Notes/ Firstly, I obviously don't own Ark or have any claim to it – Wildcard does. I just like to borrow the world created in the game to write my fictional work for fun and never for profit.
Secondly, yep... this is the second part of a story I recently finished. Though it should mostly make sense as a stand-alone story regardless. I'm, writing in the same style as the first – a story without in-game mechanics and sometimes facing the truly horrific nature of something as close to realistic, as Aberration could possibly be.
As always, feedback is truly valuable. And I do read and consider it all gratefully. Because I'm always looking to improve.
The very first thing she was aware of, on waking, were the noises. The woman lay for a long moment, just listening to it all in complete and utter confusion, trying hard, her eyes still closed - to make even one thing about it all make sense.
Flowing water. That one was an easy one to pick out among the varied sounds. A river, running nearby. Then there were the animal noises – strange ones, like nothing she had ever heard before – growls and calls, a bellow from somewhere far enough away and loud enough to echo through the landscape. There was a strange, and horrifying roar somewhere else, and just a little further. While close beside her, she could hear an odd alarming sort of whining gurgling, accompanied by small feet scratching at something her mind could not quite figure out.
She opened her eyes slowly. And despite the dimness of the light all around her, they burned painfully, forcing her to shut them again in only a second. She tried again, blinking repeatedly as she struggled to adjust to simply seeing anything at all. And when they finally began to, she gasped loudly with shock at the landscape around her – a world so unlike any she had ever seen or could have imagined even in dreams. She lay sprawled across the ground on her front, her head to one side. And from that terrible, disorienting position – her face so close to the dirt was she laying in – she could see colorful and glowing mushrooms, large ones, nearby. There were trees too, with large roots bulging from the ground to form endless tripping hazards just barely visible among thick bushes overgrown with berries of varying colors, and the jagged boulders that littered the area.
She sat herself up slowly – her head spinning wildly as she moved – to rest with bent knees just barely holding her upright. And she looked around from her new vantage point, gasping again at the height of the trees, she could now see so clearly around her. They were thin, and bare ones, with smooth pale trunks, seeming to reach up for meters above her - each with a flat mushroom-like top, that formed something close to a little umbrella capping each one.
A river flowed not far away - tumbling over large and jagged deadly rocks to form raging rapids, that evened out again over smother waters before the whole thing vanished over a waterfall at the edge of her vision. And gazing across it, toward its opposite bank, she could see the wall of a sheer cliff, cut from the land somewhere high above it, carved from near white rock that almost seemed to reflect the light from somewhere up above, however dully.
She looked directly up them, far past the trees and the cliffs and as high as she could see – careful as she could manage to, considering her still very present dizziness. And her confused, horrified eyes met the ceiling of the world – a dark canopy of stone, and dark translucent crystal, that filtered sunlight into streams, casting odd nonsensical shadows over everything below.
"Billy!" The woman screamed the name out loud, panicked as she all too slowly remembered him. But recalling the noises she'd heard on waking – the screeching and the growls that had surely been what had woken her up – she lowered her voice again at once, frightened at the thought alerting any still well-hidden wildlife of her presence in the place.
"Billy," she said again, nearly whispering now, listening for a reply and hearing nothing but the snapping of a stick somewhere from a footfall that was far too heavy to be human. She looked around for the source of that disconcerting sound, while she looked for any sign of the man, unnerved at finding neither.
She took careful stock of herself then, noting a slight nagging thirst that burned her throat and an irritating itch in the places where her body rested on the rough sharp blades of grass. She understood only then that she was all but naked – wearing only thin, crude, and simple undergarments that did nothing to protect her, either from the roughness of the ground or the oppressive damp heat. Her left wrist itched and burned on its inner side. And slowly, fearfully, she turned her arm while looking down, to see the reflective metal that sat, embedded and partially exposed, in her own limb. She screamed once before she bit back a second scream – remembering the danger of unseen creatures yet again. And promptly the world around her turned to blackness, as she fell in a crumpled heap, back onto the ground.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The drops of moisture splashing onto her face, in a slow and constant rhythm were the thing that greeted the woman when she woke up again sometime later. And she raised her hand to bat away the droplets – letting a couple fall onto it instead in her confusion – before she finally opened her eyes again and sat back up hurriedly.
Everything around her looked the same but... different now. And she understood after a moment's thought that the place she was in, despite having been so dim in the first place, was so much darker now. The light that streamed in through the crystal ceiling high overhead made her think at once of a world in the hour before sunrise. And she knew at once that she certainly wasn't wrong. She shuddered then, disbelieving, horrified, and panicked over having slept – unconscious and vulnerable, naked on the ground through what was surely an entire night!
Her thirst – which had earlier on been a mild burning discomfort – had now become a desperate and pressing need. And with a throat and mouth that felt like they were filled with coarse sand, she looked around for the source of the moisture that had been dripping down onto her face before she'd moved. She found it in a few small puddles of dew, formed through the night in the larger leaves of a large bush ripe with red berries. And she carefully drank it from the edges of the leaves, letting herself smile at the perfect cleanness of the water as it landed on her tongue.
"Where in God's name is this place?" the woman muttered, refreshed from the water, letting go of one dew-filled leaf, and studying the berries that hung from a branch in a thick bunch. She thought of eating one, to see if she could. But she paused with her hand outstretched and hesitant, unsure how she could possibly know if the berries were safe.
She gave a shriek of immediate terror – forgetting all about the red berries entirely – when something cold and wet... and breathing – touched her bare lower leg.
The woman stifled the scream, just as quickly as she had any previous ones. And she shuffled backward, still in her seated position on the ground, nearly toppling into the dirt, before she caught a glimpse of the creature that had sacred her.
It was red in color, speckled here and there with blotches of pale blue, with a small and almost comically round body and the fin of a fish that started at the head and ended at the stubby tail. Its eyes – just a bit too big for its body, and bulging as a result – watched her intently for a long moment. And the long antenna-like appendage on its head, waved from side to side, slowly as it moved. The little creature finally pawed at her slowly, nudging her with a chubby front foot with amazing gentleness, before it pawed away at a clump of large brown mushrooms growing nearby.
"These?" the woman asked the creature, even knowing full well it was surely foolish to talk to an animal. "You... eat these?" She plucked a larger of the mushrooms from the ground, and offered it slowly to the little thing, laughing a little when the small beast took it with a fast but gentle snap of its jagged teeth – convincing her that its intention was truly anything but harmful.
"You're kinda... cute," the woman mused out loud, watching the creature, who sat now in the shade of the rock, pawing again at the mushrooms, lazily now, with its oversized tongue hanging out of its mouth. It growled at her then – an oddly friendly sort of growl, that could only have been a noise of greeting – as it uprooted a clump of mushrooms on its own, and ate another of them hungrily.
The woman laughed again, just a little as she got to her feet. She was thinking again already of water – her urgent need to drink, just barely held at bay by the small amounts of moisture collected in the leaves. And she turned toward the noise of the river, listening to its steady and welcoming sound through a think grove of those odd mushroom-capped trees and a tangle of bushes and vines.
She nearly fell once – almost crashing down onto her knees, when her foot caught a thick and low vine strung across the ground and all but hidden in the underbrush. But she caught her balance just as quickly as she could – her reactions slightly slow and head just a little foggy – leaning for a second on the firm support of a smooth-trucked mushroom-tree beside her. And twice, she stopped to stand still, pressed flat as she could manage against others of the trees, looking around her – nervous and sure she'd heard something walking with her through the woods. Both times she only sighed with her relief, seeing nothing, before she shook her head and realized she had only the snap of twigs under her own feet to blame for the sounds before she carried on walking.
The woodlands ended with a certain abruptness, giving way to a flat and empty beach of sorts, strewn with small jagged rocks and several huge boulders of varying shapes. There were bushes here too, smaller ones, scattered sparsely here and there. And the ground was mostly a dark and dark mucky dirt under her bare feet, dotted in places with odd clumps of thin dull grass that was seemingly in the middle of dying. And the river flowed - just as she had so confidently guessed – cutting its way through the rocky rough ground in a wide stream, that appeared deep toward the middle.
The woman approached slowly, carefully. And she looked around her once, and then again to check for danger before she sat down on the rocky ground. Seeing nothing, she cupped her hands tightly, scooping up water to drink it gratefully – pleased with its coolness and perfect cleanness. She paused for just a moment before she took another drink, and then a slower one right after – pausing again when a strange but now familiar gurgling growl caught her with her cupped hands halfway to her mouth.
"You again?" she exclaimed, finding the little red critter close beside her. And she let herself laugh just a little, watching the silly thing tip itself forward, almost topping over into the river, as it took a drink – its comically long and dragging tongue slurping up the water in large noisy gulps.
