The coals of a dead fire clung to life, glittering rubies slowly becoming obscured in charcoal colored ash. However their light was no longer needed as early morning sun was replacing it as a source of light. The air was still, but not muggy or humid yet. It was rather cool without being chilly, and was quite warm in the sun.
A lone dilo sat perched on a rock, which had a shaft of light beaming down on it almost majestically. Its orange frill and crests shone in the morning light, and the red patches of it's face were cast a bright crimson. Its tail and frill twitched occasionally, but otherwise it remained motionless until it turned it's head to look behind it, and snorted when it saw that its partner was still sleeping. It sighed in a manner only a dinosaur could and turned back, resuming its basking in the sun.
Several minutes later, the dilo jumped to it's feet, wheeling around at what it was sure was the sound of its partner awakening, but was sorely disappointed. He had merely rolled over and grumbled in his sleep, then went back to sleeping as soundly as before. The dilo hopped off its rock and walked the few feet to him, still keeping a little distance between himself and the burning, crackling coals.
He nudged the the sleeping form of the questionably supernatural mammal, then jumped back, but he didn't respond or even shift in his slumber. Getting more frustrated and impatient, the dilo hooted and growled loudly, and received a few upset groans and a lazily slap to the nose that was more of an open handed tap than anything. The dilo shook his head indignantly and rubbed his nose with his claws. Once he was sure he hadn't taken any injury or had anything wiped on his face, he grabbed the loose white hide around its waist with its teeth and worried it, leaving large punctures and gashes in it.
I woke to the feeling of something pulling on my side and looked down to see a dinosaur pulling on my shorts with vicious growls of aggression. I scream in panic and kick out with my legs and flail my arms. I shove it off of me and grab my half spear. I prepare to throw my weapon before realizing its the crested dinosaur, who was priming to spit its venom to defend itself from me. I drop the spear and hold up my hands palms out, showing it there's no need for him to spit his deadly payload at me. He barks and shakes his head, scowling at me.
He struts over to the trickle of water and takes a drink, then threshes his head back and forth like a bird in a birdbath, washing any traces of blood or bits of meat from his lips or between his teeth. Taking his example, I go upstream from him and do the same, though in a less birdlike fashion. While I'm at it, I splash some of the cold water on myself to wash of the dirt that had stuck itself to me in my sleep. I shivered and flinched at how cold it was, not expecting the how frigid it was. In reality it was probably rather warm but considerably colder than the air which made it seem even cooler in contrast.
Feeling hungry, I hacked up a small patch of particularly tall grass and threw it on the hot coals, which promptly roared to life into a proud albeit small fire. I tossed the last of my branches onto it as well to get the sweltering heat I needed to cook. Having already cooked the meat of value from the tiny dinosaurs, I shaved off a good deal of thin slices from the mostly eaten parasaur chunk.
Deciding to try something different, I looked around for a flattish rock and eventually found one in the form of a large slab of what I was pretty sure was slate. I rinsed all the sand and mud off for in the water as my crested companion sat waiting impatiently for me to cook his meal, and stop fiddling with rocks and mud. Once I was finished there, I lay the strips out on the face of it. Then, I carefully set it halfway on the fire, the strips of raw meat on the half of the stone over the coals.
The meat sizzles from the intense heat and gives off an even better smell than when I had cooked them over the open flame. The crested therapod sniffs the air and perks up, licking his lips hungrily in anticipation. He fidgets, watching as I flip over each piece with my sharp stone. The fat is melting out of it, giving an appearance quite like that of pork bacon. One of the pieces starts becoming crispy and I drag the stone off the fire carefully. The dino nearly pounces on the stone, but refrained from it with how a misplaced jump could land him directly in a pile of burning coals and twigs.
I waited for then to cool to the point where I was able to handle them without searing my fingers on contact. In that time, the impatient dinosaur has nearly had a fit waiting for it to be finished and was now laying in defeat on the ground groaning. I pass one of strips of parasaur bacon and it lands next to his nose. He snorts and whips his head back and forth, then notices the piece of food before him. He chirps and grabs it in his teeth. He swallows it whole, throwing his head back in the familiar birdlike manner. He pants and licks his lips hungrily, hooting at me, obviously wanting more.
