Chapter Two - Act 1 - Rise And Shine, Mr. Apaton
Morning had not yet arrived, the first light of the sun just under the horizon, when Arlo stirred awake. With a low, long-lasting yawn, he observed the immediate surroundings of the homestead he just moments ago slumbered within. Buck, Libby, and his momma were still soundly asleep, curled up together, with Arlo himself being on the outer edge of the bundle. To his other side however, he immediately noticed the absence of his poppa, who'd usually complete the bundle where Arlo would rest between his parents. Cautiously, Arlo lifted himself onto all fours, before strolling out of the homestead and embracing the cold air of the night.
Not a single sound from either of the other two homesteads could be heard, and the many sounds of the light bugs that were amongst the grass overfilled the air with sound. Making as little sound as he could, he stopped outside the adjacent farm, one that was closer to the river than his though no where near as close as where the silo used to be. Within, he could see Arlie resting alone in the spacious homestead. Usually, she would've been accompanied by Ben, as well as the three supersaurs Chris, Mike and Jess. Even Spot and his family would've been with Arlie tonight, if they weren't away for the time being. He noted that they would be back later on in the day, after going on their round trip to find more kinds of berries to have for the farm. He felt bad for Arlie resting all alone, though he reminded himself that Arlie offered to do so as the other homesteads were both nearly full.
Before moving away from the river, Arlo stepped on the sturdy wooden bridge that led him over the streaming river and onto the other side, and relaxed when noting the undisturbed longhorns. Heading back to the main side, and walking past the first two homesteads, he arrived shortly at the third and final one, which happened to also be the largest. Upon peering slightly in, it didn't take even a second for him to see Nash, Ramsey, and Butch huddled up together. Arlo soon made his way out once he saw Butch's tail shift slightly, and decided to find his poppa, who couldn't have gone far from the homestead. Arlo knew he wasn't far, his poppa never did go far from home after what happened more than a year and a half ago.
Carefully he made his way through the fields, lined with not only the usual corn but also a variety of berries, all different colours and shapes. It was welcoming to have more than a single food supply, especially for the cases where one type wouldn't be as plentiful by winter, the others would balance it out. The more kinds of fruit and plants, the better chances of them all having a more bountiful year, the whole reason for the various trips beyond the homestead. Usually the selected group would spend no more than a day finding new kinds of things to eat, that was until the one that was currently underway, they would probably be back by the evening.
Looking out once more, Arlo saw the sauropod shape in the distance, distinguished from the more natural treescape. With a more paced walk he caught up to his poppa, who hadn't noticed his presence beforehand. "Arlo! Watch 'ya doing up so early huh?" Arlo could see the warm smile as the two embraced, "I could say the same thing to you poppa." Henry chuckled lightly at Arlo's remark, and the embrace became slightly tighter. "Just wanted to get some fresh air. It's been a while since you an I have had time alone hasn't it?" Arlo thought for a moment the last time he and his poppa had a real time alone, coming to a conclusion that it was practically the night before his poppa got washed away that was the last true time they were alone for a lengthy amount of time. "It sure has poppa."
Arlo felt his poppa's tail slide off from him, and as he looked up he saw his poppa walking towards the fields of tall grass. Quite figuratively, and almost literally, Arlo's face lit up with a sense of joy as he knew what his poppa wanted to do. "Lets not make as much noise this time." His poppa advised, Arlo nodded and began moving his tail across the blades of grass. Several light bugs came out and provided more light amongst the fields than the moon could for the whole place. He had to admit they were beautiful despite the stuff he heard from Arlie. The longer he watched them, the more vividly he remembered that same night, back when things were so simple.
Seeing his poppa lay down on his back and look upwards, Arlo walked over to his poppa's side and did the same. Upon viewing the sky, he felt a new kind of wonder watching the stars. As the light bugs were still around, they danced alongside the stars, and the tall grass that Arlo once looked down upon suddenly felt more like trees reaching up to the darkened sky. For the first time he felt small again, and he wondered whether his poppa had the same feeling. "Poppa?"
"What is it Arlo?" His poppa whispered, allowing the light bugs to remain the loudest sound throughout the plains. "Do you ever feel..." Arlo wanted to say 'small', but it wasn't quite the word he was looking for. It was something more specific that he was feeling, comparing himself to the grass and all those small dots in the sky that were always ever so far to reach.
