You probably stopped listening to me at this point because you wanted to hear about Ian Malcolm, Grant and Sarah, and instead I'm going off in a weird Doctor Who/`tomb explorer' tangent.

...Unless you got grossed out by my wedding, but I did try to not be overly descriptive of consummating my (ahem) biblically proper union.

...Or maybe you're religiously offended by dinosaurs, but then again, why listen this long?

That's okay. Used to talking to myself. I told you about what I did in `solitary.'

...Anyway, being attacked by glowing reptile woman...

I ducked, and the spear noiselessly struck a wall.

The female creature made a silent snarl, drawing a long knife.

"G-ghost!" I beat a hasty retreat from the weird glowing dinosaur woman, cowering behind Cynthia.

Cassie's eyes bulged like she'd seen it too, hiding behind me.

"Are you freaking kidding me right now? Did Kung Fu against an army of Proceratosauruses, a T-Rex and a mutant Allosaurus, bravely rescued a falling dinosaur, and you're scared of a ghost?"

"Yes and yes!"

I think Webby understood some English, or maybe she noticed how I tensed up, for she got scared too, hiding behind my legs. Her head fin poked me.

Cynthia snickered. "You weenie dinosaur..." She stepped through the archway, shining her flashlight into the room. "Hello?...Are there any ghosts in here?...Mister Ghost? Yoo hoo!" The woman stomped in, waving her arms.

She sniffed and immediately made retching sounds. "So gross. I thought the Vapo Rub would work!"

Cynthia put her hands on her hips, frowning at me. "C'mon, Weeniesaurus, it's not haunted."

The little girl breathed a sigh of relief, following her in.

"Y-you sure?" I stammered.

The woman knocked on a wall. "Hey! We got any ghosts in here, or are all you guys washing your sheets?"

Silence answered her. "There aren't any ghosts, Albert."

"Okay, fine. Don't believe me." I crept into the room, nervously glancing back and forth. "Are you absolutely certain?"

"Positive, Chickensaurus. We've already got too much to deal with as it is, without having to worry about ghouls and poltergeists."

Cassie, though, seemed eager to hear more. "What did it look like?"

"Imagine if a dinosaur and a human had a baby, and it grew up to be a woman."

"Waaiiit..." Cynthia flashed her flashlight in my face. "Is this some kind of weird way of flirting with me?"

I swallowed. "No, no! You think I want Zelda to disembowel you?...How would that work anyway?"

She rolled her eyes. "If there's a will, there's a way."

Heat rushed to my face. "Did I mention you're not my type?"

"You also licked my hair."

"I probably hallucinated and thought you were ice cream."

"You also tried to kiss me."

"I did not!...Did I?"

She only shrugged, like `You should know.'

"I was high!"

"You sure the pot didn't just...lower your inhibitions?"

Webbigail chirped and quacked at me, basically implying that I loved Cynthia in a romantic way, and I just didn't want to admit it.

"Aw, c'mon! I know she's cute, but not that cute! She doesn't even have green skin or a tail."

She just made a `so?' sound.

"You want mommy to kill both me and Cynthia? She will!" I sighed through my nose. "Cynthia, I actually saw a ghost dinosaur woman."

"Hmmm...Maybe this is some kind of deep seated psychological thing."

Webby gave me a questioning look, like she agreed with Cynthia. Cassie, too.

I stared at the woman, wondering if she were right...I mean, if I had imagined the whole thing...

Cynthia illuminated the archway with her flashlight. "Huh. These...Mesoamericans can't make floors, but if that Allosaurus thing squeezed through here, I'm impressed!"

"She could have come the other way. That tunnel on the other end looked wider."

"Hmmm." She shined her flashlight into a tunnel to the north (Cynthia had found a compass, in case you're wondering). Interesting color murals depicting tribal wars, a king with a semi-rectangular jade and gold crown...and his women. Braziers framed a doorway, but there had been a collapse, so we only found a huge pile of rock beyond. "Guess that way's a no-go."

I examined a mural, trying to decipher the glyphs. Not easy, considering how I never studied the language. "Hey, uh, Cynthia...You know pretty much everything about my love life, but I haven't heard much about yours."

