New Worlds
AvalonReeseFanFics
A/N: Well, hello there my wonderful readers! I'm sorry I missed last week's chapter. I was super busy last week and I completely forgot! But it's okay, cause here it is now, and hopefully, from now on in I won't be missing any chapters. Are you guys enjoying it though? You gotta let me know! Don't forget to leave a review and I'll see you guys next week!
Chapter 5 – The Fierce Fives
She was at that age where they asked questions. Non-stop. She wanted to know why everything was done that way and why things were the way they were. She wanted to know what everything was and what their purpose was. This became particularly hard when they came across bipedal creations, twisted lumps of unmoving metal that none of them knew about. Not name, not function, not… well… anything.
Then there came the worst question.
"Mummy why don't I look like you?"
Rela had always known that Una would one day want to know why she was different, but she was hoping that maybe the girl wouldn't notice. And because she had been hoping that, she never got around to thinking of an answer.
So, when Una asked that question the first time, she said the first thing she could think of.
"Because your special. There's only one Una in all the land, and that is you."
And that sated her for a while, but not for long.
"But I don't have claws and teeth, and I don't have a snout, or a tail… why am I so different?"
And again, since Rela didn't have the answers and it had worked so well the first time, she winged it.
"Because you are Una, and you are special. You are made the way Unas are made."
And that was no good because then Rela got this question: "Well… where are the other Unas?"
Rela told her to stop asking questions.
Sooner or later Rela was going to have to tell her what Una was and how she came to find her. But she wasn't jumping at the chance to do that right at that moment.
It was becoming exceedingly obvious that raising bipeds was hard and that because Rela knew next to nothing about them, she was rather out of her depth.
Early that year Una had taken a particularly bad tumble. At first everything was fine. Only a few scrapes, a face full of mud, but nothing was broken and she wasn't cut too deep. But then, when she raised her face up for Rela's inspection, she opened her mouth in that tooth-bared way of hers she used to denote happiness and Rela was horrified to find that she was missing one of her teeth.
Both Una and Rela had been distraught, teeth did not just grow back if you lost them. But a couple of moons later Una was smiling again and a little speck of white was coming out from her gums.
Apparently bipeds could grow back teeth. Honestly. What even were bipeds?
And since then she had lost at least four more teeth. How many teeth were going to fall out of her biped's head?
But that one moment highlighted just how much Rela didn't know about bipeds. If Una were to get really hurt Rela wouldn't know how to fix it or how long to it would take to heal her. She didn't know what changes what were going to happen as she grew, what if things got worse? What if Una had more questions?
For the first time since taking her little biped in Rela was forced to think about the way off future and what it might entail if she didn't get help.
And where the hell was Rela going to find help?
-JP-JP-JP-
Whenever her mummy went hunting Una was supposed to stay at the nest.
The problem was, she hated it. All of the eggs that had hatched and the hatchling inside had already grown up. But for some reason Una was still little. There weren't any other hatchlings for her play with yet either, which meant she was bored.
She had noticed, once the hatchlings started growling and she had been left behind, that she was clearly different. She didn't have scales, or sharp teeth or sharp claws. She didn't have a tail, she didn't have a snout, she was just… different.
And her mummy couldn't tell her why.
The more she asked the more her mummy got upset so Una had learned to stop asking her mummy. Though that was mostly because he mummy clearly had no idea how to answer her questions.
That particular day, though she knew she was supposed to stay by the nest, she did not.
She had learned the signs of danger, knew to climb if she thought something was following her. She also knew to keep most of her wanderings to the little stream. Not only would she be able to find her way back to nest, but it covered up her scent from would be predators… and most of all her mother.
She had started wandering farther and farther away from the nest, learning more about the surrounding areas.
She had managed to find the mango grove, so now she didn't have to wait for her mummy to take her there if she was hungry. She had found the game trail where her mummy usually took the pack to hunt. And then she found all the strange stone nests.
They looked like they were supposed to be mountains but they were flat and square. She had started going in and she found all of these things that she just didn't know what they were. But the place was filled with them.
She had spent every day in that nest every day this week. She didn't even care that she was in another raptor's territory. Her mummy would be so mad if she found out.
She had been in that little nest playing with the bits and bobbles she had found trying to figure out what they could be used for when a strange noise was heard.
It was this strange sort of flapping but she had never heard a bird make that sort of noise before.
She rushed out of the nest and saw a giant dragonfly kind of thing flying above the trees. But instead of the wings coming out of the sides they were circling above it's head.
Una had never seen anything like it before.
It was landing on one of the nest tops and she was immediately moving towards it.
She wanted to know what that thing was.
She did, however, hide herself in the bushes to watch as it landed. She wondered if this was a new dinosaur, though it didn't look like it was made scales or anything… real for that matter.
