Creeping just as silently as she could, Katie moved just as quickly as she dared with careful steps along a narrow ledge. She could have been much quieter than she was, and she knew it well – if not for the rattling of her shotgun strapped over her shoulder, and the metal bits of the currently folded wings of her glider strapped tightly behind her. But she currently needed both of those things, as well as the rough leather pack she carried, tired safely under the glider straps. And so she simply did the best she could, making her way still further along and only hoping to not attract unwanted attention.
The narrow ledge grew even more so as she continued. And it began to slope badly too, dropping sharply in front of her, as she struggled to keep her footing. Katie felt the wall behind her, moving with far greater care than before, searching, somewhat hopefully for some manner of handholds to help her along. But her hands found nothing but a sheer wall of near smooth rock instead.
She stood still then, for several long moments, just trying to reorient herself in a place so impossibly easy to get turned around and lost in, if one only lost track of any known landmarks. And she knew full well to keep those in the forefront of her mind as she ventured along. Above her was the base – high above by now, but still above, nonetheless – She could see the edge of the cliff that dropped away from it at the edge of a pathway toward the lake – though she now saw that cliff's rocky underside far overhead instead. And she knew well that the lake dumped out into the waterfall, which now poured over the path up ahead of where she stood. Far below her was the horrifying river of hot and liquefied element, which flowed in a wide stream of menacing and glowing pink color, and that she knew would kill her in under a minute if she were to ever so much as touch it. But she simply did not intend to touch it – though if her planning was right, and she was confident it was, she would certainly be closer to it than most of her tribe dared to go for any reason. She took a few more steps along the ledge, inching sideways as it narrowed again, and she ran dangerously short of anywhere to plant her feet. In front of her, the waterfall was so close that she could feel the cool spray of water as it crashed down so loudly over the cliff tops above.
That was that then, Katie decided. And she smiled to herself, in her confidence after having made it that far unnoticed. It wasn't that her excursion was forbidden exactly. There were certainly no rules against such things in the Tribe of the Lighted Dwelling. And she laughed a little, at knowing it. But she hadn't exactly been given a full-on free and clear from the leader she so admired either... and she only reasoned in her still young heart, that he'd forgive her easily in success. And she had every intention of succeeding.
"Ready, Trevor?" she said to her featherlight – a lovely blue one with bright yellow tipped feathers – that sat perched obediently on her shoulder. Trevor gave a cheery chirp in answer. And Katie reached up to pat his head for a second, while she looked straight down into the blackness below her.
She knew just how many people feared that blackness more than anything else in their world. And she had too once – she supposed she still did to some small extent due to human nature and a need to be cautious of invisible threats. But she had grown used to the idea of dark pits that filled her world. And that had turned at some point to curiosity and a sense of... inviting. She stood for another moment, listening but not hearing, anything that would hint at dangers so far. And she worked to quickly check and recheck her glider straps, tugging on the places where the buckles rested over her hazard suit shirt and assuring herself fully that they fit tight enough to not slip.
Katie jumped then, making a full effort to get as much height as she could in doing so. And then she threw herself forward, her hands already on the handholds of her glider frame. The air rushed past her as she fell fast, with the ground rushing up toward her., - just barely visible in the near darkness of the cavern. But her hands calmly reached up, one on each of the bars, to pull each of them outwards and deploy the wings of the glider. Her downward fall ended at once, as the air around her caught the glider. And she pulled up, hard as she could on the metal frame, easily leveling it out to fly across the expanse of nothing around her for ages, as she slowly dropped toward the ground, still far below. She grinned at the excitement of gliding across the dark landscape, below her. And she looked around quickly if only to reorient herself, still grinning brightly to herself as the landscape came into view through the blackness. Her eyes caught a hundred yellow lights to her left, and still so far below. And with a laugh, to go along with the smile now, she yanked the glider frame hard in that direction, banking sharply – and barely missing the edge of an unseen cliff that came into view almost too late in a place lit almost only by the featherlight that rode on her shoulder, his lighted feathers illuminating anything around her in the tight circle of his glow. She could hear the creature chirping now as she leveled out the glider again. And she smiled at the cheerful sound he made.
The smile faded into true and serious focus though as she got close to the ground. And she shifted her weight a little so that her feet pointed down as she landed, with a dull thud on the rocky surface under her. She folded the glider wings upward in a single motion of a hand, yanking on a wooden lever, and unshouldered the shotgun, in another fast motion. She was moving at once then, running forward across the rocky ground, in near darkness, while she listened again for any sound of danger.
Katie found a crevice ahead, carved into the side of a sheer cliff wall beside her. And she hurried to the side quickly, ducking for cover inside the narrow and tight gap. She took a second then to catch her breath from the mad dash forward. And she had just moved to look around her again, plotting her next moves, when a sound of fast-beating wings made her freeze in place at once.
"Seekers," she muttered to herself, as the sound of wings – three pairs at least from the sound of it – quickly got closer to her crevice. The terrible bat-like beasts were drawn to her pet's light. And for only a second, she debated commanding Trevor to cease his glow, in hopes they would simply fly on past, unbothered. But the thought of a nameless attack – more than somewhat inevitable, the second she was in the dark that far underground – made her rethink her tactic immediately. Though she did wonder to herself for a fleeting second, if only out of morbid curiosity which of the two species of terrible beasts could shred her faster. She reasoned in just another second, as she readied the shotgun in her hands, that she didn't even want to speculate further on that matter.
"Well, come on then," Katie muttered as the flying monstrosities came close to her. And when the one in the lead position of what turned out to be four of them came just a little closer, she fired the shotgun. Aiming right at its horrible face.
The seeker shrieked once in its dying despair, before it dropped from the air, and landed with a dull thud at her feet, its usually twisted and near impossible wings, now bent backward entirely under its crumpled bleeding body.
