The Butterfly Effect

A fan fiction by Tarashima

Chapter 6 – A phenomenon that no on truly understands…

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Somehow we must've fallen asleep on the shelf; I woke up when the light struck me through the eyelids. Carefully I opened my eyes and realized that I was lying beside Buck with my arm over his chest, as he slept like he'd at the first camp we made and was lightly snoring. My heart started to beat faster and so loud I thought it would awake him. Careful and soundless I took away my arm and crawled to the edge of the shelf. There, I stood up and stretched my back, and yawning checking out the valley. In front of me, I could see a landscape of small trees and large bushes, creating a field of different kinds of greens. It was definitively not a rough terrain.

Suddenly, I heard a roar, but it wasn't as relentless as Rudy's were. And when I looked at my right side, I could see a sharp-toothed dinosaur in the distant, the biggest one I'd seen so far.

"Buck?" I asked to the weasel behind me.

"Hm?" he answered newly awakened.

"Do you think we'll meet that one today?"

Buck crawled to the edge, and stood with his left knee in front of him, resting his elbows on it and studied the dinosaur far away.

"Maybe, but I know that dinosaur, so if she would try something, I'll remind her of that"

It sounded mystical, but before I had the chance to ask him about it, he'd disappeared down the pillar. I followed and realized how much more flexible I'd become during these few days. Maybe Buck was right when he'd said that he hadn't noticed my clumsiness. The skeptical face he'd worn yesterday came back for my inner sight and I could hear his voice inside my head:

Are ya really that clumsy ya say that ya are all the time?

And with my lost phobia of water in mind, it all came clear to me. During these three days, I hadn't got one single teasing comment of my clumsiness; it was as it had disappeared as soon as no one mentioned it. And Buck had definitively not commented it; he doubted it.

The only thing he'd said was that I wasn't that experienced, but that was only a truth that could be improved, nothing more.

Back on the ground, Buck had started to walk, and I followed him. But inside my chest, doubt had started to grow. Was it really worth all the effort to get myself back to my ordinary life?

We'd been walking a while when I asked Buck about the dinosaur we'd seen earlier, and how he could know her.

"She's the mother of three young rats fooling around here, practicing pranks whenever they can, but they usually more active closer to Lava Falls"

"Okay, but how do you know her?" I asked again, laying some extra tone at how.

He gave me a cunning smile.

"Let's just say we have something in common"

And that was the end of the conversation, and he turned forward continuing the walking. I tried to keep myself as close to him as were possible, just in case.

After awhile, I could suddenly hear a scary noise behind me. I tapped Buck on his shoulder.

"There's something really intimidating behind me, right?" I asked in a low voice.

He didn't say anything, and I couldn't read an answer from the expression in his face either. I turned around and saw three miniatures of the dinosaur we'd seen earlier.

"Watch out, I bet she's close" Buck whispered in my ear. Then, he stepped forward to one of the dino-miniatures and scratched it on its nose.

"Yeah, ya remember me, don't ya? I saved your floppy green mother from the flames for some time ago" he said

The kids giggled and it didn't seem like they wanted to eat any of us. I stared at him in confusion.

"What floppy green mother?"

"Oh, just a sloth I saved from the lava falls; he adopted them when they still were eggs, believing they'd been abandoned. He became their sort of surrogate-mother for about a day"

My experience with sloths weren't sky high, but I knew that if they could avoid trouble of any kind, they would do anything to succeed with it.

"And how could a sloth find three dinosaur eggs?" I asked skeptically

""Well, I didn't quite get that part of the story, but I can assure ya that they did see him as their mother"

He gave me smile, like he'd just remembered something funny and I guessed that could also be quite a story to hear. But before I could ask, he'd fixed his eye on a spot behind me in the air above.

"Stay absolutely still, momma's coming" he said in a lowered voice.

I stiffed and stood perfectly still, as the dino-miniatures ran passed me, giggling and cooing. I hardly dared to breathe.

Suddenly, I felt shakings in the ground, the shakings of something big walking. The trembling stopped right behind me and from above I could feel the breath from a gigantic mouth, lowly roaring.

Buck pointed his knife at Momma.

"Hello there, momma, you remember me, don't ya?"

Something snarled above me, but I didn't dare to move yet.

"Let her go, she's with me"

A snort was heard, and then I could feel how something pushed me in the back, making me fell to the ground. Surprised I turned around and finally dared to take a watch at Momma as she turned around and walked away. When I saw how big she was, I was glad that I hadn't turned around before.

Buck came up and helped me up, smiling one of his big smiles. Finally I could breathe again.

"Well, how was that?" I asked

"Absolutely perfect" he said, patted me on the shoulder and then continued with the walking.

I shook myself a little, feeling rather proud of myself and how good I'd been dealing with the situation.

"So… what do you two have in common?" I asked him, now walking by his side.

He grinned.

"She's the only reptile in this valley that'd ever succeeded in defeating Rudy, except for me"

"Is he bigger than she is?"

"Oh, ya have no idea" Buck said, and I didn't dare to ask anymore questions about his foe.

The day went by without any more delays or distractive meetings with other dinosaurs, and at the end of the day, we could finally set camp up in a large tree, growing at the riverside of a stream. Buck climbed up and I followed, feeling more and more confident in myself and my own abilities. I'd never dreamed of being able to climb in trees before, but here I was, realizing once again that this wasn't hard either.

