"A what?" Hvitserk's voice was barely there. He might have been going into shock. Danika sure felt like she was going into shock.

"A Dinosaur." She could feel her heart pounding in her ears. It isn't bad enough that I Doctor Who myself, nooooooo, I had to Jurassic Park myself too! They were near the border of a small plain and a forest. Nestled between two mountains, the soft rush of water was not too far away.

"What is a dinosaur?" Hvitserk managed to ask while beginning to stagger backwards away from the oncoming reptiles. Not looking where he was going he tripped on a stone and fell. He seemed too shocked to get back up.

"I don't think now is the time for explanations."

"Should we be running?"

Hvitserk's unexpectedly logical question forced Danika to calm down and actually process the situation. Instead of just registering the incoming dinosaurs, she was able to recognize what kind of dinosaur they were. Diplodocus. Massive, intimidating...herbivores. Her chest released and she no longer had her legs poised to pounce. She extended her hand to Hvitserk. He looked up at her. She did not seem imminently worried. So he took her hand and repeated the question, better prepared for the answer this time.

"Should we be running?"

"From them? No. The worst they could do is step on us. But that doesn't mean we should stay here. There are plenty of other dinosaurs we should run from." The frighteningly long list ran through her mind. Hvitserk watched as the massive beasts rambled by. Even the smallest were longer than most ships and their steps made the ground shake. Suddenly he felt an impact in his side. Danika had tackled him to the ground as a whistling sound cracked overhead.

"I thought you said the worst thing they could do was step on us!"

"Sorry. Forgot about the whiptail."

Getting back up they began to jog along the edge of the forest until they came up on a rocky outcropping with a cave near the top. Scrambling up the gravelly hill, they sat down in the mouth of the cave breathing hard.

"I do not remember the last time I felt this tired." Danika said, taking her knife to cut several feet off her long dress. To pile on to all the other unexpected events of the day, Her dress began to shimmer and the cut skirt rewove itself back into its full unmarred length. She and Hvitserk looked at the dress, to each other and back at the dress.

"You saw that right? I didn't hallucinate?" she asked. He shook his head.

"This dress is from the past, it shouldn't do that."

"Yes, while my skin shouldn't do this either." Hvitserk showed her the palm of his left hand. It was scuffed raw and bleeding, from when she had tackled him while dodging the diplodocus tail.

"That should have been undone at least an hour ago."

"Precisely. This means…"

"We aren't immortal anymore." What a time to lose our immortality, when we could be eaten at any moment by dinosaurs! Danika internally screamed. Well at least I don't need to worry about living several MILLION years back to the present. I'll become a frickin' fossil instead!

"But my dress is?" Danika followed with a question. They were silent for a while, catching their breath for the first time in over 600 years. It was Hvitserk who put it all together.

"When you were transformed the first time, everything you had froze. Same for me. You have been frozen before, but this dress has not. The dress froze. You unfroze."

"That all begs the question...how?"

They were silent once more. Neither of them, inquisitive as they were, had ever endeavored to understand exactly how they had become frozen in the first place. Danika doubted it was random, because it felt like Hvitserk in choosing to follow her, had triggered his transformation. Danika's seemed completely random. All they knew was that they got hit by a wave and BOOM immortal. It was hardly something they had gotten down to a science.

That night was a silent one. They collected wood from the trees, with the now unbreakable knives they had, which was exhausting, not to mention blistering for the hands. Quietly they sat by the fire, tended their cuts, blisters, and bruises, and watched the late Jurassic (Danika guessed based on the Diplodocus) sun set over the mountains. In the distance were the skeens of some ancestor of birds. Each was consumed with their own thoughts.

This world, which Dani says is our own, is filled with terrifying beasts. What was going to be a long life, could now have been cut down to a matter of days, maybe even hours. I do not think I am prepared.

I thought if I was patient, I'd get to see Gideon, Rae, maybe even my parents again. Now…

One thought moved between them both like a lead weight around the neck: What are we going to do?

They slept in watches, now forced to be cognizant of their bodies' need for sleep, food, water. Now there were consequences. Real ones. And morning came. It always does.

Standing side by side, they looked out over their newest challenge. Danika had undone the outside of her dress as well as her hair, leaving her in just a thin white chemise, which hung to just about the knees. Hvitserk had dropped his leather vest. He gave her hand a squeeze. She returned it. If nothing else, they were still together.

