Home Away From Home

Living with a full functional pack left little for the hatchlings to worry about. With time, they grew into strong young juveniles on a steady diet provided to them by the adults, all the while learning to hunt themselves. Sooner than they realised, they were joining in on hunts and helping to feed the next generation of strays that Peaches swore she wouldn't take in.  Bigger and bolder, they could hold their own in most fights and were now capable of holding territory as part of the pack. Which is why it completely blindsided them when they were asked to leave.

"What do you mean? I thought we were pulling our weight around here?" Meatball protested while the others stared in shock. 

"This was always part of the deal," Peaches said firmly, "You'd get older and then form your own pack, leave some food for the rest of us. The start of a new chapter in your lives, it'll be exciting!"

"But- we helped," Meatball protested weakly.

"You did, and we'll always be allies because of it," Magnus reassured her, "But when a pack grows too big it can collapse, the members fight each other, starve, get sick. We've lived through that before and we need to take the steps to make sure it doesn't happen again."

"It makes sense, but that doesn't mean we have to like it," Dexter huffed. 

"We don't like it either, but hey, it's not that big of an island, we'll see each other around," Magnus tried to lighten the mood but the juveniles still looked at him with wet pathetic eyes. Peaches stepped forward and wrapped her arms around the trio, squeezing them tightly before letting go and looking at them with motherly tenderness.

"Please leave now," she said lovingly.

"So, what now?"

It was a question none of the raptors wanted to ask, but someone had to do it. Two scowling faces turned to Meatball, who had been brave enough to break the silence. She shrank back from the scrutiny and resumed her silence as they walked. It was an aimless trek, none of them knew where they wanted to go, just that they had to keep moving. If they ended up running into pretty much anything they'd be completely steamrolled. Three juvenile Utahraptors were only a threat to things smaller than them, and not much was smaller than them on Isla Kela. So far they had ducked into a rotted log to hide from a herd of Parasaurs, jumped into a river to avoid what they thought was an Albertosaurus (it was a tree) and backtracked to an entirely different route because they heard something that sounded scary from further down the path. At least now, the plants were being pried back by the gradually emerging artificial structures of the old human ruins. Meatball had drifted towards the sea, remembering her initial thoughts to head there as a hatchling in the dead of night. She now knew the water that could be found there was toxic, but she also knew there was an abundance of shelter in the building by the shore and fish to catch in the shallows. 

Dexter had perked up the second he heard they were heading for human ruins. He had been fascinated by their artifacts for so long now, the chance to take his time to study or even live in one of these ruins had been enough to lift his mood. Smelt was still feeling morose about the whole situation, but Meatball had pointed out enough cool metal on the way there that she was beginning to come around to the idea. The streets of the human ruins were mostly solid, right up until the steep drop into the sea. The juveniles peered over the edge until the vertigo freaked them out and made them scurry away back to the road. The very first building they checked was full of shining trinkets to examine and all three split up, enraptured by the shiny environment. Dexter jumped up high enough to reach a shelf and looked along it to see a row of bottles, all sealed and all with different coloured liquids in it. Some were clear, some were brown, some were lurid shades of green and red. 

"This is just like the Alpha Labs!" he said enthusiastically. He had hung onto every scrap of information he had been able to overhear about the Alpha Labs, the pinnacle of human ruins. He remembered a Styracasaurus talking about 'specimens' in clear jars, suspended in liquid. He was disappointed none of these bottles had specimens in them, or at least he thought they didn't, he wasn't quite sure what a specimen was.

Smelt had found herself behind a wooden counter, prying apart an old rat nest underneath it to try and find food. She admired the craftsmanship of rats, it was a shame they were such easy meals. Speaking of crafting, she spotted a wooden peg sticking out of the counter and tugged on it curiously. When she wrenched it free the entire side of the counter collapsed, making her shriek in surprise and run away in a flap. Once the immense dust cloud settled, she looked down at the wooden peg still in her claws. This was holding that whole side up? She wanted to look closer, to figure out how it worked and to see if she could replicate it. 

With a loud crack, Meatball shouldered her way through the fragile wooden door into the back hall of the building. Inside she found more bottles of liquid, all resting on metal racks. She tilted her head and considered the structure. They would work well as nests, nice and high off the ground while also being shielded from the elements. All they had to do was clear the glass bottles and find some bedding. She hurried back out to the entrance, nearly tripping over her claws with excitement. She found Dexter hauling a bottle from one of the shelves and Smelt holding a little wooden stick, waving it in the air like she had found treasure.

"I want to live here!" 

"I think we could stay here!"

"I think we should live here!"

The three looked at each other before laughing, coming together and bouncing around like excited hatchlings.

"We didn't even have to vote on it," Meatball said jokingly. She took her two packmates out to the back to show them the shelves and Dexter eagerly pulled the bottles down to tuck them into what he had already designated a 'study corner'. Smelt tore any dry cardboard she could find into shreds and made a decently comfortable nest from it, tamping down the sharper edges and making it as fluffy as possible with the materials at hand. She made a note to raid any other buildings in the area for something softer, potentially even heading back into the forest for bedding. Maybe she could just pluck Dexter and use his feathers instead. She snickered at the thought and Meatball gave her a Look the way Peaches used to give her a Look when she was scheming. It gave her a pang of homesickness but she shrugged it away, focusing instead on their brand new cool home. Peaches had been right, this was anm exciting start to a new era instead of being a depressing end to a comfortable childhood. Or maybe it was both, Smelt still had her feelings about it.