"Insignificant?" His poppa asked, and Arlo swiftly turned his head to look in the direction, finding his poppa still staring up at the night. That was the word he was looking for, the same word in many ways, but at the same time was much more bonafide in it's meaning. "Rarely, with all the work and activities we have it's easy to be distracted from such things." Arlo waited for his poppa to continue, and heard a small breath before Henry spoke again. "But on the odd night, when there's no light but from the stars up above, and there's not a single ember of sound left but yourself, then there's nothing you can do but think along those lines. It's a special place with many conditions to enter, but once you're in you almost feel infinite despite such insignificance. Have you been feeling that way too?"
Arlo wanted to think about it, but without thinking he nodded his head. "Well think about significance as relative." Henry answered, "You're very significant to me, and you should know how much I'm willing to give my self up if it means you get to live on." Arlo smiled, frowned, and then smiled again. He definitely knew the lengths his poppa would go to, but it also made Arlo wonder what that would mean if something similar happened in the future. They were all fortunate his poppa survived the first time going, if it were to happen a second time... He waved it off, not wanting to think about such a situation, for now all he wanted was this moment they were living in right then; a quality one on one.
Their moment shifted as the radiant glow of the sun started painting the near-black sky with a light blue, and even a more golden colour closer to the horizon. They knew the first light wouldn't be long from now, and so headed on out to the nearest significant hill, far from the homestead. With only small mountains ahead, if they could even be called that, it was no surprise that the first true rays of the sun quickly came to fruition. While the landscape behind them had not displayed their colours, Clawtooth was tall enough to have had already seen the sun, and so it's capped peaks provided a blinding light that could only be grasped within that moment of the day.
"Lets get home Arlo, by the time we're back they'll be up and around." Henry said, turning around and beginning to amble forwards "I'll catch up to you poppa." Arlo said aloud, from which his poppa responded "Don't be too long then." and continued along forth. Arlo looked back at the rising sun, a smile forming on his face. Looking back on it, the adventure he had with Spot was so much fun in the end, meeting new friends and being in daring situations, even thinking about it made his adrenaline rise. Maybe some day, when they would have to go far out to find new kinds of berries, he might tag along just for the adventure.
Though that future was quite far, Arlo couldn't wait for that day to arrive. He soon decided that he'd want to go with the next group, at least once the current group came back from their trip. Making sure not to be too late, he swiftly turned around and paced towards his poppa. For now all he could do was wait, but he didn't have a problem with that. There was much to do even without adventure.
On any other day, Mary would've enjoyed waking up to the peaceful sounds of nature and watching the sun rise from the horizon, those sorts of days were not this day however. What started as a slow awakening soon became the rapid motion of being frightened, as Mary became startled by a nearby sound that at that moment she couldn't quite understand. It was not fun having to quickly adjust to the light, trying to both pinpoint the time of day as well as the origin of the unknown sound, but she adjusted with a heavy amount of frustration.
For a slither of time, she thought that whatever she had heard was nothing more than something her mind made up to get her up and going, but that option soon dissolved as the sound came back. As fast as she could she swiveled herself to face the sound directly, only to find the source both mundane as well as surprising compared to what she imagined it to be. In front of her was a rather large green sauropod, one she was all too familiar with. Of all it could have possibly been, it was none other than the heavy slumber of one of her dearest friends. Speaking of which, she gazed around to find where her other two friends had been, only to find them quite afar from where she was currently at.
Being quick whilst maintaining what ever level of tranquility remained, she strolled on over to her other two friends who seemed to have been waiting patiently. "So you're up, that's good." Her good friend Will spoke aloud, not that there was any concern of being loud. "How long have you two been up for?" Mary dared to ask, "It's been three hours since I got up, and about the same time for Will." Jack answered, Mary looked at them a bit dumbfounded, "Yeah we joked about whether or not you were dead, since you weren't waking up from... that. We decided that I should wake you up a bit by tapping you with my tail, seemed to do the trick when you jumped up not too long after." Jack explained.
Even with the explanation, Mary still found it hard to believe that it had been up to three hours of Clay snoring as loudly as he was currently, and that she couldn't even hear it until one of her friends had to wake her up enough. "I gotta say, I'm conflicted. On one side, I could've been asleep long enough for Clay to wake up-" She paused when Will snickered at the thought of Clay waking up from that before Mary, "-On the other side, I thank you for waking me up such that I didn't have to be near that." She emphasized on the snoring, which was still ongoing. How they managed to endure the amount of time listening to that was beyond her, though she soon reasoned that they went far enough to actually think. She knew right then she wasn't going to be able to think, not with that sound.
Her morning was slightly ruined, not today would she be able to hear any of nature's wonderful sounds, unless someone had the gall to call Clay's snoring one of 'nature's sounds'. Fortunately, there was a fairly large uplift in the terrain nearby, such that they could easily get around the corner and have the rock block out the direct sound. It was still present, but she could finally think much to her delight.