"Did you follow me?" she asked the silly thing. She spotted a small patch of its favored large brown mushrooms, growing half hidden under a bush and in the shade of a stone. And she plucked one up at once, offering it to the animal. She decided then – as she watched it devour two of the treats in mere seconds – that the little critter looked like some odd impossible mix of a Chinese pug and a well-fed guppy. And that idea only made her laugh again, just a little louder as she reached out to pat the thing on its head, deciding at once that she liked the little beast.
She wondered if she too could eat the mushrooms that the pug-fish had not yet seemed to suffer a single ill effect from eating. And the slowly growing ache of her empty stomach made her consider it for a long moment. She reconsidered the berries too, this time finding yellow ones on the closest bush and looking them over – unsure of exactly how to be sure of their safety. She settled for more water instead, wandering back to the edge of the river to scoop up another drink in her hands – stopping again when she heard the sound of sudden, unexpected footsteps.
"Billy?" she called out slowly, as hope and dread ran across her mind all in one strange moment. But the feet that had made the sound she'd heard – that now stood still somewhere nearby – were too large and too heavy to belong to a human anyway. And she knew it at once, reasoning it out, as she turned slowly to look for what she'd heard.
She gasped out loud, and then for a moment she just sat still in her place on the ground, staring wide-eyed at the thing that stood just out of arms-reach. Because of anything she'd guessed at, in her growing unease as she'd turned to look, a dinosaur was surely the very last thing she'd expected to see looking back at her.
"What... the... hell..." the woman muttered, speaking under her breath as she watched the thing, cautious and with her heart banging inside her chest. And she watched the thing – a bipedal beast of roughly twice her height at the head – as it munched peacefully on a bush of yellow berries, eating leaves and all.
It looked at her once, turning its billed and crested head to look her over lazily. And it only snorted then – probably entirely disinterested in the helpless human who served no hint of a threat – before it promptly went back to its meal. The woman watched the impossible creature for a while, nervous when it stepped slowly closer to her – relieved when it went only for a bush close to where she sat. And she studied it – intently and disbelieving, while it chomped nosily – sure even in her most basic of knowledge of any long-extinct species, that they had surely never had the strange and horrifying lighted glow to their skin that she saw on this one's pale tan body.
She got to her feet again slowly, cautious and deliberate, hardly under any illusion at all that she was safe even at the feet of a gentle plant eater, given its size. And even more slowly, she backed away from it, letting out a sigh of relief when it only continued its oblivious munching at the berry bush. Observing the dinosaur, however, as it ate from the bushes with such carefree relish, was enough to convince that the berries were indeed likely safe to eat after all. And slowly, she picked a few of them herself – bright and plump red ones – from a plant she'd come to pause beside. She ate one and then another of them slowly, surprised and pleased at the sweet and inviting taste of the fruit, while she watched the dinosaur continue its own grazing nearby.
The woman wandered away a short distance, determined to explore just a little, as she slowly devoured the berries she held in her hand. And she chuckled a little, under her breath, when the little pug-fish tromped on after her – its short and chubby legs doing a surprising job of keeping up until it stumbled over a flat-topped rock half buried in the dirt of the beach, and it fall face-down in a patch of mushrooms. The woman laughed again, as she gently righted the creature, surprised at the feel of its skin – smooth and soft, but drier than it looked. She decided, determined that the funny-finned and red creature – if it was going to continue to follow her – would most certainly need a name. And she considered what she might call him as he looked around her, walking a short way down the riverbank - her eyes taking in the endlessness of the rocky beach and the mushroom-woods behind it, the high jagged cliffs that rose up across the water.
After walking for a while longer she came upon tumbling rapids, formed in the place where the river beside her dropped at least a meter without any warning, over huge boulders that jutted out of the water at its middle. And just downstream from this tumbling water, she kneeled down again, with cupped hands to take another drink – her thirst unrelenting even as the sun moved well past its full height in the peek of what was surely afternoon. She yanked her hands back from the cool water – startled at first, and then yelping with pain – when something first bumped against, and then outright bit at her wrists. She gave another cry, one filled with shock and horror, at the steady stream of blood that dripped from a visible bite wound on the side of her right hand, and at several small but still so obvious puncture marks that dotted several of her fingers.
"You!" she snapped loudly, barely even bothering to question her own sanity now as she glared in terror and disbelief, frustration and anger at a decently sized and hideous fish that swam slowly below the surface of the water – appearing to taunt her with its flitting fins and its open toothy and dangerous mouth, just as close to the edge of the river as it could get to reach her. She looked around quickly, grabbing a stick – part of some once living bush now discarded on the ground among some fallen dried leaves and pale whitish mushrooms. And with her annoyance still at the forefront of her mind, she stomped back to the river's edge again, bashing at the hideous and bloodthirsty thing until it swam away, defeated.
She kept the stick after that, holding it in her hand even after she'd managed to drink again from the river and had stood up again. And she used it twice to poke at the rocks and underbrush, to her left side as she walked – half expecting snakes and finding only oversized ants, with hard shiny shells that glowed with the same odd luminescence as the dinosaur she'd first spotted upstream. Both times she dove backward, right along with her chubby pug-fish companion, stumbling and catching herself on some tree or another at the edge of the mushroom-woods, dodging the biting attacks from the insects she'd disturbed. And that was more than enough to teach her to simply leave the underbrush alone.
The river narrowed up ahead of her. And for a moment or two, she considered crossing there, since it was clearly shallow enough to do so in that place, assuming as she was careful. But she still saw only the same endless wall of high and rocky cliffs across the water, and thus decided quickly not to bother. She called out for Billy again, while stopping to take another drink. And she was hardly surprised now when he didn't answer. She debated turning back, wondering for a long moment if wandering so far had been a bad decision – because perhaps he was somehow looking for her by then himself. But somewhere in her mind – from a place she could not understand – an instinct drove her instead to press on forward, and away from the place she still reasoned he could still easily have been.
The woman walked still further, her silly fin baring 'pet' bounding eagerly and determined behind her, still following the river as it widened out again. And she finally stepped into it – double checking to assure herself that there were no more biting fish there. And for a decent while, she simply enjoyed splashing along in the shallows, watching the landscape change subtly around her – the bushes growing fuller, the grass greener, and the mushroom-trees just a little sparser on her side of the river, while the cliffs grow just a little lower and smother on the other. She drank when she wanted – the pug-fish eagerly drank too. And they nibbled on berries while he nibbled on mushrooms as they went... traveling this way and carefree and almost cheerful until the sunlight from high above the strange crystal ceiling began to slowly dim.
It was getting late. The woman understood that all too easily. And though the day had seemed to pass so quickly – so much faster than it surely should have done – she couldn't exactly think about the hows and whys of that fact then.
Her time spent sleeping on the ground, fully unconscious and yet somehow safe the night before, had easily been pure luck. And she knew without needing to be told, just how lucky she may truly have been – naked and exposed, laying in the dirt in the darkness without even a fire to protect her. She'd encountered varied forms of life already. And she shuddered to think that she might surely encounter far more of them in the dark of night. She found a shorter of the mushroom-trees, one close as she could find to the edge of the woods and still close to the river – and with a large mushroom top that gave at least some odd illusion of safety in its shadow.
Sitting on the ground, she set to work quickly, grabbing up small sticks and fallen branches – thankfully plentiful in that area – to form them into a neat little loose pile. She found some rocks then, small and rough ones, to hold in each of her hands. And for a long time, as the sun set lower and low, somewhere unseen beyond the crystal ceiling of the world, she tried varied pairs of them, hitting and sticking them together, doing her best to catch a spark over the pile of wood, getting nowhere and quickly growing annoyed all over again.
Her annoyance turned to worry, as the sun set entirely, plunging her and the world into near darkness, broken only by the plentiful glows of plant life all abound her – and by the light reflected off the river from somewhere beyond the ceiling, casting an ominous sheen over its liquid surface. She tried again, several times more, just to start a fire. And finally, deciding it was all but impossible, she sat back instead against the trunk of the tree with her long stick in her hand, and her eyes wide open for dangers in the night. Her hand found a jagged bit of stone halfway beneath her – she'd grabbed it when its jabbing into her backside began to cause pain. And she used it then to idly carve away at the end of the stick, fashioning it into a sharp point, that somehow made her feel just the smallest bit safer as she held it tightly and at the ready.
The pug-fish had wandered away a short distance at some point in her struggles. But he returned to her again, as the world around them reached the peek of its darkness. She recognized him instantly, but the feel of skin against her bare legs as he climbed into her lap with a happy little gurgling growl. She patted his head, smiling for a moment before she considered it again carefully.
