It’s a race to the finish. In the last warm little sun-pools of the monsoon rains, toad tadpoles are growing legs as fast as they can. Ravens and garter snakes have gobbled most of them, but a few laggard babies are still working on pedestrianism.
The cold is coming. The tiny survivors need to tuck up somewhere against the frosts.
The rains have come, and with them the toads. The pools of the Syncline were full of bright red mud-water, tadpoles and predators. A slim—but no doubt well fed—garter snake with a black head took to the opaque slurry, then poked its head out like a sea serpent.
In a drying pothole were many toadlets so small they looked like insects, not a quarter inch long. They had finished their lightning metamorphosis, but at the bottom of the hole was a gelatinous pudding of polliwogs that hadn’t grown up fast enough. Now and then there was a tiny squirm or shudder from someone in the black mass, a last effort at life.
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WORLD-BUILDING and WILDERNESS: 