Myrm's Antobiography - Chapter 6

Oh my friends, disaster has befallen us! It is a while since I last wrote to you. The troubles that we have faced have been great. First there were the wars. Battles we had with our enemys the reds. We took the upper hand early on and attacked the enemy. Many lifes were lost, and we thought that we had killed the enemy when we had destroyed their queen. Little did we know that the reds are different to us. I learned that they had not one, but two queens in their colony. How this is to be? I don't know, but it is true. Not only are they dangerous to us because of their defence and strength, but now they have more than one queen. Even if we kill one queen of the enemy, we must continue further into their nests and face further danger to see if there are any more queens.
Disaster did visit us, and it wasn't in the form of another ant type. It was nature that caused our troubles. It was nature at its most dangerous that caused the death of most of our colony. Only a few dozen of us survived the deadly rains of the spring time floods.
It began in late April. We had not that long finished nursing our wounded after the battles with the reds. Our numbers were already low, and we needed a good period of time to replenish our stocks of food so that we could concentrate on raising new brood. Workers began to get nervous, they could sense the danger about to arise. I got the first reports of rain from Mantriba. She told me that the rains had begun, but that they were different than usual. These were heavy rains. Droplets of water falling from the sky that were so heavy they could kill our workers outright. I gave the order for the workers to be withdrawn into the depths of the nest. Here I thought we would be safe.
Hours and hours passed and then the water began to seep through the walls where it began to collect beneath us. We had to move onto the ceilings of our tunnels to keep ourselves and our eggs dry. This was getting dangerous, the tunnels were in danger of flooding. Being a Queen I had to worry about the long term survival of the nest. Do I save us remaining here in this chamber, and leave the rest to their fate, or do I hold out here and hope that it is all okay. I made the decision. I ordered my personal helpers to begin tunnelling upwards towards the surface. They worked fast, and even I began to help move the earth to make the new tunnel. We dug and dug, and as we dug, we filled in the hole behind us to dam the water that followed until eventually we broke surface where we found that rain had stopped for a moment.
We all moved quickly overground in search of new cover. It was bright for me, even in the gloom of this cloudy day, after all, it was the first time I had seen daylight in 4 years. We quickly found a large stone slab which I knew was a place where we would be safe, so I ordered the workers to burrow beneath it. Again we worked hard to create a small burrow for us all to retreat to, and after a small time digging again we were thankfully all inside. We closed the hole behind us, and there in the dark and damp of the burrow, it slowly dawned on us that many of our sisters, my daughters, were now trapped in the nest, the nest that had been flooding when we left it. The rains continued to fall hard just as our mood continued to lessen.
After what seemed like an eternity the rains stopped and the sun returned to the sky. The workers finally were able to venture into the undergrowth once more, back to the old nest they went, where the news was not good. It was almost completely destroyed by the flood. Many tunnels had completely collapsed, and those that hadn't were full of water. My workers that came with me dug into the remains of the old nest and found only 20 worker sisters, and 10 eggs and larvae - They were led to their new home with me under the slab of stone.
Our total number was now a mere 50 with only 35 larvae. My once great colony had suffered a major disaster. A disaster that would thankfully, never be repeated. I decided to remain under the stone slab that we hid beneath now. I didn't want to go back to the old nest. Too many bad things had happened there. This stone slab offered us a different kind of protection, no matter how hard the rain fell, it could not penetrate through to our tunnels and chambers, yet, it was also surprisingly warm when the sun shown on it. Our new home was what I wish I had found originally when I first set up nest four years previously.
During the year that followed, times got better, and the colony became strong again. That was until, as a queen, I faced my final test of strength. But that is a story for another day...