Jorden

[ginger_firebird]

~Outside~

“Do you know what this is? It’s a wolf. I worked with a woman who loved wolves. She would follow people from a distance before taking them out. I liked her, but she was scary.”

Mantis is in front of the apartment building again. He’s dressed and bundled up in white from the scarves covering his head and mouth to the jacket, scarf, pants, shirt, and shoes covering the rest of his form. Yaga is playing with some votive candles as they sail out of a box and settle into a loose ring around an assortment of objects. In the middle of the ring are several small figurines of animals and related objects: a nest with an egg in it, a white snake, an octopus, a raven, a wolf, and a praying mantis. He adjusts some of the candles by hand, but only with one hand. In the occupied arm is a small and fuzzy looking animal with grey fur and wide purple eyes.

“Watch this. This is the important part.” The little animal chirps with surprise as Mantis waves his free hand over the candles, setting all of them alight at once. He laughs at the noise and sits down, holding the small animal against his chest. “Don’t worry. You’re safe here.”

This seemed to soothe the little animal who trills and nuzzles its face against his chest.

“I’m pretty sure you’re a boy. What kind of name can I give a little boy like you?”

 ~Indoors~

Up in his apartment, Mantis is in the kitchen. The new friend is clinging to his chest and held up in a sling tied around Mantis’s body. Yaga meows quietly and sits on the counter as Mantis cracks open a window to set out several baking trays with cake in them. He looks out onto the world outside and sighs. Yaga walks onto his lap and sniffs at the little friend, getting a scared chirp. Mantis hugs his little friend closer and sighs again.

“I’m never going to enjoy this day, am I?”

Comments

[hybriddino]

Humans light candles as memorials to remember the dead. I was there to see the memorials after the Long Winter - the people killed by the storm and by the Eliksni. The Eliksni honor their own dead, like we do, so they can't be all bad. Maybe that's something all thinking creatures have in common.

A ten-foot dinosaur, jet black with a gold stripe across its side, approaches Mantis. The Indoraptor doesn't venture into the inhabited Nexus as often as he used to, in part so he can keep an eye on his less socialized and more aggressive mother. But he was drawn to see Mantis by the lights.

He uses his marker to talk to Mantis on his whiteboard. He can't talk, but he's found ways around that.

I know loss, too. I am the only one of my kind. There were others like me, but they died in their eggs and were never born. We were made by humans, so I'm not sure if I can have children the way humans do.

[ginger_firebird]

A terrified squeak is all the espurr makes before diving as far as it can under Mantis's shirt. The shaking lump is aided without much thought from Mantis himself, who is far more concerend with the fact that a giant dinosaur that can apparently write fluent English has approached him. He holds espurr up against his chest once more, now with an added layer of fabric hiding the little thing.

He's met aliens, a kelpie, a teenaged robot, talking baby spiders, and a host of other weird and strange people. Talking dinosaur. Why not.

"I was taught to do this when I was a child. You light candles for the dead and arrange them with effigies to represent who is gone." He's just going to slowly stand up and try and reach into this mind. Not too far. Not too deep. But inquiring minds need to know if he can read the mind of this particular dinosaur. "You don't look much like any creature I've seen in a museum. Is this really what technology was used for in your world? Bringing back dinosaurs?"

[hybriddino]

I'm a special dinosaur. I wasn't born the normal way. Humans created me in a laboratory by putting parts of other dinosaurs together. I'm part Velociraptor and part Indominus rex, but there are other parts in there somewhere - parts that aren't even dinosaur. I don't know everything that's in my DNA. It's what humans call classified. That means they didn't want anyone to know what's in me and how I was made. The big black claws twitch. I was the only one that made it to adulthood. The humans kept me in a cage and poked me with shock-sticks.

The dinosaur can tell where the furry thing hid because of his sense of smell. Hiding from him is difficult - he was created to be an expert hunter and tracker, skills that he still has.

In my world, yes, humans used technology to bring dinosaurs back to life and put them on display for people. But I'm not like other dinosaurs. My kind of dinosaur isn't one you'll see in books. The people who made me called me an Indoraptor, after my mother, the Indominus rex. She's here, too - she lives deep in the Wilds. She's bigger than I am and white instead of black.

[ginger_firebird]

Mantis has a bit of a hard time following such an incredible story, but he feels parts of it to the deeper parts of his soul. He too had been experiemented with and mistreated in the course of it. Some of the worst parts of him were made by the actions of others. He tries feeding a sense of understanding to the massive dinosaur.

"I was kidnapped as a child by a military force called CIPHER. They kept me prisoner along with other children... It's nothing compared to how you came to be, but I can begin to understand that pain. I was the third child before I managed to run away. Little Tretij Rebenok."

Mantis takes a couple of steps closer, but only that, because he could feel espurr wiggling more.

"Indominus Rex... Oh goodness, she must be even bigger compared to you if she's modeled after the Tyranosaurus." And he's deeply happy he hasn't run into her as much as he goes to the Wilds for scant amounts of food and herbs. "I am Psycho Mantis. Most people call me Mantis. You're Indominus and velociraptor. ...Indoraptor?"

[hybriddino]

When I escaped, I killed as many of the people who kept me locked up as I could. I'm sorry about some of the things I did, but not that. They deserved it for what they did to me and the other dinosaurs. Some of them weren't lucky enough to get away.

Indo feels sad about the Allosaurus he saw and the other dinosaurs who were sold off to people. Dinosaurs aren't pets, he thinks, and it was wrong of humans to bring them back only to be treated as such. But at least the people who made Jurassic Park and Jurassic World didn't intend for the animals they made to be abused, for the most part.

The I. rex was an exception, made as a weapons prototype, and she was a mismatched, troubled creature who had no business being on display in a theme park.

If you meet my mother, it's a good idea to have me come with you. She was treated badly by humans, too, and she's angrier than I am. The way they made us didn't help - all those animals with different instincts thrown together.

[ginger_firebird]

"You did well. I used the very weapon they wanted me to pilot to crush the bastard who had me kidnapped in the first place. It was the best day of my life."

He still thinks about Shabani and even Hal Emmerich at times. Two boys who escaped in such different ways, and yet their departures left so much pain in their wake regardless. Mantis feels sympathy for this massive creature. It's bad enough when an animal suffers needlessly, but the Indoraptor is clearly capable of communicating it's experiences.

"I've been that angry person. Her boundaries will be respected if I ever encounter her. Sometimes there needs to be a measure of seperation for someone to find a sense of peace."