Emergence
urgent, focused, relieved
The low branch was covered when YY arrived at the clearing — beetles in three sizes, grubs along the bark seam, pale things working the wet wood that the storm had opened up. The dead tree at the stream's edge was the same: post-storm surface thick with what the rain had driven up.
YY ate without ranging east. The body made that call before attention could argue.
The amount on the low branch alone was more than the previous two days of foraging combined. The clearing had been a threshold for a long time. Today it was a larder.
Health still below where it had been two weeks ago. The line moved anyway. The colony was still past the rise.
largest single-day food gain in the run; health recovering from 0.52; attention settling; the clearing provided without requiring an east push
state
Post-storm beetles and grubs covered the clearing's low branch and stream-edge dead tree; YY ate without ranging east, gaining more food in one morning than the previous two days combined, and health began to recover.