Thank you for all of your messages of consolation at my grandfather's death. I'm coping well, thank you. Grief, actually, was not the reason the chapter was delayed. The reason why is I had university assessments (each of which were worth 30% of my grade) to revise for.

Chapter 2 – Day One

The day had not started well.

"What can you do with your dumb boyfriend, you can't do with me?", Nathan said, in a huff, as he ate his breakfast. "A lot of things!", James mockingly shouted from the balcony. Holly looked apologetically at him and said "I'm sorry. But I already have things planned for today." Seeing Nathan's expression, she smiled and said "Don't worry. I'll take you on the Night Tour later." Nathan smiled. He liked spending time with his sister.

Holly was four years older than Nathan. She was, from Nathan's perspective, practically an adult. They had a very close bond. She'd watched out for him a lot when he was young. In fact, they'd been virtually inseparable. Then, two years ago, she'd met James. That was the moment everything went down the crapper. She was never around anymore. Now, Holly having a boyfriend would be fine. It was just James as a person he didn't like. James was, in his view, a useless, pretty boy who didn't have enough brains to fill an eggcup. But his parents liked James, so they never wanted to hear Nathan say anything bad about him. They just told Nathan to grow up.

Nathan's mother said "Nathan, remember what we said about letting Holly do what she wants?! And besides, Gerard said Lauren and Jack wanted spend the day with us, anyway!" Nathan silently rolled his eyes. He didn't like Gerard.

Gerard was Nathan's uncle – his mother's brother. That didn't mean he had to like him. In fact, Nathan found Gerard to be a jerk of the highest caliber. His two kids didn't help. Ten-year old Lauren, the elder of the two, was alright. But, Jack…

Jack was seven (almost eight) – he was the youngest in his mother's side of the family. He was extremely spoiled; he got "stuff" all year long from his parents for absolutely no reason. His parents were also extremely overprotective of him. The result is that he basically had a really annoying narcissistic attitude. Now, Nathan was like that as a child, but, somehow, this was much worse.

A prime example of this was on his 7th birthday, the August before. Both Nathan's aunts had presents for him, but his mother didn't. This was unsurprising; it wasn't particularly common for aunts and uncles to give presents – Nathan very rarely got any substantial presents from his aunts and uncle. However, Jack was the youngest, and so there was, apparently, some kind of unwritten rule that says he should get some material property for his birthday or something. After unwrapping both of the presents his aunts had got for him (and immediately throwing them aside because he didn't like them), he walked up to Nathan's mother and said "you didn't get me anything?". She apologized to him, his face dropped and he walked away.

Last Christmas, Gerard had called Nathan's mother to talk about Christmas presents. His plan was to 4-way split the price of an iPad (£700, to be exact) with Nathan's mother and their two other sisters. Which was fine. However, at the end of it, he had the audacity to say: "maybe you should pay a little bit more since you didn't get him anything for his birthday." Keep in mind, none of his other cousins got much of anything from anybody besides their own parents. That didn't bother Nathan. What bothered Nathan about the whole thing was that his mother had been basically bullied, by her own brother, into taking £200 out of her pocket. This was at a time where Nathan's family was in serious money trouble; the telecom company Nathan's father worked for had failed to achieve a major deal that a lot of people's careers had been riding on. This meant that many of the employees, Nathan's father included, had had their wages halved until they "decided what to do" with them. To make matters worse, the manager of the bank Nathan's mother worked as a teller had openly refused to give her a raise. To be exact, he'd laughed in her face for a full minute and told her to get out of his office.

They'd gotten through it all right. Nathan's father had gotten back his full salary (after he and several other valuable employees had threatened to send complaints to HR that they were being unfairly denied full pay). But the fact was that Gerard was much better off than them. Both he and Liz, his wife, worked high-paying jobs at a pharmaceuticals company. Nathan didn't know how much money they made, but he knew that they, combined, made twice his father's annual salary. Now, Nathan didn't care at all whether his mother got him expensive presents or not, but he knew for a fact that he never got £200 worth of presents for Christmas (which was also his birthday).

