CHAPTER VI: Realization
With their bags on their backs, feeling energized after that Brachiosaurus encounter just now, Nathan and Michael proceeded to return to the area they'd just left. Michael in particular had no worries about finding the way back, it was at most a few minutes away from here.
"We just need to find the footprints."
"Yeah," said Michael, "they'll be over here somewhere, do you remember that small little mountain of rock we walked up on? it's just that one there, and we can retrace our steps."
Michael was relatively confident. All of the engulfing cycads and palm trees with the rocky terrain looked easily familiar. To his mind, it'd be hard to get lost. All they had to do was return to that elevated 'mountain' of rock that they climbed on to initially spot the Brachiosaurus, and then they'd be within the same vicinity of the footprints.
Nathan wasn't so confident. As he walked besides Michael, the scent of burning wood continued to penetrate the air from the tropical temperatures, and the heat now was so hot that it was starting to get to Nathan specifically, particularly given he felt uncertain about the way they were going.
"Just gonna have some water real quick," Nathan said, taking off his bag and unzipping the top of it.
"Alright. I can hold off for now."
"How? it's boiling down here and it's just stupid to risk becoming dehydrated," said Nathan, "it's dangerous."
Some of the water splashed on his face as he quickly drank it.
"I'm not actually, obviously I'll have a drink when I actually feel like it, but I'm quite well so far."
After finishing his brief drink, Nathan decided to keep his bottle within his hands just in case he needed another drink. There wasn't any point in his mind just putting the water back in his bag. He lifted the bag onto his back, both straps along his shoulders, and the two of them carried on their excursion to where they thought was their original spot.
Michael was still beaming with joy from that encounter with the Brachiosaurus a few moments ago, enabling him to worry not as much as Nathan was about returning to the location they were at previously. The plan was to return to that initial spot and carry on following the footprints of Momma Dino to the Lava Falls. But it'd only been a short distance the two of them diverted from, when leaving the original spot, and they were already struggling.
"Everywhere looks the same really, because it's such a thick forest?" Michael said , as the two of them continued walking.
"We should've taken a picture of where we were, why didn't we think of that?" Nathan asked.
"Oh god, you're right. How much charge is your phone on now?"
"It doesn't matter at this point how much charge it's on, we just need to find where we were. Otherwise we're stuffed."
Michael could detect a sense of frustration within Nathan's voice, like he was sort of prompting him along subtly with the tone to lead the way back. Michael figured he'd have been a lot less gloomy and more excited and joyful having just petted a proper dinosaur.
"We're literally here in the dino world mate, we need to have a good time with this, look what we just did with that long necked dinosaur?"
Nathan sighed.
"Our safety is paramount above anything else. I honestly think if we can't find the way back to our original spot, we shouldn't bother going anywhere near Lava Falls. I just don't feel comfortable about potentially getting lost down here."
Michael was surprised at the sudden gloomy outburst of his work colleague. He wanted to change the subject entirely.
"At the very least, in hindsight, we should've left some sort of marker as to where we were."
"We'll find it Nathan, we just need to keep walking this way and we'll be back there," Michael assured Nathan.
They carried on walking. It felt like they were on repeat at this point, the environment was the exact same bar the positions of the trees, the shape of the terrain, and just generally the clustered piles of leaves all over the terrain, resembling vegetables. They hadn't realized just how much they'd diverted from the footprints, and as a result, for the next five minutes the two of them kept walking, pushing their heads through all of the thick leaves and bushes, not realizing that they were going in the complete opposite direction to where they initially walked from.
At this point, they were once again walking in the direction towards Lava Falls, but unknowingly. Because they'd lost any sense of direction to where they initially were. Inadvertently, they were making their way towards Lava Falls whilst trying to relocate the footprints from Momma Dino. And it was starting to get to Nathan's head, and the tropical heat wasn't helping.
"Still can't see the footprints."
"Same here," Michael said, "but I'm pretty sure we're still heading in the direction towards Lava Falls, if we just make a mental note of where we are now, and actually, we'll take a picture here, we can retrace our steps."
Michael stopped and took his bag off, allowing the very very subtle rush of air to get to his back. He reached into his khaki coloured shorts and pulled out his phone. Nathan muttered something under his whisper, clearly getting agitated and stressed - they were clearly lost, but what was annoying him more than anything was Michael's relaxed tone.
Michael pulled out his phone and turned around to the maze of trees and cycads behind themselves. He pressed the red button on his phone and took a picture of the vicinity. He was going to keep the picture on his phone to refer to in case they needed to get back to this specific area, because he knew this would be the way back towards the exit of the dino world.
Except, when Michael looked at the picture on the phone, it looked all smudged and blurry, like some sort of floating chemical substance has blurred his camera. It bewildered him, and he showed it to Nathan, who was just annoyingly glaring all over the trees at this point.
"Look at this, I don't think the camera on my phone was focused enough."
He showed the photo to Nathan, who instantly noticed that the photo was all blurry and smudged-looking. Nathan could only shrug as words weren't able to be uttered from his mouth under his currently agitated state. Michael once again held up the camera, rubbing it on his pink short sleeved t-shirt, and directed it towards Nathan's direction. He pressed the red button and his phone once again snapped the picture.
But to no avail once again. The second picture was just as smudged looking and it looked incredibly blurry, to the point it was near impossible to make out the environment. It completely bewildered Michael, and he once again moved his phone out towards Nathan to show him.
