Another chapter here folks, jam packed with emotion as they realise that this might not be as great an adventure as they once thought. Will they escape the claws of a Slasher and the tight patrols of the phoenix group, read and find out. :)
Thank you SO much Coolgal99, again. And to all the reviewers, it means a hell of a lot. :D
We collapse on the grass in a clearing puffed from out running a phoenix patrol; the sun had well and truly set. That's how we managed to escape the advancing rovers. We laugh at our close escape.
I take Skye's hand as we looked up at the stars shining like tiny eyes burning millions of miles away. My leg much better and my ribs weren't sore any more. I think I was much better, which is good living out here with a broken leg and three ribs wouldn't be a good thing.
The big moon shone an eerie light on the trees and all of a sudden, the jungle didn't seem so safe. I was getting worried in the distance I hear the far off sound of water rumbling, falling to a crash on the rocks below. I turn my head to look at Skye for reassurance and she does the same to me as I look into her eyes and they sparkled as the silver light danced on her face. I smile at the beautiful sight.
"I'm so glad I came with you," I squeeze her hand and look back at the stars.
"I'm glad you came too, this place would seem much bigger and scarier without you," She lets go of my hand and wriggles closer to me.
I turn to look at her and she kisses me sweetly I sit up and so does she. She presses into me, her fingers entwined in my hair, my hands around her waist. I hear a twig snap and I rip my lips from Skye leaving her wondering why.
"Josh..." She begins I put my finger up to make her stop talking. I stand up.
"Shhh..." I whisper I look over at the tree line in the direction the noise came from. I hear a growling noise and I see a massive shadow moving across the trees, then the shape jumps into the clearing. I'm frozen with shock.
"Slasher..." Skye whispers standing up slowly.
It's just sniffing around, I don't think it has noticed us. I push Skye behind me slowly but the Slasher sees the moment and flashes its head in our direction, we walk slowly backwards and it starts to stalk us.
"Josh, what do we do?" She asks terrified.
"I have an idea but we have to run ok," I whisper back still walking backwards the Slasher following.
"I hope you know what you're doing," Skye whispers, sounding even more scared than before.
We reach the cover of the trees and make a run for it. Hearing the smash of the Slasher following was sickening. We finally reached some tall trees.
"Climb, come on," I give Skye a boost up as high as I can; the Slasher bursts out in front of me before I have time to reach for the first branch.
It snarled at me, I swallow hard and wait for it to slice me in half with its tail.
"Keep climbing Skye," I yell up to her. I see a massive branch fall to my feet but I just look from the branch to the Slasher and back again.
"What are you waiting for, pick it up," Skye ordered and I snapped my head up. She must have thrown it.
I bend down slowly and pick it up, swinging it wildly in front of the Slashers face. I watch its head move in the same direction as I wave the log but suddenly without warning, it swipes its tail and tries to cut my head off and I try to defend myself with the branch. It just sliced it uselessly and almost in half. I throw it at its face and the stub connected with its head, knocking it to the ground.
I can see it wriggling frantically to get back to its feet. There is a bolder just a few metres away I grab it and smash it into the Slashers face knocking it unconscious as Skye jumps down.
"Nice job, now grab the rock..." She orders. I obediently obey since Skye was one to give the orders and take charge.
"Why?" I ask walking over and taking the boulder from its face, realising it was really sharp.
"Because we are going to take its tail barb, now, we have to be quick if we're going to get it before it wakes up, come on," I smile and pass the rock to Skye who starts to cut.
After what seems like hours and a lot of cutting and a pulling the sharp knife like shape is removed, there is a tiny blunt end that Skye holds as we run, as fast as we can.
"Nice thinking," I say once we are far enough away, then there is a stomach-turning roar far off and we guess the Slasher just realised it's got no more Slash. I smile at Skye as she bends down to sharpen the already sharp knife.
"What are we going to eat?" I ask her.
"I don't know, but Taylor took me OTG a few times and he told me what is poisonous and what isn't, we'll be able to find something, promise," She smiles up at me and runs the blade lightly across a tree trunk even without pressure she was able to reveal its sapwood.