"You really do need a name, you know," she told the critter as he snuggled in her lap, remarkably not unlike a small dog might have done so easily. "I can't just call you 'pug-fish."
"Finn?" she tried thoughtfully, cleverly thinking to name him for the silly fin that swayed back on forth on top of his body. But she shook her head at once, dismissing the idea. "Maybe... Chubs, or... Pugsly!" she smiled then, the matter decided as soon as she'd said it out loud. And when the critter gurgled again, she smiled, patting him again and leaning back against the tree.
"Billy would say you're good for nothing useless," she muttered to the critter in her lap. He rolled over, quite unexpectedly on her knees. And she gently rubbed his belly, almost able to imagine for a moment that he truly was a naked dog and one who'd loved her all his life. She sighed, and then startled and sat up just a little straighter, alarmed at a flash of understanding that came to her mind in the darkness.
"Billy is my husband," she said to the critter – Pugsly – letting herself pretend he could understand her as she talked to him. "The last I saw him he was yelling over God knows what, and I was pretending I gave a flying shit about his damn ranting and raving..."
She began to doze off then into sleep, her mind idle with her sitting still, and her body worn out from her walking with only berries and water for nourishment. And she snapped herself awake at once, afraid to sleep out there exposed, and knowing better than to risk it.
"My name is... Josephine..." the woman muttered, partly because such a thing suddenly felt so important to her and partly because recalling details seemed like it could be enough to keep her awake for longer in the darkness. "I'm from Wisconsin... middle of nowhere because Billy hates the city. I drive an old Honda with a dent in the door... I work for the bank..."
She dozed off anyway, despite her best efforts to stop herself from doing so. And when she awoke again - still leaning against the smooth mushroom-tree, with her neck now kinked badly and her back aching horribly – a pair of eyes stared back at her through the darkness. Josephine stared for a moment, both curious and horrified, far from able to even start to imagine what the eyes – which glowed just enough that she could see their shape between slow blinks – could belong to. She heard a growl then, and certainly not a friendly one. And a light, just bright enough to light the area around her in a wide circle, popped on out of nowhere.
She blinked, leaping to her feet at once, springing to action, pointed stick in hand and barely thinking to even question the light as she looked again for the glowing eyes. She heard another growl then. And she gasped in her terror at the sight of a ragged and large beast, who stood perched on a flat rock at the very edge of the lighted circle. It snapped it's jaws wildly, showing off its jagged and sharp, snaggle teeth. And under its heavy and so clearly strong body, for sets of sharp and deadly claws pawed at the rock, making its intent to jump so plainly clear.
"Stay back!"Josephine's words were loud and deliberate, even as she trembled from her fright, while she held her pointed stick in front of her. She jumped up and down then a few times, waving her arms and shouting at the wolf-like beast on the rock – recalling somewhere in the back of her mind something about a need to make oneself appear bigger than she was, in hopes that an attacking animal would simply back down and run off.
When the beast did no such thing, and instead leaped down from the rock right in her direction just as she'd feared it would, she screamed out loud, turning to run and knowing full well it was all but helpless... stopping again only when a whizzing projectile caught the creature in the side of its head, making it roar and stumble before it crashed to the dirt in a furry heap just a couple of meters from the place where she stood.
"Niiiiiiice," a voice - that of a stranger and clearly male – exclaimed over the noise of heavy animal footsteps in the direction of the river. Josephine glanced back at the creature again, both relieved and entirely horrified, to see a long shaft of metal lodged fully through its head, and a growing pool of blood all around it.
"The next of you fools to imply I'll miss a throw is neck deep in the river fending off the bloody piranhas until you're crab food, and you know it!" another voice – this one belonging to a furious woman – snapped back.
Josephine ran toward the river then, aided mostly by the odd and unexpected glow that continued to follow her as she moved – and partly by the slowly rising sun above the crystal ceiling. And as surprised as she was at the sight of her fellow humans in that place – three men and two women, all dressed in clothing made seemingly from heavy hides and metal plating – the five looked oddly just as shocked and amazed to see her too. It was the creatures that the people rode on though that caught her attention fully. And she stood for what was surly several moments, just staring in disbelieving shock, at five enormous dinosaurs, each of then standing three times the height of any human at least, each of them saddled and controlled with reins held in the riders' hands – deadly carnivores clearly, with deadly teeth and claws to so easily prove it, trained to be ridden like common horses.
"You... you saved my life," Josephine muttered, grateful and beginning to shake now as the reality of her own narrowly avoided certain death caught up to her. She forced her attention away from the dinosaurs and back to the humans with effort. "Thank you..."
"Saved your life?" the rider in the lead – a tall and impossibly large built woman, with her black hair falling from its long loose braid - snapped at once. She laughed mockingly and scowled at the newcomer, before her eyes traveled over her, slow and intimidating. "I was aiming for the ravager because we wanted its pelt. And you... you were one bad throw away from being in my damn way, Girl!"
"Still..." Josephine was shaking harder now, and not just from her near-death encounter with the 'ravager'. She looked the angry woman in the eyes and even made herself step closer, smiling a forced smile. "You did save me regardless. And... and I'm grateful."
"Ha!" the tall woman laughed loudly. "Just be thankful there was only one. A pack of them would have fought each other for your dismembered corpse!"
She leaped from the back of the now snarling dinosaur and took several steps forward. Josephine feared for a moment that the furious – and possibly insane – woman would attack her. But she instead just kept on walking, approaching the dead and still bleeding creature that lay on the dirt, yanking the metal projectile free in one fast motion, before tying a rope around its back legs, in order to drag it behind her. She paused for a moment, looking the newcomer over again while standing, glaring over her. And it looked for the same moment like she would say something more. But she didn't and instead just walked a few steps more, back to her mount, to tie the rope to the saddle.
"Pike through the middle and she's done like that ravager, ya know," said the man who sat in the rear of the little group. His own mount snarled and growled the loudest of them all. And instead of any move to control the beast, he patted it lightly on the head, only seeming to encourage it in its terrifying behavior. He stared ahead of him, his expression so confidant and self-assured even when the woman in the lead turned to glare at him without a single word.
"You disgusting, idiotic fool," she finally snapped at him, causing Josephine to laugh just a little under her breath, despite the seriousness of the situation. She smiled in amusement – however inappropriate it may well have been – recalling the same woman's recent threat of tossing a man into the river.
"I would never dare speak to Billy like that..." the thought flashed through Josephine's mind in an instant. And she felt a flash of pain from a backhand smack across her face, just as though she'd been hit only seconds before. She stood for a moment, cringing hard with the memory – and then frozen with her terror as she watched the man glare right back at the woman who sat in front of him. She sighed in disbelieving relief and amazement when the fellow simply shut his mouth.
"Can you tell me how far we are from Antigo Wisconsin?" The question left Josephine's mouth before she'd really taken the moment she should have to consider it. And unsurprisingly the leading woman laughed loudly, while her four companions all either exchanged glances or laughed along.
"Never once heard of it," the woman answered. And any hint of her earlier halfway to crazy and threatening rage was replaced by a most unnerving look, showing nothing desirable at all, as she stared at the newcomer again. "Hardly matters anyway, Girl. Because no one who washes up here ever makes it home again."
The revelation shocked the newcomer into silence. And for what seemed like endless long moments, she just stared at the group and their dinosaurs with her entire body shaking. She barely recalled the life she'd left behind. It was all just tiny flashes and bits of understanding here and there. Still, she felt the warmth of her tears, forming in the corners of her eyes. And at a glaring look from the loudest of the men that sat in front of her, she forced them away with a gasping breath – glaring him straight in the eyes for the second she dared to before his own look made her gaze fall at little in the direction of the ground.
"It gets to be easier here," the words came from the other woman in the group of five. And Josephine looked up again to look at her – sitting on her mount, the reins held lightly and easily in her hands and a hint of a compassionate smile on her face, and her wild blond curls falling to the shoulders of her well-worn hide coat. She looked like just another someone – a person who could have come from anywhere. And that somehow made Josephine shudder in her rising unease.
"I am..." she began to speak up again, more hesitantly than before. And she was looking mostly toward the blond-haired woman as she talked – because that young woman appeared truly interested. "I am looking for a man. Billy. Dark hair... tall and thin..." she paused again thinking harder about exactly how to best describe her admittedly nondescript husband – especially now, as she realized on trying to, that his appearance was never fully real in her memories.
That however mattered just as much to anyone now as the location of her home had. Because the woman only sighed, and shook her head a little, her eyes helpless as she glanced between a couple of the men around her.
"We haven't," she said slowly. "And if he washed up here with you, and if you haven't found him yet, that only means he's likely dead..."
