Ben had never been all that confidant in truly exploring much of the aberrant world. Aside from the occasional run on horseback while following the river he'd come to know well enough and short trips up the path from base up the path to get there, he just didn't dare to venture far from the base on his own. He was certainly happy enough to see more of the world, in the company of his tribe-mates – many of them almost impossibly good at navigating the dangerous terrain were, to him, so much looked the same and lacked in landmarks on the many twisting paths here and there. And now he happily followed the traveling party, as it did exactly that, dashing forward on their mounts, traversing the strange and horrifying landscape.
Jessie rode at the front of the small group – on a ravager with a bluish-dyed saddle – while Katie rode, at least for that moment, beside him on her own ravager mount. Three more ravagers followed them, all of them saddled, despite a lack of riders, and carrying supplies in their saddlebags instead.
Further back, on the trail that tracked through the heavy woods lined with high mushroom topped giant trees and the ground strewn with small mushrooms of every color among think clumps and grass and low bushes – Ellie jumped Chomper over a fallen mushroom tree, that the others had all gone around instead. Ben watched her grin as she did so. And he smiled in her direction at seeing her do so, before he pulled back on the reins of his equis, leading him into a slow bend in the path.
Nearby, presently just off to the side of the small group of mounted riders, Johnny – on his own raptor mount – leaped with the creature over a larger fallen tree, this one crumbling slightly and propped at one end on a large rock. Ellie cheered her approval at him and his clearly impromptu jump, at once. And she smiled brighter as the boy laughed.
Ellie certainly had her rare decent days even then, amid the sadly still growing number of increasingly horrible ones. And Ben could see so easily, that this was one such decent day for her. He watched her jump Chomper over another small obstacle in the path, this time a small flattened boulder. And understood at once, in her needlessly playful and almost competitive riding, that she was simply determined to enjoy feeling decent for the first time in a while.
"I feel like that boy might just be okay in this crazy world after all," Ben said, falling in beside Ellie again after she'd made another little jump. He took a drink of water from the water jar he carried with him, frowning to find it already turning unpleasantly warm. And he shoved it back into his horse's saddlebag, without stopping.
"His chances are just a good as anyone's, I should think," Ellie answered, drinking from her own jar of water, before tossing it into her bag. And her smile turned then to a smirking grin, as she watched the boy make his next jump – yanking up on his mount's reins at the perfect moment, and then holding on as the small dinosaur leaped over a rock with ease. "I'm just glad to see, he may well be a raptor rider!"
"I still don't know yet," Johnny said, laughing easily as he joined the conversation. "I might still be a horseman..."
The dirt path they were following turned sharply to the left. And Ben, following the bend as it veered so sharply and then straightened again, found himself amid the group now facing a waterfall. It was small and narrow, but a waterfall nonetheless. And it poured from somewhere high above – down over a cliff, far above their heads and surely close to the ceiling of the world, to add to a clear blue pool fed by a stream winding down a hill to their right.
Besides the flowing of creek and the tumbling steady splash of the waterfall, there were other noises too. Many of them. Ben could easily hear so much when he listened – and he had learned well, and early into his time in that place, to always listen well for anything. There was the ever-present squawking of a dodo, hidden somewhere beneath the thick cover of the bushes that covered the ground. And the snaps of twigs and the growls of some distant hidden creature, he could only hope would not inch closer. Somewhere, further away, the footsteps of something obviously massive shook the ground around them.
A diplodocus. Ben had seen one of the towering creatures only a couple of times before during his time in that place. But he certainly knew that the beasts were harmless, to anyone not careless enough to wander under their feet.
"Johnny! Look!" Ellie said, still in her place beside them, facing the small waterfall and the creek. She tapped the boy lightly, but clearly excited, on his shoulder, and gestured frantically with a waving hand as the massive diplodocus came slowly into view over the tops of some lower trees.
"Whoa!" The boy was obviously shocked – and just as clearly more than a little unnerved – by the size of the dinosaur that stood, only its head and portion of the neck visible, looking down over the treetops at the traveling party. He was close to falling from the back of the raptor he was riding as he peered up at the thing, high overhead. And he grabbed for the reins quickly, in order to catch himself.
"A herbivore I would imagine," he said. And his voice was calmer now that he'd realized the massive thing had no interest whatsoever in him as a prey item.
Johnny was off his mount in the next second. And while Ben and Ellie just sat exchanging glances, he tore a long and leafy branch from the closest mejoberry bush to his feet. Grinning, the boy waved the branch, with its prize of green leaves and juicy berries over his head, while he whistled for the creature's attention.
The dinosaur came closer then, with a few heavy and ground trembling stomps of its enormous feet. And it slowly leaned down – surely too trusting for it's own good in that place – to snatch up the branch from his hands. Johnny laughed loudly. And his eyes opened wide and suddenly anxious in fright, for only a second when the creature leaned down further, to nudge him gently with a head half the size of the boy's body. In the next second though, the boy just laughed again, before he patted the gentle giant of a creature on the top of its head.
"Well, would ya look at that..." Jessie muttered, so clearly amused as he watched the boy's antics.
"Diplos may well be among the stupidest creatures in this place, but they are absolutely harmless," he continued. And Ben, still sitting on Charlie's back watching carefully, knew at that moment just how much his own fright for his bunkmate's safety must have shown on his face.
Ben smiled then, nodding understanding when the tribe leader rested a hand on his shoulder with a hint of a laugh. And he watched, still seated in his saddle, as Katie dismounted nearby, to carefully approach the huge dinosaur herself in order to gently pat its giant front foot. And he laughed a little, his unease fading rapidly when he saw the creature merely nudge her lightly with its snout – neck bent down low to do so, and the dino giving a boisterous bellow – while it did nothing to hide its hope for another feed of leaves and berries.
