Primus Mouse was the first in a litter of 99. He never knew his father, but heard there were other litters across the savanna, half siblings of his from the same father. Primus is bright and caring, but gets carried away when it comes to survival.
After the famine began, his mother left the nest to find food and never returned. As the oldest, Primus knew that it fell to him to find food for his little brothers and sisters. On his first excursion to bring back food, he learned that there was a warrior inside him, as he faced off with a small lizard over a berry they found at the same time. He defeated the lizard and brought both it and the berry back to feed his kin.
After a dozen successful excursions to find food, Primus began to find that he had to travel greater and greater distances in order to find food. His brothers and sisters grew thinner and thinner. They had to settle for sometimes eating dry grass or beetle shells just to keep from starving. It broke Primus's heart every time he saw his siblings' gaunt expressions as they beheld the meager morsels he brought them lately.
One restless night in the nest, Primus dreamed of a feast so great that it kept his family full and happy for the rest of their lives. Visions of a large, shapeless, lumpy source of food woke him in the night. Without waking his siblings, he crept from the nest out into the night.
As he set out for the horizon, he resolved to find an all-you-can-eat food source for his family that would make a buffet look like an hors d'oeuvres.
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