“I assume,” said the teacher, “that you killed the human.”
“Well actually no.” She decided it wouldn’t work simply to lie, because he’d know. Maybe she could tell him just enough to talk herself out of this.
The teacher seemed surprised. “But you said there was only one of them. An individual human is puny and weak. They are only dangerous when they swarm.”
There was something about the way he said “swarm” that Ilara found chilling. She pictured a huge horrible cloud of insects, all coming after her. Was that really the way they thought about her kind?
She was about to answer, when suddenly there was a commotion. Mammoths were running about in every direction, and the look in their eyes told her that something in the mammoth village was definitely not ok.