A second one dashed for her face then, its twisted mouthful of sharpened teeth snapping furiously even as it flew, drawn now both by its blood lust as well as by her glowing lightpet, while two more shrieked and dove and circled out her all the while inching dangerously closer to her body. One more bullet took down the new leading position. And another bullet each took down the last two, each right in the middle of a dive toward her arms. Katie's heart was pounding hard as she looked down at the small batch of now flightless corpses – each near a meter long, and their gray bodies stained with their blood – scattered at her feet. And she ducked back into the crevice for a moment more, forcing her pulse to slow down, while her knees began to shake horribly.
She thought of turning back then, more than well aware of just how much could have gone wrong during only one encounter down below. And just as aware that there were surely more to come. She could have been killed or at least wounded. And she knew it. Still... the lure of any possible success drove her on instead. And she ran forward again, straight out from her hiding place, and forward on the winding path in front of her, as it now followed the river of element, which eventually vanished ahead somewhere, under a rocky land-bridge.
"Marcus!" the sound of a voice – a man, calling out the name of someone she had never met or heard of, made her pause again. And she ducked behind the closest thing she could see – a huge bolder just slightly closer to the element – to watch for any sign of other humans in that dark cavern.
"Marcus! Watch out, mate!" the same voice called out again. And this time it was an urgent, near panicked scream.
Katie left her hiding place at once – a split second decision made to trust that the men involved in whatever situation was unfolding nearby, were not likely to be any more dangerous than anything they'd obviously run into somewhere. And she sprinted forward carefully, with Trevor still perched and glowing, on her shoulder.
She caught sight of a man almost instantly, crouching helplessly where two massive boulders met to form a short wall dangerously close to the river of element. A pair of furious seekers circled him – and the bleating shinehorn on the floor beside him – both of them shrieking and hissing horribly. Each of them now nipped at his body at least once. And Katie cringed, glad of the heavy leather of the hazard suit that protected him from the razor-sharp bites, and even more glad that he was currently away from any radiation. Because that would surely kill him when they inevitably tore through the suit at any second, with the sharp tips of their madly flapping wings. The man yelled profanity at the creatures, and waved his arms frantically, oddly unarmed. Katie spotted his weapon then - a blue-stained compound bow - laying out of his reach on the ground, where it must have been knocked from his hands. A second man stood in the corner of her vision, barely visible in the near darkness, firing arrows from his own bow at the flying menaces. He managed to injure both, but that so clearly only enraged them. And one quickly turned, obviously about to fly at him, while the first continued to nip at his teammate.
"Hey," Katie screamed, across the expanse of the cavern around them all. She fired into the air once, looking for the attention of both angry seekers. "Stupid and stupider!" She wished for a second she'd thought to bring a couple of her well known flash-bang bulbs with her in her pack. Because such a thing would have served her oddly well then. But she decided just as fast that it didn't matter because she would simply need to make do then the best she could.
She stood ready, as both creatures turned to fly at her in their confusion, after a quick moment of their hesitation. A single shot took out the first of them, just as easily as they had the first three she'd killed to protect herself not long before. But the second it hit the ground, mortally wounded, but still alive – its wings flapped around horribly. And it shrieked and snapped its jaws, inching closer to where she stood in horrible helpless motions, until she planted the barrel of her shotgun into its head, crushing it against the ground with a terrible cracking noise.
"Thanks!" the man who had been crouching and helpless muttered, nearby and gasping. He held his crossbow again, now in shaking hands, he struggled so obviously to calm himself down from a terrible fright.
"That was impressive," the second of the men added. He ran over from slightly further back from the deadly river. He held out a hand, as soon as he was close. "You absolutely saved our necks down here, I tell ya. And I can't thank you enough."
"I am Marcus,'" the first man said. His smile of gratitude was clear through his tinted hazard helmet, and he gestured to his teammate with a still shaking hand. "He's Alexander."
"We represent the Dashing Raptors," Alexander added. He grinned behind his helmet visor.
"Katie, of the Lighted Dwelling," Katie explained back, letting herself return their smiles through her own tinted helmet.
"Ah... the rescuer tribe," Marcus said. "It surely fits you, then."
"What could possibly have brought you down to these dark depths alone?" Alexander questioned. His tone was curious – impressed even – rather than accusing or suspicious. He gave a small laugh and quickly explained his thinking. "I might have assumed you were the one in true and real trouble down here. But you appear to be fully equipped and working alone..." He raised an eyebrow then – the gesture just barely noticeable given his helmet's front cover. And he gave another friendly, yet doubtful laugh.
"You surely aren't planning to raid a rock drake's nest... or at least try to... all on your own," he said, in a tone somewhere between questioning and honest terror at the thought.
"I sure wouldn't be the first to make it," Katie answered, forcing full confidence back into her voice despite the man's doubt. She looked him in the eyes, even when her every urge then was to look down at the ground instead.
Nest raiding was something these men's tribe did best. And she knew well, without any need to be told, that she had run into a pair of nest raiders in a place they knew at least ten times better than she could ever hope to. Yes, they could easily have died to those seekers... but that had also been pure rotten luck.. a one-time mishap that could well have befallen anyone, no matter how skilled and prepared. Still, she would never let either of them see just how well she had been intimidated.
"I say we all team up," Marcus said. And his eyes showed confidence even when his teammate's expression bordered on doubtful.
"Come on, man," Marcus told said doubtful tribe-mate, looking in the man's direction now. "This girl is just as fast as we are, and she can obviously shoot too. She saved our butts. She can help us as much as we can help her!"
"Sounds fair to me," Alexander answered, after another second to consider. He turned back to Katie, grinning in her direction.
"One more short drop down from here and we land at the end of the rock drake trench," he said. "Stay close behind us for a moment. Once we've dropped down, stay close to the wall."
Katie nodded quickly, heart pounding in a mix of excitement and sudden dread, as she followed close at the men's heels over the run across the path – much wider now – and away from the river. She followed their lead carefully, jumping over the ledge and deploying the wings of her glider only after each of them had done so. And she managed to land, with barely a thumping of her feet on the ground, behind Marcus.