"Look at these cryin' eyes," the other of the men – the one who seemed so clearly unable to keep his mouth shut for long – remarked, smirking. He made a snarling sound almost akin to that of an animal, and shook his own long metal weapon – with its sharpened tip – toward the newcomer in a well-implied threat "And of course, she can't stop shakin' in terror for even a minute out here..."
"You really are disgusting." Once again Josephine had spoken before she'd paused to consider it carefully. And her anger and utter disgust were the only things at that moment that kept her staring the man down instead of looking at the ground again.
The man – a large framed fellow, who easily could have used some washing up, his hair and shaggy unkempt beard slick with lack of any care – growled in anger. He leaped down from the back of the creature he rode on in one fast and angry motion. And suddenly he jabbed the metal pike toward her, lunging for her chest with a snarling expression on his dirty face.
"Friggin' sicko." Josephine was fully furious now as she muttered the insult. She grabbed at once for the rigid, dangerous weapon in the man's large hands – landing on the ground with a surprised and furious cry, when he used the thing to knock her off her feet, sending her flying back across the grass in with a dull thump.
"Killing you quickly should be considered a damn favor..." the furious man growled. And he laughed, his eyes wild as he lunged again – the blow from the weapon stopped this time only when the lead woman grabbed it in mid-thrust.
"Enough!" she snapped, only a second before she belted him once across the side of his head with the back of her hand - and that was more than hard enough to send him sprawling backward onto the dirt.
"I should have fed your sorry ass to the fish already and been done with it," the woman growled at him. And she managed to yank him – a man just a little bit larger than herself – partway to his stumbling feet, with a hard tug of his fastened coat, before she simply let go of him again, letting him drop awkwardly back to the ground.
Josephine backed away slowly, not willing to be to any part of this enraged woman's so clearly still mounting fury. But to her quick relief, the lead woman turned away from her, walking back to her mount in just a few long and hurried steps. She huffed with her frustration – while the man who she'd bested so easily just sat on the ground, defeat so clear on his face – and rummaged through the creature's saddlebag.
"Take this, girl," she demanded, tossing a surprised and dismayed Josephine a hide-wrapped bundle.
"You once said yourself, more than once, that there's little room in this place for acts of compassion," another of the men – a younger one, with his dark hair falling into his eyes and his heavy boots stained at the toes with blood – muttered in a hesitant tone.
The lead woman turned to him frowning. And for one horrible moment, it looked like she might rage at him like she had the other fellow – even if the first of them had certainly deserved it entirely. She turned back around again, however, to mount her creature instead.
"Never let it be said that I've never helped a single unfortunate person," she muttered back. And in a motion that seemed almost an afterthought, she turned to the large and filthy man – now just a little dirtier, from his laying on the ground, and climbing clumsily onto his own mount nearby.
"Alfonso, give your pike to this new arrival," she demanded of him – much to his obvious dismay. "She might just stand a chance if she only has a proper weapon. And I'd be relieved to no longer ride in front of a man intent on waving a dangerous weapon around like a reckless bloody fool!"
The man gave up his weapon with a begrudging look, tossing it to the ground with an audible huff far enough from the newcomer that she needed to walk for several steps to retrieve it. She stood then for a moment or two, holding the odd weapon in her hands, getting used to the surprising weight of it. And when she turned again to look back at the group, they were walking away slowly, along the edge of the river.
"Ride on!" the lead woman said loudly and with a motion of her hand before she yanked on her reins and kicked her dinosaur's sides with her heavy booted feet.
"Wait!" Josephine cried, speaking out of turn and impulsively for the third time during their encounter. "Can I... go with you?"
She directed her question mostly to the black-haired woman in the lead position but looked at each one of the group regardless. They were so very unpredictable. And she hardly needed a moment of consideration to know they could easily be truly dangerous people. But she had begun to respect the lead woman – if only for her confidence, and completely unapologetic fearlessness... even if she did like the man, Alfonso, far less.
"I'm willing to work," she muttered, hopeful and just as though her very life depended on it now – because she'd come to understand how it well may have. "And I'm surely good for something. My name is..."
"I don't care what your damn name is," the lead woman snapped. But in the next second, she was looking down from her once again stopped mount, with a look on her face that could almost have hinted at kind understanding.
"One truly becomes a person to you when they have a name," she said simply. "It only makes it all the worse to find them dead somewhere further down the route." She looked Josephine over again – and much to the newcomer's nervous discomfort – slowly exchanged looks with the blond-haired woman, and the third of the men, who had remained silent on his mount to her left. Slowly she looked back again.
"Find the Lighted Dwelling if you can make it that far alive," she said. And she waved a hand vaguely behind her, in the direction Josephine thought she'd been traveling, to begin with.
The group of five rode off then, reaching a near running pace on their huge and furious dinosaur mounts, splashing through the river as they shouted directions to each other over the sounds of snarls and growing. And Josephine watched them ride off, her weapon in one hand and the bundle under the other arm, while Pugsly sat, gurgling, at her feet.
She sat on the ground for a while after they'd left, alone once again and gently patting her pug-fish companion on the top of his head, laughing a little when he hopped into the air, excitedly. She fed him a mushroom, plucked from a patch of them growing near her feet. And while he sat munching on it, she slowly unwrapped the bundle.
The hide that had held it all together turned out to be a thin but clearly decently made jacket. And tied neatly inside it there were light boots with think hide bottoms, and a thin shirt and pants made of soft cloth fabric. She found a simple and crude skinning knife next – its sharped blade secured with course twine to a wooden handle. There was a small light hatchet too, made in a similar fashion to the knife - And a think hide pouch clearly meant for drinking from through a hole at the top, currently blocked with a little stopper.
Josephine put the clothing on – grateful for the generous gifts, and wishing she could thank the furious black-haired woman who have given them to her. The clothing was just a little big on her – and so was the coat, which she fastened around her upper body with its metal buckles after just a little fussing with it. But she made it work so easily, by rolling up the pant legs, and tightening the belt around her waist just as much as she could, before the clipped the knife and the hatchet to the belt loops.
A little cloth bag fell to the ground as she walked forward a step. And she bent down again to quickly retrieve it. She found roughly ground red powder inside it, pouring a tiny amount out to rub between her fingers, mystified. She lifted her fingers – still coated with the powder, to her nose to smell it, further baffled when she smelled only the gritty subtle smell of dust and stone. She kept the pouch regardless, stuffing it into the coat's simply and large left pocket – because it surely would not have been included in what she reasoned was meant to be an emergency survival kit if the stuff had no good use.
"Come on then," she said to Pugsly, pausing a moment to let him dig himself up another of the mushrooms, and finding balance with the metal pike in her hand, before she set off walking again, still following the river as it curved just slightly to the right.
The early afternoon weather was warm that day. To warm it seemed, considering it was well into fall. And the cooking pot – which was currently occupied with the task of boiling thin liquid over the hot and roaring fire beneath it – did so little to help with the heat and humidity inside the little cabin, even with the smoke and the steam venting well through the well-placed gaps in the ceiling above.
Stella sighed as she shoved open the creaking window – one closest to her cooking pot and fire. And she once again retrieved the wooden bowl, that she'd set down for just a moment on the table beside her. Her gaze fell then on Johnny – across the cluttered room, laying on the bunk in the far corner with his left arm red and blistered, laying limp across his upper body. She watched the young man for a moment, observing him for signs of anything he hadn't told her, about the condition he was in. And then, satisfied that it likely was indeed just an injured arm – even if it certainly was a relatively bad one - she crossed the cabin quickly.
"I am... sorry to have had to bother you with this... this disaster of mine," Johnny mumbled. And his tone so clearly showed every hint of his embarrassment and disappointment with himself. Stella watched him turn his head just a little, glancing away from her in said embarrassment as soon as he had spoken.
"Absolute nonsense my dear," she told him at once. She set the bowl - filled with strips of cloth fabric drenched and soaking in thin pinkish liquid – on a low table beside her and sat down carefully in a wooden chair beside the bunk.
She studied his left arm carefully for a moment, noting the still growing number of large, angry blisters that continued to spread over the redness from his elbow to his wrist and over the back of his hand. And inwardly she cringed just a little, concerned that the damage could have been worse than she'd first guessed with a glance. He was so warm, and not entirely from the heat that lingered inside the little cabin. And the window, which she'd opened in her hope of keeping him just a bit more comfortable, barely seemed to make a difference to the situation.
"This is definitely not a thing to just ignore and leave alone," she continued, shaking her head just a little in her understanding that her youngest tribe-mate – despite every bit of the pain he was so clearly in from his injury – had considered trying to do exactly that. She sighed with her relief when he nodded.