"Again...my camera's being funny, is yours the same? it's like we can't take a picture down here because of the sort of environment or gas in the air, I don't know?"
Michael was completely confused. He had no idea why, seemingly, his camera wasn't able to focus in properly down here in the dino world. He wasn't sure if it was like an invisible toxin or substance within the air. Either way, it was completely unusual.
Nathan once again shrugged. The blurry pictures were the last thing he wanted to see or hear about given his mood.
"We're completely buggered, aren't we?" Nathan said.
"What?"
"We're lost, Michael. We've completely gone off course from the spot we were at. How could we have ever thought we'd be able to make our way through this place without any trouble?"
Michael put his phone back into his khaki shorts and retrieved his bag from the ground. He rapidly hooked his bag straps underneath his armpits and the bag was positioned on his back again as he looked at Nathan.
"Why all of a sudden have you developed this gloomy sort of tone, Nathan?"
"Because we're LOST in an underground jungle, I should be asking you why you're so relaxed about that, mate."
Michael was flustered. He didn't realize just how on edge Nathan seemingly was. His friend, his work colleague, the guy he's worked with and known for so long, was actually looking like he was about to lose it.
"I'm not relaxed about it, I just think that we're here, we're literally in the same dino world from Ice Age 3, it's a vicarious sort of thing and it's a mega hike, we literally just petted one of the dinosaurs too, we should be excited that we've somehow managed to come here for real."
"Forget all of that, literally, just forget all of that," Nathan said, waving his palms, "I am LOST in a forest with dinosaurs in it. We don't even know how far we are now into here, all it took was for us to move just five minutes away from where the footprints were, and we're in a completely uncharted area down here. I don't like it, I actually want to go back."
Nathan was on the verge of having enough. The excitement of being down here, the dinosaur world itself from Ice Age 3, was gone for him. He didn't feel comfortable getting lost down here. The chirping roars of the flying dinosaurs above didn't phase him, nothing at all phased him now in terms of excitement, he wanted to go back up and go home.
"Do you actually think I wanted us to get lost? come on, literally, we can make it to Lava Falls and back?"
"See what I mean?" Nathan chuckled, "you're so relaxed about this, it's actually frustrating me Michael. Talking about Lava Falls despite everything I've just said. Just because this place was in the movie, it never meant it'd be easy to navigate. I feel like a complete idiot to be honest for coming down here."
Michael was starting to feel the pressure of Nathan's anger. He never intended on getting lost nor did he want it to happen - the excitement of somehow being able to arrive here from a random fissure from above had clouded over the logic and senses he'd normally use.
But there was a deep subtle part of Michael that didn't want to go back out of here - he actually wanted to carry on, just to see if they could make it to within an eyesight of Lava Falls at the very least, and there was a subtle curiosity in him about potentially seeing some of the bigger, badder 'parts' of this world.
"Do you remember in the movie at the end, after they'd rescued Sid? they went from Lava Falls back to the entrance in one day, you know, before they encountered Rudy? we can do the same, literally-"
"Stop, mate," Nathan interrupted, "just STOP referring to the movie and whatever scenes, it's making me cringe. We need to go back and we need to go back before anything stupid happens. I'm not willing to risk my life, if we didn't get lost then fair enough, I'd be up for carrying on. But we've completely diverted from the trail we were on."
Michael was completely aware that they could potentially draw attention to themselves if the situation continued to evolve and the anger continued to build up. He was completely aware of that and thus didn't want to resort to Nathan's tone. And he was completely empathetic to Nathan's notion about being lost - Michael didn't want to get lost at all himself.
"Do you actually want to go back?" Michael asked Nathan, "because if you do, you can go back. I literally want to try and get to Lava Falls."
"Do you think I'm gonna go back to the entrance leaving you here? we've known each other for long enough Michael, I can't realistically go back without you, so if I'm going back, you're coming with me, it'd be like leaving you in a foreign country with dangerous dinosaurs."
Now that was enough for Michael to actually become offended. They were both grown men, Michael didn't like being condescended and patronized like that.
"When was it ever your place to tell me where I can and can't go Nathan? you literally need to take a chill pill."
Nathan rubbed his hands across his face. He couldn't believe how tone deaf, in his opinion, Michael was being.
"You literally need something bad to happen to you down here it feels like, for you to actually wake up. We both need something bad to happen to us I think, so you can actually understand where I'm coming from and realize just how dangerous this all is. I don't even need to mention the fact that Rudy exists for real down here, maybe something needs to happen between us and him for you to actually wake up and see sense."
"Don't patronize me, Nathan. I don't know where you're getting this moral high ground stuff from, I literally wanted to come here from pure excitement but you're turning it into a gloomy sort of thing."
"I'm not patronizing you, I'm just saying, if it's gonna take something bad happening to us here, whether it's in the form of Rudy attacking us or Momma Dino or some sort of accident, to make you realize what we're doing is dangerous now that we're lost, then karma's gonna make it happen for us."
Michael was readying to just walk off into the forests. He was offended at Nathan's suggestion that he'd stop him from going off down here by himself. Michael was 24 years old, a grown man, and he wasn't prepared to be lectured to even by his closest work friend. He wasn't a kid.
Just as the voices of the two friends rose and rose in anger and volume, a completely distinct voice from up within the trees spoke out.
"You two little blighters are trying to catch my attention, aren't ya?" said the voice.
At that, both Nathan and Michael looked up within the palm trees and cycads as the pink skies beamed through the leaves. There was only one 'animal' down here that voice belonged to.