"Katie," Alexander said, his tone sharp and urgent as he turned quickly to face her. "If you do manage to get yourself targeted and attacked by even one rock drake down here, do not try to shoot it head-on with that shotgun of yours. You surely know as well as we do you'd only wound it just enough to piss it off and make it want to rip you into even smaller bits and pieces!"
Katie, who'd understood the logic in his words before he'd even spoken just nodded, trembling slightly now as she flattened herself immediately against the wall.
At least fifteen drakes dashed about, through the wide and rock-strewn trench before her And several more sat still on the walls and even on the ceiling, their eyes darting around as they scanned constantly around their home. Katie paid far greater attention to the ones that were moving – their feathers fanning out behind them as they flew, just the same as any tame member of the species that she'd ever seen. And several were so colorful too. There were the duller greens and oranges of the common tames, along with the lovely blues and reds on their feathers. But there were also brighter colors there – purples and magentas, brighter greens and shades of yellow... She stood for a long moment then before, just watching one in particular, as it glided higher than most of the others, from one end of the long trench clear to the other. Its cobalt scales and its feathers a strange and impressive mix of cyan blue and the lightest of purples, made her think at once that this unique creature was the prettiest she'd ever seen yet.
She readied her grappling gear in her hands – prepared at a second's notice to toss a rope over the clifftop just as far as she could reach – as soon as she saw that the two men had readied theirs before her. But her eyes stayed focused mostly on the quick movements of the massive and deadly creatures so close to them all.
A loud noise of a metal... something, tinging and bouncing across the ground got her attention at once. And at first, she inwardly cringed, expecting deadly trouble in the next instant. But that noise, she realized quickly, had come from a short distance outside the trench instead of in it at all. She watched at least ten rock drakes turn at once, to the sound on the clanging metal. And she understood fast that the sound had been human-made and entirely deliberate. She looked to see Marcus toss some piece of scrap metal – a flattened thing, bent clearly in just a way as to make it tumble and drop noisily – as far away from himself as he could manage, from his place closest to the end of the trench. She knew he'd thrown the first too. And she gasped with surprise, as so many of the rock drakes that had been running about, fled toward the noise of metal tinging outside. They sensed a threat, clearly. Rock drakes were among the more intelligent creatures on that aberrant world. And of course, it only made sense any number of them would think to investigate any loud and unusual noise nearby with more than just the halfhearted sniffing of the air of so many things that lived there. Katie reasoned that out quickly. And she grinned in Marcus' direction, catching his gaze through the visors of their helmets, as he stood ready to throw another little bent object if needed.
"Let's move," Alexander said, in a whisper as he tugged gently at the loosely fitted sleeve of Katie's hazard shirt. "We've got three minutes if we're lucky. As soon as you find the first easily reachable nest, get yourself up to it, grab the egg quickly and get the hell out with your grapples back up to where we started."
"Right," Katie answered. But her confidence was failing now, and she just blinked at him in doubt for a moment.
"We'll meet up back at the top," the man said. "Run!" And he gently shoved her forward, before he dashed off ahead without another second to waste.
Katie took off running in the very next instant, and before she had a second more to reconsider. It was difficult as ever to be quiet in heavy radiation safe boots. And the loose rocks, kicked about as she went, made it impossible entirely. She could hear the feet of her companions though – both of them making some degree of noise as they ran. And that was enough to assure her that the sound of her own feet was far from unreasonable.
She reached a nest closest to her in the next second of hurried running. And for a moment that was almost too long, she just stood, staring over a low rock ledge and into a space carved into the rock by the formation of the place. It made a perfect, cozy, and close enough to circular cubby, just over the low ledge. And inside that small space sat a perfect bright purple egg, tipped over just a little to lean on the protection of plant matter dragged into the nest and left to dry out.
Katie looked around her once in every direction her eyes could take in. And with her heart banging inside her chest loud enough to echo in her ears, she pulled herself up over the ledge.
She was certainly not known for being clumsy. And she would have been glad – if she'd had the mental focus then to think of much aside from her pounding heart, and the griping urge to freeze with every tiny sound around her – that no one was watching her then to see, as her foot caught the edge of the rock wall as she jumped over. She landed with a dull thump, in the hard and rocky nest. And she stifled a cry, with some effort, as the wind was knocked from her lungs by the impact with the far side of it.
"We've got three minutes if we're lucky." The words of her companion echoed though screamed in her head, as caught her breath and looked up the wall high above, searching for a place to fire her grappling hook. She fired it then, quickly from a modified crossbow in her hands, before she detached the line from the bow in one fast motion and clipped it to her belt. She reached down in the very next heart pounding instant and snatched up the egg, which lay beside her in the nest. And in one more flurry of motion, she was gone, flying upward, with a yank of the grappling line, the bow nearly falling from her hand and the rock drake's egg held secure as she could manage it, against her body with the other hand.
Below her, she could now hear the endless growls and roars, and the motions of confused and angry rock drakes, as most of those that had been chased out returned to the safety of the rock-strewn trench. And she knew full well they had easily detected her.
She reached the top of her grapple line, right at the top of the high wall of the trench – a perfect shot of the line. And she grinned for a moment at just how perfectly she'd aimed it, as she hauled herself up, awkwardly and still holding the egg, over the edge of the cliff wall. She stopped then, to catch her breath again for just a second, while she stuffed the glowing purple drake egg into her bag, and toss it back onto her shoulders quickly.
Katie was kneeling, to free herself from the grapple, and it from the cliff wall... when something massive knocked her backward.
A rock drake! She realized with instant and all too real terror before she even looked to see the thing. But when she did look, she, sure enough, saw cobalt blue scaled face and a flash of cyan and purplish feathers of a creature now full on top of her as she lay helpless on the ground. She could feel its hot breath in her face, as it snarled its rage at her.