"Can you bend your fingers, dear?" she asked him gently and encouraging. And she watched, concerned when the boy paused for a good moment, his look doubtful through pained eyes.
"Yeah... no," he muttered. And his look made it clear that he was afraid to even try the simple motion. "Maybe..."
Johnny tried then to do as he'd been asked to. And the fingers of his injured arm did – to Stella's instant relief – bend well enough. But even that simple movement and the slight tension it put on the limb so clearly hurt him badly because he turned away again – the look on his face an unmistakable mix of pain and nervousness.
"You'll be alright," Stella said, calmly. And she sighed, well aware that Johnny had never exactly been injured in that strange world before then. He knew barely a thing of what to expect from the situation. And he was still very young, besides. She reached over onto the table beside her, and working quickly she mixed a small dose of narcotic medicine with a larger amount of concentrated tintoberry liquid that had always seemed so good for its healing properties, into a container partly filled with clean drinking water. She shook it up a little, careful not to splash it everywhere before she held it out to the boy.
"This will have you feeling a little better very soon," she promised, relieved when he drank the contents of the container without any protest.
"Now then, do you care to tell me how this happened, dear?" she asked him. And she carefully placed the first of the wet fabric pieces over his lower arm, trying her best not to feel terrible when she saw him visibly shudder with pain as she did so.
"It wasn't Jaxon's fault," Johnny said, though Stella certainly hadn't seen the slightest reason to blame the old fellow in the first place. "He told me to be careful. But I didn't know rendered fat would splash like it did if I put the meat in still wet from rinsing it..."
"I see..." Stella muttered, with another look of calm assurance as she reached carefully into the bowl for the next soaked piece of cloth. She decided quickly against further admonishing the boy to be careful – sure he fully understood already, just as well as she did, just how cooking mishaps were nearly as common in these primitive and simple conditions, as injuries caused by the local wildlife.
"Do you think Jessie will be mad?" Johnny questioned suddenly, after a long moment in which he'd been silent, just laying on the bunk – his eyes shut tightly. Stella smiled again and took a second to pat him on his uninjured arm before she quickly resumed her work.
"I can't imagine that," she replied easily. And she quickly went from feeling bad to feeling even worse, when a couple of the largest of the blisters inevitably burst at the slightest contact with the next wet cloth piece, sending yellowish-white fluid running over the now exposed red and hot skin beneath. She pretended not to have noticed the tears that formed in his eyes or heard the pained intake of his breath. "I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen that man mad at anyone. And you know we've both been around here a while..."
"I... I just..." Johnny said slowly. But he never did finish explaining himself, and instead, just lay still again – his eyes half open now as he looked around him idly.
The mild narcotic she'd given him not long before was so clearly starting to take effect now – Stella could easily see that in the way he managed to hold his arm perfectly still, barely appearing to notice this time as she wrapped the next bit of cloth around it. And she watched him for a second as he appeared to consider speaking again, noting how easily he simply decided against bothering, and instead just shut his eyes again, allowing her to keep on working. She worked for a while in silence then, expecting he might speak to her again, but understanding when he didn't.
"Johnny," she said gently, covering him with a fur-lined blanket as soon as she'd finished her work, and wrapped his arm as well as she could manage to in another long strip of cloth. She shook him carefully and lightly, trying hard not to startle him fully awake again, as she held out a jar of water for him to drink from. "I'll leave you to sleep in here for a while. I'll wake you up in time for this evening's meal."
"Thank you," the boy mumbled, his voice fully sincere and grateful, even as it became quiet.
"You're very welcome, dear," Stella told him, smiling again in her usual assurance as she reached out to pat his hand gently.
She got up then, cleaning up the bowl at the tap beside the cooking pot before she set it down again – upside-down - to dry, on a nearby shelf. She spent a while busying herself then with the idle work of tidying up, rearranging her many bottles and jars filled with dried leaves and powers and various liquids, into neat and organized rows on far too many shelves. She stirred the cooking pot, as she wandered past it – grabbing a long spoon for just that purpose, left resting nearby. And she nodded slowly, pleased with the perfect and smooth texture of the thin, sticky contents of the pot.
A noise outside her cabin door slowly caught her notice. And she stood for a moment, listening to the sound of steady thudding and the rattling of wooden logs – a sound that had become comforting in its familiarity so long before then. Slowly, she opened the door, smiling to see Jessie – who stood on the rough and scraggly grass beside her walkway, a large and heavy ax in his hands and a pile of near perfectly split chucks of firewood beside him.
Stella watched him for a moment, silently and not even bothering to hide her impressed smile, as she watched one large wood chunk and then another both split at once, in single firm swings of the ax held between his strong hands. She wanted to approach him then – and she certainly knew she should. But instead, she simply watched for a moment more, as he easily tossed the chopped wood into the pile beside him in single, easy motions, before he set the next long firmly on the chopping block. Finally, she forced her feet to move, shaking her head just a little at her silliness before she moved to rest a careful hand on his arm during a short break in his work.
"I saw that you were running out of wood," the man said, smiling so easily as he reached to take her hand in his. His free hand reached for a falling fire log, which tumbled from the neat stack of the others. And he tossed it effortlessly onto the top.
"Thank you," Stella told him, sincerely. She sighed slowly as she leaned in closer to him, prompting him with her simple motion, to lower to ax to rest safely on the ground. "But... you know you don't need to..."
"Your cooking pot produces medicines to heal an entire tribe, Stella," Jessie said seriously He paused for just a moment to smile before adding easily, "well... that and your unrivaled talent and skill of course. The least I can do is assure your cooking fire stays burning."
"You know I appreciate it." Stella sighed again, smiling brighter as she let her head rest for just a moment on his strong shoulder. She felt his arms, now tight around her body. And she chuckled just a little at the dull thud caused by the ax falling to the dirt.
"Do you currently have a resting patient?" Jessie asked after another moment. He let her go just as quickly as he'd moved to hold her tightly, only so that he could resume his task of tossing newly split logs into the woodpile by the door. But he stopped again quickly, clearly realizing only then that someone may indeed have been at risk of waking up inside because of the noise. Stella nodded slowly as she looked toward her cabin door.
"Johnny," she explained, hesitant and quickly dreading a need to say more. Still - she sighed another sigh – best, she knew so easily, to break the news then that the boy had gotten hurt.
"It isn't terrible," she said quickly, when Jessie's face showed every bit of the concern she knew it surely would for the youngest of their tribe a boy he'd been protective of from the day he'd found him, newly washed up in their world and taunted needlessly by neighboring tribes-men, so clearly determined to bully the kid simply for laughs. "A cooking accident. And Jaxon sent him to me quickly."
"The kid's been asking me to let him join in on patrolling the place for new arrivals," Jessie muttered. "Now with him having hurt himself, I just don't know... Not that I was ever sure in the first place."
"Jessie..." Stella said back – understanding finally dawning now as she recalled the boy's odd concern over the tribe leader's perceived annoyance. She took a breath to collect her thoughts, and spoke up again, quickly. "The boy burned his arm in a second of misjudgment. He didn't lose it entirely, along with both legs! He wants to see just how much he can do in this place. And you know as well as I do, he can ride as well as anyone..."
Her words died in the air around them, as she studied his expression – suddenly so truly troubled – and considered it carefully.
"You are... thinking of past tragedies again?" she asked him, hesitantly. But it wasn't exactly a question at all. And she sighed because now she was thinking of them too. She rested against his strong body, watching him nod slowly, and as sighed in reply.
"We're lost as many people as we've gained in the past few years alone," Jessie muttered, thoughtfully and sad. "I swear if anything ever were to happen to that kid..."
"Hmm..." Stella mused back. She rested for a moment, pressed firmly against the body of the man she loved. "Perhaps the bigger risk here is of a boy never growing to reach any true potential for the fear of some imagined tragedy... Of any person in this place, you're the one he looks up to most, you know. He tries so hard to be just like you. He didn't even say a thing to me today about his pain. Because his only real concern was that for some reason or other you might have been mad..."
"Of anyone around here, I'm hardly the kid's best choice for a role model..." Jessie said, sighing again as he leaned heavily against the railing of the porch. "You know damn well I've done a few too many things that no decent person could ever be proud of, both here and in some other life before this world."
"Please tell me how any person claiming to have no regrets to have ever learned a thing from, isn't full of it!" Stella exclaimed, chuckling loudly. She was flooded with relief at once, when Jessie nodded, laughing too – even if the unease did still show so clearly in his eyes. He was silent for a long moment, just watching her intently before he finally spoke again, so clearly concerned.
"You were away for a good while yesterday," Jessie mused, so undeniably concerned as he hugged her tighter. "It was so late last night when you got back."