"I grew up with basset hounds," Johnny said. And it was clear, just from watching his wistful and almost startled expression, that he recalled the fact only then – reminded somehow of the dogs, by the playful behavior of the dinosaur it seemed. He yanked a long branch free from another of the berry bushes near where he stood and grinned as he offered it to Katie to take for the dinosaur. "I used to wonder when I was a bit younger, how they didn't trip over their own ears. There's a difference between dogs and dinosaurs though, yeah..."
The boy sounded suddenly sad then – presumably remembering at least the smallest hints of a life that had been his once, in a place he would never see again. And Ben watched him, understanding some hints of his own confusion, reflected then in this young new arrival's lost and staring gaze around him.
"Perhaps you'll have a creature of your own in this place soon," Katie said. And her simple attempt to boost Johnny's suddenly despairing mood clearly worked at once. Because he was instantly smiling again, looking from her to the leader of the tribe, who sat nearby, hope and excitement flashing across his eyes.
"Do you suppose I could really tame and train a beast creature of my own someday?" He asked, his tone hopeful.
Jessie chuckled, and moved closer in order, to rest a hand on the boy's shoulder with an easy smile.
"I'd say, it's pretty well a requirement, Boy," he said, cheerfully. He gave a slight laugh and added, thoughtfully, "I can't say I've tamed and trained a creature in years now myself. Taming creatures... the younger folks usually get good at that. But I could certainly teach you how."
"Big silly beast," Ellie said. And Ben turned his attention to her again, watching her laughing brightly as she patted the diplo on its head - which it had leaned so eagerly toward her with its neck bent low - while she stayed seated on her raptor. She'd found a branch herself and torn it free so that she could hold it in her hands, while the massive creature nibbled its leaves with amazing gentleness.
"Jump in!" Katie called out, from a ways away, once the massive dinosaur had begun to slowly, calmly wander away from them. Ben looked in her direction after he'd watched with the group as the creature left in the other direction. And he knew she was talking about the clear blue pool, because she stood in it herself up to her knees, still in her thin cloth clothing, but with her boots kicked into a pile near the dirt path.
"There's not usually much in there but a few fish. Maybe an otter," Jessie said, giving his unspoken okay to swim – though he himself stayed on his ravager with clearly no interest in getting himself soaking wet.
Johnny made for the small blue pool at once. And he leaped into the water – in a near-perfect jump, pulling his knees against his body as soon as he'd left the rocky edge at nearest the waterfall – with surprising enthusiasm. And Ben discovered, to his initial surprise, that the water was just over their heads at the deepest point – deeper than he'd first thought – once he'd jumped in too. The water was warm – almost warmer than Ben would have liked on a hot day in summer. But it was still a welcome break from the muggy heat of the afternoon. And he fully enjoyed just cooling off in the pool, and diving underneath for a moment before watching Katie and Johnny fully engaged in a sudden bout of splashing water at each other with flying hands, much akin to five-year-old children.
Ben laughed at the pair of them, enjoying the feeling and fast and instant joy at watching them – both so very young and truly deserving of far more of such moments, that that dangerous world allowed. He paused, silent and still in the water dismayed and disbelieving when a handful of water, thrown his way by a grinning Katie, slammed against his face. But in the next second, he was simply laughing again, while he watched her dive under the surface of the pool in a clear effort to avoid retaliation. Ben might of laughed harder still – and he might easily have stood still just waiting for a perfect chance to soak his already drenched tribe-mate for her antics- had he not heard Ellie's sudden scream of terror from behind him.
Ellie had left Chomper's saddle at some point. And she now sat, perched on a fallen log that lay close to the edge of the water. She was barefoot with her hide boots on the ground close by. And though she couldn't or wouldn't jump into the pool entirely, she'd had her feet in the warm water. Ben had seen her before in the corner of his vision, smiling with her own amusement at the rest of them.
Suddenly though, she had her feet up on the log in front of her. And her eyes were open wide with shock and terror, as she stared towards the litter waterfall at the back of the pool, one hand stiffly pointing.
"Sarco!" she exclaimed. And her hand gestured around now just a little at the waterfall. "There's a sarco in the pool!"
Ben's heart began to slam in his chest at once, at the mention of the huge crocodile ancestor. And he instantly cursed himself and the others for not seeing such a large creature anywhere around the pool before they'd so carefully dove in. But instead of even bothering to look in the direction Ellie was looking, his eyes went instead to Katie, who was swimming fast across the pool to climb out on the side furthest from the creek. And to Johnny, who was splashing around half helpless, and treading water, in confusion over exactly which way he should move. His eyes were wide with terror. And the poor boy finally gave a scream of panic, as he moved, probably driven by instinct more than real decisions, in the direction Katie had gone. Ben reached out as far as he could from his place in the water, now making for the edge himself – his heart pounding harder – for the boy, and determined to shove him onto the ledge ahead of him.
He looked around frantically in the water – which was now churning terribly from the splashes of he and his tribe-mates as they struggled to safety, and sure to only gain the attention of the deadly creature. But still, he saw nothing anywhere near where Ellie was still pointing. And that brought him close to panic as he grabbed, in desperation, for the back of Johnny's cloth shirt. The boy however gave a scream of his own terror. And before Ben could manage to grab him, he went under the water, arms waving wildly as he splashed and kicked and screamed again.
