#aplanetofapes

Life on his own was difficult – lonely – but Pahana had adapted, as much as a person could. He had managed to take care of himself enough to stay alive and mostly well, having had to learn very quickly at too young an age. He liked to think that this had made him stronger, even if he didn't always feel like he was. His mother and father had always told him that he was strong... Pahana was doing his best to believe that they were right.

The gorilla had become skilled at making snares, and determining which areas were game trails that would almost guarantee a trapped animal. It had ensured his survival, more or less. There weren't enough eatable plants and berries around to sustain him afterall, and he had to save what he was able to grow as best he could. Pahana didn't enjoy killing other living things for food – something about it just felt wrong to him and gave him a sick feeling in his stomach – but he had little choice.

It had been a day and a half since he had checked some of his snares, and usually this was long enough to assume that he had caught something. Pahana moved as quietly as a person of his size could, all too aware that his light colored skin and hair spooked animals long before he was close enough to make a move. It was why he had begun using snares in the first place. They felt cruel, but at least it filled his belly.

Thick hands gripped the pump action rifle that he was never caught without, just in case he ran into one of those nasty apes that sometimes crawled about the forest. He could hear something struggling in the general direction of his trap, and at first this perked his spirits, until Pahana got closer and realized that he could see that whatever was there was wearing clothes.

Brows raising in surprise, the gorilla pointed his gun cautiously at the creature and took few steps forward until he could get a better look. He had never seen an ape wearing clothes, but the painful reality was all too clear – not all humans were friendly. Even worse, some carried the virus...

The incident replayed on a loop through the tired ape's mind, each step taken with tense muscles and a deep furrowed brow over his eyes. As much pain and death as Caesar had witnessed the past two years, he never grew used to the sight or the smell, and he became more and more angry with each time he came face to face with it.

They had lost so many apes, and there was no end in sight.

The new information that the grizzled leader had gained from this particular event also gnawed at his mind as he made his way through the series of dark caves that his kind had been forced to hide in. He hated that they had to hide, to live in fear all over again, not in cages but in caves. But these humans were more ruthless than any Caesar had ever known, took great, disgusting pleasure in murder that rivaled a certain bonobo whose name had almost become taboo within the colony. The apes had had no choice but to hide. These humans would not stop until each ape was lifeless.

And now, he knew, there was more to it than that... more to it than any of them had thought.

For the sake of those within, Caesar forced his face into a more neutral expression as he entered this cave chamber, though frown lines had been deeply etched into his features the past two years no matter what expression he took on. Young eyes all faced his direction immediately and as though completely oblivious to the world they were growing up in, happy grunts and hoots greeted him and some imitated the palm up posture that they had seen their parents assume when the great leader entered a scene. He swiped each of them with gentle fingers, not for his benefit but for their own, for it sent them into excited squeaking and raspy laughing. It was a sound that had once filled his ears each day, when they had lived in their beautiful forest village. Here in these caves, the sound was increasingly rare.

When his eyes finally landed on his own blood, however, his softening expression grew sorrowful. Milo, once a quite happy and curious infant, had grown into an anxious juvenile who clung to Cornelia's arm as though his life depended on his doing so. This was not the life Caesar had wanted for his youngest son. For any of the apes. But it was the only reality they had available to them now.

"үσυ cαη'т нσηεsтℓү вℓαмε тнε αρεs."

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