[Trade] Raised by Wolves

A final jab with his snout sent sunlight flooding into the eyes of the fresh hatchling. He brought his forelimbs up to his face, shielding his vision from the blinding rays and tried to retreat back into his egg. The hollow casing rocked backwards, tipping over and causing the Suchomimus to spill out of its protective embrace. He lay stunned for a minute, looking up into the blue sky that swam through the grey buildings. The clouds drifted across their azure expanse in such a slow fashion that the hatchling would not have noticed had he not been staring while stuck on his back. He staggered upright, finding his feet despite slipping on his damp feathers, planting his clawed toes into the unyielding ground and gripping tightly to try and stop him keeling over again. The scents and sights of the streets around him were overwhelming, but his mind kept repeating itself over and over. Find water, find mama. He had barely any concept of these things repeating themselves in his head but he stumbled forward to seek them out nonetheless. They were safe, safety was good. Safety meant not dying and not dying was his current goal to chase beyond any other. 

As the brand new Suchomimus adapted to the concept of being alive, he was quickly finding his bearings in this strange new world. The hard grey stone was the ground, the greenery pushing through the ground were plants. Plants tasted terrible and were not food. Food was what remained of his egg, which he had greedily guzzled down moments after hatching. Water was what pooled in the craters of the ground and helped him preen the eggshell from his feathers, but sitting in these patches of water wasn’t enough. He needed to find bigger water, wherever that was. The call in his heart for mama also persisted, telling him to find whatever it was and that it was a beacon of safety. He had yet to encounter anything on his journey so far that soothed the urging and it was beginning to make him worry. Was he supposed to have found mama earlier? Was mama supposed to be in his egg and he left it behind? He didn’t have much time to think about it as he rounded the street corner and made eye contact with a pair of glowing golden eyes.

Grey and furry with four legs was wolf, wolf was dangerous. The word ‘wolf’ richoted inside his head, chanting it like a warning call. He knew so little, but he knew this word and he knew he was in trouble. His little feathers bristled, trying to make him look bigger in the face of a predator. The wolf didn’t move, just watched the Suchomimus’ threat display with an unreadable expression. He stepped it up to include a vicious hiss, baring his sharp teeth and emptying his lungs in the loudest threat he could manage. The wolf tilted her head at him, seeming to see his shivering limbs instead of his dangerous teeth. She paused a moment before darting forward, dodging to the side of the hatchling and grabbing the scruff of his neck in her mouth. The hatchling screeched and flailed at the snout of his captor, trying to pry her jaws off of him with his tiny claws. Her teeth refused to release him but they also didn’t crush his throat, he was just held in place. When his body went limp in defeat the wolf started to walk before breaking into a run. The hatchling’s head pointed downwards as he hung from the wolf’s mouth, leaving him to watch the ground speed past as she took him somewhere far from his hatch site.

Concrete began to give way as more plants rushed past his vision instead. The patchy yellow grass began to fade, turning into longer lush green stalks that the wolf had to make an effort to step through. Her paws started splashing through shallow water that flooded the lush grasses and all of a sudden she came to halt and the hatchling was staring at the brown clay under the water’s surface. The wolf lowered him into the water and his webbed feet instinctively paddled to keep himself afloat. He turned and saw the water stretch out into a lake, wide and calm. He stared in awe at the water, something within him telling him this was the big water he was supposed to find. He ducked under the surface, washing the last of the egg’s residue from his feathers. He shook himself as he reemerged, sending a spray of droplets into the air, each catching the sunlight and gleaming like jewels. He remembered his captor and glanced back at her, finding her retreating form vanishing back into the shadows of the city streets. He saw one final glint from her golden eyes before he lost sight of her entirely, leaving him alone with the waterfowl on the lake.

He was puzzled. Was he not food to this wolf? Did she decide to show him kindness and bring him to where he needed to go? The thought warmed his chest and he felt happiness rush through him. In a very blunt way, she had taken care of him and treated him with the gentleness she would probably reserve for her own hatchlings. His mind was set from that moment, to learn from that wolf and carry forward the kindness she had shown him. There would be no need for grand gestures or even asking permission, just a firm desire to help someone the way he had been. The little Suchomimus continued to paddle around the lake, ruminating on his future and the urging of his instincts earlier. His belly was still full from his egg meal, and he had found water, but not ‘mama’. The urging had quieted for now, perhaps whatever the wolf had done was an act of ‘mama’ and had satisfied his need for it. He was looking forward to performing an act of ‘mama’ for someone else one day.