"Johnny," Ben yelled, with his heart banging harder, and his stomach flipping hard enough that he knew he was surely about to be sick from his dread. And he could hear Katie's frantic cries echoing his own, as they both scrambled to dry land, and instantly turned back to look for blood in the water.
Johnny, however, surfaced again in the next several seconds. And though he was clearly winded from holding his breath, all panic was gone from his eyes. And he looked around him in the pool then, a grin quickly spreading across his face before he instantly burst into laughter.
"If only you could see the looks on your own faces," Ellie exclaimed, through laughs of her own. And Ben, dismayed, turned to see that she had promptly dipped her bare feet back into the water again, grinning.
"Priceless," Johnny said. He hung from the rock ledge, holding on easily with both arms before letting go again to drop back into the water. Ben watched Jessie chuckling for a brief second behind them, before he climbed off his mount, and began to lead the whole pack of them, plus the raptors and horse to the water so that they could all drink from the stream.
"That was so needlessly mean," Ben grumbled. Though he was laughing by then, as he did so.
He could take a joke as well as anyone. And clearly so could Katie – back in the pool just treading water, while she shook her head a little and laughed it off silently. And he was happy to join back in again, as the bout of simply goofing off – so rare a thing on that strange dark, and dangerous world – resumed with laughter and shouts.
Ben moved to the front of the group to ride beside Jessie and Katie when the five of them, their mounts, and the ravager pack moved on again, following the creek as it trailed along tight against the wall of high cliffs that continued on for as far as he could see, in a long barrier across the landscape. He took a drink of his water jar – now filled again with far more pleasant cold water – and exchanged looks with Katie, who shook her head a little and chuckled with a hint of laughter.
"They got us good," the red-haired girl said, turning for a second to watch Ellie and Johnny behind them, both back to jumping their raptors over the rocks and one fallen log the others had again gone around. She shook her head, and shot Johnny a look of mock fury clearly wanting him to see it, before she muttered quietly, "if not for this place, that guy could have surely been an actor."
"We're all just people in the end," Jessie mused, obviously referring to the silly harmless prank himself. He turned to look behind him for a moment then himself, appearing to look mostly at Ellie, before he turned back again, smiling.
"She might not know yet, and maybe never well," he continued, quiet and contemplating as they rode on. "It's hard to say... and many people here just never remember much about their own families because they simply refuse to even try. I can't say for a minute that I don't understand why. But... I'd bet you anything, Ellie once had a little brother."
The little group's journey was a relatively short one overall. And after their impromptu stop at the natural pool and the waterfall to swim, they rode for only a few more minutes on their mounts before they reached a place blocked from the front by a high stone fence, and at the back by the cliffs. Jessie stopped the group easily with a raised hand before he climbed off his ravager and hurried to yank open the wooden gate – which was fastened shut with nothing more than a heavy rope that secured it to a fence post.
Ben was the last one in through the gate, having let the others and the unbidden ravagers all pass in front of him before he rode past the fence with some strange and growing unease and hesitation. And as soon as he was inside the fence, he yanked up hard on his horse's reins, in sickening shock, before instantly letting out a gasp of horror at a collection of scattered dinosaur bones, all marred with jagged teeth marks and strewn around at the right side of the large enclosure he now sat inside. He gave another gasp, and that quickly became a cry of fright, when he next step on the horse, after turning the creature to his left with another awkward tugging at the rein, placed him nearly face to face with the nearly intact skull of a triceratops, discarded carelessly between some low branches of a large bush against the fence, and with one massive horn snapped off halfway to the base.
Beside him, Ben saw Johnny cringe a little with his own obvious unease about the place. And he exchanged silent concerned looks with the boy, as the two of them stepped forward and further into the penned in space all too slowly.
"How the hell did the boys manage this one?" Katie muttered, her voice merely amused and curious instead of horrified, as she looked at the discarded dino skull in it's perfect placement, balanced in the bush.
"Oh my..." Ellie said, in a hushed tone. And Ben looked to his right to see her now off her raptor's saddle again, walking very slowly through the discarded bones with a large leg bone – stripped entirely off every scrap of meat and dried in the heat of the daytime sun – held in her hands while she studied it intently.
Her steps were hesitant and slow as she walked carefully to catch up to the leader of the tribe, walking faster toward one of several large dirt piles scattered through the fenced-in pen. But her face showed a sort of determined boldness as she watched him stomp his foot hard on the ground near the pile. Ben took a fast step toward her, his every instinct to protect her – something he'd been so sure he was over by then – surfaced at once. But it was all too late because the ground around them had begun to shift and tremble with a powerful motion from somewhere underneath.
"Get up here!" Jessie called out to the thing under the dirt mound. And his tone was calm and cheerful, even as the ground trembled harder and dirt flew up around his feet.
Ben stepped back, in instinctive panic as a massive reaper left its burrow in a few fast motions to stand among the little group. And still, close beside him, he could hear Johnny give an audible cry of shock before he saw the boy – in the corner of his vision – stumble backward for several steps before the wooden fence behind him stopped his certain fall to the ground.
"He won't hurt ya folks," Jessie said, grinning as just though something was entirely funny while Ben offered a hand to Johnny, helping the boy to get his footing all the while in danger of losing his own. And he was sure he must have gasped out loud, right along with his youngest tribe-mate in their collective uncertainty as soon as the towering creature, perhaps four times their own height and far more than even that from its head to its tail, turned to watch them with unblinking and emotionless eyes.