"Katie!" a voice screamed somewhere behind her, and just close enough that she could hear it clearly. One of the men, she knew at once – and the recognition dawned fast though her terror as she stared certain death in the face. She wondered, oddly in that moment, which of them it was that had yelled. And just as quickly she understood that it didn't matter exactly. Because both were yelling, mostly to each other now, surely – and incoherent past the blood that Katie could hear rushing in her ears with each rapid beat of her heart. She could hear a clanking of metal – the familiar noise of the same trick that had been used to run the flurry of drakes from the trench. But this particular creature that pinned her to the ground gave no real reaction at all. Katie understood, in the part of her mind still able to think while the rest of it was filled with fast growing panic, that it was so clearly on to the trick by then.
The beast snapped its teeth several times in rapid succession only a foot from her face. And she wondered, with her terror fast growing, if an arm – held in front of her in a futile attempt to hold the creature off – had been torn off in a bloodied mess by the snapping bites. But when her body moved, to one side and then to the other, in a hope that refused to ever die, of freeing herself from her deadly predicament without further angering the creature, both arms moved as well as ever long with the rest of her. And Katie understood then – her stomach dropping hard in her body and a sickening sense of dread – that the creature was truly toying with her. Her stomach flipped again, hard enough that she would have thrown up from her terror and shock, had she not been fighting with every bit of her will, for her composure.
Katie reached behind her, moving slowly as she needed to in order to avoid the rock drake's notice while it snapped again dangerously close to her face, but as quickly as she dared, for her shotgun. She was sure it must have fallen somewhere behind when she hit the ground because she felt nothing but the glider still strapped over her shoulders now. She heard pounded harder, and her stomach dropped further when her hands felt nothing of the weapon's familiar cold metal behind her anywhere. But she reached just a little further, stretching her arm behind her just as far as she could manage – and finally, she felt the narrow barrel of the gun. She dragged it toward her and settled it in her hands the best she could in her terrible position, trapped under the fierce animal, and with its underside resting over her upper body.
"Katie!" a voice screamed out her name again. And only then did she remember the pair of men, who had become her allies. Her heart dropped again, as she realized how they had stood where they were, instead of simply running off to leave her to her death. 'Good God' her mind screamed. They must have been horrified, even in their unexpected show of loyalty, as they both stood helpless to do anything but hope.
"Don't shoot at it!" the same voice shouted– her mind oddly wondered in that second again which of them was speaking, just as though that mattered much then. She recalled his earlier warning at once. She had never fully forgotten it at all, letting it play quietly in the back of her mind while she'd struggled for the weapon. And she just nodded once, unsure if the motion was obvious to the men at all from where they stood, unseen by her.
'If I die here, at least it'll be to the prettiest one,' the strange thought come to her, and almost to her own amusement, in the strangest of moments, as she suddenly recognized the drake that held her still tightly pinned to the cavern floor.
With a struggling breath and a desperate hope, she aimed far away from herself and the massive beast's body on top of her. And she fired at once at the far wall of the cavern. A puff of air she didn't know she'd even been holding, escaped from her lungs with a gasping sigh. And she sat up, the very instant the rock drake had leaped away from her at the sound of her gunshot. She watched it for only a fraction of a second, as it scurried away to sniff at the wall in its confusion. And her feet were pounding across the ground before she'd even been aware of having dragged herself to standing at all.
"Nice one," Marcus exclaimed, his voice an unlikely mix of disbelief and amazement right along with relief and near-absolute shock. He stood for a good moment, staring as she raced across the wide path, his mouth hanging half open in a gaping gasp, that showed every one of those emotions all too clearly. He stepped toward her, and gently shook her by the arm. His hands though were visibly shaking.
Alexander though stood turned away from where she was been laying on the ground. And he turned around slowly, his eyes wide and barely blinking, when she approached.
"I've... got your bag," he said. His voice was so shaky, it was enough to be truly concerning. But he smiled just a little, behind his helmet visor and held up the worn leather sack from its place, stashed near his feet.
"I... I just couldn't stand the thought of watching you die," he mumbled, followed closely by some far more mumbled words about how far her sack had been flung, allowing him to grab it in the first place. But Katie just blinked once, grabbing the bag quickly, and moved to confusion by the strange concern of a near-stranger in that dark world.
"Let's get moving," Marcus said. He tossed a compassionate arm around his friend's shoulder, and motioned cheerfully, but still so clearly shaken, for a stunned Katie to follow them. "We've still got the job of grappling our way back to the top of the pathway. And it's already getting later than we'd like."
"Wait!" Katie paused in her tracks. And her eyes darted around the cavern, searching for any small flashing of light and fluttering motions. "Where's Trevor?"
"My featherlight," she explained to the pair of men. And she watched as both pointed up, realization dawning fast on their faces, at the tiny lightpet, who sat perched high up on a rock ledge over their heads.
She caught the little bird on her arm after a high and commanding whistle up at him. And for a moment after that, as the true shock of her own near-death and survival caught up to her, she burst into loud laughter, unable to do anything else in the moment. Tears came next. And somehow she laughed hard and cried harder all in the same moment, while she gasped for breath and shook and nearly collapsed to the ground under the flurry of intense emotional reactions.
Stella found herself troubled as she worked alone in her cramped cabin, rummaging through the shelf closest to the door – on which she stored countless bottles and jars, and little hide and cloth bags tied with twine. She double checked a few small glass bottles on her second look through the contents of the self and made a mental note of two that were nearly empty, before checking the berries she'd hung, in the darkest corner of her cabin – suspended still on their branches she clipped from the bushes – left to dry for later use.
