Another day of the tortoise being wounded began. The tortoise woke up intending to do the same thing as it did yesterday, wake up, get a drink, and then go back to sleep for the day. Living the dream. It moved its mouth towards the greenery, intending to take a bite, only to snatch some air. Meanwhile, the greenery flew away. As it tried to eat the other weeds, the same thing happened. Upon closer inspection, the greenery was not weeds at all but grasshoppers. Tons of them surrounded this little pond, overrunning it. As for the weeds, the grasshoppers ate them all, leaving not even a trace behind.

The tortoise was annoyed by this yet could do nothing about it. Instead, it took a drink of water from the pond, which was getting lower by the second, and tried to go back to sleep. And it did so for an hour or two. Only to wake up again with hunger pangs. While a tortoise could survive days without food or water, that was not a good idea when injured. Its body was diverting resources towards self-recovery rather than storing it away for later use. With these arrangements, the tortoise could heal much faster but would need a steady supply of food and water.

All it could do was turn towards the oasis and start walking. Already, the pain had subsided enough for movement. It couldn't go too quickly or the pain would flare up. Not a big issue for a tortoise, a specialist in moving slowly. Hours passed before it entered the oasis, only to find barely any plants. Grasshoppers fled from the survivors they had been feasting upon. Tons became hundreds which became thousands. A second storm upon the oasis had come in the form of grasshoppers, no locusts. Swarms and swarms of insects specialized in eating all plant life in sight. They came in both green and brown colors with powerful legs and wings adorning their body.

With all these locusts out and about, it was hard finding anything to eat. The tortoise was forced to eat scraps left behind. Stems and leaves speckled with holes from the locusts. Hard to stomach with the plants being dry. When the locusts ate on the plant, it would die and any moisture and nutrients would be redirected away from the parts being eaten in a desperate attempt by the plant to preserve its life. This resulted in these scraps being poor food. Considering the thousands of locusts in the oasis, the tortoise was lucky to find any food at all. Even the weeds growing by small ponds on the outskirts were being ravaged by the assault of the locusts.

The reason for the locusts exploding was simple. All their natural predators died. The ants, toads, and scorpions perished during the events of the last few days. Even predators that only rarely ate them like the vultures and fox were in low numbers and barely dented their population. Conditions were right with the rainstorm revitalizing the oasis and stressing the local locusts. Their survival instincts kicked in and they bred and spread almost overnight, overrunning everything.

The oasis itself was no longer red. The sludge around the outer edges was swept away and the water level rose a bit. Its depths were brown and less murky than the first time the Tortoise saw it. If one ignored the locusts, then the oasis was even better than before. Except, the locusts were there and were a major problem. The law of nature was competition and the tortoise had no way of competing.

It returned back to its pond that it called home out of habit. There it tried digging a new hole. Unfortunately, while the ground was soft and easy to dig into, so was its legs. It could only make a few gouges in the ground before giving up from the strain it caused on the body. Just moving around was one thing, actively straining muscles to dig and push dirt around was a whole different story. So, the tortoise spent another night under the stars. These cosmic beings that people looked up to for both their fortunes and direction. Passing dark clouds constantly obscured them as the night went by.

Another night; another day. The eighteenth day of the tortoise's life went as per usual. It woke up, got a drink, and then headed towards the oasis. There was literally nothing else to do in the safe confines of the oasis. Days could repeat endlessly with the same exact things over and over with barely any change.

Once again, the tortoise found the area covered in locusts. This time there were barely any plants left. With little food, the locusts turned to eating each other. Their bodies piled on top of each other, forming silhouettes that resembled plants especially with their green and brown colors. There was nothing left. All gone. This paradise for the tortoise no longer had any food. The tortoise became angry as it couldn't find food anywhere.

It pushed the locusts away, hoping to see a stem or leaf left behind. No such luck. Its hunger intensified and an emotion became stronger. Hunger became an annoyance. Annoyance brought a surge of anger. It took an action unrelated to survival, one purely from emotion. It swatted at one of the locusts with its claws and killed it before it could jump away. Rather than counterattacking, the swarm surrounded the downed locust and feasted upon it too. The whole ordeal was unsatisfying.

To fill its stomach, the tortoise swatted down another locust and ate it. The taste was unpleasant and the texture unpleasant. While the tortoise could eat meat just fine, it generally wouldn't. The lack of plants made these locusts the only source of food left in the oasis. And despite their numbers, it was not infinite. Within a few days, they'd all be dead or cannibalize themselves enough to restore their population back to low numbers. Perhaps they'd all die out from this unsustainable consumption and destruction of the oasis. Or perhaps the lost plants would make a comeback once the locusts thinned out.

When the tortoise returned the pond that filled its former burrow, it was struck by a temptation. It looked off into the wastes opposite the oasis, in the direction of the storm, and felt the desire to travel that way. Surely the ponds left behind by the storm would provide for the tortoise for a time. That was, as long as the tortoise was fast enough to outrun it drying up. It was a risk with its injuries and the fact that there was something in that direction that couldn't be explained.