"I rode out to the Red Piranhas' base," Stella answered. And she laughed just a hint of a laugh, trying only halfheartedly to free herself from Jessie's grip as it grew so protectively tighter around her. "To check up on the little boy, Sebastian." She laughed again, smiling. "He's so much better every time I visit. And tonight he insisted he show me just how fast he can run... how quickly he can climb the tree outside the base..." She paused for a moment, unable to ignore the fast-increasing worry on the tribe leader's face as he listened to her. And she added hurriedly, "Don't worry. Katie came with me for safety on the trails. And if there's another person in the place who truly loves that boy it's surely her!"
"I never thought I'd see the day you'd so willingly ride even half that far." Jessie's tone was an odd mix of pride and worry. And one look into his troubled eyes made it all too clear that he was thinking of a hundred different dangers – from both dinosaurs and humans – ready to spring out of nowhere on the way. Stella shuddered inwardly, just considering it herself. But she continued to smile regardless, as she looked up at him.
"Such timing you had in announcing our engagement in the dining hall the other day," she said slowly – her sudden shy embarrassment making her blush involuntarily. And the blushing only served to further embarrass her. "Even today I'm still hearing congratulations from the tribes-people."
"They've already begun to call you the first lady of the Lightened Dwelling." Jessie gave a lighthearted and cheerful, amused laugh as he spoke. His face – concerned and worry-filled just a moment before – turned up in a bright and happy grin, before he grabbed her suddenly around the middle of her body. And he caused her to make a surprised, and laughing cry of surprise as he spun quickly around once on the cabin porch, with her still held securely against him.
"I told you they'd be happy for us, Stella," he said seriously, setting her down again on her feet – causing her to laugh – as the sound of hurried footsteps made them end their silliness.
"I'm sorry to bother you both," Linh said slowly. It was clear the woman was embarrassed by her timing. But more so she was frightened – her eyes were wide and her hands shook just a little as she tried her best to stop them, by shoving them both into the sleeves of her cloth shirt.
"It's fine," Jessie said at once. And Stella only nodded – reaching out to rest a hand on the younger woman's arm - because it was more than clear that something was truly wrong. "What is it?"
"A reaper queen," Linh explained, hurriedly and trembling harder as she did so. "Quite possibly on a direct course toward us. Lorenzo caught her in his spyglass while he was checking on the lower levels. And I grabbed it from him for a second to take a peek myself. She's huge! Massive! And furious too. We would have noticed her in another minute or two without needing a spyglass, just as soon as she jumped clear across the pathway to the metal mines to snatch a full-grown megalosaurus and drag it underground!"
"Where is Lorenzo now?" Jessie's tone was calm and collected as he asked the question. But his concern was no less obvious regardless.
"He's still watching her closely," Linh explained, still speaking quickly – still trembling as she did. "He's trying to better estimate her path and speed of travel." Jessie nodded slowly, his eyes filled with careful consideration.
"Please let Katie know about this if you can find her," He muttered thoughtfully. "Girl could be anywhere. But she'll most certainly want some time to consider her own thoughts on a plan of action."
Linh hurried away at once - still trembling a little, with her eyes just as wide as ever. And Stella watched her as she went – aware of her own hands trembling just as badly as her younger tribe-mate's. She hid her face in Jessie's shirt, looking up at him again when he spoke to her.
"Stella..." he muttered his words slowly, carefully, and doubtful. "We both know I can't risk doing nothing..."
"I know that," Stella told him, hesitantly. She wanted to add so much more – to speak about the terrible dread she felt, so much more than any sense of dread she'd ever felt before. But instead, she let herself fall silent, her head buried in his clothing again. Her dread wouldn't matter and she knew it – because it couldn't matter.
"Sure, it ended with all of us flat on our backsides in the mud, yeah. Every one of us socked and dirty... and that's why all those clothes were hanging out to dry so late at night. But I tell you, it was still the funniest thing... We did finally get the thing though. And Leon's left boot with it!" Ellie paused in the middle of her cheerful and amused chattering on, to look around for a second or two with a thoughtful expression on her face. She reached easily to pick up a small flat stone from the ground beside her feet. And she tossed it quickly, managing to make it skip twice across the blue water of the luminescent lake before it disappeared under the surface of the water
"Hmm..." she mused slowly, chuckling with laughter. "Maybe you really would have to have been there..."
Ellie paused again, just a moment later. And this time she stood still – studying her tribe-mate with concern fully clear on her face.
"Are you alright?" she asked, hesitantly.
Ben - leaning against a nearby tree with its tall mushroom cap high over his head – blinked his eyes and stood up straighter, doing the best he could to shake off his sleepiness. He'd slept badly again for too many nights in a row - waking up far too often trembling from terror and confusion, whose cause he never could fully remember, sitting up already and staring out the window at nothing outside. But it was the juvenile reaper king that fully horrified him now – and he watched it carefully – crouching on the ground at Ellie's side, with its tail swinging back and forth behind it.
"I... didn't sleep well," Ben muttered, simply leaving it at that. Because he was after all, certainly not lying.
The creature beside Ellie moved then – yanking hard against its heavy training harness after standing up, to pull first to the left and then forward again, its eyes intent on a wandering dodo well beyond its reach. Ben stepped backward before he'd even realized his feet were moving at all. And forgetting all about the tree behind him, he bumped against it in one single step before tripping over its protruding roots and nearly falling to the ground entirely.
"Ben," Ellie said, her face concerned for a moment and her tone hesitant before she started laughing again just a little. She looked toward the juvenile creature beside her, and so clearly struggled with the harness. "You've got to get used to him sometime, you know. He's already two months old..."
"Two months, and already bigger than you are," Ben answered back. He forced himself to stand up straight again, even as the young reaper king advanced toward him, just as far as the training harness would allow.
"Not by much yet," Ellie said. And somehow she managed to laugh again so cheerfully as casual about it, as she studied the creature intently, appearing to realize only then just how big it actually was already. Her expression shifted then. And for a brief second, she just stood, giving Ben a strange sideways glance, whose meaning he'd never fully understood.
"What are you going to do in a year, when he's twenty feet tall?" she asked, amused.
"You know I've never liked a single thing about this," Ben muttered back, instead of any real answer to her clearly rhetorical question – which he shuddered at regardless. "He could seriously hurt you even now..."
"He would never..." Ellie said – so confident and self-assured. She tugged once, lightly, on the heavy training harness and reached up to pat the creature on the head, urging him to sit again. And to Ben's great and immediate relief, he instantly did so. "He's not even capable of wishing me harm..."
"Maybe not on purpose," Ben argued at once – and speaking up again perhaps far too quickly.
He didn't understand the strange and impossible connection between Ellie and the creature who would one day be among the biggest living things on their would. Ellie had never been able to explain it very well herself – she, despite having been thrown into the situation head first, was still very much learning. And Ben, quite frankly, didn't exactly want to know regardless.
He watched for a moment, cringing again as Ellie stood closer to the little reaper, patting his head happily, just as though he was a very large imposing dog. He watched the creature then as it turned its head to look at her – eyes intent and clearly thinking while it took in everything it could. Ben backed up again, instantly stopped by the tree behind him, when the creature turned to stare in his direction for a solid minute, unmoving. The young man sighed out loud in his instant relief when he saw a second dodo bird wandering behind him – the now obviously true object of the beast's full attention. Ellie – true to form – just laughed again, her head shaking in amusement, just as though the whole situation was somehow truly funny.
"Brimstone is a good boy," she said, just as though she was speaking of one of many creatures far less horrifying. "He'd never want to hurt you either. Because he knows full well that any friend of mine is a friend of his too..."
"He's outgrowing his harness," Ben observed, changing the subject again, and cringing harder as he noted the thick leather straps of the training harness, already buckled so close to their ends. The creature would simply be without one soon enough. And the very thought of it only made him shudder again.
"Brimstone will learn to let me ride on his back soon," Ellie said. And for the first time, her voice showed tones of doubt. "Katie and Jessie have said more than once already that we need to start that training early... just as soon as he can safely hold my weight."
Ben shuddered again, involuntarily. And for a moment he just stood, shivering as though the humid air was freezing cold. Troubled thoughts filled his mind – rising to the surface, like a creek about to flood its banks in a sudden downpour. And for surely many helpless seconds, he just stood, leaning on the mushroom-tree, trembling helplessly.
"Ben...?" Ellie said, clearly concerned. And Ben tried not to notice that she'd let go of Brimstone's training harness – that the creature in question stayed close to her regardless, and with its eyes looking one way then another in its search for leadership from the human it thought of as its 'mother.' "Are you sure you're okay?"
"I could ask you the very same question," Ben said, more than a little aware of his trembling as he made himself step away from the tree trunk. His voice was shaking and he knew it. But he couldn't do a thing to make it stop. "In all this time, Ellie, you've never said a thing about that day you literally nearly died!"