She moved next to the bunk, slid in perfectly under the upper steps of a narrow staircase, and used so often for anyone in need of care to sleep on. Shaking off her troubled thoughts, and annoyed at herself when she couldn't fully manage to do it, she straightened the woven bedding for the third time, before she shook her head and made herself stop. She was about to climb up the staircase above, to her own bunk in the low roofed loft above – because that one really needed tidying up after a night spent tossing and turning in it restlessly - when a polite, fast, and hesitant knocking at the door made her turn around again instantly.
"Jessie," she exclaimed, surprised to see the tribe leader standing in her doorway just as soon as she'd yanked the door open. She cringed a little at the horrible creaking of its hinges and stepped outside to her small wooden deck to speak with him. Her heart dropped a little at once – an instinct mostly, it seemed, learned from her years of caring for the sick and injured.
"You... aren't hurt are you?" she asked him. Her eyes looked him over quickly but intent. And she felt great relief when he shook his head, and even granted her just a hint of a laugh.
"You released that boy, Johnny, from your care?" the leader questioned her. And Stella's thought's went at once to the young new arrival, dropped off the night before at her cabin – still in the far too big clothing that he'd been hastily dressed in, and shaking steadily from shock and confusion while he just stared ahead of him for hours at a time, barely even blinking. She studied Jessie's face for a moment, trying hard to guess at just how he felt about the boy's release into the main buildings of the base. And on this odd occasion, she simply couldn't find even a hint of how he felt.
"I couldn't keep him here with me," she said. And she fought as she spoke, to hide her intense emotions over the whole situation. "He isn't sick or injured. He's certainly not dying. He's lost and confused and afraid of so much about this place. He's a kid, Jessie, plain and simple." Stella shook her head then and forced back threatening tears – annoyed as she did so, because shows of emotions in that place felt so entirely pointless, in their inability to change a thing. "He belongs here the very least of any of us. But since he is here, we can only let him find his place in his crazy world now. I sent him on his way last night. He's bunking a few of the younger men upstairs..."
"You have a good heart, Stella," Jessie answered. His tone was grateful, and his words so simple as he nodded his understanding. But he smiled then – a strange, too casual and playful smile he showed only to her.
"You can never be told enough, just how much you are appreciated here," he said. He moved an arm around her, and pulled her firmly but gently to lean against him, while he just smiled again.
"I will admit that does mean a lot, from a mighty tribe leader," Stella answered with a smile of her own. She rested her head against his arm – her own height somewhat short of her reaching to lean on his shoulder, and reached for one of his hands with hers.
"Our tribe are all good people," Jessie said. His tone was assuring enough to make her smile with her own confidence, as she nodded full agreement against his strong arm. "He'll be protected here... just like Katie was when she first arrived..."
"I found him a proper set of clothes," Stella said – because practicality felt better than frustration over circumstances she knew she could never hope to understand. Slowly she added urgently – because though she knew she was fretting as she was so prone of doing, it seemed so important then - "strong and durable boots too. Something that won't get soaked in the river..."
"How many times now over the years have we stood out here like this" Jessie mused, content and wistful as he looked straight down to what – from there at least – looked like an endless pit of blackness and tiny red glows here and there far below them.
"I've... lost count by now," Stella pressed herself in closer against him, smiling brighter to understand he most certainly wasn't complaining when she did.
She followed his gaze down to the near endless pit far below and felt herself cringe just a little – she never had liked it much in the levels any further into the place than the top of the mid-levels the base stood in. She's certainly been dawn far further than that more than once. But where some of her tribe-mates took some enjoyment from the adventure and the danger of the lowest levels, in the depths of the world – where burning radiation spilled out in places from some hidden place below the ground, and massive wild rock drakes battled endlessly for hunting grounds against the just as massive reapers. It was endlessly dark, so far from the sun that streamed through the ceiling high above. And the red grows of crystals and those from so many aberrant creatures themselves, giving off the only light had never ceased to make her uneasy.
Stella hadn't even ventured down in so long by now that she'd all but forgotten the main routes down into the center of the world. She simply had no reason to go and for that she was glad. The more adventurous and bold explorers of the tribe had stopped asking her to venture down even partway, after endless refusals from her. And for that, she was glad too. Though she certainly did have a good set of radiation gear stored in her cabin, that she only hoped she'd never need again.
Her gaze traveled back up then, to the path leading downward and winding around the underground lake. For a long moment, she watched a megalosaurus, just barely close enough that she could see exactly what it was at all, as it dodged and bit furiously at the swinging tail of an ankylosaur it had harassed to the point of the usually docile creature's obvious frustration.
"You look so tired today," Jessie observed. It was his turn then to look her over. And he did so with obvious concern before he held her tighter in his arms. She sighed then and mumbled a few words of admittance to the dreadful night in which she'd spent far more time just staring at the walls than sleeping.
"You could have come to my room to visit me," Jessie said. His tone was so regretful. And when she looked back up at him, he was already staring down at her intently. "It's been so long now since you have..."
"You... stopped inviting me," Stella countered. She laughed lightly for only a second before she grew serious again... and sad. Slowly she added cautiously. "I'd started to assume perhaps you didn't want..."
"It was so easy to forget how this place never made you less of a lady," Jessie mused, still smiling as he held her close to him. "How you'll never stop waiting for me to make my play first, while you just wait and hope... You can visit anytime. And I do hope you will."
Stella just blushed against his body for a moment, hiding her face because she felt like a silly young girl for doing it. And the fact that he was always so amused by it every time certainly didn't do a thing to help her either. Suddenly though her mood turned serious. And she looked up at him again as the blush faded from her face.
"Are we just going to keep up this silliness forever, then?" she asked. And when Jessie just gave a wordless sigh of questioning, she leaned against him again and followed his gaze out over her rickety railing at the top of a short set of steps leading down to the path leading to the main building.
"You know I've loved you for so long," she said quietly. And she blinked back sudden threatening tears of emotion, trying hard to squeeze herself in closer to him still – that was impossible. "Not long after that night I'll never forget... three men had died to that megalosaurus that rampaged through the old metal mine. You came up here, nearly punched a hole in the wall because you couldn't have saved them. And you finally said I was the reason you carried on in this place then..."
