Author note: Ack, delays... I'm sorry! Really, I am! Also, the Dedicato Award is still up for grabs to anyone who can figure out who we are!! Enjoy the chappie...

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"It was a dark and stormy night."

"Really? I'd never have noticed."

"Down in the dark, dark cave, a brave but vertically-challenged Brit awaited death by thunder, surely -"

"Trip?"

"Yeah?"

"Shut up."

"Just tryin' to have a little fun," Trip said sulkily. "S'not exactly a lot else to be done around here."

"Well," Jonathan said, speaking for the first time, "perhaps if you focused a little less on telling stories and more on what's actually happening, we might just get somewhere."

"Get where?" Trip asked him. "We're here, stuck in some godforsaken excuse for a cave... in the middle of a thunderstorm."

"Which will eventually subside," the captain retorted. "I just hope Porthos is okay," he mused, turning back to stare at one of the cave's walls.

"He's a dog, Cap'n," Trip offered. "Dogs love the rain. Right?"

Jonathan shot him a look that would have made T'Pol, Soval and a good half of the Vulcan compound back home proud. It was a look that clearly said, "Shut up now, and I won't let Malcolm's guys use your ass for target practice."

"Can you hear that?" Malcolm asked, cocking his head in the direction of the entrance of the cave.

Trip stared at him. "Right about now, I can hear thunder, lightning and -"

"You can't hear lightning, you idiot," Malcolm retorted. "You see lightning and you hear thunder. Call yourself an American."

"High talk comin' from someone who hails from Great ol' Britain, land of neverendin' wind and rain."

"Yank."

"Idiot."

"Pillock."

"Uh... jackass."

"Getting slow... featherbrain."

"Cretin."

"Nincompoop."

"Uh..."

"When you two have *quite* finished," Jonathan interrupted, exasperated. "Thank you."

"And as I was saying," Malcolm continued blithely, staring at Trip, "can you hear that outside? It sounded like a bird."

"How the hell can you heard a *bird* in this weather?!"

"Quite easily, believe it or not. It makes an irritating noise that has the sole effect of making me want to strangle it."

"I can't hear a bird."

"Try listening for it."

"What do you think I'm doin'? Teachin' it ta do a two-step?!"

The argument continued in this vein for some time before another flash of lightning lit up the inside of the cave, giving the three men a chance to see each other for about three seconds until everything went dark again. Complete silence then fell all around - even the wind seemed to quieten down.

And then a bird clearly squawked.

Malcolm smirked, now invisible in the near darkness. "Told you," he said triumphantly, sounding like a kid.

"Oh, shut up," Trip retorted.

Jonathan sighed and returned to worrying about his dog.

***

Back in the shuttlepod - alone in the shuttlepod - Travis stared at Porthos. The dog had curled up into a furry little ball on the pilot's seat and had somehow managed to fall asleep, completely and utterly oblivious to the storm outside.

Travis hated Porthos right then. Really, he did.

His communicator, now almost forgotten by his side, began to chirp again. Enterprise. It had to be. Flipping it open, the helmsman shot the captain's pet one last dirty look before answering.

"Ensign... your... cation... ali... gns... pproaching."

For the second time the connection went dead abruptly and Travis stared at the dormant device in his hand in disgust. "That's it," he declared. "I hate you."

The communicator had nothing to say to that, so he snapped it shut and tossed it back on the co-pilot's seat while he sat against it, listening to the sounds outside and trying to figure out a) who had been on the other end of that hail, and b) what on earth they had been trying to say to him before it cut out.

Now that he actually had time to think about it, the voice had sounded remarkably like T'Pol's, although that was certainly no guarantee that it was in fact her. It could equally have been Hoshi or any other of the female crew on bridge duty at the time.

And as to what had been said to him... only a couple of words had actually been fully audible, but he could easily hazard a guess at the whole sentence... "Ensign, your location... something something approaching." Fizz, sputter, dead communicator.

Something approaching?

Moving over to the storage locker at the rear of the shuttlepod, Travis removed the phase pistol that had been stored in there (and silently thanking Lieutenant Reed's paranoid tendencies at the same time) before resuming his seat and staring at the pod's hatch, waiting for... whatever could be out there to come.

***

The nut had proven too tough an opponent. Disappointed in himself and in his hunting ability, the odd-looking bird had left the safety of his tree above the strange creature's rock, and flapped along the wind's path until he had spotted another tree next to a series of caves.

And joy of joys! there was a whole cluster of nuts at the end of one of the branches. Landing on that very branch, he immediately became aware of more noises coming from inside one of the caves.

"Perhaps they know the rock-creature," the bird thought to himself and called out loud to them, asking them if indeed they did.

The response came almost straight away, much more clearer than it had sounded before, although the bird couldn't quite catch what they were trying to say.

"I'll try again in a bit," he promised himself, hopping along to where the nuts were growing on their own little twig.

As he tucked into what was hopefully the first of many nuts, the bird was blissfully unaware of the shadows moving through the trees at the edge of his vision.