Jessie gave a sharp whistle and a commanding wave of his hand toward the cliffs, while he dared to look the massive beast in its eyes, looking way up over his own head to do so. And Ben – though he was filed with a sense of great dread over every terrible and tragic thing he imagined would happen in under a second – sighed in amazed relief when the creature turned at once to back away toward the cliffs, as commended, just like any other tamed creature of that world. Katie, clearly just as familiar and confidant with the terrifying creature as her leader was, walked over to stand beside it at once. And she calmly patted its underside, while standing under it and reaching up, just as though it was an absolutely massive trusting dog.
Ben, watched the girl for several long moments with his horror growing rapidly into a new sense of near-complete panic. And that same panic only increased quickly into something that nearly froze him to his place on the ground in terror, as he watched Ellie slowly and hesitantly stepping closer to the terrible creature herself.
"Ellie," he exclaimed. His words echoed in his own ears. And he almost questioned whether it had been him that had spoken at all. He forced his feet to move... forced himself to run the few steps it took to reach her. And with some effort to be gentle, instead of shoving her to the ground in his own panic, he grabbed for her arm and pulled her toward him quickly.
"You can't possibly think you can ever learn to train and command such a... creature," he shouted at her, even as his own good sense reminded him somewhere beyond his state of panic, that there was no reason at all to be shouting at her. His eyes fell on the striped leg bone she had dropped to the ground beside where she'd been standing, making his point without explaining it, before he shot a look at the flung skull in the bush to further enforce it. Ben knew full well he was only being harmful in his loudly expressed doubt in her. And on some level he questioned whether it may well have been the worst thing he ever could have said. But on so many other levels he didn't truly care.
"I can," Ellie answered, her expression determined and her voice calm even in the face of his needless shouting. "Or... at least I can try my best. Just... like the others did."
"No reason I can see for you, or anyone, to be shoutin' at her, Boy," Jessie said. But the tone of his voice was one of concern instead of any anger. And Ben turned around as the tribe leader rested a strong hand on his shoulder, before immediately shooting him a look of understanding.
"I know that," Ben muttered, his tone a little closer to snapping than he would have liked. And instantly he felt bad for it, as he shook his head, just hoping that could somehow shake off his frustration... his hopelessly and sudden dread.
"I'm sorry," he said, quietly and looking at the ground, smiling without even meaning to when Ellie smiled in his direction – her expression showing that she held nothing against him and even understood.
"Does he just stay underground all day then?" Johnny's question made Ben turn to look at his young tribe-mate again. And he managed to shove away his terror at watching the boy extend a hand to the huge and horrible creature with the same curious interest he showed for any living thing in that place, only by reminding himself firmly that Katie hadn't been harmed by the beast, even as she so boldly stood well within its reach.
"Yeah, for the most part," Katie explained still so calm and confidant. "And most of the night too. None of those fellas do much really... just wander away to hunt for themselves when they want to. And they make a damn right mess..." Katie looked again at the scattered bones around the area, surrounded by a fence now so clearly not ever intended to keep such creatures in at all – it was impossible to keep anything inside a fence when it could simply travel underground - but instead to simply warn any wandering people to stay out for their own safety.
"I could call the others above ground if you want to meet them," Jessie said standing with Ellie again much closer to the cliffs now and speaking mostly to her while the rest of the little group just listened. "Much like any creature really, they are all a bit different from each other. But I'll simply never be able to keep control of any one of them as well as I can this one. Because the rest of them aren't mine..."
"Yours?" Ellie questioned, slowly and hesitant as she looked at the towering creature again with clearly new understanding dawning quickly. "So... you were...?"
She didn't finish asking the question. But she probably didn't need to anyway, because Jessie simply nodded confirmation regardless, before he gestured toward the massive reaper king again. The creature moved then, far more quickly than it had been moving. And Ben - who had been standing calmly enough by then, close to the fence and well out of the way while he listened quietly – fought back a new gasp of fright and nearly stumbled into the fence when it turned to sniff at him. He struggled just to catch his balance – nearly past the point of righting himself entirely, and leaning gracelessly against a fence post with his knees bent in a way he was sure must have appeared almost comical – and finally hauled himself back to standing again.
"Mine was the first of them," Jessie was saying a short distance away. And Ben tried his best to listen to the conversation, despite the hot breath of a massive creature that had him still terrified, blowing an uncomfortable warmth onto his arms as it sniffed around again. He heard the tribe leader laugh a little then – a forced sort of laughter so obviously meant to hide unease over something so long past that it had to have been truly horrific to have left a lasting impact even now. But the older man smiled a little then, with a slight shake of his head. And he continued speaking, in what he must only have hoped was a confidant tone.
"It was obviously a completely unforeseen situation back then. But at least I learned a lot first hand." He held a hand dangerously close to the creature's mouth – open wide and showing long jagged teeth – finally letting in rest on the front of the thing's face, until it stopped snarling at seemingly nothing somewhere outside. "Unfortunately... so did poor Stella, who somehow managed the entire mess while learning fast and convinced that someone out there somewhere must truly want to punish us all for reasons we might never understand."
"Are you alright?" the question startled Ben enough to make him jump slightly, before he stiffened, looking around him quickly with his heart pounding. Katie stood beside him now, obviously having cross the entire length of the enclosure while he was so helplessly distracted by his own unease. And he forced himself to look at her for a fraction of a second before his terror made him look back at the massive creature again – too frightened to let his guard down for a partial second longer around it.
"Fine," he muttered, openly lying to her as he forced himself to look at his tribe-mate again. He could not hide his relief when she pulled him by an arm, out of the enclosure, before making a point of closing the gate – however much good a gate could possibly do – behind them.
"It could have been any unfortunate person that got targeted on the day of that last damn reaper attack, you know," Katie said, sighing in thought as she leaned against a mushroom tree behind her – one closest to the fence- and drank from her water jar calmly. "But the more I get to know the two of you, the more I'm glad that since it had to be someone, it was Ellie instead of you."
