Hello, everyone! First of all, you should know that English is not my first language (I'm Italian) so most likely there will be grammar mistakes (maybe there are mistakes in this sentence, too XD), I'm trying my best but I can't be perfect, so if you see a mistake, please let me know and I'll correct it.
I'd like to thank the user Ninxi who is the co-writer of this story.
Ice Age belongs to Blue Sky Studios.
Enjoy! :D
20,000 years ago – Yukon, Canada
One morning, inside a cave, a female brown-haired woolly mammoth was sleeping. However, she looked very agitated and kept tossing and turning, while tears were rolling down her cheeks.
"It should have been you!"
"It was all your fault!"
"You don't deserve someone who loves you anymore!"
"Leave right now!"
These voices were echoing in her head, making her situation even worse.
"No!" She screamed, waking up startled. Then, the mammoth realized where she was and, little by little, wheezed less and less.
"It was just a dream … it was just a dream." She kept telling herself, while she wiped her tears with her trunk.
When she was calm enough, the pachyderm stood up, revealing that she had an above-average height of ten feet, and headed towards the mouth of the cave. Before she could even get out of there, she heard many voices coming from outside.
As soon as she came out, she noticed hundreds and hundreds of mammals of several species. They were apparently migrating, going down a tundra plain, with snow on some parts.
There were mainly steppe bisons and Yukon horses, but also some reindeer.
"Been a while since I saw such a great migration." The mammoth sighed, immersed in memories, not noticing she was still walking.
"Watch your step, giant lady!" A voice yelled angrily. She looked down, seeing a small herd of horses. The stallion was the one that talked.
"Don't be rude, Eddie." One of the mares scolded him.
"If you're looking for the other mammoths, they've already left." The other mare explained.
Those words someway shocked her, who started wheezing. It didn't go unnoticed by the horses, who looked at her worried and confused.
"Are you okay?" The only foal, a male, asked innocently.
Before anyone could see that coming, the mammoth turned in the blink of an eye.
"What the-" Eddie couldn't finish the sentence because he was forced to drop to the ground not to be hit by her tusks, and so did the mares. The pachyderm started walking in the opposite direction of the migration.
Right after that, a few reindeer narrowly avoided the big mammal and "roared" at her in annoyance before picking up the pace, replaced by several irritated voices from bisons and horses.
"Are you nuts?"
"Get out of the way!" An adolescent male bison, in a bachelor herd, yelled.
"There's a migration going on here!" Another young bull added.
"What's wrong with you?"
Meanwhile, the foal, confused by all his family members lying on the ground, comically got down too.
Not far away, an Arctic ground squirrel with a beige pelt and his mouth stuffed with food for hibernation was looking for a burrow to hibernate in.
After a few seconds, he finally found it, and quickly reached the hole. But when the rodent got inside, a strange noise interrupted him. He walked back scared, and turned to see an American badger.
The squirrel realized that he couldn't escape, being in the burrow with his lower half; all he could do was stare into the badger's dark menacing eyes.
The carnivore opened its mouth, showing his sharp teeth, and growled, ready to end the life of the small mammal. The rodent screamed in fear, and all his food poured out of his mouth.
But miraculously, and strangely, the badger started moving back, and quickly ran away. The squirrel got confused, but then he heard footsteps behind him.
When he turned, he saw a male giant short-faced bear, with light yellow fur, and immediately passed out from fear, hitting the ground. He wandered by the squirrel curiously, sniffing him.
"Huh, he fell asleep." The bear observed, talking with a lisp, not realizing what actually happened to the squirrel.
The squirrel made no movement as the bear nudged him.
"Hmm, I guess I'll take you. Maybe we could be friends. We're both so lonely! You look so scared in your sleep... so rattled. A rattled squirrel. I should call you... squirrel rattle? No. Scrattle? Nah. Scrat? I like that! Scrat."
The bear put the squirrel gently on his back and began walking again.
"You might think it's strange that a bear is looking for friends." He explained, like the rodent was conscious, continuing "Well, the truth's that my mother and my siblings abandoned me when I was a kid."
"Since then, I've always wanted to find someone who cared about me." The bear sighed sadly.
"Sidney" A creepy girl voice yelled.
"But not that someone." He shivered.
"Sidney?" The one who talked became visible. It was a female short-faced faced bear with brown hair.
He looked around, needing a way out, but there was nothing. He had no choice but to meet her.
"You teach a lady raised by speechless wolves how to talk, and she suddenly falls in love with you because they are monogamous!" The he-bear muttered, disgusted.
"Sidney!" She exclaimed joyfully, noticing him. She started running towards the male and reached him in a few seconds.
"Hi, Sylvia." He told her, trying not to show his discomfort.
"I knew you'd have waited for me!" She said happily.
"Um, er…" Sidney didn't know how to get out of that awkward situation. He was slowly backing away, when Scrat, still unconscious, fell from his back.
"Great! You've brought me breakfast." Sylvia was about to eat the squirrel in one bite, but Sid was able to grab him away from her just in time.
"Stop! This is my friend, Scrat, not a meal!" He explained, and said, with a look of false sadness "I guess you wouldn't like to stay with a vegetarian."
"No, on the contrary, I love how you care about every single creature." She told him with admiration.
"Obviously." Sidney muttered, rolling his eyes.
"So, shall we migrate?" She asked.
"Huh, well…" He got an idea after seeing a cave "I actually decide to hibernate this year, I mean, brown bears do it, why can't I?"