"Ok," I say, I bend down to find a small thick branch had fallen from a tree. "Here Skye pass me that blade for a minute," I hold my hand out and she carefully places the blade in my palm.
I smile and start to dig out the wood, after a few minutes I have a cylinder like shape branch. I slid the blunt end into it and there we had a handle.
"Nice thinking Josh," I smiled, and handed back the knife.
"So now where do we go?" I ask taking Skye's other hand.
"I know a place, it's beautiful and no one I know has been there before, but I don't know where we are so I won't be able to find it," She looks at me sadly.
"I'm sure we will," I wrap my arm around her shoulder. "Ok, so think which way do you think it is?" I ask, looking at her as she thinks.
"I think its north," Skye was nodding. "Definitely north." She smiles.
"Alright, which way is north?" I ask. Skye stops walking moving away from me, letting my arm fall to my side, she walks around a tree.
"This way..." She points to her right; smiling as she walks back over to me I look at her a questioning look on my face.
"How do you tell?" I ask. I walk over to the tree how could a tree tell us which way was north.
"Look," She comes over to me and takes my hand she walks pulling me along to the right side of the tree. "Look, moss always grows on the north side of trees, if you don't believe me look at most of the trees and they should have moss in relatively the same place," I grin and walk over to another tree. She was right there was a patch of moss, on the right side of the tree, I walk to another the same again.
"If you don't believe me look, up," She says pointing once I'm back at her side. "That's the northern star, it points north, never moving, always there, leading north." She smiles, she was right there was the northern star, in the same direction as the moss.
"I believe you. Now lead the way to this almost unknown safe haven of yours," I smile Skye takes my hand she smiles back at me and we make our way through the jungle.
We arrived at this mystery place just as the sun began to rise.
"Alright in you go," Skye says lifting up a very thorny wild plant.
It reached high into the sky so no dinosaur could get in; it wrapped itself around the thick layer of trees that help it spiral upwards. The only way in was under so I wriggled under. Skye following.
It was nothing like I expected. I thought it would be overgrown and ugly but it was beautiful, soft lush green grass and there was a small stream coming to an end at a small waterfall leading to a large pond of water a willow tree giving a lovely amount of shade. As well as all of that, around the willow tree was a few big berry bushes packed full with dark red berries, to one side was a tree with lots of braches which would be perfect for a tower lookout, and in one corner was a small garden of blue wild flowers.
The trees caved over to form almost a dome shape but there was a big gap in the very centre letting light in there and also in between some of the trees were small gaps letting in slithers of light in, even the thorn bush had tiny blue flowers-matching the little garden-scattered all over the thorns and tiny green leaves too. Just like a perfect sanctuary.
"This is beautiful," I smile over at Skye who has seated herself on the grass.
"I know. I use to come here occasionally after I'd see my mum. It's so calming with the waterfall and shade of the trees; I'd just lie and think," She looked up into the trees the early morning light shone though the gaps making her glow like and angel.
"What did you think about?" I asked sitting next to her, she cut the tips of the grass of with the knife. She looked up at me sadly.
"Mum, but mostly you." She smiled laughing to herself. I smile back at her she looks down and fiddles with the knife.
"What about me did you think about?" I ask, she laughs again, still not making eye contact.
"Well, honestly I just thought about us being together and how it would never happen. A bit ironic hey. I thought about Kara and how once she arrived everything would change, umm, what else did I think about, oh yeah, our kiss and how amazing it was." She smiles, blushing.
Putting the knife down she finally looks over at me; I bring my hand to one of her crimson cheeks pulling her face to mine.
"Amazing..." I repeat, a second before I press my lips to hers, she brought her arms around my neck bringing us closer together. We stay like that for a moment I tangle her hair around my fingers, enjoying the privacy and freedom we now have. After a few minutes of peaceful kissing, we break apart.
"Wow, now that was better than amazing," She smiled.
I look up through the trees to see the sun has begun to roll into view.
"Now, let's make this place a little more like home shall we? Come on," Skye smiled picking up the knife and jumping up.
"What do you suggest?" I ask jumping up next to her.