For a good moment, Ben just stared at her too stunned by his disbelief to even react. Finally, his shocked disbelief gave way to anger. And he glared at his tribe-mate, with his fist clenched in utter frustration.
"What's the supposed to mean?" he demanded, shouting loudly. He knew all the while that surely had some reason for her comment, and that she would certainly never be openly hurtful for the sake of it – least of all about Ellie. But still, in his fast mounting rage, he couldn't quite manage to care "How could you say such a horrible thing?"
"Ben, just think about it for a second," Katie said, still leaning against the tree just as calmly as ever, obviously all but entirely unbothered by his anger at her. "Really, think about it."
The gate leading into the enclosure behind them opened again, and the rest of the little group made their way out, all of them leading their mounts by their reins, and pausing while Jessie secured the gate once again behind them. And Ben's gaze found Ellie at once – watching intently with his frustrated anger fading again, as she grinned while laughing with Johnny over some joke they clearly shared between them.
She was shaky again as she so often seemed to be – her hands trembling more than just a little as she held her raptor's reins. And her feet slipped, clumsily and uncoordinated as she mounted the saddle in several slow and all too careful movements, and with some help from the boy, who was always so willing and eager to be helpful. It hardly took any level of reasoning to know that the outing, though it wasn't far from home, was proving almost too much in her terrible state. But still, she just smiled again waving a hand about in excitement while she made some comment to the boy about dinosaurs tripping over their own tails.
"I've heard people say more than once that you just don't know what you'll do in an impossible situation until you're somehow in one," Ben muttered, His anger at Katie faded away as he began to understand exactly what she was trying to say in her own too direct and awkward way. He sighed in her direction and looked back at Ellie again. She was still laughing with Johnny and was now safely in her saddle. "Still... in her situation, I'd have only lost my bloody mind long before today. And she's just so damn... understanding."
Once again Ben was awake in the night. And once again he lay in his bunk, sometime during the summer season's short hours of darkness, his heart pounding with the lingering remnants of some nearly forgotten nightmare. He stared up at the window above his bunk, strangely overheated under his hide cover, with his back aching from tension and fighting a little, though struggling gaps, to catch his breath.
He sat up slowly on the bunk, feeling horrible – his head spinning from confusion and unease, and his stomach flipping horribly from the lack of decent sleep. And as soon as he was sitting, he began to shiver from the coolness of the room as all signs of his overheating faded fast. He looked around the bunk-room, looking toward Johnny's bunk in the near darkness, purely out of habit. But the boy – for all of his restlessness and nightmares in the days after he'd arrived – slept soundly now, his hide cover over his body and his head on his pillow.
Ben stood up from the bunk, with his stomach growing quickly so much more unsettled as he did so. And he crept across the darkened room carefully and quietly. And determined to settle his stomach with a drink of cool water, he made his way to the staircase. Glow, his little shinehorn, was as always up from her favored place at the end of the bunk, bleating loud enough he feared she would easily wake half the tribe as she ran behind him. He silenced her quickly with a gesture of his hand before he bent to let her hop up onto his shoulder.
His head had begun to pound from its sense of spinning, and his stomach was flipping over itself bad enough to make him fear he might just be sick, by the time he reached the darkened dining room and the cool water tap near the back door. But a sip of cold water from a jar he'd managed to fetch with his shaking hands, seemed to help a little, and so he sipped a little more, and slowly. Ben wandered to the closest chair at the end of one of the large wooden dining tables. And he sat there for a while, sipping more water as the fog that filled his head slowly began to clear, and the pounded slowed along with it. His thoughts wandered to his dreams, and suddenly all he could think about were the visions that had plagued another night of sleep until they'd finally forced him awake entirely.
There had been flashes of the little town again, and of family and a friend whose name he couldn't quite manage to remember – a shaggy-haired man in his well worn brown hat who spoke endlessly of his dreams of seeing the world, of sailing the oceans, making Ben laugh at the very idea as thee pair stood looking out over nothing but desert sand for miles. There were flashes of the now familiar house, and the river behind it, and a large garden filled with fresh peas and tomatoes. But there was so much more than that too. And the second he let his mind think about it, Ben knew without any doubt that that had been what had scared him wide awake again.
He recalled the bright lights – glaring white from every direction around him at once. And the though light burned into his eyes painfully, he realized suddenly and with a horrifying start, that all the while his eyes had been closed. There had been some odd sense of weightlessness – of floating in nothingness, while still being so very aware of being somewhere, even if it was somewhere he couldn't see or understand. He'd tried hard to feel something under him, beside him, or to the front of the back or above his head. But he couldn't feel any such thing, and he couldn't move.
Then there were the voices. He took another sip of water, his hands trembling again and harder now, as his mind forced that realization to the front of his awareness. It was always the voices! Strange and unseen, speaking in whispers, speaking in no language he's ever heard before. But this time he was at least sure they were certainly speaking words instead of only mindless noise. Somehow that scared him for worse.
Ben finished the water and sat petting Glow gently on her head while she sat on his lap, happy and bleating again. And slowly, the presence of a creature – something very real amid the confusion of his mind, the water and the hints of light that had begun to stream in through the windows as the sun began to rise again, began to let the nightmare fade away a little. At the first thought of sleeping though, he knew full well he couldn't – that the nightmares would only come back to him fast and his fear grippe his mind again once he was laying in his bunk. Because that's how it always happened. So, instead, he just sat on the wooden chair at the table in the empty dining room, watching the sun continue to rise through one of the windows. He even let himself smile a little as his shinehorn bleated her affection, asking so clearly for more patting while she nudged his hand with tiny dull horns.