The first order of business was water. They hiked up the mountain, and realized that only a thin row of mountain separated them from the sea. And connected to the sea was a river. They reached it and waded in, drinking their fill before using the walk back to come up with some plans.

"Perhaps there are people somewhere near who can help us at least until we figure out what to do." Hvitserk suggested. They stopped to rest on a stone, and it seemed as good a time as any for Danika to thoroughly explain their situation.

"Hvitserk there are no people. People don't exist yet. Grass doesn't even exist yet." She gestured to the ground which was littered with needle-like leaves, ferns, and gravel and notably grass-less. She went to explain as best she could, the basics of evolution, when they were, the fact that huge reptiles ruled the world. She watched as his eyes grew wide, then darkened with a frown, then drooped into an almost sad resignation. His head was in his hands by the time she finished.

"So there will be no people for another 150 million years?"

"Give or take ten thousand years."

"So we will never see people again."

"I don't want to think like that! We'll find a way back." Danika's voice shook.

"And if we don't?" he pushed.

"I don't want to think about that."

"Dani-"

"Not yet!" she snapped. He put up his hands defensively. "I'm sorry," she sighed, "I shouldn't have yelled, I just thought I had my life figured out after going through this the first time and I'm not letting go of that yet." It was just like Hvitserk. He accepted things so much more quickly, so easily. What other person decided to follow an immortal time traveler instead of living a fulfilling life in their own home? But Danika was stubborn. And determined. She would find a way back. He pulled her into a hug.

"I will help you try. But please promise me. In the end, I just want us to be happy. Do not let this get in the way of that, if it won't work."

"I promise." She said, muffled by his shirt. But who says it won't work, just yet?

By then the end of their first week in prehistory spirits had lifted a bit. It was novel and exciting. Danika took videos on her IPhone of the sauropods loping through on their migration and videos of the pterosaurs in the sky, before promptly turning it off to save battery. Danika's pocket journal was getting very full, as was Hvitserk's. They weren't for full entries, just dittles until they could put them in the proper journals, but now they packed in tiny script and drawings of plants, animals, sounds, geography. Their cave was littered with bits and bobs, as they cannibalized what they could of what they brought for tools. They pulled piping off her outer dress to tie their knives to long sticks to make spears. Hvitserk's codpiece became a makeshift slingshot for distracting dinosaurs. Dinosaur meat was a highlight experience. It got a whole page in the journals. Not unlike snake meat, they concluded. But they supposed that made sense.

Furthermore, Danika thought a lot about events leading up to each time they had transformed. What they had in common. What they didn't.

In common:

-getting hit by water, like when the machine globe broke.
-a storm? (but the machine hadn't needed a storm…)

Not in common:

-time/place, of occurrence or landing

Needless to say it was not an inspiring list. However, Danika was reasonably sure that the machine the other time traveler made was supposed to do exactly what it did, time jump them. It would explain what Da Vinci had said, about him suddenly disappearing. She couldn't imagine how Alessio was reacting, would react, ughhh time travel, to them vanishing into thin air. She'd thought it lucky enough that his great grandparents, the family they'd met on the street in Florence, had not considered them witches when they found out.

"You are kind people. So kind," the woman had said, after Danika and Hvitserk promised that they would see to their son's, Lavinia's father's, education. They had been installed comfortably in the villa, with their own set of rooms. The overly generous wages they had tried to deny, but Danika had talked them down by explaining that they would only have Danika and Hvitserk for help around the house. The Biancos saw to the education, safety, and livelihood of every child in the family, and the family saw to the matters of the house and that everyone kept diligent silence about the masters of the household. In the end it was an arrangement everyone enjoyed.

"The Bible tells us that where there is goodness and love, there is God. Surely you and Donna cannot be driven by the devil." the woman told Hvitserk one day, as Danika spent the hour teaching him his sums, with collections of painted pebbles and paper.

When asked, Lavinia would simply recite the same thing everyone before had said. "Our family and their family have been together for a long time. That's all."

Danika, and Hvitserk too, missed them dearly. It was a treasured luxury to have company that didn't vanish in a few short years. The family had become their close friends and advisors, listening on the streets for anything that might endanger the Biancos, giving their advice on matters of sociality, politics, and anything else. And the Biancos could be honest. Danika could honestly ask whether it would be less suspicious to put her knives under skirt or under sleeve. Hvitserk could ask if Italians found so and so offensive, or taboo. And both of them could ask for the layman's opinion on daily events and the state of the world.