He quickly entered it, but Sylvia followed him and within seconds she was out again, dragging the male by his right leg.
"Because you and me are short-faced bears." She said a little upset.
Sidney, sighing, looked at Scrat, who he was holding, and had a brainwave.
"All right, Sylvia, I changed my mind." He told her, standing up "You can eat the squirrel."
"Really?" She asked incredulous.
"Yes! But only if you can find him." He replied, getting ready to throw Scrat in the air. The she-bear started shaking her tail and hopping; after all, she was raised by wolves.
"One…two…three!" Sidney exclaimed, and apparently made the throw. She ran away at full speed.
"I'm a genius!" He laughed, showing that he still had Scrat, and he just pretended to throw the rodent, so Sylvia would have never found him.
"We'd better split." He said, and ran away in the opposite direction, using only three legs to hold his friend with his right front paw.
A male American scimitar cat growled deeply as he stared at his brother. Both the cats had orange fur and hazel eyes, but the second one was less muscular.
From behind him, he heard voices.
"Soto!" A high voice called "I'm here, it's me, Keke!"
"I know." Soto hissed in reply.
"Jenny." Keke whispered "Tell him you're here."
"I'm here too, handsome!" A deeper voice yelled.
Two orange scimitar cats came into Soto's sight. Keke was short and skinny and Jenny was overweight and had low endurance. "Brother." A cat whispered gently.
"What is it, Diego?" Soto mused, using a kinder voice around his little brother.
"Do you get why those two are here?"
"I don't know. It's a miracle Keke even survived, being as small and useless as she is, and Jenny is so overweight and no help! Why couldn't any of the good females have survived the attack?" Soto sighed, upset.
"Can't they hear you?" Diego asked, feeling a little guilty about Keke and Jenny.
"No. Look at them." Soto growled, pointing at them as they were running in fear from a flying bug, and continued "We were one of the last chances to prevent scimitars' extinction, and we can't anymore. And it's all because the humans killed all our females, except the two who'd give us helpless small or overweight complaining cubs."
Diego flattened his ears.
"We're going to get revenge, right?"
"Yes, why wouldn't we?" Soto hissed.
"How, exactly?" Diego asked quietly.
"We're going to kidnap the chief's baby and kill it in front of him." Soto explained "He destroyed our chances to have cubs that would have saved our species, let's make him experience what we're going through."
"I like the sound of that." Diego smirked.
"Plus, it's the best we can do now that we can't afford too many casualties." The older male commanded, glancing over to Keke and Jenny playing with plants "Even though we all want certain cats to be in water."
"You're fat!" Keke shouted.
"Oh, well at least I don't look like an unhealthy squirrel!" Jenny hissed.
"Too far!" Keke gasped.
"Diego, can I trust you with bringing us the baby while we create a distraction?" Soto smiled.
"You can trust me." Diego grinned.
"Good." His brother smirked maliciously.
Author's note
This story surely needs some explanation. I wanted it to be as realistic as possible, putting together real Ice Age animals, that lived in the same place at the same time.
About the time, in the final scene of the first movie, where Scrat ends up in a tropical island, it says "20,000 years later". I assumed that the scene was meant to take place in the present day, putting the rest of the film at 20,000 years ago.
The continent where most of the animal and plant species that featured in the movie could have met in real life is the North America, so I thought that the story should have took place there. The humans are the only absolutely necessary species, and the only places in North America where humans probably lived 20,000 years ago are Yukon and Alaska. Most of the fossil records I found online of animals of that part of the world are from Yukon, so I chose it as the location of the story.
I replaced:
- the saber-toothed tiger with the scimitar cat because the former never reached Yukon or Alaska.
- the ground sloth with the giant short-faced bear because, even if the former reached Yukon and Alaska, it went extinct there about 75,000 years ago.
- the saber-toothed squirrel with the Arctic ground squirrel because the former is a fictional species.
I used:
- the American badger because two fossils have been found, dating respectively 37,000 and 15,000 years ago. It is unknown whether it reached Yukon in two different moments (since both the dates represent times when the climate was warmer), or lived there from 37 to 15,000 years ago. In my opinion, since the badger is the only animal that could have preyed frequently on the Arctic ground squirrel, limitating its population, it inhabited Yukon in that time range.
- the woolly mammoth, the steppe bison, the reindeer, the Yukon horse, the giant short-faced bear, the American scimitar cat and the Arctic ground squirrel because they inhabited Yukon 20,000 years ago.
Something that probably almost all films never cared about is what kind of social structure and mating system the animals had:
- Mammoth bulls, like elephant bulls, were solitary, so Manny couldn't have been shocked by the death of his family. Instead, mammoth cows lived in large herds and raised the calves, so I thought the best thing to do was to make the character a female.
- Sid had to be abandoned when he was a kid and Sylvia had to be raised by wolves because short-faced bears were, like modern bears, solitary and not monogamous. If you don't know who Sylvia is, she is a deleted character that was planned to appear in the first movie, as a female sloth who was in love with Sid.
- Diego and Soto are the only males of the pack because scimitar cats likely had the same social structure of modern lions, with packs composed by few males, many females and cubs. About the other members of the pack that featured in the first movie, Oscar is absent, while Zeke and Lenny have been made females, Keke and Jenny, precisely.
I hope it gave clarity.
This is the first chapter, I hope you enjoyed it!
I really want to know what you think, and I'm open to suggestions, so please review.