Nathan's mother didn't help. She just let him walk all over her. Every year, she ran around after Gerard's kids, whilst he was away. Every Christmas, she cleaned up after her family whilst they all got drunk in front of the television. Every time, she just ignored people who complained that she was being a doormat and that she should stand up for herself.

Nathan's mother walked him to the lift. After a few minutes, they walked out into the lobby. Suddenly, Nathan felt something slam into him, sending the wind right out of him. A blonde head with shiny blue eyes stared up at him. "Nathan!", Lauren's voice yelled excitedly, as the ten-year old hugged him tighter.

He looked up to see Gerard, Liz and Jack standing in the lobby. Gerard said "Alright, Potter?", laughing maliciously. Gerard had adopted this nickname for Nathan ever since Nathan had been forced to have glasses, because, since his glasses were slightly oversized, he bore a slight resembelance to Harry Potter. Gerard had adopted "Potter" as his nickname and never ceased to make jokes about it when he was in earshort. Nathan sheepishly said "Uncle Gerard, you've been calling me that for two years. Why do you still call me it?"

"Because it's funny.", he replied nonplussed. Nathan rolled his eyes. Gerard thought he was the pinnacle of humour, despite the fact that virtually all his "jokes" were terrible. In fact, not just terrible, awful. However, he was blissfully unaware of this; if you didn't think his jokes were funny, you obviously had no sense of humour.

They walked out of the hotel, into the park. A suggested first destination was the Carboniferous House. Nathan had read all about it. A large EFTE dome, which covered 1.56 hectares (one of the largest domed exhibits in the world), it was home to the Carboniferous giant insects and amphibians. The entire building was airtight, in order to maintain the higher oxygen content which the Carboniferous animals required.

They entered through the doors and were instantaneously hit by the hot, humid air. However, the humidity was not what Nathan's mother complained about. She detested bugs at normal size never mind the staggering size of the Meganeura and Arthropleura. "Oh my god! Just look at it!" she cried. The shiny brown carapace of the Arthropleura sparkled in light as they listened to the many legs clack against each other.

Nathan looked, mystified, as he saw a Pulmnoscorpius looked at him from under some leaf litter and a Meganura buzz near his head. Suddenly, he caught, in the corner of his eye, Jack was trying to grab the Meganaura. Nathan walked up to Jack, grabbed his arm and murmured "Jack, stop it!" Nathan's mother turned round and snapped "Don't you embarass him in public!" Nathan looked "But, Mum, he was…", Nathan stammered. "I don't care what he was doing! Don't you make a scene!", she shouted, earning looks from everyone in the crowd. Someone in a blue tour guide outfit walked up to Nathan's mother and tapped her on the shoulder. As she turned to look at him, he stated, "Um, Ma'am, excuse me… you're making a scene."

Somehow things seemed to be conducted quicker after that. They'd only briefly stopped to see the giant Crassigyrinus, swimming around in its pond. In less than five minutes, they were out of the Carboniferous House.

Nathan's mother turned to him and said, in an exasperated tone, "What am I going to do with you?" Gerard turned to her and said, "Tell you what, Linda. Why don't I have him for the rest of the day? You and Andy could get some well-needed time to relax." Nathan looked at his mother with an expression of barely concealed pleading, Please, please, anyone but him. No such luck was coming. Nathan's mother cast him a withering look and said "Sure. See you later." She walked off, before turning to him and saying "Remember, be good!"

After that, Gerard suggested going to Sorna, the large island and they headed off for the monorail. With a hiss, the doors slid open and they took the nearest unoccupied chairs that weren't filled with families excited out of their minds speaking in every language that could ever be spoken. They wouldn't have wait a while before they arrived at their stop; Sorna was the closest island to Nublar. The window was cold against Nathan's head as he leant against it. He turned out of the window, to see Isla Nublar scatter past him as the monorail silently sped across the track. Judging how he saw through the leaves the orange and black stripes of a Caspian Tiger he knew that the track was fast leaving Nublar. His estimate was right as the monorail then sped over the tranquil sea. At one part he saw a large whale tail burst from the surface before sinking back down.

