Drabbles
Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™.
1) Fire
There are limits to human endurance, at least in theory and most likely in practice as well. After weeks, months and years of travelling through the Palaeozoic, the Mesozoic, and the Cainozoic (and not even in that order!), Abby Maitland was tired, dead tired. If only she didn't break up with Connor back in the Cretaceous, she wouldn't be alone during all those travels. But break up they did, and now, now...
Slowly, Abby leaned back against a giant Cretaceous sequoia tree and closed her eyes. In front of her, a small fire that she had made was blazing merrily, and Abby hoped that it would keep the predators away. Or not, for truly, she was almost too tired to care. Within moments, Abby Maitland – looking too old and too weary for someone in the early twenties was asleep, dead to the world.
2) Frost
"That is the last time that I follow Sarah's lead," Becker's breath spread out and crystallized in the frosty mountain air right before his eyes. "Helen's portable device emits a homing signal, all that we have to do is to follow it – well, I have followed it, and where is it now?"
There was no reply to Becker's rather rhetorical question, save for the wind howling down the snowbound mountain slopes. "No, I thought not," Becker said flatly. "And another thing – I was supposed to end up in the late Jurassic time period, so what's with all the snow and frost? I thought that it was supposed to be warm?"
There was a crack, and a small ginkgo-like tree, unable to bear the weight of ice and snow any longer, collapsed, almost burying Becker under its weight, save for his own reactions. "I hate my life," Becker said quietly, "I really hate my life."
3) Forest
Caroline Steele couldn't believe her eyes – it has been months, maybe even a year or so since her disastrous involvement in Oliver Leek's crazy scheme, and all that time she was able to work in the ARC as an auxiliary member, without getting into any situations concerning the time anomalies proper – and now her stroke of luck has come to an abrupt end.
"Miss, stay back please," the senior soldier slash watchman (in Captain Becker's absence), "we're professionals, we know what to do-"
"That's true, you are, and I am not," Caroline agreed easily, "but even I – after just flipping through a couple of dinosaur books – can see that you may be doing it wrong: it's the other end of the dinosaur that you should be worrying about."
"Say what-" the solider stopped talking, as the rest of the stegosaurus emerged from the time anomaly – namely the tail armed with the spikes long and sharp enough to kill a man as easily as a man would kill an insect. "Oh. Crap."
4) Jungle
Connor Temple was lost. Connor Temple was hopelessly lost. Connor Temple was hopelessly lost in the Carboniferous time period and had no idea as how to be found.
It was probably Abby's fault, Connor reckoned. He wasn't sure how, he wasn't even sure any longer as to why he and Abby had fought in the first place, but he was sure that it was Abby's fault, for how could it be otherwise? He would bend backwards for Abby, even when she was wrong (like the time they had to rescue Jack on their own, without any backup), so however else they had separated, it wasn't by his initiative. Therefore-
Abruptly, Connor stopped. A series of tracks – human tracks – were imprinted in the soft, muddy soil of the Carboniferous world. This meant – another time traveller, the end of loneliness! Eagerly, Connor sprinted along the trail... and stopped at the edge of some freshwater body, where a time anomaly was twinkling some distance away, attracting Connor... as well as several man-shaped, crocodile-like Carboniferous amphibians, carnivores, no doubt.
"Oh dear," Connor groaned, "Life just can't give me a break, can it?"
The amphibians just stared back at him, silently.
5) Steppe
Danny Quinn couldn't believe his eyes. After all of his works of virtue (to wit, preventing Helen from killing off the ancestors of humans), karma has decided to send him via time anomaly... definitely not back to his time, or even back to Abby and Connor. Instead, the time anomaly has deposited him someplace else, somewhere that he clearly didn't know.
Unexpectedly, Danny heard some grunting noises behind him, and whirled around, expecting, hopefully, a herd of prehistoric deer, or even woolly rhinos, any sort of animal, really, that would imply that he was on the right track. Instead, however, he saw a herd of some strange sail-backed plant-eating reptiles that actually looked too primitive and relatively small to be dinosaurs.
Groaning, Danny just sat down at the place where he stood. "Will I never find Abby and Connor and come back to the ARC?" he spoke rhetorically into an empty space. A nearby edaphosaurus, hearing it, just grunted sympathetically and kept on grazing.
6) Desert
Slowly, Helen opened her eyes. A clone – a chronological clone – of hers was dead, and she was alive. Good.
Well, relatively good, because the feedback from that clone still hurt like a-
A time anomaly appearing abruptly cut-off Helen's up-and-coming rant. Tentatively, Helen took a sniff. The air coming from the other side of the time anomaly smelled strongly like sea water that was beginning to trickle through the time anomaly by itself, bringing with it a couple of sea scorpions, each one the size of a small dog.
As Helen's ears caught up with her nose, she could hear the quickly deepening sound of water flowing in her direction-
"Oh, Hell no," Helen muttered and fled away from the time anomaly, even as on its other side the sea tide flowed upwards, bringing more sea water and sea scorpions into the present...
7) Fresh water
"So, this is the time anomaly through which Temple has returned?" James Lester enquired of Sarah Page.
"Yes," the ex-Egyptologist nodded eagerly, pointing back towards it. "And he didn't return alone, either."
"Oh? What else did he bring?" James asked, politely curious.
"Water - fresh-water – saturated clothes and that," Sarah pointed to the now-captured giant dragonfly that looked almost as big as a golden eagle and seemed to be somewhat worse to wear.
"Oh joy," James said unenthusiastically – he may not have had the same insect phobia as Sarah, but giant insects were never good test subjects in his opinion. "Just send it back and close the portal."
"Will do," Sarah nodded a bit too eagerly.
8) Air
Jenny Lewis just stood in a forest of the late Jurassic, breathing in the clean, unpolluted, prehistoric air. To be more precise, she was standing on a tree branch of a giant tree that grew in a forest of the late Jurassic, breathing in.
"If only Nick could see this," she said wistfully. The next moment an archaeopteryx, flying by, deposited a smelly surprise on her shoe.
"Okay," Jenny admitted, "maybe not that, but still..."
All around her, the prehistoric silence reigned.
9) Island
"I cannot believe that I am doing this, I honestly can't," Sarah Page muttered to herself, but didn't bulge.
Sarah stood in a small clearing, overgrown with some prehistoric, probably Carboniferous ferns, that was empty, uninhabited save for herself, and felt really proud of herself: for the first time she came to work at the ARC, she had travelled through a time anomaly, and-
Something ominously rustled in the ferns, causing Sarah to get back to earth:
"And now, it's time for me to get back and tell the tale," she spoke to herself one more time and fled back to the time anomaly (manifested by the ARC).
End