"Every bit of it was true. It still is," Jessie answered, smiling again.
Stella gave a little laugh, though the mood was serious besides, and mused out loud. "Five years now at least, that we've been sneaking around like reckless school kids, with everything to lose."
"Do you really think no one's ever noticed?" Jessie asked her. And he gave a small laugh as he shook his head, amused. "That most of the tribe hasn't guessed by now? It's been years already and we aren't very good at this, you know. We both know our tribe is only being polite."
"To build a life together, in this place..." Stella mumbled, not unhappily. "It would have seemed so... impossible once. But somehow we are far from the first to ever try... It makes sense I suppose. We are all still just people in the end." She pressed herself tighter against him again, as ever lingering fears that perhaps she was involved in something very wrong somehow, departed after years of spinning through the very back of her mind.
"What will little Katie make of this?" she muttered after another moment. She smiled to herself for a second, relishing the understanding that she was – aside from Jessie – the only one of the entire tribe who could likely ever get away with calling the young tribe-mate in question 'little' without the girl herself loudly voicing every hint of her displease at the nickname.
She knew as well as anyone that Jessie loved and cared for Katie as though she was his own daughter. And of course, the girl had all but idolized him as her protector from the start of her time in that place. If anyone had an opinion now – she let herself chuckle just a little at the thought – it would be the energetic and opinionated girl. She was also, Stella understood in the very next second, perhaps also the only one of the tribe who truly had the honest right to. She was surprised when Jessie just laughed, at least a little.
"Katie will support us," he muttered. "I know her so well... trust me."
"May I.. come to your room tonight?" Stella asked, blushing again and not used to being the one to do the asking. And she held onto him now as he let her go, so clearly needing to go back to endless duties to the tribe – though she saw the regret in his face over stepping back from her.
"I would very much like it if you did," Jessie answered. And he granted her another unguarded smile, before he simply walked away down the short set of steps in front of her porch, and away down the catwalk to disappear out of view around a bend.
Groaning with pain, Ellie dropped down to sitting half slumped forward on the large tightly bound bundle of straw she just tossed down onto the floor of the animal pen. And for several long moments, she just sat like that, gasping for a breath that only seemed harder to fully catch with each passing day and shaking from the effort just moving the bundle had taken. She was exhausted, just from the effort of standing on her feet, of moving and even thinking – while relentless pain which tore through her body, riding her nerves all the way to her feet and hands if she moved too fast, or reached too high or stood too fast – sapped what seemed left of her energy reserves.
Stella never failed to assure her that she wasn't quite dying, sometime during every one of their nearly daily interactions somewhere in the base. Though it was just as obvious from everything about her tone of voice and the expressions that showed on her face, that the brilliant healer was more than just a little unsettled by her still steadily declining state.
'Never,' she said in her mind, scolding yourself harshly as tears formed in the corners of her eyes.
She was just so tired of her own tears... so tired of the endless sense of terror that screamed in the background of her thoughts as just simply went about existing.
That fear only grew so much worse at night. And laying in the darkness of the base while most of the tribe slept in their bunks, she only ever seemed to battle against endless strings of vivid nightmares, filled with blood and death and a creature that wanted to tear her limbs from her body and clearly would if she ever got to close to it. Even the more recent nights, by that time spent in Brendan's bunk - because he'd all but insisted he certainly didn't mind after the first two nights she'd finally run to find him while shaking badly and desperate for help just to convince herself she was safe – she still hadn't slept enough. They'd taken to laying together, in a bunk far too small for them both but neither fully caring, having whispered conversations – mostly of anything they could each recall of their lives before that strange world - so as not to wake his bunk-mates, until she was tired enough that her eyes fell closed. And finally, he would just hug her tightly against his body, knowing without even trying while he slept, to hold her tighter amid the inevitable visions of horror, so that she could sleep at least an hour at a stretch, before they were both awake again and usually downstairs in the sitting room, both of them trying hard to distract themselves and each other from their endless discomfort and pain.
Ellie dragged herself back up onto her feet, with every muscle and nerve in her body screaming in protest. And she looked around the large pen, so crowded with noisy animals. Somehow the pen, from one end to the other looked so much bigger than it truly was that day. And she slowly stepped forward, moving toward a stall inhabited by a breeding group of raptors at the farthest end of the structure. She remembered the bundle of straw only after several stumbling steps. And she let herself groan out loud before turning around to grab it again, groaning again as she shouldered the bundle. Somehow, even after stumbling so badly over nothing but her dragging feet, that she almost fell onto her face on the dirty floor, she managed to reach the door of the raptors' pen. And with effort and another groan of despair, she yanked it open.
"Hello...?" The voice that spoke somewhere behind her was so quiet and hesitant that she questioned for a second if she'd really heard anything at all. But the strange unnerving feeling of eyes staring at her from behind made her slowly turn around to look.
Ellie wasn't sure exactly who she was possibly expecting to find when she turned around. But a young man, nearly trembling from his obvious uncertainty, his eyes wide with just trying hard to take in everything at once, while he fiddled frantically with his shirt sleeve, was certainly not it.
"Hi," Ellie said, returning his greeting at once and forcing a smile through her pain, because this poor boy was so clearly afraid of even her, as he stared around the animal pen.
For a moment she just studied him, while he studied her slowly crossing the pen toward her. He was so thin and almost... fragile looking. His brown eyes still darted around when he wasn't looking at her. But in them, she saw a strange innocent curiosity, so strangely out of place in that world. Good God, she cursed silently. He could easily have been fifteen! She only hoped – for the sake of his own sanity and safety - that he was in fact just a little older than that.
"I'm Ellie," she told him slowly. Because she truly wasn't sure what else to do with this poor boy that had wandered into the animal pen – probably let loose to explore the base on his own.