"Ben... I..." Ellie tried to answer. But Ben simply interrupted, barely registering in his own mind that she'd tried to speak to him at all.
"You've always just acted as though it doesn't matter! Just like maybe if you never say a thing... if you never talk, or think about it, somehow it'll all just kind of go away one day in a year.. or five," he continued, trembling harder as he recalled a still too recent day, full of blood and terror, and a crushing sense of certain tragedy. He recalled what he could from his old life then – one before that place, and a life that had done so much to teach him all too valuable of lessons "You can't be okay, Ellie. It's impossible to be. And no amount of trying to simply forget will make something just go away!"
He watched – with the scenery spinning around him, as Ellie stepped closer, her face filled with concern. And he blinked his eyes slowly, forcing his lightheadedness away – feeling utterly stupid for his outburst, even as his own troubled emotions refused to be shoved into submission.
"You've got to talk with someone eventually," he said, managing at least to stop the world from spinning as he steadied himself again against the tree. "If not me, then maybe Stella. Or Jessie... or Katie..."
"Ben," Ellie said firmly. She paused for a moment and just stood looking thoughtful – and so oddly as okay as ever. "I couldn't talk much about any of it if I tried. I don't remember much of that day. Jessie said I probably wouldn't. And sure enough, I don't"
"What did you just say to me?" Billy's rage was more than clear in the tone of his voice. And the loud thump of his hand against the countertop only served to back it up.
Josephine gasped, startled and stumbling backward, crashing against the closed door of the pantry when his angry hand grabbed her arm hard. And she cringed as he shoved her, with force, into the door. She heard the sound of creaking, as a hinge snapped somewhere – before she fell into the now busted wooden door.
"God damn it, Billy," Josephine cried, wincing at the feeling of a hard and jagged-edged pantry shelf against her back. There was a loud thump against the floor beside her. And she stood up straight again, staring down at two large cans of tomatoes and one of green beans, that had flown from the shelf. "Are you trying to get me knocked senseless!"
"I said..." Billy's rage was real, as he grabbed her by her blouse – tearing it in doing so. She was thrown against the wall, opposite the pantry, and his fist slammed into her face twice in the next second. "What, did you say to me!"
"I said, get out!" Josephine didn't care anymore that he'd hit her twice – that her mouth was full of blood and her back was undoubtedly scratched to pieces from the pantry shelving. She bent to collect a fallen can as it rolled toward her, bumping against her bare foot. And she picked it up at once, wielding it like a weapon in her shaking hand. "Take your damn temper with you and go get drunk somewhere else!"
"Big mistake, Jo," Billy's tone was pure fury now. And he snatched the can away from her before she gathered enough nerve to hit him with it. She was backed against the counter and his heavy hand was at her throat, pressing hard enough to make her gasp and cough, even as he drove his free fist – in a clenched fit – into her gut. "Big, big damn mistake..."
Josephine awoke abruptly, with Pugsly's long and wet tongue licking playfully at her face. She shoved the small creature away gently – only for him to return again to his antics until she finally sat up on the rocky beach.
It was early in the morning – the sun, somewhere above the ceiling high overhead casting a still dim glow over the landscape. And Josephine pulled her hide coat – which had been her makeshift blanket - tight around her body before she slowly put it on. She struggled to her feet, her body stiff and aching from another night spent laying on the ground, and looked around carefully.
A large dinosaur – one of the duck-billed herbivores, that she was by now fully certain were harmless – chomped away on a nearby bush. And it turned when she got up, looking at her for a moment in what could have been simply dinosaur curiosity before it went back to its breakfast. Josephine watched the beast for a moment, unable to ignore the plump and juicy yellow berries that grew from a branch of the large bush it nibbled on. And slowly – growing hungry for some breakfast of her own – she crept toward the bush and the dinosaur.
"Do you... mind sharing?" she asked the creature – a dull bluish-gray one - hardly bothering to even feel silly anymore in talking to the local wildlife. The dinosaur simply looked up, snorting once almost comically, before it went back to eating from the bush. Josephine moved quickly, snatching the large juicy bunch of berries, little branch and all, before he stepped backward again, and further from the creature.
"I'll just take these," she said, laughing just a little at the sheer silliness of the situation. "You can have the rest."
The duck-billed dinosaur looked up again. And it bellowed loudly once before it nudged her – still curious it seemed – with its head. Josephine dared to touch the creature then – surprised by the feel of its rough and thick scaled hide, as she ran a hand gently along a side of its upper body. It turned away to wander off. And she watched it for a moment as it went, wide tail swinging behind it as the dinosaur walked into the mushroom-woods and surely searching for another plant to eat.
Josephine re-lit her fire, which she'd built the night before – using a small pinch of the reddish power in her little cloth sack, poured over the wood to catch a spark, which she made so easily this time, by striking one fist-sized stone against another. She sighed her relief as the fire took quickly – aided entirely by the rough reddish powder, whose use she'd discovered only through some trial and error – and carefully placed on another chunk of wood from the little pile she'd chopped the night before. She grabbed her sharpened pike, left laying on the river bank beside the place she'd slept, and walked the short distance to the water's edge.
She speared a fish on the end of the pike – missing once, but managing on her second try at it, to catch one from among the multitude that swam around her feet, as she stood ankle-deep in the cool, swirling water. She hurried away then, to sit beside her fire, the fish laying on a flattened stone she'd nearly tripped over the past evening. She found her sharpened hunting knife among her few possessions in a pile nearby and used it to carefully gut and clean the fish, before she held it – now in several pieces – to roast over the fire, skewered on a pointed stick.
"I'm sorry, Pugsly," she said to her pug-fish companion, when the little critter jumped onto her knees, sniffing at the fire and the cooking fish in hopeful expectation. She lifted her cooking stick enough to carefully pull a piece of the fish back off again, offering it to the animal – reasoning at once that of course, he'd like his own food far better uncooked.
"I guess I'm just... distracted," she told her pet, patting his head gently while he nibbled at the fish. "I dreamed about Billy again. I... I guess I still don't fully believe he might actually be gone forever."
She watched the pug-fish, shaking her head in amusement when he tipped his head slightly to the side, just as though he could really understand her words. And she sighed slowly, turning her cooking stick just slightly in the heat of the flames.
'Billy? Dead?' The question echoed through her mind as she recalled the words of some young woman whose name she'd never heard. She'd questioned it a lot in the days since then, slowly letting herself believe when he'd still not appeared in that strange world, that perhaps he never would.
She ate the fish, nibbling on another little handful of berries along with it. And when she was done she got up again, tossed the cooking stick away into the bushes, and walked back to the river.
She looked down into the water, seeing no sign of immediate danger. And quickly she stripped off her clothing, folding it neatly on the riverbank, before she walked, then finally swam out into the water. She longed that morning for a shower – a chance to bath properly, with warm running water, fragrant soap, and shampoo for her hair. But the river would do. And it was so clearly her best option. She stood up in the water – almost deep enough to reach her shoulders – and did the best she could using only her hands, to scrub away a coating of dirt and dust from her body. Satisfied with the best effort she could possibly have made, the woman left the river again – startled at the sound of continued splashing of feet somewhere behind her.
"Well, that oughta just about fix 'im!" a voice – snarling and furious – grumbled upstream.
There was more splashing and then the noise of snapping twigs as whoever it was left the river themselves to walk over land. People! Josephine wasn't all that surprised to have found more of them there. It was easy to reason after meeting a few, that there were far more people in that place. But this one – a man whose tone of voice was one of clear threat – made her nervous at once. And she snatched up her clothing from its neatly folded pile in a single movement – her pike and tools in a couple more.
Josephine ran off quickly, spotting a large mushroom-tree among the thick woods close by. And she hid there, sitting huddled behind the tree – Pugsly silent in her lap – watching as the angry man approached, along with another fellow.
They were on foot and dressed in simply hide clothing – both of them walking quickly with hide packs on their backs and pikes in their hands – sharing a laugh as one of them smacked the shoulders of the other.
"That waste of space idiot knows damn well it won't just be his fingers busted next time," One of them said loudly, and snarling while he laughed - the voice was different than the first one, and clearly it was the second of them speaking now – the smaller of the two. "Next time it'll be his damn arm."
"More like both of his legs," the first fellow said "And then..." Josephine watched the pair approaching quickly on the riverbank. She cringed when the man made a clear and universally understood motion of pulling a finger across his own neck.
"Right in front of his kid I should hope," the smaller man snarled. He shifted the pack on his back just a little and readjusted his hold on the sharpened pike. "Teach that useless brat a lesson he'll remember for the rest of his damn life!"
