Well, lookie here, folks!so u may have noticed i changed the title to something slightly more...long.

ANYWAY.

chapter nine yay

on with the story!

this chapter is rated a rating for hallucinations sadness and vivid hallucinations. much confusion experience, which will you. that was a bad impersonation of yoda. please forgive me. before i say something really stupid...:

INSERT DISCLAIMER HERE.

also, i'm going to try to include the british accents now..in CHAPTER NINE YAY

Evening: the herd was setting up camp. Buck had gone to get firewood- or was it fruit? Melody had forgotten. But whatever it was, nothing should take this long. She was worried. She wrung her paws. "Manny, he's been gone a while, don't ya think?" Manny rolled his eyes and huffed, "For all we know he could be chasing Rudy. The guy's madder than the mad hatter." Melody winced, "But really Manny. I don't think...I mean, I think...Perhaps somethin's wrong. He's...He was sick earlier. And I..." "If by 'sick', you mean mentally ill, by which 'perhaps' you mean crazy- he's always crazy. Get used to it." "Manny!" scolded Ellie. "Don't mock me, Manny," warned Melody, "Tabitha wasn't the only one who learned to fend for herself. And that's not what I meant-" "Then what did you mean? Listen, we've got better things to worry about-"

"No, you listen!" yelled Tabitha. She looked frightened and angry- a look that made her scarier than normal. "Listen, mammoth, you don't understand this. You don't know what it's like to be an...an orphan, to have to do everything yourself (even stuff that you don't know how to do), to have nobody there for you. You learn everything by yourself or die. It's different when you're a kid. You're vulnerable; and, evidently, tastier. Okay, that sounded really weird. But besides the point!" She looked Manny in the eyes, and said quietly, "He's. All. I've. Got." "Well, I'm sorry for your loss, but I'm not risking my family to go after him! He can take care of himself!" "Fine, when there's three of us dead, maybe then you'll come looking for someone other than your daughter. Without us, you won't find her."

She ran off into the wilderness, catlike and silent.

"Tabitha! Come back!" screamed Melody. Her thoughts went something like...This:

Crud, my niece is missing!

Crap, my brother's missing!

Dang it, Peaches is still missing.

And my niece is missing and probably going to get killed!

"Don't worry," reassured Ellie, "we'll find her." Melody nodded grimly, "Aye, I believe you. The question is, alive, or dead? And when? Because the last time somebody said that (it was me, by the way) we didn't find her until she had been presumed dead for years and her fathah had gone crazy for a number o' reasons."
Silence.

Buck had had a splitting headache for most of the day. He chose the job that didn't require anybody else to come with him-gathering food- because he was relishing silence at the moment. But then things got really weird. And then, they got downright scary.

He reached for the kiwi; after he picked this, he'd have enough food to feed all of them. But there was something strange about it. Could he have mistaken it for something else? No, he thought, it's a kiwi alright. But he picked the fruit and looked down at it, and dropped it, horrified. Maggots, worms, and ants swarmed the fruit. He brushed off his hands out of habit, but realized there was more than just a couple of ants.

They covered his arm, those horrible little nasties. But the worst thing was: they hurt. The insects were biting him. Frantically, he dropped whatever food he was holding to brush them off. But they seemed to be multiplying, and were crawling up his neck. Panicking, he swatted at them, cursing and nearly falling out of the tree. He put one hand on the branch to balance himself as he tried to shake them off, but abruptly drew himself back upon seeing the bugs attacking the tree. He fell for what seemed like eons but was probably three seconds. He braced himself to land on dirt, but he didn't. It hurt like he'd fallen on packed dirt, but when he looked down he was on a rock in the middle of a river of lava. The falls was coming up fast.

Before he could think about how to go against the current without dying, he heard a cry. He turned, and saw Tabitha hanging precariously from a low ledge on the side of the cliff. Scared out of his wits he hopped onto another "floating" rock drifting downstream. He did this again until he was on a rock that was really, really hot, but was not moving, and was not lava. He yelled at her to let goo, promising he would catch her. His daughter hesitated, but obeyed, trusting him.
And he didn't catch her.
He lunged to do so, but missed her, and her sweaty fur brushed his finger tips for a split second before she fell screaming into the river of fire. And then he fell in too.

He resurfaced, panting and dripping wet. He was no longer at Lava Falls, but there was still fire. He choked on ash, and called out his daughter's name. He waded out of the river, and narrowly missed being squished by a flaming tree.

This wasn't Dinotopia at all.
The horror dawned on him and he looked down at himself: a much younger version of Buck, maybe nine or ten years old.
He leaped back into the river in a desperate attempt to avoid the fire and swam to the other side. He crawled out again, and ran without knowing where to go. His foot landed in some sort of hole that had been covered with debris before, and he was stuck. He called out for help, screaming for his older sister, Rudith, because in his fuzzy memory she had saved him before dying here. A chill ran down his spine despite the heat, and he realized that no one was coming, and somehow he got out and was running again.

But he was somewhere else again, somewhere cold and white, and red. Red stuff stained the snow, and his youngest sister was beside him, bleeding from various wounds. Part of his mind told him to leave or they would both die, but then he looked away from his surroundings and down at her, lying at his knees. Golden fur stained with blood, and a bloodied, feminine face looked at him weakly, whispering something urgently that he couldn't hear. He leaned in, shakily asking, "What?" and found himself looking into the crimson eye of Rudy.

Rain poured down, and it burned his skin. Who was Rudy? The name had briefly crossed his mind. He was lying in a field of grass, retching and vomiting blood. Somebody was shouting someone else's name, "Buck! Where are you?"

He lay there, motionless, breathing heavily and looking at a gray sky. Something told him he should know where he was, but he didn't. A female weasel with brown fur and a creamy underbelly shook his shoulders, shouting that name over and over, saying, "Buck, answer me! Please!" She was pretty, though she was crying. And then he said the only thing he could:

"Who are you?"

She looked at him, shocked, and still, and quiet. "Buck," she whispered, "It's me. Melody. Your sistah. You know me."
And her face contorted into a look of pain when he replied hoarsely, "No I don't. I don't know who you are."
And then everything went black.

Was that not the best chapter of this story or what? i had fun writing this, but i need to stop thinking about tracker jackers. please review, thats the reason i keep writing!