He paused, however, sitting still and with his hand poised in the air, about to pat the little lightpet again, at the distinct sound of cries from somewhere out of sight.
The noise was quiet – he surely wouldn't have noticed it at all had the base been crowded with everyone awake and rushing around. But it was nonetheless so sad and heartbreaking regardless. A female voice crying into the dimness of still so early morning. And seemingly alone somewhere, as he didn't hear the sound of any other person nearby. Ben felt a sense of panicked obligation then, and he leaped from his chair fast, running from the dining room with Glow following close at his heels, as tried to work out exactly where the sound was coming from.
It crossed his mind to wonder for a moment if someone was hurt. Because as he reached the doorway, and the crying grow louder, it sounded to him almost like a sound of pain and terror. He hurried his pace because the pain in the voice of whoever it was that no so clearly sobbed wildly in some nearby room, instilled in him some instinctive need to find her quickly. Stepping through the doorway, it was plainly obvious then that the sobs came from the sitting room. And he hurried to it, opening the door slowly so as not to frighten anyone by bursting in. And his heart sunk, when he recognized Ellie at once only by her pale blond hair.
She was sure enough all alone in there – probably the only one besides Ben awake in the place. And she sat on the floor, on the soft fur rug, in front of the unlit fireplace, her head buried in her arms, which rested on her folded knees. She was dressed only in a thin cloth shirt and pants, with her feet bare. And she shivered hard in the coolness of the place at that hour, as her fragile body rocked slightly from one side to the other, shaking with her tears.
"Ellie?" Ben said, quiet and calm as he crossed the room to sit beside her on the floor.
"Ben..? I... I'm... sorry if I woke you up..." Ellie answered, mumbling through tears even as a new wave of them came and she began to shake harder with sobs.
"I was already up. I needed some water," Ben explained, only because explaining that gave him something to say when he could think of nothing else.
He looked at her intently in the still dim light. And her appearance truly shocked him then. She was so very thin – that was more clear than it had ever been, as she sat in only her thin clothes that now fit so big around her body. And her fingernails were caked in blooded that was dried underneath – just as though she'd been tearing at something dead and bleeding with only her hands. He saw the single thin blood smear on her face then, as she looked up at him for only a second. And with a start, he understood that he might not have been wrong in his disturbing guess. He got up again, and moving quickly he found a warm woven blanket left folded on the back of a chair and wrapped it around her shaking shoulders gently before he worked to light a fire inside the fireplace. He fought back every urge to mutter curses as he struggled, uncharacteristically so, with the simple task in his heartsick state. But finally, he succeeded anyway, and a flame caught the logs, giving off a welcome warmth he knew was more than needed. He sat back down again, beside Ellie. And before he had even a second to think about it, he'd pulled her against him gently, trying hard to further warm her with the heat from his body.
"Ellie, what's happened?" he asked her, urgent and panicked, as she trembled against him.
Good God! he thought to himself, horrified. Why was she so very cold?
Ben thought instantly back to the past afternoon - the short trip they'd taken with the others. In his mind he could see her laughing as she jumped over fallen longs and water puddles on her raptor, grinning brightly humorously taunting Johnny, her head held up in her endless confidence. What had happened to her when he'd been asleep in his own bunk, fighting his own nightmares?
"Ellie..." he said her name again, speaking slowly now, calm and inviting a reply, as his friend only continued to tremble hard in his arms, shaking with her sobbing cries, as he pulled the blanket tighter around her.
He tried to understand then, with his heart sinking further, if something had simply upset her so badly or if she was in terrible pain. He listened carefully and watched her as closely as he could with her face buried in his clothing. And to his dismay, it was all but impossible to be sure.
"Do you need me to go find Stella?" he asked her, helpless and trying his best. He felt only frustration at himself now, in his helplessness to even know how to be useful. Beside him, Glow bleated a low call of something that sounded close to compassion, near his feet. The tiny lightpet slowly sniffed at Ellie, before she nudged against her lightly.
"No, no..." Ellie just shook her head forcefully as she muttered through sobs. "I... I.. no.."
She moved to pet the shinehorn, managing a hint of a true smile as she did. And Glow, in turn, rewarded her with a cheerful bleating, before gently nudging her again.
"You aren't unwell?" Ben asked, still slowly. He was relieved when Ellie managed an answer, even if that was only another forceful shake of her head.
"I'll go.. get you some water," Ben said next, still trying just as hard to do... something, but unable to work out how exactly to do much of anything.
He moved to get up, gently wiggling himself away from his friend, whose weight – however little she might actually have weighed - rested against him more than just a little. He was taken aback, and his heart sunk still further, when her hands grabbed hold of his shirt sleeves, while she shook her head again. So he just sat where he was, on the soft fur rug, on the sitting room floor, the increasing heat from the fireplace warming him as Ellie cried and cried for what seemed like it could have been an hour with her face buried in his clothing. She finally looked up at him slowly and so clearly hesitant, tear stains having turned her eyes to a horrible red and streaking her face. And for many long moments, she just stared up at him, blinking slowly where her body continued to shake horribly.
Ellie began to cough suddenly. And she sputtered as she took a breath, only to begin a worse fit of coughing. Ben panicked for only a second before he realized with dread that her mindless sobbing was surely to blame for that. She'd been crying so hard she could barely even breathe. And sitting as she was, still halfway collapsed against him, was far from helping her situation any.