"Ok, I'll pick some berries, they aren't poisonous, because I use to eat them" She grinned. "Why don't you go and get some twigs and branches and stuff for a fire..." She says running to the willow tree.
"What, outside?" I ask nervously.
"Yeah..." Skye picks one of the berries off. "Why, are you scared?" she looks over at me and smiles.
"No, but can I have the knife?" I ask, smiling slightly.
Of course I was scared!
"Please," I add.
"Sure," She threw me the knife and it landed just in front of me.
I pick it up and walk over to the small hole where we had crawled in. I crawl out and start to search for some sticks. My arms are almost full when I hear a noise, immediately I think Slasher or maybe Carno, but I hear motors of a few rovers and then I think phoenix I wriggle back through the entrance, which was difficult with my arms full of twigs and medium sized braches, but eventually I get in.
Skye has her hands full of berries; I drop my pile of wood just near the entrance and run over to her.
"What's wrong?" She asks scared and wide eyed, she placed her pile of dark red berries on the grass and looked up at me.
"There is a phoenix patrol, heading our way," I whisper. "Come with me," I grab Skye's hand and pull her to our lookout tree. "Climb," I whisper to her as I push her forward.
She does as I say and she climbs three quarters of the way up, I follow her, she stopped right where they was a big gap of no leaves. I'm gobsmacked by the beautiful view, rolling hills, trees everywhere, far off in the distance a herd of Brachiosaurs were grazing. I smile forgetting about the patrol until Skye elbows my arm and points in the direction of three rovers, which had just come into view they were a little way off but it was definitely them. "What do we do?" I ask.
"Nothing, they don't even know we are here, unless we make a lot of noise they'll never know." She smiles and begins to climb down after they are well and truly out of sight. "Coming?" she asks once she is on solid ground and realised I was still in the tree.
"Yeah, just a minute I want to look around, it's beautiful up here." I call back to her. "Here..." I throw down the knife in case she wanted to use it.
"Thanks," She calls back up to me.
I climb up some more until I'm as far as I can go before the tree with snap; I stand on a branch and look though the leaves. I look over the tree tops that stretched far over to the horizon. I look at the clear blue sky no a cloud up there, I can see half of the gates of Terra Nova and a few houses and I sigh as I wonder what was happening in there at the moment people just going about their daily business safe and secure. A tear falls down my cheek
"JOSH!" I hear Skye call. I sniff and whip the tear away.
"Yeah..." I call back.
"Come down, or I'll eat all the berries." She says sarcastically, I walk down placing my feet on each branch careful not to slip.
"Don't you dare!" I laugh as I jump to the ground and run over to her.
She leant against the willow tree a plate shape branch in her hand full with berries and I take a seat next to her my own branch plate with berries placed on the grass.
I see a pile of carved wood in front of us and I guess Skye had hollowed out two branches to make us plates, smart thinking. I smile as she pops another dark red berry in her mouth, pulling out a pip.
"What are these?" I ask, as I eat one, I crunch around the rock hard pip. "They're great." I look at Skye as she makes a pile of pips on her plate. I was about to put another in my mouth when I realise it looks like a love heart.
"When I was little mum use to get a berry that looked like this, she said it's called a cherry but I don't think they are the same as the ones mum would get she said they grew on trees. They use to have green stalks, I guess they must have evolved over the years," She pulls another pip from her mouth smiling.
"Cool," I smile. "Look it looks like a love heart." I show her the one I found, she smiled and took it from my fingers she looked at it for a second before she put it in her mouth.
"HEY!" I shout, smiling, I put my plate down and tickled Skye's side, she giggled.
"S-stop..." She says in-between giggles. I stop after a while, and smile to myself, putting another Cherry in my mouth. We looked at each other and I wrap my arm around her shoulder pulling her into me, she plants a small kiss on my cheek and I rest my head on hers as we eat our Cherries.
I hope you liked it. I thought I had to put in a beautiful sanctuary for them to call home, for a while a least. But will a dinosaur find them or maybe the phoenix group? Or will their happily ever after end in tragedy, keep a look out and you might find out, please review.
Thanks :) xoxo