"Mom, look a Basilosaurus!" a little kid with a Texan accent shouted in glee. "Yes honey," his mother said with apparent disinterest.

He never understood that from some people. Why come to a remote island chain that was rumoured to be haunted by the ghosts of murderers and inhabited by some animals that went extinct before terrestrial plants evolved if you look at them with disinterest? He remembered what someone had written on a review site that the Tylosaurus had just swam past his viewing area and did nothing. He wrinkled his nose at the thought, thinking Well I'm sorry that the bloody thing didn't smash through the viewing dome and rip apart your family in a frenzy of blood and gore for your entertainment! Well, those people were few in number.

Prehistoric Park was well liked by most of the world. Several giant corporations poured sponsorship and money into the park. For example, Imdominus Isle, on Nublar (the park's newest big exhibit) had been funded by several companies, including GoLite clothing and Sony. Celebrities also visited the park. He'd seen in the hotel, how everyone, from the presenters of Top Gear to Scarlett Johansson and even politicians like David Cameron and Barack Obama, had visited the park and written glowing reviews.

Several important conservation groups had supported the place. The WWF and other conservation organizations wrote glowingly of the park. The WWF had even co-masterminded the Eastern Cougar reintroduction project, with several more to come. Animal rights groups, however, the relationship was more…. frosty. PETA had, initially, supported the park, but the instant it opened to the public and it became trendy among the animal-lib types to dislike Prehistoric Park, they had dissacoiated themselves from it and stated that they'd been "decieved" by the park's true purpose. Born Free and CAPS had also written disparapagingly of the park. However other, more moderate, groups expressed a degree of support, with Friends of the Earth writing "Whilst it's not the best outcome (no form of captivity really is), there could be many worse outcomes".

Nathan looked out over the sea and briefly saw the Basilosaurus' tail fluke resurfacing again. He briefly smiled, when the monorail suddenly jerked to a stop and the doors slid open. He looked to see Wadi Al-Hitan Formation in blue text on the roof. He looked, shook his head and walked out the doors.

Looking down, from the top, he saw what looked like a thick log slithering into the sea between some mangroves. The giant snake Gigantophis. He couldn't wait to see that monster. He sprinted down, into the viewing area, ignoring Gerard and Liz's requests for him to slow down.

The room smelt heavily of salt water. No water could get in but it definitely did nothing to hinder the overpowering smell of the saline water. Nathan was always amazed by the exhibit design of Prehistoric Park. They had copied Hagenbeck Zoo where most of the barriers to the exhibit were natural barriers and any actual fencing was tactfully hidden. He'd read, though, that originally there had been a few bits of fencing where there hadn't managed to construct a natural barrier or where fences were needed for using the transport vehicles. Whilst the staff knew not to do anything stupid near the barriers, it was decided that guests couldn't be trusted and in the majority of exhibits, actual barriers were put up. This was a prime exhibit exemplifying this. There was a slight cliff face which dropped into the exhibit which was full of mangroves submerged in tranquil blue water while the rest was a golden beach. Out of sight was a series of submerged rocks which stopped the denizen within from making a bid for freedom via the Isla Sornan sea. There were also several glass panels spanning the ridge of the rocky cliff, allowing guests to view the denizen.

He paused at a glass pane, long enough for his relatives to catch up. Some people were kneeling down eagerly looking through the glass panes, which stood over two metres high. Some were ignoring the tank and some people were standing further back with expressions of fear and trepidation. He could see why. Some people were scared of snakes. A snake over 10 metres long would be an ophidophobe's nightmare.

