[Trade] Make A Weird Grotto A Home

Morning came quickly and cold to Elisia’s nest, rousing the hatchling with a sudden stiff breeze. She sat up abruptly, her head spinning with the quick movement. Her eyes darted around in the darkness searching for the familiar large silhouette of her mother. Both the nest and the lake surrounding it were empty of her usual presence. Elisia stood on her spindly adolescent legs and tried to wade into the dark waters to search for her. She circled the nest, chirping and waiting for the clucking rumbles that normally followed. Only the moor hens answered her, their soft calls breaking the silence of the dawn with worried clucks, like she was one of their own lost chicks calling for help. Embarrassed, Elisia hurried away before she inconvenienced the waterfowl any further. She tried a wider perimeter but began to fear getting lost in the dark and hurried back to the nest. While waiting for her feathers to dry, Elisia pondered her situation, had her mother left to save Elisia the trouble of leaving? She had been so certain that her hatchlings needed to leave home, did she move where ‘home’ was to make sure her youngest would find her own way? The little Suchomimus sat on her own, shivering in a nest that felt far too big all of a sudden. 

Elisia scuffled around in the reeds of the nest for a while before throwing her arms up in defeat. She simply couldn't undo the tightly packed mud and woven plants her mother had made before laying her eggs. The structure was too sound to be undone by a singular hatchling trying to reshape it. Now that she thought about it, that was probably the exact reason it was built so solidly, to stop rambunctious Sucho hatchlings from tearing it apart as they grew up within its embrace. Elisia climbed up to the edge of the nest and surveyed its gentle curve downward into her only place of safety. It didn’t belong to her anymore, it was too big, too empty, too cold. There wasn’t anything she could do to shape the nest to her liking, she would have to start fresh somewhere else instead. Reluctantly, Elisia slipped back into the water and began to paddle away from her old home. She would have to go her own way, just like her mother wanted. She was such a force of nature, her mother. Elisia shouldn’t have been surprised that she got her way in the end.

Elisia decided her best option would be to head upstream from the lake to find new territory. She had no reason in particular for picking this direction but she had to pick one, and this seemed just as good as the others. She was also keenly aware that most of her siblings had set off downstream to find their fortune closer to the ocean. She felt from her experience with them during their hatchling stage that they wouldn’t be pushovers when it came to taking up space and she would rather avoid fighting. Saving her energy for hunting and actually constructing her new nest seemed to be the wisest course of action. Again, this was all guesswork, Elisia wasn’t sure of anything without her mother so she was relying on what seemed logical in her own thought processes. The current upstream was stronger and seemed to be quite the hotspot for migrating fish, the thought of which made her mouth water. She managed to snag one on her way and savoured the plump meat of her catch. Certainly an easier prey than anything with claws. 

She came to a bend in the river, a slow meander that pooled the water into a small version of the lake she had been raised in. Elisia perked up at the rocks lining the bend, overhanging the river in places like its slow current had worn it gradually into a shelf. She didn’t have to duck under it, its ceiling being several feet above her and giving her plenty of headroom. As she pushed through the thick reeds lining the river she found the hollow continued back onto dry land, ending in a slightly damp cave. She looked in wonder as the soft green moss that lined the walls and began to paw at the ground, instinctively feeling the need to dig herself a nest. She doubled back to the reeds, using her teeth to sever their thick stalks and brought a mouthful back to the shore. She splayed them out into a rough pile and returned to the river for more. She continued this process until a scraggly pile of green rushes laid before her. It had no shape to it but it was a serviceably deep bed for the night. Elisia preened a little at her new nest, as shoddy as it was she had made it herself, her own self-sufficient home.

She looked around at the quiet hollow, only hearing the gentle lapping of the river against the bank as she sat in silence. It was peaceful here, cut off from the rest of the busy world and giving her the solitude she had craved as a hatchling. A sudden thought struck her, this grotto was such a perfect home, surely she wasn’t the only one to discover it? The idea of a bigger Suchomimus, or even a large alligator, laying claim to her newly discovered sanctuary filled her with such grief she didn’t know was possible for a hypothetical scenario. The idea of growing attached to a place instead of a family member had seemed strange when she had left her nest that morning, but as the light of the sun began to vanish below the horizon she would rather be nowhere else than her new home. She fussed anxiously with her bedding as she awaited nightfall, surely the time when this cave’s rightful owner would return to rest. She settled in, watching the entrance as the world around her grew darker. Her eyes began to ache as the darkness closed in, it was getting harder and harder to actually see what was going on. Perhaps she could just close her eyes for a while? Just a short rest to rejuvenate her after a long day of travelling.

Elisia lowered her head into the soft reeds, enjoying their fresh scent as she wriggled her body into a more comfortable position. Sleep came like an ambush, claiming her before she was even aware it was creeping up on her. As the young Suchomimus gently snored, her sleep remained undisturbed until the morning. No one would contest her territory. Not tonight at least.