Danika pulled herself out of the downward spiral of nostalgia, and refocused on the task at hand. Hvitserk was standing up, likely to go hunting. She sprang to her feet.

"You don't have to come with, Dani."

"Normally I wouldn't, but if something eats you, I won't know what happened and it would drive me insane. If something is going to kill you actually dead, I'd at least like to be there."

"NORMAL wives live with their husbands going to hunt just fine."

"NORMAL husbands are not fighting dinosaurs."

"NORMAL husbands don't have 600 years of experience."

"Why don't we just accept that we are not normal and that I am coming with you."

"I would enjoy your company."

"Then why protest?"

"I was making a point," he smiled that grin.

They were officially the coolest people ever. They had climbed a tree, being more watchful of height than normal, and in a spurt of spontaneity, dropped on the back of a large passing brontosaurus. The large sauropod, twisted its long neck and took a look back at the strangest creatures it had ever seen, sitting on its back. Seemingly decided that they were of no consequence and not going to try and eat him, he then proceeded to amble along with the rest of his herd. Taking in the sights while looking for easy prey on the plains they spotted a lone stegosaurus munching on some low ferns. Sliding down off the brontosaurus via the tail, with a polite thank you, they began the approach. Hvitserk tried to be sneaky, but Danika didn't even bother.

"What are you doing, look at the spikes on his tail!" Hvitserk grabbed her arm and tried to pull her into a crouch.

"It's another plant eater."

"That does not mean it can't kill you."

"Very true. But it has never seen a person before. We are tiny to it."

"Surely it will recognize us as a threat."

"They may look like dragons, but they are stupid. Stegosaurus has a brain the size of my fist. I don't think it can recognize us as anything other than 'new' and 'small.'"

Hvitserk considered the remarkably small size of Danika's closed fist before standing up and calmly walking towards the massive creature. With its large eyes it paused when it saw them, but did not seem ultimately bothered.

You are so beautiful, Danika thought, looking at the tall plates standing out from its back, Sorry about this.

She snapped one photo, but suddenly the plates on its back flushed red and the tail began to lift and swing threateningly back and forth. Hvitserk raised his spear.

"What were you saying about its brain?!"

"There's absolutely no way it was set off by my phone. It must be something else," she stubbornly maintained, dancing back away from the increasingly aggressive stegosaurus. She looked around, and then paled.

"That's why." She pointed to a nearby rock, where a full grown Allosaurus, discount T-rex predecessor, appeared out of ambush.

"Is this one of the stupid dinosaurs?" Hvitserk had only so far seen small to medium theropods.

"Stupid, and carnivorous! Run!" Danika grabbed his hand and they took off at a mid pace run. Thankfully, the Allosaur seemed more interested in the large Stegosaurus than them. But that quickly changed. The Stegosaurus's tail dealt a mean blow to the side of the Allosaurus's face. The large theropod deemed the stegosaurus too much effort, and instead turned his attention to the two small mammals running off. They were skinny, but there were two of them.

"Dani, it is chasing us now!"

"Trust me, just keep running! It's too heavy to follow us for long. It's an ambush predator!"

Problem was, that only works when they had someplace to run too. The brontosaurus had taken them well away for the safety of the forest. With its dense trees, the allosaur would never fit. But they were out on the plains, and coming up against a cliff face. They were both excellent climbers, but the dinosaur definitely had the height advantage. They wouldn't make it high enough in time. And the dinosaur may just wait for them to come back down. She had to think!

"Dani, we are running out of running room!" Hvitserk looked over. He turned to prepare to fight, but Danika kept running straight at the cliff face. Hvitserk didn't know what she was doing, and he was kinda looking forward to beating this beast, but she rarely, if ever had led him wrong. He trusted her.

"Get ready to turn hard left!" She yelled. They closed in on the cliff and the Allosaurus closed in on them. 20 meters, 10, 5, she could feel its breath on her back.

"NOW!"

She swung right and he hung a left. The dinosaur tried, but it crashed its side into the cliff, knocking boulders loose from the cliff face. Danika and Hvitserk laughed from relief and triumph, clapping a high five, as they looped behind the dinosaur.

"Giant head, little arms, can't bank for shit." Danika shouted for joy, jumping on Hvitserk's back as he cheered.

The dinosaur was only dazed, but Hvitserk spotted something behind it. The Allosaurus's slam with the cliff and moved boulders away from the base, revealing a recessed hole in the cliff. It wasn't a cave per se, more like a very deep impression, and inside it was definitely the skeleton of a person.

