Pit

The dark streets of the Dead City were filled with life at night. Everything from the fireflies to the Albertosauruses were out and about, making the city a bustling hub even after sunset. Some areas were unspoken truce zones, the market place where the Craftsmaster set up the stall was one of them. The other was a large stretch of greenery, plants weaving around old rusted metal structures, some that moved and some that were fixed rigidly to the ground with some kind of human affixtions. It was understood amongst the dinosaur residents of the Dead City that this place was for hatchlings, anything outside was fair game for an opportunist but the thick foliage created a perfect nursery to hide the vast majority of hatchlings, even the large sauropods.

This is where Sparrow and Piper grew up, darting between the trees and hunting rats to fill their bellies. The nest had been long abandoned when the twins hatched, their unborn siblings frozen solid and their mother nowhere in sight. Sheer instinct kept the two of them moving, working as a team to keep them alive in their silent home. They occasionally ran into other hatchlings but somehow the ancestral memory of peacekeeping had spread to the children as well, and they let each other be. Only the flighted birds and the small mammals felt the wrath of the twins as they grew from freshly hatched to fully plumed. They fell into a rhythm, finding food in the early morning with their sharp raptor eyes piercing the low light. Then as the sun shone on a pair of raptor hatchlings with full bellies, they made for the lake to wash up and clean the gore from their teeth and claws. The latter half of the day was for exploring and playing, honing their hunting skills through tackling each other through the undergrowth.

The twins were training in their usual fashion, nipping each other's tails and running far from the retaliatory jaws that followed, when disaster struck. Sparrow had spun on his heel to run from Piper when his foot fell clean through the leaf litter. He pitched forward, tumbling into a deep, dark hole in the forest floor. Somewhere under the piles of fallen detritus a hole had been dug into the ground, at least four times the height of a Utahraptor hatchling. Piper squeaked and ran to its edge, peering down and gripping hard on the dirt to avoid falling after her brother.

"Sparrow? Are you alive?" she called nervously down into the dark.

"I'm alive," a weak voice replied, "but it hurts."

"What hurts?" she asked, looking around for something to help.

"My head, my arms, my legs," Sparrow said, his voice trembling like he was trying his hardest not to cry. Piper began to panic, if he had broken something she wasn't sure if she would be able to carry as far as the Craftsmaster to get a cure.

"Is your tail okay?" she asked, not sure what else to say as she frantically tried to solve the problem.

"I think it's okay," Sparrow said cautiously. There was a quiet hissing from the hole and his voice came closer than before. "I can stand up, that's good isn't it?"

"That's really good," Piper said in relief. If Sparrow could stand it would be easier to get him out of the hole.

"I think I'm just sore, I don't think anything is broken," he continued reservedly, like he would jinx himself into breaking a bone on the spot.

"That's great! We can get you out in no time!" Piper chirped. "Stay there, try and dig little handholds into the side if you can, I'll find something to lift you up!" She took off running the second she heard him agree and ducked into the undergrowth. She tucked her wings tightly to her chest and her tail worked overtime to keep her upright as she weaved through the thick plants. She had a destination in mind, having seen it in passing while they were playing earlier. At the time she had been struck by inspiration to use the environment to hogtie her brother but now she had a far more productive use. She arrived at the foot of a great tree, its trunk tightly bound by winding vines that spiralled upwards into the canopy. She eyed the length of the vines and selected a section close to the ground, trailing the forest floor before its roots eventually sunk below the earth. She needed a piece that was at least twice as long as the hole was deep, this would allow her to tie and secure it to something solid while she tried to pull Sparrow from the pit.

Using her little clawed hands and feet, she scrambled up the trunk and managed to find purchase on a charitably low-hanging branch. She pulled herself upright and oriented herself next to the vine, making sure it was the one she had seen trailing the ground. She thought back to the pit, trying to imagine how deep it was in the scape of her mind and tried to match it to the vine in front of her. If she could get a little higher and cut the vine about a foot above her head, it would double the length and allow her to rescue her brother. With her claws grasping the bark, she shimmied upwards and began to gnaw on the woody stem, her meat eating teeth doing a poor job of shearing through the plant matter. Just as her jaw was beginning to ache, the final fibres snapped and the vine fell in a snaking loop to the ground. Carefully sliding down the trunk, Piper hit the ground softly and gathered the length of the vine in her arms, wrapping it around her chest to avoid tripping over it as she ran.

Back in the hole, Sparrow had been digging footholds into the dirt. Most collapsed in on themselves, the loose soil not holding any kind of shape. Enough of them held firm to keep his spirits up and kept him digging while he waited on his sister. He trusted Piper had a plan, she was the smartest dinosaur he had ever met and he'd put his faith in her any day of the week. He was no slouch either, if he could be so bold, but he knew his twin outmatched him in wits. When the vine landed next to him, he couldn't even act surprised, of course Piper had found the solution,

"Hey! Good thing you found that, this dirt isn't cooperating," he joked.

"We might still need footholds," Piper told him, her pale snout sticking over the rim of the hole. "I just have to tie this other end to something sturdy and we can start trying." She disappeared from sight again and the vine moved next to Sparrow's feet as she began to tie it to something on the surface. Sparrow watched the vine hike up nervously, worried he wouldn't be able to reach it by the time it was safely secured, but it stopped just at his eye level and Piper soon returned to the edge of the pit. "Alright, grab on tight and we can get you out!" Sparrow did as he was told, wrapping the vine tightly around his forelimbs and using his legs to steady himself against the smooth, muddy wall of his prison. With a combination of Piper pulling and Sparrow scrambling, the male twin finally emerged from the hole, his chest fluttering with the effort.

"We did it!" he panted, grinning at his sister who was equally exhausted. He flopped onto his front and savoured the fresh green grass between his feathers. 

"We're so cool," she grinned back, joining her brother in sprawling out in the grass.