Cynthia visibly cringed. "Why's that important?"

"Because I want to know. I'm pretty sure you're not married, but...have you ever had a boyfriend...ever?"

She sighed. "A long time ago. We broke up. I started dating this other guy, but once I came to work here, he found someone else."

"Did you...try making eggs with any of them?"

Cynthia laughed. "I'm not going to answer that question."

"That kinda sounds like a no to me."

"And what would you know about it?" She rubbed her face. "Fine. I'm a virgin, okay?"

"Nothing wrong with that...Do you like Bryan?"

"Me and him? Yuck. I mean, okay, we hang out a lot, because we work together, but pardon my French, you don't shit where you eat."

"You used the S word," the girl said. "You have to put a quarter in the swear jar."

Cynthia blew a raspberry. "I'll do that when we get out of here."

I grimaced in disgust. "What's that colorful expression again? I'm...not familiar..."

"You don't pick up people at work. It's a no-no. It gets weird."

"Even if you work on an island, and nobody's around?"

"This isn't Fantasy Island, Albert." Cynthia appeared to consider my suggestion, but said, "We're not like that."

"You sure? He helped out Cassie's dad and stuff. He's kinda heroic. At least a little. Girls like heroic types, don't they?"

Webby made sounds like she agreed with me, giving her this `Yeah, Cynthia!' look.

Cynthia rubbed her face. "You are so nosy! And should you know about the subject anyway? Weren't you a female that suddenly grew male parts or something?"

"True, life found a way...Which means I know you guys would be a good match. Especially if he's still hanging out on the island, and lonely—"

"Eeew! You can stop talking now, please."

Cassie chimed in with a "My dad met my mom on a safari."

Cynthia put her hands on her hips. "That's not the same, kid."

I glanced back and forth, still wondering if Dinosaur Woman would show up. "What about you and Mister Arnold?"

"He's my boss, plus he's way older than me."

"So?"

"Albert, that's really weird and improper. You don't want people to say you got promoted because you slept with the boss."

"So change jobs."

"No way! I've got this dinosaur trainer thing going. I could make this a career. No, there's gotta be someone else."

"Like Bryan."

She threw a chicken bone at me.

Our only exit, other than the way we came, appeared to be a passage to the east. As we took steps in that direction, Cassie showed Cynthia a dusty old notebook with crumbling pages. "Can you read this?"

The woman shined her flashlight on the book. "Sissy, I told you not to play with that. That thing could be valuable, not it won't be if the pages fall apart."

"I'm not a sissy! I'm a dinosaur wrangler!"

"Okay, little sister. You shouldn't be manhandling that book."

"What's it say?" the girl insisted.

Cynthia furrowed her brow. "It's...all in Spanish."

"You can speak Spanish."

I leaned over her shoulder and read a few portions. "You sure this is valuable? This guy seems a few sandwiches short of a picnic. I mean, look at how the writing loops all around in the margins. And then he goes from talking about gold in the lost city of El Dorado to something about a solar powered golden airplane built by ancient aliens."

The woman scoffed. "And this is coming from someone who claimed to see a...ghostly dinosaur woman."

I gasped. "You think that's somehow connected?"

"Albert, let's not follow this guy down the rabbit hole. We got real things to take care of, like getting out of here."

I kept staring at Cassie's book. "...Can I thumb through that, please?"

Cynthia shook her head. "You'll damage it with your dinosaur claws."

"Hey, I'll have you know I can be gentle with my dinosaur claws...just ask Zelda!"

Cynthia groaned. "I need something else to throw at you." She lighted the eastern corridor with her flashlight. "See anything, Albert?"

"Not...anything more than you can see."

A loud bellow made us all freeze in our tracks.

The woman's hands tightened around the `torch.' "Albert! Go check it out!"

"Me? Why me?"

"Because you're an apex predator and we're just soft bodied humans."

"Fair point...Though you did get kinda scary back at the Visitor Center."

I crept into the tunnel, Cynthia and Cassie trailing behind with the flashlight.

I brushed sticky threads out of my face. "Hey, Cynthia. What would a spider eat down here?"