I eat one myself, and I'm amazed at how much better it tastes. Eating healthy is for losers with no sense of taste. Frying stuff in grease is way better. My partner roars loudly, interrupting my moment of enjoyment. I scoop up roughly half of them and toss them to him. He's about to dig into it before realizing I've lumped several pieces together. He painstakingly pulls apart every slice and eats each one individually, while I cram several pieces in my mouth at once to eat more of it faster.
The picky dinosaur seems to scoff at my lack of effort to enjoy and savor the food, then goes back to pulling apart his lump with even more slow and deliberate movements. I chuckle to myself through a mouthful of the delicious bacon like meat. Rather bizarrely, though predictably, despite having a texture and appearance nearly identical to pork, it still tastes like poultry. It's odd to say the least. The flavor not matching my subconscious expectation even nearly is disconcerting and utterly bizarre. It's like biting into an apple, but instead of tasting like apple, it tastes like a pear or cheese or something completely different from what you know or think it should taste like.
I wash the grease off my hands and start piling handfuls of the sandy riverbed mud on my fire, not wanting to cause a forest fire by accident and roast myself later. The fire adamantly clings to life, but after a decent layer of silt is covering the entire thing, it finally goes out. A feww fading plumes of smoke rising from gaps and shallower parts of the mud layer are all that's left to attest to the once proud blaze.
After shoveling the mud and sand with my bare hands, I realize I've just completely undone the effect of washing my hands a few minutes before. I wash my hands off once more, and by the time I do that, the picky saurian has finally finished his breakfast and picked up all the scraps and eaten those too. He rubs his snout with his claws, attempting to remove the grease but only succeeding in transferring more from his hands to his face. He growls in frustration and tries it several more times, failing every time to actually remove the offending liquid fat. Finally he tries rubbing it off on the ground, which does remove a little, but replaces it with twice as much sand.
He screeches and shakes his head like a dog, then runs over and dunks his head in the water. He comes up sputtering and coughing, but his face is clear of all the debris and he looks glad of it despite having half drowned himself. He sneezes and watery snot comes out of his nose, lodging itself on his snout. I stick my tongue out at the grossness and he seems to share the sentiments. He snaps his head sideways and the snot goes flying, landing with an audible splat.
I bust out laughing, somehow finding a good deal of humor in it, though exhaustion and being half awake are the source of true comedy. It's far easier to laugh and to be humorous when you're barely managing to keep yourself awake The dino growls and hoots at me, flaring up his frill at my laughter. "Oh hush, you. I'm stressed and bruised up and half naked in the wilderness. Let me have this you indignant reptile."
In response he simply growls again and huffs, then turns and climbs onto the boulder he had been perched on earlier that morning. He sits with his back to me and grumbles to himself while preening his quills. I roll my eyes as the proud reptile pouts and pick up my untouched meat block and jabbed my sharp stone into it. I grab my half spear in my left, then think it over and switch it to my right hand and the bundled meat to my left hand.
Keeping on with my travels I set off down the riverbed, walking past the grumpy teal carnivore, who took notice a few moments later and follows after me. After walking for maybe ten minutes I realize that the twenty five foot wide stretch that we slept in was actually narrow compared to the rest of it. Currently we're walking in maybe double that, albeit the banks are a much gentler slope than the near ninety degree bank of the less wide part.
A pair of the tiny species of dinosaur from the night before are drinking from the shallow stream that runs through the much larger riverbed. They watch curiously and unafraid as we approach, only scattering when my short tempered acquaintance roared at them and opened his frill. Among the trees , some bizarre animals I didn't recognize crunched through the underbrush and browsed from the scrubby ferns.
They resembled massive furry turtles with long tails ending in mace like tips. With their tails included, they were probably almost eighteen feet long and the top of their shelled back were about six feet high. The crested dino looked wary of them and walked on the other side of me, and judging by the wicked spikes on its tail and its shoulders, they were deserving of his fear. Considering that the small theraopd had faced a carno, succeeded at not dying, then came back for round two, it would probably be wise wise to leave the currently docile animals we walked past them, they glanced in our direction and grunted, but otherwise ignored us entirely.
A few parasaurs foraged among the trees and brush or lay in the sandy mud, either enjoying the coolness of the mud or the warmth of the morning sun, I couldn't really tell which. They all turned to watch us as we walked by, but like the armadillo turtle creatures they didn't pay us much attention. Looking more closely at a few of them, I saw that some of them bore a good deal of scars. Most were just slightly .discolored spots or a differently textured bit of scales, but a few even had large shallow grooves running down their ribs or thighs or shoulders. They weren't very noticeable unless you looked for them, but there were at least five individuals that I could discern some sort of blemish on. The placement of some of the scars on one of them made it quite obvious that it had survived a run in with a carno, its teeth marks memorialized on the hadrosaurs hide.