Someone gave a small yelp as from behind one of the mangroves in the warm water a long, serpentine black and green shape emerged. It moved following a pointed head in an S motion through the clear water. It was a magnificent looking animal. At over nine meters long, its black and green skin was perfect camoflauge for the wetlands it hunted in. It blended in so well, it was hard to tell what was detritus and what was snake. It looked similar to that of an African rock python, with curved teeth that were every bit as sharp. When it opened his mouth, his curved ivories shone white in the sun until it was hard to tell what was water and what was his teeth. Its green eyes coldly stared at the humans observing it, with a look of calculated indifference.

Jack lent on the glass panel and started tapping on the glass. Nathan reached to stop him but the memory of the chewing out he'd earned before stopped him. He knew something would happen; snakes often hunted through vibrations and it, surely, could sense the idiot's banging of the glass. This proved to be correct, when the water exploded and with an audible clang against the transparent glass, the Gigantophis struck, trying to seize Jack. Many people shrank back, and some even shrieked out loud. "Jack!" Nathan yelled, grabbing Jack's arm,"You knew it would do that! Don't do it again!"

"Oh, Nathan, lighten up!" Gerard laughed, "He was just having fun!". Nathan stammered "B-but the sign said….", to which Gerard responded with a mocking imitation, before laughing "'B-but the sign said…' You are such a killjoy!". In response to this, Jack and Liz burst out into hysterical laughter, earning amused and curious looks from the rest of the crowd. Several members of the crowd let out little giggles. With everyone's stares boring into him, Nathan looked like he was about to cry.

Suddenly, a woman with tanned skin and shoulder-length chestnut coloured hair wearing a Prehistoric Park keeper's uniform walked into the viewing area. According to her name badge, her name was Maria Ramirez. She walked through the crowd, towards Nathan and calmly asked him "What happened?". Nathan, pointing to Jack, spoke in a hurried nervous tone "Well, my cousin was tapping on the glass and the snake struck it. I tried to stop him but he wouldn't listen to me!"

She turned to Gerard and said "Sir, please, you were told on arrival not to disturb the animals". Gerard gave the keeper a sour look, "It was a laugh! Lighten up! You're a bigger killjoy than my nephew!" he laughed, pointing at Nathan, who shrank back in fear. Maria remained poker faced and said "It isn't about lightening up, sir. It's about park rules. Your nephew was perfectly well within his rights to stop your son. There is a sign that very clearly says "DO NOT TAP ON THE GLASS". "Of course… but, but but…" Gerard stammered. This was the first time Nathan had ever seen him without a sarcastic, mocking or "witty" comeback. Nathan smiled at this victory. The crowd looked around at them, looking like they were about to burst out laughing. Gerard, unable to find a response, just muttered under his breath, "It's just a big python, anyway", before turning to walk out. "Come on Nathan!" He walked out, taking his family with him.

Maria watched them leave and turned to Nathan, "Listen, about what happened…. You did the right thing. You understood that there are rules against that sort of behaviour and that you have to respect our animals. You know, we need more guests like you. People who've read the rules. Have a good day." She smiled at him and walked out.

Nathan stayed for a while, watching the snake stare at them. He said, more to himself than the snake, "Sorry you had to hear all that" and sadly walked away. Almost as if in affirmative, the snake brought its head out of the water and hissed at the departing humans before returning back under the watery world where it reigned.

Meanwhile, on Isla Nublar

The two birds easily stood over the golden grass in Santa Cruz Plains. If they didn't tower over a human they most likely would have vanished in the height of the grass. The female issued a low caw from her huge orange beak which reverberated around the exhibit, to which the slightly smaller male replied to in kind. Periodically, one of the birds would bend down, pick up a branch or twig in its beak and carry it over to a large pile. According to the sign, the birds were collecting material for a nest. Holly stood for a few minutes, calmly watching the birds stalk around through the long grass. According to the sign they were Phorus-something… Holly didn't know how to pronounce it. No doubt Nathan would. He knew the name of every dinosaur known to man. What she did know was that watching them was almost hypnotic. They were working in perfect synchronised harmony. As soon as one put down a stick that was suitable for their nest, the other would carry a new one.