"Come on," he said gently, coaxing her with urgent patience to let go of his shirt her hands were now wrapped around the fabric in a near-death grip bright on by her terror. "Up you go." he helped her sit up straight, relieved and sighing with her coughing and her gasping breaths finally stopped again.
"Ellie," Ben said slowly after he'd given her a moment. "Please... talk to me."
"Does.. everyone here really think I don't know I'm dying?" Ellie asked him in a voice that was so impossibly serious that it made Ben freeze in place for a moment while he tried to think.
He wanted to deny it on behalf of everyone he knew in that place, as well as for himself. Because of everything that everyone had done for her, giving her tasks to give her meaning, teaching her anything they could, laughing with her and leaving her little choice but to smile with them – it had all been out of hope.. hadn't it? He thought himself and the way he'd always tried to protect her, even when circumstance had made it more than clear that it was he who needed the protecting, and she who had the true amount of nerve and courage to face the dangers he would only scream at her to run from. He remembered racing with her down the edge of the river, before she was so sick and weak and so clearly about to fall to the ground so often in a second's warning, and so frankly close to death at any day. Ellie had only laughed when she and her raptor and beaten him and his horse by more than just a little bit. She'd shaken her head and rolled her eyes and let him know she knew he'd let her win – even if she had laughed off well enough all the same. And now, sitting on the fur rug that covered the wooden floor, he asked himself for the first time, two months after the fact, as the memory of her dismayed tone returned to him, if he'd really done it because he too knew she'd never live to beat him outright.
"Ellie," he said, suborn, and denying, "that's not true!"
He'd just done the very thing she was so distressed and upset over from so many others and lied to her. Not surprisingly, she just sat glaring at him for a moment. And soon a new wave of tears came to her eyes. She held herself together though this time, at least for the most part. And instead of another burst of terrible wailing sobs into his clothing, she just sat, looking at him with teary ears, her body growing stiff with what was now so clearly a kind of terror he could not begin to understand.
"I tried to sleep tonight, but I just couldn't," Ellie explained. She was still shaking hard with her terror. And when she looked up again, Ben could so clearly see every hint of the terrible pain she felt, reflected in her hazy eyes. But her tears never did start to fall again. "I realized just how close I am to what could well be the end now. Two... three days... And everyone is talking about next month... next year. Will we ever understand the purpose of this place? Or... what will Johnny and Katie become one day since they're both so young? But to me, that's some unimaginable future I know full well I'll likely never see..."
"Ellie... I..." Ben started to speak again. Trying hard to say... something. But he stopped again quickly, after saying next to nothing at all. Because there was nothing to say, and he knew it.
And so he just sat on the sitting room floor, warmed by the flames from the fireplace, and with his arms wrapped around Ellie again as she trembled against him. He thought of her in better times – recalling her boldly screaming at a spinosaurus lurking in the river, her voice steady as she yelled about how she would make boots from its hide if it came any closer. And all of this while armed only with a pointed stick, and her wildly waving arms, as she tried her best to intimidate the thing. He watched her in his memories, bent over a campfire cursing over the dampness of the wood in the humidity of the strange world, while she tried to best to get a spark from a pair of flat struck over some thin sticks. He recalled her grinning at him when she somehow managed to succeed. And he marveled now at how those truly had been 'better times' – or at least they had been for Ellie.
"Remember the time you almost fell into the river?" Ellie asked suddenly, almost as though she could read his thoughts as she spoke of the same early days that had begun to fill Ben's mind. She sounded tired now – exhausted likely from her panic and her tears. But she laughed a little anyway, back to sounding so much like herself again.
"No," Ben said. But he was lying – and playfully so now, as he laughed and shook his head and looked down at the fur rug they sat on, embarrassed.
"Hey, how was I supposed to know the noise in the bushes was just some dodo bird?" he asked after a second. And he smiled then, glad just to hear Ellie still laughing. He laughed a little more himself, recalling all too well just how ridiculous he'd surely looked in stumbling backward, arms flailing and his feet stumbling over each other, as he hurried away from the tall berry plants he'd been picking from. "It was so loud, crashing around in there... I thought it was a damn raptor. Or four!"
"Raptors growl, Ben. And dodos squawk," Ellie answered, laughing quietly as she stated the obvious. She sounded so very tired now. And Ben, recalling that she oddly liked to lay down there, helped her to get herself comfortable on the fluffy rug on the sitting room floor. He heard her groan with true and real discomfort as she moved to a laying position – heard her gasp for painful breaths and saw the tears appear in the corners of her eyes, at the movement. And for a moment his only thought was once again of finding help. But she looked at him again in the very next second, serious and blinking through her pain and exhaustion, with a look that begged him not to. He moved instead to pick up the blanket she'd been wrapped in, and cover her up with it again, while she just smiled drowsily in thanks.
Ben moved slowly to sit down in a chair near the fireplace, not wanting to leave Ellie alone in order to return to his bunk – where he knew he'd only lay awake anyway. He reached out to poke at the logs with a long sturdy stick, encouraging a new flame to rise up from the burning wood. And for a long while he just sat, with Glow curled up in his lap - her head on her front hoofs - staring into the flames as the steady growing dawn gave way to early morning.
In the furthest corner of the large animal pen, Jessie stood looking over a collection of five rock drake eggs, all sitting tightly packed together and leaning against each other to keep them upright and supported on the wooden floor. He studied their decidedly interesting patterns of purple against a lavender background, amazed at that first chance to see drake eggs up close for himself. And he carefully tapped it on its highest point, satisfied at the healthy, barely noticeable sound it made – assuring him there was most certainly something very much alive inside.
