In a world where time is measured by catastrophes and mutations, an ancient frog traverses geological eras, cataclysms, and extinctions; a silent witness to the planet’s evolution and destruction. With the arrival of the «devourers», its existence changes radically: it is captured, tortured, and forced to adapt. Amidst the ecological disaster and devastation, the frog evolves into a new, sentient species: the ranids. The prey has changed.

Nº 08 | Short story | Science Fiction | 1407 words | Spanish version | Translated by Trinidad Montalva

THE LAST AMPHIBIAN

C.A. VERGARA

The frog propels itself from the depths of the wetland with its long legs. In the world below, the sun appears as a diffuse light shimmering through the mud, and the surrounding landscape is but a black background against which green and blue dots stand out.

When it emerges into the world above, it feels the warmth hiss over its skin and the clarity of the earthly sun changes the background from black to blue. It lies motionless on a rock, the skin pleasantly moist, forcing spasms in its throat to draw air into its lungs, while the vocal sac expands and contracts in an incessant rhythm.

In the distance, young araucaria trees rise, as if striving to reach the peaks of a mountain range born from a seismic birth. An insect brushes against its skin, triggering the almost automatic deployment of its tongue, which seizes the insect like a sticky reed and swallows it whole. Other creatures hover around the perimeter, but they are not edible. Some stir the water and try to leap ashore, though they cannot stay there for long. Those that do manage to reach land glide close, so close that the frog must jump to another rock to avoid being caught. Then, reptiles that rise high above its field of vision, block out the sunlight. They are as tall as the araucarias, with legs like rough roots moving heavily, making the earth tremble. Their roars are so shrill that they disturb the water and make its skin vibrate.

The frog senses the presence of others of its kind. It observes their green skin, camouflaged among the reeds and rocks. It hears them croak their ancient songs under the full moon. It feels compelled to leap into the vegetation and release the eggs to be fertilized. It scurries away without ever meeting its offspring. They will begin their evolution on a small scale, transforming their bodies as no other animal could. The only ones with two lives to inhabit two worlds.

Sometimes, the wetland turns into a desert. The moisture is absorbed by the sky under the all-encompassing sun, the trees lose their leaves, and the frog dries up in the cracked earth, turning to dust, until the water returns to its ancestral courses so it can revive with fins, appendages, and limbs. It emerges onto land, crawls, leaps, it’s stalked by giant reptiles, and it’s swallowed alive. There, it decomposes in the corrosive vapor of gastric juices, only to return to the water, where it experiences its first life again, in the underworld, swimming in the darkness until it feels ready to return to land.

At some point, the scent of fear is perceived. The inhabitants of the swamp grow restless. The mountain range is illuminated. A distant sun falls, and the world becomes fire. Water and shadow, as in the world below. The giant reptiles are annihilated, and other small beings rise, whose offspring do not hatch from eggs but grow inside them and accompany them while they are small. They swarm around, devouring and being devoured. They taste different. They fill its tongue with hairs that are difficult to swallow.

In an instant, which seems endless, the earth cools and the plants wither. The mountain range turns white, the rain freezes, and the wetlands solidify. The frog feels slowed, becomes paralyzed, and it is frozen in an age-old sleep.

When it awakens, the wetland swarms with life. Small creatures have multiplied; many manage to rise above the frog’s field of vision, but none reach the heights of the araucaria trees. The roars of the giants that once disturbed the water and made its skin vibrate are no longer heard, but similar beings have risen and soar through the skies, landing on the water with their jaws transformed into beaks and their tough skin transmuted into feathers.

The frog continues its existence as a living fossil, an immutable witness to the events of the world. However, there’s something different: beings it has never seen, felt, or smelled appear in the wetland.

These beings are not of the water, they are of the land, but they are not afraid to live in both worlds. They do not crawl, nor walk on all fours, nor fly, nor jump. They can do everything. They have no scales, no sharp teeth, no claws, no pointed beaks, although, somehow, they manage to acquire them. They rise upright from the ground, like the reptiles that disappeared with the fallen sun, and, like them, they are the supreme devourers of all.

The frog hides. The devourers find it and impale it with one of their beaks, cut it with one of their claws. Pain before fading away. Though it hides, they always find it, with claws like toothless jaws that imprison it.

Sometimes, they simply pick it up and observe it. Their eyes are like those of other animals, but their faces have flat snouts, their tongues are small, and they emit broken, indecipherable sounds. For the first time, the frog is taken away from its habitat and relocated. It lives with them, confined, waiting a long time for death; its skin dry and unable to cool, its insides twisting from the lack of insects to feed on, incorporating a new fear into its ancestral memory: the anticipation of pain. Because these animals don’t just kill to eat; they enjoy prolonging the agony, cutting and burning, and removing the skin, often without consuming the bodies.

The living fossil that is the frog becomes a witness to a great change. It watches the all-devouring creatures subjugate all other species, using them to become stronger or faster. Not even the fiercest animals can defeat them, because they know how to manipulate and transform the environment for their own benefit. They redirect waters, flood deserts, dry up seas, and make plants disappear. They thrive in their nests, which resemble enormous hollow leafless trees, with canopies that exhale steam that suffocates the skin, and roots that filter scalding water, as they multiply and kill each other. The frog has never witnessed anything like this. It sees them expel waste that the earth cannot assimilate, with which they create islands and hills, strange grass that is neither alive nor dead. It hears them roar, with sounds never before heard, not even when giants walked.

In a wetland it no longer recognizes, under an increasingly unpredictable climate, the frog attempts its impossible escape again and again, but the devourers always find it. Deaths follow one another, heterogeneous and massive, so dizzying that the frog’s cells begin to learn. It becomes a witness to its own evolution, while the devourers remain ignorant, self-absorbed, stubbornly pursuing their self-annihilation. Its skin darkens to the thickest blackness. It becomes capable of filtering toxic vapors and waters. It feeds on grass that is neither alive nor dead. Its stomach begins to assimilate waste and becomes unpalatable to them. Now free, it begins to observe them from afar.

The world is a hostile place. The wetland is now an ancient desert, and few species have survived. Only those that can adapt can withstand the extreme temperatures and lack of water. To reach the water sources, the frog slowly learns to stand upright on two legs and walk. Something in the toxic waste, which is now its food source, causes its brain to grow and undergo the greatest metamorphosis it has ever known. It becomes self-aware, recognizes other frogs, its croaking transforms into speech, and it perceives the passage of time. It learns and remembers. It crafts weapons to catch insects and fish, and builds shelters near water sources and beyond.

The all-devouring creatures survive hidden in caves; they, too, know how to adapt. They regard the frogs with suspicion; no one remembers that they were once their prey. Now they fear them and attack them whenever they can. They call them monsters, mutant frogs, ranids. They know that there cannot be two all-devouring species. The frogs know it too.

Emerging from the depths of the desert sands, a ranid propels itself onto a rock using its webbed hands and amphibious legs. The sac beneath its throat expels gases its body cannot assimilate. It gazes toward the horizon, and the snow-free peaks of the dimly lit mountain range tell it that time has come. Others approach, armed. Croaking in the full moon’s light, the ranids head toward the caves.