"I thought you said there were no people…"

"There aren't, why?"

"Look." He pointed under the body of the now standing Allosaurus. But Danika did not see it, she saw her life flashing before her eyes, or more accurately Hvitserk's life.

"NO!"

She pushed Hvitserk over, but didn't manage to herself fall in time. The Allosaurus's primary weapon, that massive swinging head, just managed to brush her shoulder, shoving her a few meters away. It knocked the wind clean out of her, making her slow to get up. Recognizing her as the easiest target now, the Allosaurus walked towards her, this time to attack with teeth. But Danika's quick reflexes meant that Hvitserk still had his wits about him, and outside the sightline of the giant Allosaurus, he was back on his feet. Grabbing Danika's spear he tossed it her way. She grabbed it just in time to do battle with the dino's head as it bore down. She aimed for the eyes, as she rolled to and fro dodging its teeth, eventually getting to her feet. Hvitserk drove his spear into the foot of the beast. In pain, the great reptile turned its head. But humans are smarter, faster, and more agile. While the Allosaur turned its head futilely to bite at Hvitserk he was already driving his spear into its ribs. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Danika threw hers with all her strength into its neck. Both spears fell loose, but the beast was bleeding out and in a matter of minutes it was done.

Hvitserk ran towards Danika. The adrenaline was wearing off quickly.

"You could've died!" Danika's voice was whispery soft.

"So could you!"

"Like actually died!"

"I know. I was scared," Hvitserk pressed a kiss into the top of her head, to stop himself from shaking.

"Me too." she buried her face in the shade of his jaw, the combined beating of their hearts seeming to jolt them with every beat.

A moment of silence, as much as the world of the Jurassic was ever silent. But recovery time is not something that the Prehistoric world affords them. They pulled themselves together and returned to the pressing mystery of the human skeleton in the rock. For it was indeed a human skeleton, male. And beside it, wrapped under copious amounts of cloth, was a cruder model of the very same machine which had gotten them into this mess. Instead of metal, the frame was wood, and the globe was made of clay.

"So this is where the other time traveler ended up." Hvitserk picked up the machine and looked down at the shambled bones. "Not exactly promising."

Danika, stubborn as always, refused to acknowledge that remark. There was something off about the cloth. She couldn't tell what. There were streaks on it that weren't dirt.

"Dani, we should go. Scavengers will come for the dinosaur we killed, and if we want our share we should hurry."

"Mhmmmmm." But the cogs of her brain were turning. She stood up and folding the cloth neatly under her arm, they exited the cave. But before they got too far, she turned back.

"We should cover the cave again."

Hvitserk thought for a moment, "It seems right."

It took both of them to roll the large boulders that the allosaur had knocked loosed. When that was finished they cut what meat they wanted from the Allosaur, and began the long trek back to their cave.

That night they slept extra close. As if the other might dissolve into the rock and leave them alone in this wilderness. Danika had spread out the cloth after a brief washing to dry and Hvitserk had set the machine carefully in a nest made from the skirts of Danika's dress. The first thing Hvitserk did when he awoke was make sure that Danika was still there beside him. He moved a lock of stray hair out of her face where her slow breath had been making it flutter back and forth away from her lips. Over her shoulder, the cloth had dried, and devoid of the dirt, and having been faded by the sun, the streaks had become letters and words. He could not read it, but he did recognize it. It was the same language that Danika used in her journal entries. Hvitserk wrote his in whatever language they were using at the time. Danika's always used the same one. He shook her awake.

"What does it say?" he asked, as he built the fire back up and began to skewer chunks of meat onto a stick.

Danika read, then reread, the scrawled words, which the man seemed to have written with his own blood. Bit by bit she began to translate.

I do not remember my name. I tried to. But this Time has pushed something so frivolous as my name from my mind. It was all about survival. I made the machine to bring me home. I gave it my most prized tooth from the museum back home to help it aim. But instead it brought me here. How foolish I was. It brought me to the time of the tooth. And I have no bones from the future to guide this machine home. It has been years. I am old. I was never a fighter, or a hunter. I knew nothing of the world. I am not the man who should have been sent to the past. Why God chose me I do not know. But I do know that I will never return to my home or my time. So I have resigned myself to my fate. A nameless, forgotten death, never to be noted in the annals of history. Let this serve as my epitaph, left unread I'm sure, but a testament to the last shred of my humanity, as the first human in the world. Born 1931 AD - Died 150 million BC