Said hadrosaur was a dull grayish color, with a short magenta sail and beak, and light green mottling on its stomach. She would rear up on her back legs and observe the area and let out a honk, and all the others in the area would respond with a honk in return. She would seem to nod to herself, glance over at us to make sure we weren't up to anything malicious, then feed on the grass and shrubbery that grew thick on the edge of the riverbed for a minute or two, then repeat the process. She must be a matriarch or some other kind of herd leader.
Eventually we left the herd behind, who meandered at a slower pace than me and the carnivore trekked. A few of the more curious pterosaurs followed us for a while but eventually got bored with us and flew back to the parasaur herd. Eventually I got bored of this and decided to strike up conversation with my prehistoric partner. "Hey, buddy." He looks up at me in what wasn't quite surprise and gives a half bark. "Are you a boy, or are you a girl? Cause I don't know how to check a reptile and don't really want to."
He tilts his head and hoots a few times. "Alright then, how about how old are you?"
Obviously confused at what I'm saying, which probably sounds like gibberish to him, he hesitatingly growls.
"OK, that was rude, I get it. Sorry for asking. How about what's up with this place? How did I get here? You'd probably know. I met you first out here." He looks up at me silently, giving one of his glares. I stared back at him and we both stop walking without realizing. After several seconds he blinks and shakes his head, causing me to do the same. We both start walking again after realizing we weren't.
"Wow. That was... trippy. It's like you just glared so hard you saw my soul, that was just... seriously trippy." He seemed to think the same, shaking his head several times and growling. "You know, I just realized you don't have a name. Or do you?" He shakes his head again, and I take this as no though it probably didn't mean anything.
"Well then, let's see. You've got some really cool red colors, so how about... Red hand?" The dino snorts and rubs his snout. "Yeah, yeah, you're right, that's pretty dumb. Grump then, how do you like that?" He ignores me and continues rubbing it's snout, having just accepted that his partner was being vocal for some reason today. "Fine. Spitz maybe? Heh. Killer? You like that? I do." He continues ignoring me and has stopped rubbing his snout, now sniffing and observing our new surroundings. We apparently walked out of the riverbed at some point and are now tramping through a sparse stand of trees. A few of them are really tall pines, nearly twice as tall as the other trees. Small bushes that resembled actual bushes and not palm trees grew among them, though not thickly enough to hinder our movements.
The yet to be named therapod travelling with me starts looking around and growling under his breath. "What, do you not like it?" He snaps his head towards me and barks gruffly. I grip my spear a little tighter, noting how he's behaving more like the aggressive predator and less like the self important, prideful, and picky companion. He doesn't stop moving forward however, so I assume that whatever making him so on edge isn't in the immediate vicinity.
We must have entered another carnivore's territory or something. It would stand to reason that there are bigger things out here than just the carnotaurus from the plains . It would also stand to reason that there are other carnos out and about for a breeding population, as there's no way a lone individual can keep an entire ecosystem in check, let alone a species intact. Or maybe not, and that's the last living carno in existence. I doubt that though.
We continue forward, my partner leading with a cautious and combat ready stance. I part the bushes with my spear, idly noting that carrying around a bundle of raw meat likely doesn't improve our chances of going unnoticed. Despite the underbrush being scarce, our sight range is limited, the tree trunks themselves lining up and obscuring our view. Oddly enough, underneath the underlying paranoia and fear, I don't get that other sensory premonition of being watched. This place seems pretty still and quiet, almost unnaturally so. The calls and chirps of dinosaurs in the distance being barely whispers in the wind.
A shadow passes over us briefly and we both crouch down immediately and look to the sky. Another pterosaur flew high overhead, though this one was easily and obviously far larger than the ones we've seen so far. It lacked a long tail, but it seemed to have a crest on the back of its head. A pteranodon perhaps? My companion disregards it as soon as it disappears behind tree branches and keeps moving forward. I remain crouched for a moment, watching for it to pass overhead again.