We reached a branch were large red fruits grew in the foliage. Buck sliced off one of them, cut it into halves and gave me on of them as he started to eat on the other one. Carefully I smelled on the juicy fruit, but couldn't smell anything else but soft sweetness so I took a suspicious chew on it. The sweet taste wasn't that different from the nectar I'd been drinking yesterday, but the too syrupy liquid was now exchanged into a more solid pulp that stilled both the hunger and the thirstiness.

When we were done eating I threw the empty fruit shell to the ground and sighed.

"That was truly delicious" I said totally satisfied.

"Never been eating fruits before?" Buck said smirking.

"Not these kinds of fruits, the ones above are pretty sour" I explained to him.

A bittersweet edge came across his smile, and he looked up at the roof above us.

"I don't remember what I used to eat up there"

His words made me realized I hadn't asked about his earlier life, even if I'd been wondering about it when we first met.

"How long have you really been down here?"

"So long it feels like up to me"

"Do you remember anything from your earlier life?"

He thought for a second or two before he gave me an answer.

"Nope, just fragments that doesn't make any sense in my head"

I tried to imagine what it could be like, living without memories. Not being able to remember your childhood, not if you had a family that missed you.

Family.

"Don't you remember if you had a family up there?"

"I've must have, but like I said; I only remember fragments and no faces or voices"

Filled with compassion I asked:

"Haven't you felt alone?"

The question seemed to make him astonished.

"Well, I…" he began but lost the thread.

He looked up into my eyes, and then I saw the shimmering of something different again. It made me slightly confused, and not only about his strange gaze, but also over the unknown feelings that rushed through me in that very moment.

I turned away my face. The moment felt rather awkward and all my strange emotions made me feeling very uneasy.

The silence lasted for a while, and then Buck broke it.

"Why don't ya tell me something?"

I looked at him. The different shimmering in his eye was gone again and now he was smiling, yet in a way that reminded me of my twin brothers when they wanted to apologize for something. I felt shy all of a sudden.

"Like what?"

"Anything, maybe about your life above" he said, trying to encourage me.

"I'm not sure if there's so much to tell"

"Maybe how ya ended up down here?"

I sighed; he didn't seem to give up the subject. In a tentative way, I started to tell him about my family and the life I used to live in the world of ice, about my clumsiness and about my wish of obtain recognition from the rest of my family, especially my dad. I told him about the fishing I was about to make when I tripped and fell through the ice.

Buck listened attentive at my story, and only interrupted to ask questions. I finished the story with the aggressive dinosaur I'd met at the cave, the one who'd almost eaten me.

"Lucky for me that you were around, otherwise I would've been in the stomach of a dino right now" I said thankfully. He smiled at me.

"You're welcome, mate"

The conversation paused.

"Thanks" I said after a while, and he turned towards me with an awry smile.

"Ya thank me a lot, what is it for this time?"

"For… everything, I've had the adventure of my life and become a whole other person thanks to you"

"I hope that's a good thing"

"It is"

I was beginning to feel the awkwardness get back to us, so I leaned back down to the ground and stared up in the foliage. Fragments of the last few days' events passed in my mind and I realized that I'd begin to enjoy this life, even if it contained mortal peril. More than ever, I felt strongly in my heart that I didn't really want to go home. But perhaps things would change now, as I had grown into something more secure and with genuine beliefs in myself. But if my insecurity only was the result of others teasing comments, wouldn't that destroy my self-esteem piece by piece until nothing was left?

I had to ask, even if I was afraid of the answer.

"When do we arrive?"

I didn't receive an answer so I lifted myself with up to half sitting position on my elbows, and looked after Buck. He had moved to a standing position at the edge of the branch, with his knife in a firm grip leaning on the shoulder and stared out in the silence.

I rose on to my feet and walked on to him, and was about to repeat my question when he answered.

"You'll be home tomorrow"

His words sank deep into me; it was definitively not the answer I'd wanted. I didn't want to lose the freedom I'd tasted down here, and I didn't want to return to the stingy commentaries about me and my features. But most of all, I didn't want to lose Buck.

The thought of never meeting him again hurt me more than any other. I didn't want to leave him alone here; I didn't want to be alone again. Of course I would have my family, but how often didn't I feel alone amongst them?

I'd never felt alone with Buck.

A new kind of panic started to rise within me. And before I could control myself, I had thrown my arms round him in a tight embrace. He didn't stiff this time, but didn't make an effort of embracing me back.

.

"I…I will miss you" I said, feeling tears pushing from behind my eyelids, but I blinked them away.

Buck didn't answer. Instead, he gentle released my grip around him, looked me into the eyes with his own filled with distress. Then, he let go of his grip around my hands and walked away.

"I'm sorry…" was all he had to say before he climbed down the tree and walked away.

I looked after him with teary eyes. I was filled with a suffering sadness I'd never felt before but now knew what it was.

I had for the first time in my life fallen in love. I was deeply in love with this weasel, which I would have to leave tomorrow, never to meet again.

I lifted my hands to my eyes and fell down on the branch, silently crying out my agony. And I thought that if this truly was how love felt, I wasn't sure if I ever wanted to feel it again.

End of chapter 6

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