Challenge ##00682 - A317: Strange Camouflage

Pic prompt!

[Picture shows a tree that has grown around some war debris. The most prominent piece resembles a stick insect.]

It was another ghost world. Cheryl hated ghost worlds. There was always a chance, a slim and gut-wrenching chance, that there were survivors, somewhere far away from the relics of past civilisation. Bombed back to the stone age. Or further.

Nomadic gatherer-hunters were hard to find with orbital scanners.

There weren’t many buildings standing, any more. Forests had come to reclaim what was once a city. Some animals wandered and grazed where there used to be streets. Introduced Terran fauna that had gone wild.

Lilly broke the silence. “The war must’ve really dragged on,” she said in a low murmur.

“What makes you say that?” Cheryl asked in kind.

Lilly pointed. This tree, like many others around it, had swallowed shrapnel and hardware. But a collection of wires and straight pieces and gears… moved.

It was a phasmid. A stick insect.

Which meant two things.

The war on this planet had broken out almost instantly… and had carried on throughout most of deep time. Enough time for the insects to mimic that which they found everywhere.

Cheryl was suddenly very glad that life suits were proof against projectile weapons.

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