"Um, I don't know, flies from all this rotting meat down here?"

"What about upstairs? Before we fell in the water? It was cobwebby up there too."

"I dunno, millipedes? There's mosquitoes all over the place...I'm sure they can find something."

I'd definitely classify the next room as a `ruin.' Only half the stonework remained. An entire wall had collapsed, revealing a very modern warehouse...oh, and a freaky looking Chasmosaurus lumbered about the place, knocking over crates.

Standard Triceratops horns and shield-like thing growing from the back of its skull, ordinary rear end, but the thing had a lion's forelegs (oversized, of course), Stegosaurus plates running down its spine...It had extra limbs, like someone had enlarged a body louse a million times and grafted them onto its body.

I gave the thing a slow wave. "Hello?"

It snapped a pair of pincer claws, shifting on four massive spider legs. Wooden crates stenciled with the words `Ingen' and `Dharma' crashed to the floor, the faint crunching and shattering sounds indicating...whatever happened to be in there appeared to be broken.

"What was that?" Cynthia hissed.

I held up a claw, not answering.

"Is it safe?"

"I...don't know."

When she at last caught the thing in the beam of her flashlight, she covered her mouth to silence a scream. Cassie said something, but the woman shushed her. She couldn't stop Webbigail from quacking, though.

The moment I crept closer, the Chasmosaurus monster got really scared, its fur coat puffing out like a hairy feline presented with a dog. It jumped backwards, bringing down more crates...just by being heavy.

I edged past toppled boxes bursting with straw and Styrofoam packing kernels. "Hello?" I repeated the greeting in raptor, then attempted a Triceratops bellow, because, you know, I'm bilingual.

The creature didn't answer, it just dove behind a crate...a crate too small to conceal anything. To be fair, it had all those other crates it had knocked down to...present an obstacle, but...not fooling anyone. Even with the dimly flickering overhead lights.

Cynthia still kept her distance from me. "What's it doing?"

I stared. "It's...hiding behind that tiny crate."

"What?"

The lights kept flickering. A generator going out, perhaps. A hazard when you considered how carefully I had to walk: Splintery pine smelling boards lay scattered all over the floor, quite a few with nails sticking up.

"Albert?" Cynthia prompted.

Instead of the usual beak, the Chasmosaurus thing had a small elephant trunk, which it used to place a comic book atop the crate.

"It's...uh...reading Tintin."

"What's Tintin?"

"It's a comic book. A guy with a little dog? Alcoholic pirate? `Thundering typhoons?'"

She didn't get my references. Oh well, I tried. "It's reading a comic book, though."

I stared as the creature held down a page with its paw and spread the book open with its trunk. "Yeah...looks like...Flight 714..."

"Bullshit!" Cynthia cried, then glanced apologetically at Cassie. "Bull stuff, I mean."

"Fifty cents," said Cassie.

The woman only rolled her eyes. "Are any dinosaurs on these islands actually normal?"

I padded between the fallen dusty containers. Someone had drilled into a natural cavern to store random junk they couldn't use or throw away, apparently not knowing they'd dug in beside an ancient monument. They hadn't cared about the environment, either, smashing through all those natural rock formations, pouring concrete in straight lines. Cranes, forklifts and freight elevators had been employed in moving the stuff from the floor above.

Every crate had a numerical or coded label, so you couldn't immediately tell what lay inside, except in cases where the crates had shattered: Discarded microscopes, computer components, fossilized eggs and other saurian fossils, once valuable, now, in the presence of real dinosaurs, packed away in straw to collect dust...Elements from dinosaur enclosures, equipment to leash or restrain...animals of every size (including Rexy size), wholly or partially dismantled rifles, lots of electronics parts (I have no clue about their intended use)...They'd also killed a lot of trees to make official (often redacted) inter-company documents.

The area up top fairly resembled a police evidence locker room, security cages, a good thousand or so vaguely labeled boxes...a few appeared to contain videotapes, DVDS and paperwork, couldn't see into the other ones. Smoke billowed out an open doorway, it seeped through cracks in the others.

I approached the...Reading Beast. "You know I can see you, right?"