The crested carnivore has gotten maybe fifteen feet before hooting at me, looking upset at me for dallying. I walk over to him and stand next to him, waiting for him to take the lead once more. He simply stands there, peering through the trees and occasionally glancing at me expectantly. "What?" He turns to me and hoots, then keeps looking around and sniffing the ground. I sigh and step around him, then keep going. He's probably upset at me and doesn't trust that I won't lag behind again. From somewhere behind me, he barks, and I turn back to look at him. "I'm walking pal, you can stop nagging me already."
I take another step forward and suddenly my world erupts into a blur of blue, green, and brown. I yelp and drop what's in my hands as I'm suddenly upside-down or sideways or some combination of the two. I hear the crested dinosaur shriek in alarm and I'm pretty sure I did too. I thrash against whatever has grabbed me before I realize I'm in a net. A net as in a net woven by hand by people. For most of this trek, I've been looking for people out here. I hadn't considered the fact that said person might be hostile and not so welcoming of a shirtless kid who apparently washed up on the shore of dinosaur land out of the blue. However I am not a sitting duck in here, I can cut myself free, because I am an advanced intellect with the advanced power of a sharp rock and broken spear. Both of which I just realized are laying on the ground below. So I am a sitting duck. Wonderful.
My therapod friend is down below, looking up at me with a glare that put even the soul piercing one to shame with the sheer level of unamusement packed behind it. I take a deep breath and reposition myself so I'm not face down and more comfortable. If I'm going to be hanging twenty feet off the ground for who knows how long, I might as well be somewhat comfortable. Down below, the crested dinosaur sniffs at my dropped chunk of parasaur meat before deciding against eating it, knowing I can make it much better with fire, one of my few redeeming qualities in his eyes.
I sit quietly in the net for several minutes, the carnivore pacing around and nosing through the bushes, occasionally letting out huff of annoyance. The rope, while being wove from rough fibers, was rather soft, or at least not rough and abrasive like twine. I shift my weight to one side and the net shifts too, but only slightly. I shift it the other way and the net swings about a foot in the other direction. I swing like that for maybe a minute or two before I slow to a stop. "Well this sucks." The dinosaur hoots down below as if to say "it's your own fault," and I agree with his implied statement. He stopped because he knew there was a trap ahead. I walked past him and directly into the trap, even after he tried to warn me. I feel so dumb right now.
I sit there for what feels like ages, and I'm pretty sure I fell asleep at some point. The sun moved from being about a third of the way up the sky to about directly overhead. Plus the crested dino has built an entire nest about the size of a dog bed out of grass and soft leaves and is currently curled up on it, sleeping soundly, reminding me of a dog or large housecat. A lone dragonfly buzzed by, pausing to look at me and to see if I was alive, but a couple wriggles convinced it I was still plenty alive and it zoomed off.
From the not so far distance a loud howl rings out, distinctly different from the saurian roars and hoots I've been hearing so far. The crested dinosaur jolts awake and is on his feet in instants, his frill flared and his venomous spit priming. He wheels around in circles directly below me, searching for the source. He's twitchy and jumpy, though he's not panicking, which is better than how I would deal with it if I wasn't hanging twenty feet from the ground.
From the brush, the biggest wolf I had ever seen burst into view. It was maybe a half a foot foot longer than the dino with its fluffy tail included and far, far bulkier with a broad muzzle, broader than any I had ever seen on a wolf before. My companion immediately launches a glob of thick venom and the titanic wolf flinches backwards. It hits the canine in the shoulder as a second shot is being primed. The wolf however is quicker to attack and lunges forward, knocking the dino off his feet and pinning him down with his jaws poised to bite in a single fluid movement. What actually frightens me though, more so than a giant wolf poised to rip apart my only friend out here, is the two figures atop it's back, staring up at me with a predatory gaze.
A/N:
MUHAHAHA! I did it! Two chapters in a week! With a cliff hanger! I honestly don't know if I'm either a cruel or a kind person right now. We got some dialog in this chapter aside from his sparce single lines so far.
I don't have much else to write here, so I hope you enjoyed the chapter, let me know what you thought of it and any horrible grammar errors, and have a great day, night, or whenever you're readings this. Or don't, it's entirely up to you and I can't tell you what to do.
Oh and one last thing, Grimlock1922, your review actually cemented the mount that the two unknowns rode up on. It was a toss up between the dire wolf, the anky, and a raptor until the very end and you helped me decide. Thanks a bunch for that.