"We can't do much today, not if Clay's gonna be asleep most of the day." Jack reasoned. Mary noticed the sudden pause in both Jack and Will's movement, gazing upwards towards each other and grinning, before unanimously turning their heads to stare at Mary whilst maintaining their devilish smiles. It took a while, but like a light bulb going off in her head she realised what they were up to. "Oh no... you are not roping me into this."
"Oh come on Mary, we've all made some morning pranks at each other- mostly me and Jack at each other- but still, wouldn't it be nice to get back at him for ruining your morning." Mary wanted to curse under her breath, Will knew exactly how to convince her a lot of the time, and with the knowledge of her morning routine he had all the arguments for her to join with them. Why not give it a shot for once, she thought. "Okay fine. How do you plan on... what even is it you guys do to each other anyways?"
Not a heartbeat had passed when they both tried to answer at the same time, and as a result their words were jumbled together. Given a bit of time, they recovered and answered properly. "Well, usually we wake each other up in a startling manner, with the extra challenge of not waking anyone else up. Fortunately either you are already up and far enough away or it's in the dead of night. I guess today's been an exception since, you know..." Jack answered, and Mary knew what he meant at the end. It soon came apparent that she would most likely be the one to come up with the plan. They had the constraint of not waking her and Clay up, but because everyone but Clay was up, that constraint was not present. Thus, her plan was very simple.
"I guess we just uuuh... yell really loudly?" In her head it sounded much better, but considering who she was talking to, she almost immediately regretted it. She could see them exchange expressions of just pure dissatisfaction. "Look I'm new to this, and I just thought that out-competing him in terms of how loud we can be, plus we're all awake so we don't have to worry about waking anyone else up." She knew she was just digging the hole she had already made deeper. In the midst of it all, she briefly saw Jack lighten up, and she knew he had thought of something. "You might actually have a good point." He said slowly, as if still unsure about his words. Both herself and Will both exclaimed in surprise, wondering if they heard him right. "No no, as in like..." He paused in the midst of his thinking, before using his feet to dig at the dry dirt in front of them.
When he was soon finished, Mary decided to have a look at what he made, and so did Will. She couldn't quite make out what it was, but it seemed to be something that on one end was small and narrow, but on the other end was large and wide. "I don't know, something to make noises louder. If we can find a log or some kind of tree and carve it right, we can make this and then all yell into it, would definitely be louder than anything we've heard today." Mary looked once again at the work Jack had done on the ground, this time with the context, and it soon dawned on her what he was going for. She looked over to Will, who had also seemed to make the connection before looking back at her.
So it was settled, and with the snoring still audible, it was clear they'd have as much time as they needed. The light from the sun had only just started to influence the land, and Clay was in a region that was blocked by such light, so the three had some extra time to find what they needed before it was too light and too late. As it turned out, finding such a tree with such diameter wasn't too hard to come by, they were near a forest with tall trees after all. With a bit of time to get a nice log, Mary used her spiked tail to create a grove in the log to which Jack could slowly carve out with his club-tail. In the end, they had created their desired shape, and tested it out pointing away from the direction they had come from, finding even the more mundane sounds to work out much better than they planned.
Now was the task of getting it back without waking Clay up, which turned out to be more difficult than they imagined. They first attempted to roll it, but because of the shape it ended up rolling in a circle. Next they tried rolling it, but instead have the smaller end be lifted up as not to cause the circular-rolling, this one worked better, but they found it too difficult to maneuver properly when it came to the final corner to pass. What's more, is that they didn't want to talk in case it went through the carved log and woke him up before they had the chance to really test it out. Carefully, their third plan of lifting it and carrying it with all three of their heads worked, even to the point where they were right next to the sauropod who was as oblivious to what was coming as when Mary first woke up.
With Jack and Will keeping it in place as for it not to roll, they reasoned Mary to be the one to use it as she came up with the initial idea, plus it being her first time. Nervous, she glanced directly at where Clay's head was, and found it almost peaceful right up until the snoring once again broke that thought. She wanted this to be over, for the day to really begin, to get back at Clay. And so she put herself right against the smaller end, ready to yell as loudly as she could. One thing however made her pause, just what exactly could she say to make it more effective? She was under a spotlight thanks to Jack and Will, and so she wanted to go all out on her first go.