"They certainly are amazing, are they not?" the leader of the Dashing Raptors commented, close beside him and sipping berry leaf tea from the cup he held in his hands. He chuckled happily and waved a boisterous hand toward the group of large purple eggs. "The rock drake, in my own humble opinion, most definitely lays one of the prettiest eggs."
Jessie, nodding and unable to disagree, looked at the allied leader while he took a drink from his own cup. He watched the man carefully shift a couple of the eggs just a little, trusting him as the true expert in such matters as he watched his counterpart lean them just a little forwards, though still balanced.
"I understood though that our final agreement was for two," he said, sure without needing to ask, that his fellow leader was plenty pleased with the cartload of metal and pair of adolescent ravagers he'd given, on behalf of the Dwelling, in trade.
"And I am a man of my word, Jessie," the allied leader, Randell Clark replied laughing a little as he gestured again to the drake eggs. "The others are your girl Katie's well-earned handiwork!"
Randell stopped laughing abruptly though in the next second. And Jessie knew it was his look of absolute confusion and surprise that had made the man fall silent.
"Your young tribes-woman is fast becoming a proficient enough trench runner to more then keep up with my own people. Or so I've heard from my best pair of runners." Randell stood for a moment just looking all too amused, before he added seriously, "I take it you knew all of nothing about any of this."
"I didn't," Jessie replied, with a dismayed shake of his head. But all the same, he was hardly surprised. And so he just laughed a little, before he walked with his fellow leader, out of the animal pen.
"I don't suppose you know anything about a very recent shooting?" Jessie questioned the man, turning to see the look of genuine surprise on his ally's face at the rapid change of subject, while the two walked slowly on the path that led toward the lake. But Randell's expression though, certainly still far from denied it.
"I was not, as you can imagine, involved directly. But I am certainly aware of it," he said. It was clear both in his tone and in the way he flexed and unflexed the fingers of both hands, that he was considering his words as he answered. "The shooting was what you might call... vigilante justice."
Jessie cast a serious look onto his counterpart – a man who, despite the sheer size and power of his tribe, was also considerably younger and less experienced in that strange and terrible world than himself. But the man, surprisingly, just glared back at him, his own look just as serious and unbending.
"Surely there's no arguing that it wasn't entirely justified," the younger man said slowly. His considering and careful tone remained even as he lowered the volume of his voice. And slowly he added, "Those hooligans dragged an innocent young woman off to have their way with her. They would most certainly have gotten away with it too, and maybe killed her afterward if my men hadn't heard her screaming while they were mining flint. Yes, I do agree they were too quick to act... that those men deserved some sort of trial. But I can't say I blame them. Or that I wouldn't have done the very same thing."
"Bloody hell," Jessie muttered back. Because despite the senseless violence he knew full well that hooligans in question were capable of, he had not expected that. He raged silently for a long moment, fully certain then that had it been him that had caught the men, he would have shot them too, with barely a second spared to question himself. And he knew his fellow leader knew it.
"She was one of your people?" he asked, mostly just to better understand. Because it hardly mattered in the end. Still, he was both surprised and instantly filled with a new level of dread when Randell shook his head.
"She was a brand new arrival," the younger man explained. "She's a Dashing Raptor now. But she couldn't have been here more than a day, when those men found her, considering she hadn't even armed herself with the simplest of wooden spears yet for her own safety."
"It's a good job your people got to her before Lavinia did," Jessie muttered, carefully and questioning his own words far more than he might have any time before. His fellow leader gave a curious look that so quickly turned to one of a man clearly horrified.
"Do you suppose she would have had the girl killed, to make the matter... disappear?" he asked, in a tone of more than obvious uncertainty.
"Not exactly," Jessie answered, still cautious and considering his words. Because recent times had made him reconsider many things. But how could he explain the strange and terrifying woman's thinking exactly – that the world was better off without those weak enough to be made into victims to begin with. That without a hope of truly 'fixing' the broken, they were so clearly better off dead. And that the world truly was designed on a fundamental level to favor the strong, and to ally with the weak was simply foolish.
"Oh, mark my words. That girl would most certainly be dead, yes," he said decidedly, and with a firm shake of his head to show his utter disagreement with the whole idea. "But I fear it's more a matter of twisted philosophies than any fear of judgment."
"But, you are Lavinia's ally, are you not?" Randell questioned. The naivety behind the simple line of questioning was so worrying obvious – only highlighting his too well-known inexperience in leadership.
"Tentatively, yes," Jessie answered, with a hint of a laugh. "Of course, that doesn't mean we'll likely ever agree with each other most days."
"I must say I'm impressed nonetheless that you were able to win the respect of the Red Piranhas in the first place," the younger man said. His expression showed just how impressed he truly was. "I never thought I'd see the day Lavinia would trade goods or even speak civilly with anyone."
"We are all still just people," Jessie said thoughtfully.
He looked down the path that lead away from his base, and down toward the lake a short ways below – where a member of the Red Piranhas helped two of his own people drag a hide carrying bag of freshly speared fish back from the edge of the water. No doubt she would be taking several of the fresh coelacanth home to her own tribe-mates, Jessie reasoned, smiling. And he allowed himself to nod approval, unsure if he was noticed at all when his own tribes-man tossed the biggest of the fish into the visitor's hide sack. He watch the members of both tribes for another moment, as they all laughed together – a hesitant and careful sort of laughter, but laughter all the same, with smiles on their faces as they talked among themselves.
"People seek friendship and commonality because it's just what people do," Jessie continued, sighing as he muttered slowly, "some people do certainly make it here all alone, or at least mostly so. But not most of us. Most of us just want to know how many people we can truly trust and rely on in this place."