinds had all been spotted by he all-observing Gaia. Out of all of them, the ladybugs were suprisingly he only critters that didn’t seem to be oversized nightmarish variants of insects on Earth. Gaia loved watching them fly over her, like a swarm of sparrows, and when she did, she was always painfully aware of her inability to move anything, apart from her little leaves. She could wriggle them and bend them a little, but that was all.

But the worst creature so far had definitely been the grotesque, oozing slug that had almost killed Gaia at some point during the night. If it hadn’t been for a friendly ant pinching the creature with its large mandibles, the slug would have probably eaten her whole.

Gaia shuddered thinking about it, realizing that she had no real way of defending herself against these kind of foes. She doubted that furiously smacking her two tiny leaves against her foes did any damage at all, no matter the creature. Even a slug would probably only be mildly inconvenienced, not to mention the other insects with their hard carapaces.

---

Another night went by without anything too special happening. Gaia stared at her daisy friend with a bored look.

“I just wish I could at least sleep through the night, it’s just so boring having to wait till sunrise. If only I had my smartphone, I could stay up all night like back on Earth… By the way, I don’t think you have a name yet, do you? Let’s call you Daisy for now, it seems fitting,” she said with a smirk.

Daisy didn’t answer as usual. Gaia sighed and was just about to scream at the world until something happened, when something actually did happen. Something was rustling in the grass to her left, making Gaia turn to observe whatever it was.

“Another ant perhaps? Hello there, what’s your…” She didn’t finish her sentence but instead watched the new creature emerge from the thick blades. Six tall legs attached to a chubby round body moved forward as the visitor strolled over towards Gaia. Two antennae wiggled in the air while the creature looked at her with curiosity in its small black eyes.

At first glance, Gaia thought the creature was just a really fat grasshopper, but the way it walked seemed different, smoother even. Then it hit her.

“Oh, I see what you are now! You’re an aphid!”

The words seemed a little odd for some reason when they came out, but Gaia didn’t notice why until the aphid crept closer and pricked her stem with its antennae. Before she could say anything, the aphid grabbed one of her little leaves and bit a large chunk out of it.

Gaia screamed. The place where the aphid had bit her hurt, not as much as she thought it would, but it still did. She started hitting the aphid with what was remaining of her once cute little leaf, but just like she had thought earlier, it wasn’t very effective. The aphid did have some trouble grabbing her leaf though, which gave Gaia the opportunity to scream some more.

She didn’t really know who would hear her calls for help, but she didn’t stop. The aphid continued snapping at her leaf with it’s mandibles while Gaia tried her best to prevent it from succeeding by dodging the creature’s fierce blows. This continued for a minute or so until she saw a familiar face peeking through the blades of grass.

“Please help me mister ant!” She screeched. “Get this unholy creature off me! Purge this mistake of nature! Burn the witch!”

She might have been a bit dramatic there, but she just really wanted the monstrous aphid to leave her alone. The ant slowly started crawling towards the green monster that was still trying to bite her. She cheered the ant on, amost giving the aphid an opening to bite her by doing so. She managed to pull her leaf away at the last second by twisting her stem in a painful manner, but she kept cheering the ant on nontheless.

“Yes, yes! Go, my brave knight! Deliver justice onto this cursed fiend!”

When the ant was only a few centimeters away from them, the aphid finally noticed it creeping towards them and turned its back towards the red knight of justice. Gaia was sure that the aphid would just turn around and run away in fear, but to her astonishment, it simply started wiggling its large bum at the incoming ant.

Gaia couldn’t believe her eyes when the ant closed in and started drumming its antennae on the aphid’s behind, as if it was playing the bongos. She gaped when a few drops of some light green liquid seeped from the aphid’s behind, which the ant collected in its mouth. After the ant was finished, it turned its back towards her and scuttled away. The aphid faced her again and resumed snapping at her leaf as if nothing had happened.

“No, what are you doing?! Come back, you! This is treason! Bribing my knights is agains the rules! Come back! Please?”

The aphid finally managed to grab her injured leaf, causing Gaia to flich, but it froze in place once again when a faint buzzing resounded from above. Gaia looked up and spotted another small swarm of ladybugs rapidly closing in from the sky.

Before Gaia could say anything, the ladybugs swarmed downwards onto the aphid and started biting it with their many little hungry mouths. Gaia watched in horror while chunks of the aphid’s soft green flesh were torn apart by the aggressive ladybugs. The aphid didn’t make a sound as it was being torn to shreds, but Gaia was sure it would have screamed if it were able to, which made the scene even more horrific.

The ladybugs continued snapping and biting while the aphid tried its best to throw the smaller insects off, but to no avail. They bit and bit, all while Gaia watched silently. She didn’t utter a word, she didn’t even scream. All she could do was watch with disgust as the aphid was being eaten alive.

After a while the aphid stopped moving, but the ladybugs continued to rip it’s flesh apart, filling their small stomachs to the brim with the soft, green flesh. When they had finally finished and left the scene, only half of the original aphid remained, most of it’s organs devoured. At that point Gaia could finally talk again. She looked up at the sky, black clouds sliding over the moon, bringing darkness over the silent landscape.

“Nature sure is brutal,” she muttered. She barely noticed the aphid sinking into the ground as the world around her went dark.