He stopped suddenly, just a stone's throw from the trees where Josephine stayed hidden. And she watched, her heart banging in her chest, as he stepped closer to listen intently.
"Who's there?" the man demanded. And Josephine was immediately glad she'd put out her fire before she'd gone to bathe in the river. There was another snap of some branch somewhere behind her. And she looked around a bit, silent and terrified Because although she hadn't been the one to make that sound, the man was looking in her rough direction anyway.
"Come out you damn filthy coward!" he growled, waving his pike around in reckless raging anger. And he began to stomp toward the treeline, with his face set in a furious scowl – even if he was going in the wrong direction. Josephine sighed her relief with a hand clamped over her mouth, stifling a hint of a chuckle when the man tensed, then huffed, and growled like a wild animal at the sound of another snapping twig.
"Jim!" the bigger fellow snapped, shaking his head as he stood on the riverbank. But his companion was undeterred, and now he tossed rocks - several fist-sized ones he'd gathered from the ground around him – into the grove of mushroom-trees with a still growing snarl on his face.
There was another snap nearby. And the gray-blue duckbill wandered out – its mouth half full of the leaf-covered branch it carried comically, and dropped only to bellow at the men with a sadly large fist-sized bleeding wound on his thick hide from a thrown rock.
"It's a damn parasaur," the bigger of the men grumbled – while the smaller of the two just huffed loudly.
Josephine clamped her hand against her mouth again, stiffing another tiny laugh, while Pugsly grunted quietly – just another creature noise among a hundred others in the woods around them.
"Let's just hurry up and get those damn mushrooms," the smaller fellow – Jim - grumbled at his friend, another rock in his hand poised to throw it as he glared for a moment at the dinosaur. The blue-gray creature simply bent to munch at the leaves of another bush – oblivious. "Bad enough we, of anyone were sent to pick them. We can't just go back empty-handed..."
The man's words were cut off suddenly. And he just stared for a moment frozen, before he began to wave his sharpened pike around him again.
"Raptors!" he screamed, while the second of the men held his own weapon at the ready, turning slowly to survey the landscape.
Josephine, still hidden in her place behind the mushroom-tree, watched silently and nervous. And she gasped, horrified when three new dinosaurs charged out of woods somewhere behind her. The trio of beasts - each just a bit taller than most humans - were clearly far from friendly. They snapped at the air with sharp and gnashing teeth and growled as they ran with great speed across the beach. Their long feathered tails swayed from side to side behind them. And all three turned abruptly, barely slowing down, as they caught the scents of the now screaming men, and charged toward them without missing a step.
"Tony!" Jim yelled – his voice giving way to another loud scream of rage and terror as the creature at the front of the pack leaped at his companion.
The larger man screamed in reply, any actual words little more than incoherent mumbled noise. His shouts were cut short abruptly, when the beast's deadly claws slashed across his throat – sending a torrent of blood spraying everywhere, amid the man's dying groans.
"Damn it, damn it..." Jim muttered loud and furious as he swung the pike around again, striking one of the still advancing breasts in the back of its leg – and seeming to only make it angrier in doing so. It was that one – its gray body already sprayed with blood in too many places – that attacked first. And it bit the man's leg badly, causing a new spray of blood to stain the ground around him in seconds.
The fellow screamed again, his terror and shock every bit clear as he managed to strike one of the attacking dinosaurs with the tip of his pike – impaling the thing through the chest before it fell into a dead heap on the ground. But two more were still very much alive. And both of them lunged again at once, each one grabbing an arm in their teeth, making the pike fall to the bloodied ground, as the man screamed in pain.
He killed another of them somehow – a miracle of will and fight or flight surely – driving the foot of his uninjured leg into its throat before he fell, making the dinosaur gasp, then gurgle, then simply convulse on the grass terribly for just a second more until it stopped moving. And that left just one.
Josephine sprinted from her hiding place, her own pike in her hands, and her feet moving fast enough that she had not a second in which to change her mind.
'Even the very worst of men do not deserve to die like that!' The thought screamed through her mind as she ran. She watched intently as the dinosaur nipped again at the fallen man, now unmoving on the ground. She slowed her pace and crept behind it, slamming the pike's edge against the beast's head, relieved and shaking from her own inner terror when the thing dropped to the grass like a rock.
"Hey..." the woman said, slow and shaking, doubtful as she kneeled down between the pair of bleeding and lifeless men. "Can you... hear me?"
Of course they couldn't. And she scolded herself for even hoping, as she struggled to recall anything at all that she might have ever learned about emergency first aid. The first of the men, the biggest one – apparently named Tony – was dead. That was plainly obvious to even Josephine with her lack of anything but simple common sense. His throat was torn apart, the blood flow from a gaping wound already beginning to slow as his body stiffened in its place – laying at bent and painful angles on the grass.
And Jim – he'd fared little better. One arm was bent and twisted into a blood-covered mess. And the other was half gone – bones showing through the blood and his shredded hide shirt. His injured leg was just as bad. Blood poured from another bite wound with little sign of slowing. This man's eyes were open, or at least partly so. And he blinked slowly, as she met Josephine's for just a moment – barely seeming to see her at all before he too was dead – limp and lifeless at her knees. She leaned forward, searching for life anyway... a pulse, the rise and fall of his rib cage as he breathed, the feel of warm breath from his mouth. But there was nothing.
"Shit..." Josephine muttered because she could think of little else to say before she stumbled backward, falling to the ground from her position on her knees – to just lay for a long moment shaking in her terror.
She made herself move again, with effort, sighing her relief when she saw Pugsly, who stood beside her once again entirely unhurt and sniffing about until he found and uprooted one of his favored brown mushrooms to eat.
The men's packs lay on the grass – both of them thrown off of their backs sometime during the chaos. And Josephine sighed – dismissing any hint of her fast-rising guilt as she yanked open the first of them. She dumped the contents on the ground beside her, sorting through it all just as quickly as she could, before she piled it neatly to take a further inventory. The pack was mostly full of metal – iron possibly, crudely refined and shaped into small and manageable bars. But there were also tools – a small hatchet, a simple wooden bowl, an empty glass jar, and a couple of decent knives – dried meat in a small cloth bag, and a scrap of heavy parchment, which when unfolded showed a roughly drawn and fading map. Last of all there was a sleeping bag – one made of thick and durable hide and lined with soft fur. Josephine inspected it carefully before she rolled it back up into its bundle, tied with the think hide cords attached to the bottom edges. And she gathered it up, grateful and again dismissing any guilt about it, to toss it back into the pack. She put the knives, jar, and bowl in too, and the map of course, before she added her own few possessions and lifted the pack onto her shoulders.
The second pack was torn up – she saw that when she flipped it over. And its contents - much the same as those of the first one – were all but ruined with blood and claw marks. She left it alone, as she'd found it, and backed up with a shudder, surveying the scene as she went.
Three fallen dinosaurs lay around the fallen men – their own feathered bodies broken and limp, one with a piece of human flesh still sickeningly between its teeth and one with bloodied claws. But it was the third that held Josephine's attention. It was far less damaged than its pack-mates, suffering from barely more than the blow to its head from her pike. And much to Josephine's returning horror, it was still so clearly breathing. She backed away slowly from the creature – a raptor, the now dead men had called the beast – but stopped moving again when it opened its eyes to stare at her.
"Stay back..." The woman growled at the dinosaur, her pike held firmly in her hands, and fully prepared to knock the thing right back out a second time. But it didn't move more than to merely lift its head a little. And it certainly didn't get itself back up. She noted its size then – just a little smaller than the others. And she found herself feeling oddly bad for the nasty thing.
"You're... injured," Josephine muttered to the raptor, shaking her head inwardly at her need to bother caring in the first place. She reached out a careful hand, painfully aware of the beast's steady growling as it stared her down, and moved to touch it gently, far enough down its back that she knew it couldn't reach to bite her.
"You were just doing what dinosaurs do," she muttered to the creature, pausing to shove Pugsly back behind her gently before her eyes fell on a wandering bird – one of endless many of them that waddled, fat and flightless in the place. She stood up quickly, running at the waddling bird with her pike still in her hands and her pug-fish at her heels, using the pike at the perfect second – striking the bird with one humane blow to its head. She picked it up, still warm and fresh, and hurried back to drop it on the ground in front of the helpless raptor.
"It doesn't feel right to just leave you to die," she told the dinosaur, daring to pat it again gently on the back – and even letting herself laugh a little when it moved just enough to sniff the prey with interest. Josephine sighed and shook her head, with the pack on her shoulders and firm hold on the pike. "Just... remember me one day if we ever meet again hey? You... you owe me one, you know."