It was made of something smooth and black, and when the wings stopped circling, she could see they too were made of the same smooth black material. And there were only two of them, she would have thought there were more.
But the most interesting thing was what came out of the giant black dragonfly.
It was things that looked like her.
They were taller, they were older, they were wearing funny things, but they looked like her. They had the same parts as her, walked like her, but they didn't sound like her.
They were making weird noises, which must be their noises, and since she had never seen anything that looked like her on the island before it was clear she had never learned their language.
She was a female, her mother kept telling her, and like raptors she assume that there would be a male version of her somewhere. These creatures must be grown up males of whatever species she was.
In the trees came a call from her mummy.
She had returned to the nest early and Una wasn't there. She was looking for her.
Una answered. I'm exploring.
Come back right this second, her mother ordered but Una wasn't going to move.
No. I found things that look like me.
There were three of them they had strange things in their hands and they were scouring around no doubt trying to figure out where the sound was coming from.
In fact, they for some reason they split up. They all went in different directions. Una picked one of them and followed after them, ignoring Rela as she called out for her.
No. Una. Come back. Stay away from those things.
They wouldn't hurt her. They were like her. Maybe they could tell her what she really was.
She waited until this thing was far enough away from the others and then stepped out from behind the bushes and barked a hello at her.
The creature turned around and then yelped and backed away from her. For a moment it just stared at her, just really looked at her. Kind of like the way her mother looked at her, like it was seeing her.
But none of the love or kindness she got from her mother was in its eyes. It was looking at her like she was something else.
It was looking at her the way prey looked at her mother.
This one was larger, female raptors were bigger ones, but this thing didn't look female. It looked male, she had no proof it was just a feeling.
He made a sound that she didn't understand, and then he was crouching down beside her. He made the sounds again, this time about her, but she didn't understand.
He gestured with his hands, also clawless, to her and then, to himself, pairing his hands in his sounds.
Still she didn't understand.
And he seemed to understand that.
He glanced back to the others that were there with him made those noises again and she got closer to this creature.
Her hands went to touch him, to see if he felt the same as her under her fingers. There was hair growing out of his chin, it was coarse, not fine like the hair on her head, but when she felt the hair on his head, it was fine like hers.
His skin was sweaty, she could feel the wet heat under her palms. The second skin he was wearing also felt a little like her second skin, but it was covering all of him.
He let her touch him, let her hands dip into the pouches of his second skins, let her touch the objects he had strapped to his body.
And then he grabbed her.
Una hadn't been expecting it, she cried out. She only meant to look, she didn't want to go with this thing. He was trying to take her back to the dragonfly and she didn't want to go.
Una started to struggle in earnest and when squirming didn't work, she fought back. She bite, or tried to bite through the second skin, only to fail. She tried to scratch, and that time she did manage to scratch up the one who had her, he just simply held her away from him.
Una was starting to panic. So, she did what any little hatchling did best. She screamed for her mummy.
She only had to scream once to get an answer.
There was a shrill screech, her mother's war cry and then she crashed out of the trees and into the male that had a hold of her.
All three hit the ground, Una scampered up and away towards the bushes as the other raptors flanked out, surrounding the remaining two creatures.
In the distance came more screams, these big booming bangs and she knew that her pack was converging on the others.
Some of them must have gotten away because she could hear that rhythmic beat of the dragonfly wings, first as they started and then as they began to disappear.
Her species was clearly weaker than raptors, they clearly weren't great predators either because this one hadn't noticed that her pack had arrived, and she doubted the others did either.
When the screams of the creatures had died out, and the jungle finally went silent again, Una carefully made her way out of her bushes and to her mummy who was standing over the thing that had grabbed a hold of her.
"I… I…"
Her mother swung into her direction, glaring at her, very angry. "If I give you a direct order I expect you to follow it," she snapped. "Do you have any idea what could have happened Una?"
Others from the pack were sweeping in, heading for the fallen prey to eat. Una hated this part. It was even more uncomfortable watching something that looked like her get pulled apart.
But her mummy was mad and she had to pay attention to her.
"I'm… I'm sorry… I just…"
"Why didn't you listen to me? Why didn't you come back when I called you?"
"Because I wanted to know," she whispered. "What are they?"
Rela's eyes narrowed at her she glanced down to the eviscerated creature that was currently being eaten by the others and said: "We call them bipeds."
"They look like me," Una whispered and Rela looked down again.
"This looks nothing like you. The hair is different, the skin is different... both skins are different…"
But that wasn't true. Raptors came in all sorts of colors, and clearly the bipeds came in different colors too. This thing was her, she was whatever this thing was, which meant she was a biped too.
"You said I was the only one, mummy," she said, her voice soft, her eyes lowered. Rela lowered her head to her hatchling.
"You are."
"But I'm not. They look like me."
"You are the only one like you on the island."
