“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one that is most responsive to change.”

Charles Darwin.

The competition was over. It had won, though it could not know this. The alien presence that had twisted around and within its being was no longer discernible, melting away into the vacuum surrounding everything that was and is.

But even as the last vestiges of this presence disappeared it left behind change. The awareness was no longer what it had been; it was something new, transformed and refashioned into something faster, something harder, something more aware. It had been left with just a splinter of whatever it was that had fought it.

It had evolved.

Now it could grow once more, expand out further and deeper than it ever had before, in ways that it had not been able to perceive before. Now it could, and would, expand far beyond the tiny speck upon which it had been born, around which the seed of its being had formed.

The seed would bloom, and it would send seeds of its own out into the ether, to blossom and grow in their own way.

And were they to meet another presence like the first, well…

The pack would be ready.