When it comes to ecosystems, every living thing plays a role. From the largest trees to the smallest ant, from the humble deer to the ravaging wolf, every single thing has a place to belong. Tied together, everything flows with ease, potentially into perpetuity. Nothing ever lasts though. Outside influences can cause changes, fluctuating the world and causing catastrophic change.
And that even the mightiest and most deadly of predators can fall when the pillars that they built themselves on crumble away into nothing.
Never in the throes of it did you see what was happening as you climbed your way to the top. From the bottom, you carved a path for Nobody to reach to the top of it all. You had a goal, a man to break, and you pushed your way further and further up. Each step, you slipped more and more of the human away into the nothing that you claim to have. And for that briefest of moments, you were there. The true top dog.
Knowing all that, did that final fall to the mat hurt? That everything you had carefully laid out to become the top dog was so weak that you just crumbled beneath the slightest change of pressure. A house of cards coming crumbling down. You fought desperately, tried to keep what was yours and the chance to get it back with everything you could manage.
Even after all that, you find yourself down once more. A nobody among the throngs once again. Wisps of glory that you once held keeping you down, hungering for more. But down here, alongside everyone else? You’re nobody. Another name, just another dog with bleeding wounds. A dinner bell for the opportune and adaptable.
Readjusting to change is hard now though. Despite the ferociousness, you’re still feeling it. The blows have taken their toll, and you’ve become accustomed to the top. That pedestal that made Mr. Nobody into somebody, now wrought low.
Stuck in the thicket, you’ve become anybody’s game now. You were a champion, a good mark for the rest of us down here in the jungles that make up the halls of OSW. It’s only a matter of time for you to make a slip that would have been alright above.
And down here, with the rest of us, that’s all it takes. Patience comes from waiting, fighting constantly to just keep up above the rest. You can be aggressive, snarl and lunge all you want. But here in the shadows?
Serpents reign supreme down here. For I’ve been down in the trenches, fighting again and again for what I want, what’s been taken from me. I’ve learned to hunt down those opportunities, to smell the blood in the air and lunge forward.
Shadows have always been home for snakes, and here I sit, waiting. Watching. Timing it just right to strike the old dog that’s blinded by his need to hunt. For it’s not the most specialized that survive. It’s those that adapt.