Little Una looked down to the male biped their pack had torn apart. "Then why did he look like me?"
Rela sighed. "Come," she said softly. "I have something to show you."
She let her mother nudge her away, following her through the jungle and far out of their territory.
-JP-JP-JP-
Rela had hoped that Una would never meet another biped. She knew when she did that her hatchling would realize right away that she really wasn't a raptor. She wasn't a raptor because she was what they were. And then Rela would have to explain how a raptor came to hatch a biped.
Then the truth would come out and Una would be sad and Rela hadn't wanted that.
But she never could have guessed that Una would seek them out. That she would find the buildings the bipeds had left behind and try to explore them. She never thought that Una would just walk up to a biped simply because it looked like her.
She had gotten her to tell Rela the whole story, the story of why she had been there, and why she had made contact with the creatures.
Rela was forced to admit that she had recognized the sound. She didn't know the name of the thing that made the sound, but she had heard it before. It was why they had called the hunt off and returned to the nest, because if bipeds were in the area she wanted Una out of it.
And now they were walking, so very far away from their nest and Rela's territory and Una didn't know why. They never went this close to the coast, Una suddenly became afraid that maybe her mother was going to leave her there.
She stopped just shy of the sandy shore, still a good distance in the jungle and refused to move any further.
"I'm sorry I'm a bad raptor, mummy."
"You're not a bad raptor," Rela said to her. "You're just too… too much like them."
Did she mean the bipeds? Was she too much like them because she was one of them?
Rela walked around her hatchling, lowered her head and practically headbutt her out of the jungle and out onto the sand. She led her across the sands to where there were bits of rotted wood and leftover debris. She didn't know what any of these things around her were but it looked a lot like what the other bipedal debris looked like.
"What… is this?"
"It's what left," Rela whispered. "It was a bipedal creation, one for the water. I suppose it wrecked here."
Rela watched as her little hatchling looked around. Picking up the pieces that she could, touching the ones that were jutting out the sand like large metal ribs. Did she remember this place? Did she remember anything? Would this bring it all back?
"This is where I found you."
Una turned around right away. Her smart little hatchling had caught on right away. Rela hadn't hatched Una, she had found her. Now Una knew it too.
"But… then… where are…"
"They were already gone. You were already gone" Rela said. She could see the confusion on her little hatchling's face. Coming to stand beside her and together they looked out at the surf. "The bipeds come from across the water and sometimes the sky."
Una turned her face up to the midday sun. "Really?"
"Really," Rela said. "Let's wait, just wait."
And they did, and then suddenly a hum was heard and a giant shining bird streaked across the sky. "Whoa!" Una cried. She couldn't quite see but it looked a lot like the shiny dragonfly, but shaped more like a bird. "They fly in large birds?"
"Sometimes." Rela stepped a little closer to her. "So when I said there was only one of you, I meant it. Bipeds don't stay here, they don't survive here, but you, you aren't a biped anymore. You are my hatchling, you don't quite belong with them."
"But I don't belong with you and the pack either."
"You do. Because I chose you. I raised you. You don't speak their language, you don't act like them, you act and talk like a raptor. You are one of us, one of our pack and we all love you."
"Roc doesn't."
"Well ignore Roc. Roc is dumb."
For a while Rela watched as the girl squidged her toes in the sand. After a moment she approached the wreck again, her little hands went to feel the rotting wooden boards and the twisted piece of metal, all that was left of the thing that had brought Una into her life.
"There was a storm that night and I suppose it was the storm that brought you to this island. I had laid my first clutch and was awaiting its hatching. And then a tree fell and I didn't have a clutch anymore. In the morning I heard the first of series of very strange squawking and I followed it. Right out of my territory and straight to you."
"To me?"
"That's right. I found you inside this thing. When it was whole. You were inside and you were screaming. You were such a little thing."
"But Raptors eat bipeds."
"And had I been hungry I might have. But I wasn't hungry, I was love sick. I was mourning my clutch, and all the could have beens that died with them. And then the island gave me you. And I decided to keep you. And now you are Una, who is still special, and the only Una on the island. Not quite raptor, not quite biped, I'm thinking the best of both."
Una bared her little teeth at her in that happy way of hers and reached her hands up for Rela's face. She lowered her head to her little hatchling allowing her little hands to caress the scales of her snout.
"I'm glad you're my new mummy," she said and Rela practically purred with joy.
"Good, because I didn't spend all those moons coddling you for you to decided to be a biped," Rela said to her, nipping at the air around her lovingly. "Now come, we must go back to the nest. With any luck they'll be some biped left for me."
"Would you eat me if I got older?"
"Course not. No meat on you, would have to fatten you up on mangos first."
Rela lowered herself so Una could climb up onto her back before heading back into the jungle. Loving the way her little hatchling's barking-like laughter played with the wind.