Make A House A Home

When the sun rose the next morning, it failed to wake the three raptors curled in their makeshift nest. Instead, the building sheltered them and allowed them a few more hours of uninterrupted rest until Dexter blinked awake around midday. He gently extracted himself from the cuddle pile and climbed down the shelving rack until his claws touched the cool concrete floor. He walked out of the back room to see the sun streaming through the broken glass storefront, already halfway through its journey across the sky. Dexter was stunned, he couldn't believe how long they had slept but this boded well for this place as their lair. He shuffled over to the bottles he had taken from the shelves yesterday and sat down to examine them. The labels were scuffed and lost to time but there were human letters carved directly into the glass. Dexter wiped it clean of dust with his feathers and held the bottle up to the sun to try and read it. He didn't recognise the word and could only try and parse what it could be from his limited knowledge of human language. Tee-kwill-la? That was his best guess at what it said, and as he thought it was a word he had never heard used by dinosaurs before. He wondered what the humans used it for, if it was a drink or fuel or some kind of chemical for cleaning, he was itching to know. His curiosity getting the better of him, he struggled to open the cap, hearing it crunch before it spun off with a few more rotations. The smell that came from the bottle was strong, not like rot but more of a chemical smell, sharp and it made his eyes water when he took a sniff. He leaned back away from the bottle neck and blinked as his head spun from the strong smell. Definitely had to be some kind of cleaning agent, nothing would be able to survive drinking this. It reminded him of antifreeze, something regularly found in the human bases around the highlands. As the name implied, it unfroze most things, at the cost of being extremely toxic if inhaled or ingested. It was better to leave the use of these kinds of things to those with opposable thumbs.

“Good morning,” a soft voice came from the door of the back room. Dexter tipped his head to the side to see a sleepy Meatball standing there, preening her spines as she blinked wearily in the sunlight.

“Good afternoon,” he corrected good-naturedly, “we slept for a long time last night.” Meatball hummed to herself as she began to pick through the debris in the store.

“We needed it, it's been a long journey since we left the pack,” she said wisely. Dexter agreed and returned to examining the bottle. “Did you find anything interesting?” Meatball asked, coming to stand over his shoulder.

“Not particularly, this seems to be something to clean with, the label is gone but the glass says teekwilla,” he informed her, “the smell is awful and I don't particularly want to taste it.”

“They all look about the same don't they?” Meatball observed, looking through the bottles that the other raptor had arranged next to him. “Must all be cleaning stuff.”

“Speaking of which,” a third voice came from the back room, “We should tidy this place up, make it a proper home.” Smelt hopped down next to them, greeting each of them with a soft nuzzle under the chin.

“I would prefer something softer for a nest,” Dexter admitted.

"See?" Smelt said smugly, like either of them had been objecting to her plan, "I'll start by looking for bedding around the part of town that isn't sunken, we also need to sweep up all the glass, we've been avoiding it so far but it'll only take one slip up to have a nasty infected cut," she said firmly. Meatball nodded.

"I can come with you and watch your back if Dex is okay with staying here and sweeping the glass?" she asked and Dexter nodded.

"That works for me, I'll find something to sweep with and try and get all of it."

"Go team!" Smelt cheered, "Okay, yay, let's go Meatball."

There wasn't much of the Sunken City left above the water, hence the name, but there were a few human buildings left to explore. Most were untouched by them as they had wandered straight into the perfect one pretty quickly, so there were plenty of options for scavenging. The first building they entered was a human food storage, most of the cans and cartons pried open and relieved of their contents. Smelt gathered a few of the tins for herself, thinking them good storage options for her various nuts and bolts. The next place was far more promising, with soft furnishings lining the walls, some tipped over in the centre of the large off-white room. Most had been ripped to shreds and their stuffing stolen, but some empty cloth sacks had been left behind. Meatball picked one up and wrinkled her nose at the smell.

"It's gross but if we can clean it this'd be a good bed," she told Smelt who nodded.

"They're thin but we can fold them over or find more. Maybe that river on our way here is clean enough to wash them?" she suggested. 

"No harm in trying," Meatball agreed, tucking the cloth under her arm and bending to gather more of them. Smelt found a relatively intact sack to put her tins into and starting to help. Any relatively comfortable or soft looking cloth was stuffed into their bags and brought with them, including whatever stuffing had been left behind by whoever had raided this place before them. When their sub-adult little arms couldn't hold any more, they began to drag their plunder back to their lair. Entering the door with the day's finds, they were surprised to see the floor completely spotless. Dexter was holding a large palm frond and had started to sweep the dust from the higher shelves, standing on his tip toes to do so.

"There you are!" he greeted, oblivious to their shock. "Have any luck?" Meatball recovered quickly at the mention of their mission and dragged the cloth closer to the male raptor.

"Lots actually! These stink but if we can wash them it'll be really nice for the nest," she enthused.

"And I found cans in another place we looked," Smelt interjected, "We can put all kinds of things in them and keep them tidy." Dexter took one of the cans from her and dropped a bottle cap into it, revelling in the pleasant tinkling sound on the way down.

"This is so cool!" he chirped, "But I think I found something even cooler when I was cleaning, come look." With such a hefty promise the girls hurried after him as he scrambled up their nest shelf and into a gap in the wall. Through recently disturbed cobwebs and dust, the three followed an elevated path around the perimeter of another room and found themselves under a hole in the ceiling. "We can reach the roof from here," Dexter explained, "We can make it a little easier to reach but it works as an escape route already."

"This really is cooler," Smelt said gravely, "But what's down on the floor?"

"Hm? Human tools I think, not much use for us," Dexter said, peering over the edge to regard the mess on the floor. 

"Maybe, maybe not," Smelt said pensively, "We can go digging through them when the nest is fixed up, I could use something down there." Meatball nodded along at her friends' planning, it didn't seem so long ago that she had to drag both of them out on adventures in the forest and now here they were planning a home together. The thought made her giddy, wondering how she herself would grow with time, but the immediate concern was their home and she was determined to make herself useful.

"Since you two are all feathery I'll go to the water and see if the sea can clean the cloths," she said, "If it's too salty we can try the river after that but it'd be nice to be able to wash them close to home."

"I'll keep cleaning in here," Dexter pointed to the little passageway, "If I can get rid of all this dirt you can bring the sheets through here and dry them on the roof."

"I can see some planks down there," Smelt noted, "I could make a rack to hang them from and make them dry faster in the wind?"

"You two are so clever," Meatball grinned, enjoying the way Smelt preened and Dexter became flustered. She turned back down the tunnel to make her way back to the pillowcases and the other fabrics they had gathered. She heard the familiar sound of Smelt's construction beginning behind her and Dexter's tail feathers swiping across the walls to knock the dust loose. They had been there such a short time but this human building was already feeling like a true raptor lair, though Meatball supposed the company had a lot to do with it.