"Johnny," the boy answered back, awkwardly gesturing toward himself though that was of course odd and unneeded before he went right back to playing with his sleeve again. He'd barely said a word of course, which made it tricky to be sure. But Ellie was certain she'd heard a good hint of an accent so very unlike her own mid-western American one. Australian? She only vaguely recalled knowing exactly what that even sounded like exactly. But she was confident in her assumption regardless.
One of the raptors inside the pen – the door of which now sat open – began to chatter with noises then as it scratched itself against the door frame. And Ellie looked back quickly as she could to see her own favored mount and pet, looking at her as he scratched himself. She understood in an instant that he simply hoped to be let out. And she leaned forward to scratch his head for a moment, smiling at his appreciative growl in return. She remembered Johnny – still standing nearby – only when he let out a sudden terrible scream of terror, and fell backward into a loose straw pile after a few too fast and clumsy steps back. She turned around just in time to watch, helpless, as he fell. She stepped toward him, trying her best to offer a hand up. But her heart sunk a little to see that the raptor had followed her out of the stall and closer to the boy.
"This is Chomper," Ellie said, utterly unsure what else to do when the poor terrified boy screamed again – wide-eyed and stiff with fright as the dinosaur sniffed at him as some enormous dog might have.
"He's my raptor," she explained. And she forced another smile, despite rapidly increasing pain that tore through her entire body from just making herself move fast enough to come to Johnny's aid. "He loves to be scratched on the head..."
"He is... so much cuter than those ravagers I met last night..." Johnny muttered. And now that he was speaking just a little more, Ellie was absolutely sure of his Australian accent.
"You'll decide eventually what you prefer to ride," Ellie answered. She watched, pleased as the boy gently – though still so hesitantly - patted and scratched her raptor's head. "I'll teach you to ride him sometime, if you want to try."
Her eyes followed his careful and curious gaze for a while, as he stared first at the stalls full of ravagers, some of them looking out over the tops of their low doors and yipping a little for any hope of attention. And she smiled a little – a genuine smile now – as he looked wide-eyed and awestruck, at a massive stegosaurus who sat out in the open in a corner of the animal pen, her mouth presently stuffed with the berries she was munching away on from a pile that had been left in front of her by someone earlier that morning. There were a couple of triceratops too – an old female and her baby who was now half her size, and almost constantly bellowing for any attention from his human trainer – who was of course not currently around to play with him.
A baby ankylosaur – just hatched three days before, and still not reaching a meter from his head to the tip of its tail - lay alone in the furthest corner of the pen on a straw pile. His eyes were open and he was looking around him just a little, content and not in any obvious want of anything then, as he gave a tiny baby yawn and thumped his tiny clubbed tail just a little, just having discovered that he could. Ellie watched, disbelieving at first, and then quickly impressed, as Johnny smiled brightly at the tiny anky before hurrying across the pen to look much closer at him. He snatched up a handful of berries from the nearby trough and held them in front of the little dinosaur's mouth, filed with still so small flat teeth. The boy laughed then – for probably the first time in that place- when the tiny thing took them with a quick snap.
"Came back over here," Ellie called out to the boy. She felt her own excitement grow, despite her pain and utter exhaustion. "I'll show you a baby raptor!"
Johnny was clearly so hesitant and uncertain as he followed Ellie's gesturing hand, and walked slowly inside the raptor stall. And he jumped back at once, nearly slamming against the door frame sideways when all three of Chomper's mates turned to look at him with interest. But the baby huddled between the back wall and its mother – its tiny feather's still little more than down fluff on his legs and head, and scales still weak to protect it from anything at all – caused him to grin so quickly, his fright all but forgotten.
"Well isn't that just about the cutest thing ever," Johnny exclaimed.
"I found him in here a couple of hours ago," Ellie said. She petted the raptor mother – sprinter – while she gently petted the newborn with her other hand, so both would trust her to do so. "There was still just one single egg in here last night when I left them..." She looked toward the straw bale outside the stall, and her heart dropped again at remembering her need of it.
"He'll need to that lay on," she explained. She certainly wasn't asking for the boy's help. He wasn't ready for any work yet, surely. He was still brand new to the world, lost and shocked, and terrified. But he instantly snatched up the bale and tossed it gently into the stall without ever being asked, clearly more than eager to be doing something meaningful. She showed him how to pile the straw into a thick soft heap, before directing him to lead the baby to it with his hands supporting the still tiny creature as it tried to walk a little, still unsure how to balance itself with a ridiculously long tail.
"Chomper is a lucky man," Johnny said. And he laughed again, barely showing a sign of being startled now as one female growled a short greeting to him when he moved past her in the tight confines of the stall. Ellie only looked at him, puzzled and questioning. And the boy laughed a little harder.
"Three pretty lady raptors in here with him," he explained, which made Ellie laugh too, nodding and amused.
The boy was off again then, stumbling just a little over some uneven wooden floorboards he didn't know to watch out for under the loose scattered straw in the middle of the large pen. But he caught himself, with a small laugh, and leaned down to pet and scratch a wandering lystrosaurus, that had quickly scampered to him as fast as she possibly could on short and stubby inefficient legs, to lean balanced on her back feet against his knees while she bellowed and hollered her friendly joy over the affection.
"You have horses here too!" Johnny explained. And he ran in another direction, toward the line of stalls behind where the massive stegosaurus stood to look at a small collection of equis that occupied a couple of them. He smiled brighter than ever then, and it was so easy to guess at his simple relief at just seeing something in the place that looked at least mostly familiar and recognizable – even given the oddly striped coats of these horse ancestors.
"Talk to Ben sometime," Ellie said, walking slowly after him as soon as she had closed and fastened the door of the raptors' stall. "I don't think he knows much about any creature here other than horses. And those he's so good with..."
"Are you... alright?" Johnny questioned after both had stood silent for a good long moment in front of the horse stalls. And Ellie was instantly both startled and horrified by the question.