The monster flinched and pressed her body to the floor. The comic book flapped shut.

"Nope! Still can see you!...Did you read Explorers on the Moon? That one's hilarious!"

The creature trembled, fur sticking straight up.

Grinning, I leaned forward. "You're just a fraidy cat! Where did you get the Tintin book?"

"No entiendo. ¡Por favor, no me comas!"

I gasped. "¿Tú hablas Español?"

"Sí, no hablo Ingles. ¡No me mates, por favor!"

I scoffed, shaking my head. The monster thought I came to kill her! "¿Eres un dinosaur grande y poderoso, y tienes miedo?"

The creature shivered. "Sí. Tienes garras y dientes peligrosos."

Cassie stepped into the warehouse, but I waved her back. "Careful! There's nails everywhere!"

"But the dinosaur's safe?"

"Ummm...not sure, but ella sabe Español."

"Did it write the book?"

"Cassie, let's be serious here. Does she look like she can write that small?" I picked up the comic. Spanish language. "¿De dónde sacaste esto?"

I could tell the creature didn't like me touching the book. "Una pequeña niña Peruana. Ella me lee a veces. No arruines las paginas."

A dinosaur that loved books almost as much as I did! Don't tell Zelda I said this, but...I was in love. "¿También eres un dinosaurio con cerebro humano?"

"No lo sé. ¿Verdad?" Her answer made me wonder if she actually had a human brain at all, or maybe possessed a quarter of one.

"¿Cuál es tu nombre?"

"Soy Heffalump."

I snickered. "¿Como Winnie the Pooh?"

"Sí, es su libro favorito. Ella piensa que soy una Heffalump, or eso tengo el nombre."

I thought the creature did greatly resemble a Heffalump, but didn't say so aloud. "Es un buen nombre...Conoces alguna woozle?"

"No, no, pero eso sería divertido."

Cassie stepped around me. "Did it just say it doesn't have a Nintendo?"

"No, it's Spanish. No entiendo. `I don't understand.'"

"Oh."

I held up the book. "¿Te gusta Tintin?"

Heffalump and I conversed in Spanish for awhile. In addition to Tintin, she liked some comic called La Familia Burron, which is really popular in Mexico, but I didn't know about. She also liked Peanuts and Asterix the Viking. Heffalump didn't have a TV, but she listened to the same radio station I did, and also read Spanish versions of the Bible, Dracula and Don Quixote.

I asked if she fell from the upper floor, but she only said, "No, ¿Que estaria haciendo ahí arriba?"

I think, if I understand her story correctly, the scientists didn't like Heffalump (you know, because of all the mutations and stuff that don't go on an actual Chasmosaurus) so they injected her with poison and dumped her into this cavern system (guess the incinerator broke down that day, or something).

In between Heffalump's unusual genetic makeup and the lab guys getting the dosage wrong, she survived. Wandering outside into the jungle, she grew to a healthy size by chowing down on random vegetation every day...and one snake, but that doesn't count because it gave her diarrhea.

Heffalump didn't have a lot of information about her human friend, Araceli, but I did glean a few tidbits: Apparently the daughter of some Ingen employee. I figure they didn't have a babysitter, because the girl was always out wandering the jungle, hence how the two met. Araceli didn't have anything better to do than hang out. She attempted to feed Heffalump tamales a few times, but even a cheese tamale gave her the runs.

By the time I got all this information, Webby's climbing on Heffalump's head, Cassie has a comb out, brushing through Heffalump's `pretty hair, and Cynthia's standing next to us, hands on her hips. "Looks like there's a fire upstairs. Does your friend know how to get out of this place?"

I relayed the question in Spanish, got a long answer in return. "Uh, not really. The cavern collapsed in a few places, there are fires everywhere, and there's that Allosaurus thing."

"You mean, there was an Allosaurus thing."

I told Heffalump about our encounter with the giant, asking for a clarification. "Uh...she says there's a Cthulu. I don't know what that means, she's not explaining it very well." I wagged my tail. "But it's cool that she even knows what a Cthulhu is."

Cynthia sighed through her nose. "Not if it kills us."

I swallowed. "Why did you have to say that?"