[Trade] Friend Trap

"This is foolproof, I've been working on it for months!" Roswell said, trotting into the forest clearing. Her sister followed closely, a speculative tilt to her head.

"Since you were born?" she asked, but her twin ignored her.

"Look at this," Roswell crowed, gesturing into the treetops. A ramshackle wooden cage hung above their heads, making Kisse recoil away from it. "My undefeatable human trap," Roswell continued, ignoring Kisse's reaction. The trap swayed in the breeze, its joins bound by vines wrapped tightly, tight enough that the skin was peeling off of it. None of the branches that made up the cage were aligned with each other, a haphazard mess of sticks that formed the suggestion of a cube. On top of its shoddy construction, its suspension was tenuous at best, being held by a rope with some unidentifiable rot growing along the length of it.

"It's gonna fall," Kisse said darkly.

"Only when I pull the rope!" she countered, shaking the rope tied to a nearby tree trunk. "We just have to wait for a human to walk under it and then we can catch it."

"We have to wait? For a human to show up?" Kisse asked despondently, knowing she had a long night ahead.

"Yes! But don't worry, I put bait in the trap so it'll take no time at all," Roswell said confidently. She hustled Kisse into a nearby bush and settled down next to her, keeping hold of the trap's rope. "We just have to wait a little bit."

By the time night fell, the twins were fast asleep. Kisse had her head resting on her sister's back, in a deep peaceful sleep, elevated just enough that when she opened her eyes she was making direct eye contact with something in Roswell's trap. 

"Ros, the trap the trap!" she yelped, shaking her sister awake and tugging on the rope herself. Roswell snapped awake and grabbed the rope too, yanking hard and sending the cage careening towards the ground. As it landed , it completely fell apart, splintering on contact and sending sticks flying everywhere. When the dust cleared, a black Utahraptor hatchling sat in the middle of the carnage, stunned. She was about their age, pitch black in colour with blobby tabby patches and her green eyes glowed like a cat's in the dark. She turned cautiously to face them, not breaking eye contact with Kisse as she did so. 

"Who are you?" Roswell asked groggily, still not entirely awake.

"Who am... who am I?! Who are you?! Dropping traps on people like that, you could've killed me!" the other raptor yelled. She stomped over to the twins who shrank back from her anger. "What even is this? You couldn't catch a rat with this, it's terrible!"

"It nearly caught you," Roswell pointed out sheepishly. The other raptor whipped her head in her direction to scowl at her.

"But you didn't," she growled, "you nearly flattened me instead."

"We didn't mean it! We were trying to catch a human!" Roswell explained. Kisse groaned into her feathers, braced for the reaction to this.

"Humans. Like the dead things? The dead things that are all dead? From hundreds of years ago?" the black raptor asked. 

"No, 'cause they're absolutely still out there, I've seen the evidence-" Roswell was forcefully stopped from speaking further by Kisse clamping her mouth shut with her little claws. 

"Look, we're sorry, um," she waited and the other raptor sighed.

"Bandit," she answered flatly.

"We're sorry Bandit," Kisse continued, putting emphasis on her name, "It wasn't on purpose, please don't tell your pack to beat us up." Something pained fleetingly crossed the other hatchling's face.

"Don't have one, so you don't have to worry about that," Bandit growled. Roswell stopped struggling against her sister's grasp to stare pitifully at her.

"Oh. That sucks, I'm sorry," Kisse said awkwardly, still gripping her twin's face. "We have a pack but it's small," she added unhelpfully.

"Good for you," Bandit said bitterly. She shook her feathers out and turned to leave.

"Wait!" Roswell called through her clenched jaw. Kisse let her go and she rubbed her face, rubbing out the claw indents before she faced the hatchling properly. "Do you wanna play with us? Maybe tomorrow? You can come here tomorrow and we'll be here, if you want," she trailed off lamely. 

"Why would I?" Bandit asked, something sad in her tone. 

"We could be friends," Kisse said naively, "Mama says life is better with friends."

"You seem really cool," Roswell added, "you'd be a really cool friend."

"You don't even know me," Bandit reasoned, though her resolve was weakening.

"Well duh, we haven't made friends yet, that takes time," Kisse explained, rolling her eyes. "But we want to try, okay? We want to be your friend." Bandit's expression crumpled briefly before she resumed her stoic facade.

"i'll come back here midday tomorrow, alright?" she said, like she was striking a deal, "If you're not here that's not my problem."

"We'll be here," Roswell assured her, "We've got so many cool things to show you, I promise."

"Do you have more human traps?" Bandit asked sarcastically, but the dappled raptor lit up at the suggestion.

"I don't, but I need to make another one now that that one's broken, you can help if you want, I'll show you how to tie the knots," she said confidently.

"She's always like this," Kisse stage-whispered to Bandit.

"Always searching for the truth," Roswell added smugly.

"She doesn't even believe in the real mysteries that are out there," Kisse interjected.

"The real mysteries?" Bandit asked, though she regretted the words the second they exited her mouth when Kisse obtained the same crazed glint in her eye that her twin had.

"Dragons," she said breathlessly, "have you seen their skeletons in the old human building, the one with the fancy walls and the really high ceiling? There used to be dragons on these islands and I think they're still out there somewhere!" Bandit began to reconsider her choices, now having agreed to hang out with two completely unhinged raptors. Would being alone really be worse than this?