It was wishful thinking, she knew, to assume the unfortunate boy simply hadn't noticed in his own shocked confusion over his newness to this place, just how decidedly unwell she couldn't keep herself from looking. And in the moment they'd stood still, herself not needing to think of speaking... of walking after him and worrying for his own still nervous state, her shakiness had returned worse than before while her knees felt close to giving out beneath her. She leaned against the edge of a stall, forcing herself to remain on her feet.
"I'm fine," she said, and her tone was insistent. She waved him away slowly when he held a hand out to her. But the boy only frowned, doubtful – as she knew well he would. Because of course he was young and overwhelmed, not utterly stupid.
"I've just... had some health issues," Ellie said then. Because indeed the boy was certainly far from stupid. That answer would surely make sense to anyone. Though she had certainly never been told not to explain were it ever to come up – it hardly made sense to utterly scare the poor new arrival senseless either. To her relief he only nodded slowly, smiling his understanding before he reached over a stall door to stroke Charlie's neck.
"Ellie..." Someone called to her from the door leading into the animal pen made her turn around slowly. And when she saw Stella, standing in the light of the loose and rattling door, a strange look she'd never seen before on her face, she stepped toward her moving slower than she'd turned around. "I... I need to talk to you outside."
"What... what's happened?" Ellie felt her heart drop in her chest, without being told of any need for such a reaction. Because something suddenly felt so very wrong. She took a dread-filled, slow, and shaking step toward Stella, who still just stood in the doorway, looking so... uneasy.
"Ellie, I think you've got to go. Now." that voice was Johnny's. Ellie had almost forgotten about him again, standing nearby, in her unexplainable dread. Clearly, he had not a clue more than she did about whatever it was that was going on. But he'd just as clearly heard the urgency in Stella's voice. And he stood, just looking around slowly before his eyes met Ellie's again, and looked slowly away.
Ellie tried to walk faster than before as she followed Stella outside the pen, and down a narrow path that led around the outside of the base. But her steps were nearly as slow as before. And she couldn't help it, though she certainly tried. Stella waited for her of course, a concerned look almost replacing that of her unease, as she lead the way carefully to the wooden table outside the base and overlooking the bright glowing blue lake and the pathways that led up and down to other levels of that strange world. She had taken her arm gently at some point halfway through the short walk, stopping her from falling as Ellie's feet stumbled over the uneven dirt of the path when her feet dragged so horribly in her weakness. And the Englishwoman let go of her, only when she was safely seated in a wooden chair in front of the table.
"Ellie..." Stella said, her eyes moving slowly and carefully over the girl's body before she met her eyes and frowned a little in her obvious concern. "You are clearly in a lot of pain again, dear girl..."
"Yeah..." Ellie was slow to admit it, ever to her. And as soon as she had, she smiled a weak smile that she only hoped looked close to strong enough, and tried not show far more of her struggling as she caught her breath. " But... I'll be alright."
"You should have come to see me this morning, to ask me for something for the pain" Stella answered without hesitation. Her tone was one of gentle scolding. And she looked at Ellie, serious and barely blinking.
"I... I don't like to bother you." Ellie felt the first traces of tears forming in her eyes. And she tried to fight them back at once, in her embarrassment. "If I came to your cabin every time I needed to... you... you'd get so much less done..."
"It doesn't matter," Stella's voice was firm now, though still compassionate as ever and maybe more so even. "If you need to come and see me every day then you do so. You're not bothering me in the least by just letting me do my job!"
"That's just what Brendan said," Ellie muttered back, managing to smile then through her pain and her tears.
One looked back at Stella though – to see her face turn back to that same seriousness and strange unease that had started the entire unexpected visit in the first place – made her smile disappear in an instant. She sat still, nearly frozen now in sudden terror, with her heart dropping into her stomach again, as realization hit her hard.
"Wait..." she said, mumbling through her pain and dread and terror, as her ears began to ring. "Did something happen to Brendan?" She looked at Stella's face to see still growing dread, turning to unmistakable regret. And her heart pounded in her chest.
"Is... is he okay?" Ellie questioned, doubt-filled denial making her nearly beg now for an answer.
"Oh my dear, " Stella said slowly. Her face still showed the same sadness and regret. "Brendan... passed away this morning."
"What?" Ellie was on her feet in the very next second, the landscape spinning fast enough around her to make her nearly fall to the ground as she held on tightly to the edge of the table, and just barely aware of the rough unfinished wood that scrapped against her fingers. The tears she'd been fighting back came to her eyes again at once. And this time she had no hope of stopping them. "How can he possibly be... dead?"
It made so little sense. And her mind screamed out every bit of the injustice of it all, as she remembered his laughter and grinning, just the past night in his bunk, as he told her the silliest of jokes she could just barely relate to. How she'd felt his hand firmly holding hers when she woke up in the darkness of the bunk-room after yet another of her endless nightmares of some horrid creature that snarled its intention of tearing her into bloodied pieces. He'd been just like he'd always been then – not exactly strong. She'd learned that he was farther from that than one might easily assume at first – but certainly no weaker or truly unwell either. He remembered his smile in the morning – his talk of repairs that need doing on some leaking greenhouse roof, and how he'd save her a seat in the dining room for dinner, just as though they were children again, in some other time and place.
"You were certainly one of his very best of friends," Stella said, dragging her from her thoughts and back into her tear-filled reality. And Ellie found herself so sudden sobbing tears of loss into the Englishwoman's simple cloth shirt with her arms wrapped around her body. "I couldn't let you just find out later when the news starts to get around the base..."
Notes/ Hopefully the rock drake scene did Aberration some true justice! :)
I didn't bother with a warning for that character death either, and maybe I should have. But come one, it's Ark. Lol. I'm certainly hoping no one would be truly shocked and appalled that someone died! I did decide to tone it down though... a lot, when writing. In my head, when plotting this out, his death was supposed to be horrific.