Not wasting time, she decided it didn't matter, and waited for Clay's snoring to pause so that it wouldn't counteract her amplified voice. As the opportunity came around, she yelled as loudly as she could "RISE AND SHINE CLAY!" and was not prepared just for how loud it could get. It wasn't just her, both Jack and Will were also startled by how loud the log had made her voice, it was hard to believe, but it was an action that by the time she could accept what happened it was already over. For Clay however, she found it almost understanding just how high Clay leapt up off the ground in utter terror of being awakened by such a sound, almost ironic in her opinion.
As Clay landed back only a fraction of a second after leaping upwards, Mary noted the true amount of fear in his quivered voice as he searched to find the source of whatever woke him up, the parallels were almost uncanny for her. Clay could only look at the three with that same fear, though now mixed with confusion. As Mary saw his eyes shift from them to the carved log, she wondered what he was thinking at that moment. A breath of air could be heard from his direction, and Mary was quite confused until he started to chuckle, building to full laughter. At first Mary was confused by the response, and by the looks of it her friends were expressing the same feeling, as a result all they could do was slowly join in with Clay. Only when they were all laughing did Mary make sense of the laughing; Clay couldn't of been mad at them for pulling it off, and there wasn't any other way to relieve the suddenness of what happened, so all Clay could do was laugh.
From that point on, it was only a matter of time before things started to quieten down. "I guess you got me good, not sure how you two managed to convince Mary to join in." Clay spoke, giving room for any of the three to respond. Of course, Jack got to have the first say before Mary could respond. "You were snoring so loudly that it ruined her morning, it wasn't hard to give her the chance to get back at you." Mary kind of expected a smile or a laugh from Clay, given the circumstances, but instead he ended up confused. "I was snoring? Actually skip that, I'm up late?" Clay asked, to which Jack and Will nodded.
"Yeah it's not like you to be up this late and not even hear yourself." Will said, sarcasm being present at the end of the sentence. "Did anything happen last night?" Jack asked, not an unusual question to ask in hindsight. Clay started thinking in a way that was so obviously visible, "I don't recall... oh right, I met up with Zerxes again, I think he's happy to meet you lot face-to-face now. He said he'll meet us once we're over the mountain range."
Mary had heard of Zerxes, Clay had mentioned him multiple times before. From what she knew, he had really only grew up with Clay, and so was extremely shy to meet anyone else. That didn't stop Clay from telling them all about him, so she knew in general what he'd look like with some margin of error, but that wasn't a worry to her. She knew that he'd probably be even more surprised to see them than they were to see him, she just had to make sure Jack and Will weren't going to be too... over the top, Mary thought. She was curious how one of Clay's age could be so shy, but she didn't put much effort in wanting to understand, as long as she could actually meet up and have a conversation.
Only then did Mary come to terms with the other part of what Clay said. Over the mountain range, she knew where they were, not even two days away from the famous Clawtooth mountain range. They were to the north of that, where said range met up with a couple of other ranges near the river. Whilst they were heading towards the Clawtooths, she did notice a slight divergence and so thought they were heading to a resting point that Clay might've known about, since Clay had told them of such stops. She just hoped they weren't too far north as to make an accidental trespassing on Spinos' territory.
Nevertheless, she looked at Jack and Will to get a visual as of what they thought of it, and it didn't look like they were bothered about the mountain range part. "We finally get to see him? It's been how long since you've mentioned him to us and how many times he didn't show up?" Will asked, somehow more sarcastically than Jack. Mary made sure to give him a slight nudge to quit it before Clay could say anything more. "I know, I know. You don't need to remind me. He knows how much inconvenience he's caused and he's sorry for it, which is why he's hoping to make up for it. At the very least we can see if there's any way to slow or even stop this infection."
Ah, Mary thought. She knew exactly what Clay was talking about, mostly as she could see it. Clay had a large infection covering about half his right leg, the skin more of a sickly purple in contrast to his usual green, and near the middle of it was a reasonably sized crystalline mass of the same colour. He'd told them once that he had it since childhood, and so she could only imagine how large it must've been relative to said leg back then. As many attempts to either get it out or find something that could break it failed - mostly ending in a lot of pain on Clay's part - there wasn't too much hope on finding an easy solution.
Away from the subject, Clay looked up to them and expressed a smile on his face, "So then, shall we make our way through the mountain range?"
A/N: So yeah I have a new format of doing things, each chapter is split in two, with each half focused on a single character's perspective. Not entirely first person, but also not quite third person either. I thought it would be unique for this story, so make of that as you will. Of course right now I'm just going to be uploading the first act, since that's all I've done so far, but I hope to release each act once the chapters within said act are done. It does mean there will be a wait time between, but it's better this than waiting for the entire story to be done!
Next Chapter: Daily Slice