James had gone to the toilet a few minutes ago. Holly was alone. She began to silently muse, contemplating a tribal necklace in her hand and playing with the beads as she did so. She did a little retrospect of her life so far. Having completed her A levels, with flying colours, she had gotten an offer from one of the most prestigious medical schools in the country. This had led to arguments. James didn't like the idea of his girlfriend overtaking him in terms of success. He'd been offered to try out for Everton FC and he said, in his words, "I don't want us to go in different directions". In order to achieve this, he'd tried to bully her into rejecting her offer, largely to sate his ego.

She couldn't share anything with him. She couldn't tell him how she felt insecure when James checked out other women. It made her feel inadequate. In fact, no, it made her feel ugly and unattractive. He always just told her she was just being paranoid, that she was a "jealous killjoy" and that "it was nothing". This got them arguing again. He'd threatened to dump her, repeatedly. If he made good on his threats… well, she didn't like to think about that. In the last six months or so, it was clear their relationship was failing.

That was part of the reason she'd agreed to go on this holiday. She wanted to rekindle something. Maybe on beautiful tropical islands, surrounded by some of the greatest creatures that had ever lived, maybe, just maybe, something would change. She'd booked a romantic picnic under the stars on the beaches of Sorna, the large island. Maybe a romantic night on a beautiful tropical beach, would cause something to change. Maybe, just maybe, he'd tell her that he...

She sighed, shook her head, and put the necklace back in her bag. The fact was, a lot of teenage couples didn't survive past A-levels. Most of their friends had ended their relationships, largely due to either cheating or embarassing circumstances. At her 18th birthday the week before, her best friend's now ex-boyfriend had been arrested after being caught having sex with another girl in the toilets of a pub. With that relationship ending, she and James were the only couple still together.

She turned back to look at the birds. They were silent and were standing, looking at their partially completed nest. They briefly nuzzled, in a display of affection, letting out throaty, quiet clucks. She smiled at this; they were reaffiriming their pair bond. According to the guidebook she had, they paired for life, spending their whole lives together as a monogamous couple.

"Well?" She was brought back to reality by James roughly shaking her by the shoulder. Apparently, at some point in the last 10 minutes, he'd returned from the toilets. Confused, she turned to look at him, before saying "What?" With a mocking smile on his face, James said, "Well, don't you think Lisa was a skank?" He scoffed, before adding in a mocking sneer "She left me."

Holly nodded. She had to. James had drummed that into her head. James was always right and everyone else was always wrong. If you disagreed with him, you'd evidently just had a lobotomy. The necklace she had in her bag was an example of that. The necklace was handmade by a Neanderthal tribe and supposed to grant an everlasting love to whoever wore it. James had snorted at this and called her a romantic idiot for believing in "some poncy hippie crap". He'd left his at the hotel. This got her thinking about James. She couldn't just dump him. James was a pillar of the community, the athlete of his generation at Sacre Coeur, the star striker of the town's best football team, their very own David Beckham. If she dumped him, she would be an automatic social pariah.

After five minutes watching the birds, James said, in an aggravated tone, "They're not doing anything interesting, are they? Come on, let's go and see something else", before walking off. She stayed for a few minutes, before she heard him shout "Holly! Come on!". He then walked up to her, grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her away

As she left, she looked at the birds, still focused on collecting items for their nest, working in perfect tandem. How she envied them. Their relationship would be perfectly uncomplicated. By that she meant, the male's wandering eye would not settle on another female and vice versa. They wouldn't have any doubts or any anxieties that they'd done the wrong thing. They would just stay together for the rest of their lives. They had a better relationship than she would ever have.

Apologies this chapter's a bit long, but it represents a turning point in the story. It's going to split into three or so narratives:

Nathan, having to deal with his two bratty cousins.

Holly, musing on her relationship with James, her boyfriend.

Andrew and Linda (Nathan and Holly's parents), whose problems you will see in the next chapter.

Sorry this seems rushed. Again, me and writing at 11 at night do not go well together. Bye for now.