You are where you need to be

It’s fair to assume that only spooky things happen in the dead of winter, when the nights are dark and the chill seeps into your bones. When firelight is all that stands between you and the unseen. But don’t underestimate the uncertainty that lies in the haze of summer. Temperatures soar. The air is so heavy that it seems to bend sound and light in strange ways. Insects buzz and thrum with such intensity that you can feel them communicating with each other. Every river or stream is an oasis. The small ponds and thickets become little pockets of fantasy worlds, where dragons skim past at lightning speed and absolutely *anything* could be living under the water’s surface.

On such a Summer day, a small family group of Therizinosaurus are marching towards the forest. It is their hope that it can bring even a small modicum of relief in this sweltering heat. They had already risen with the sun to travel as far as they could when it was still the cool of the morning, and then sheltered in an abandoned multi-storey car park during the hottest hours of the day. Which was not too unpleasant but a bit cramped and awkward, with the adults having to keep their heads low as they walked. The rest stop was much needed by everyone but especially by the youngest members of the group, curled up near their respective carers. A Therizniosaurus, only a season or two old, called Hecate, and two Parasaurolophus orphans that were adopted into the group, called Balistidae and Resheph. Hecate is a soft brown colour with the earliest hint of darker markings starting to form on her neck and body. A tuft of feathers on her head and tail are more pronounced than anywhere else. Resheph is a dark brown colour for the most part, with a splash of white covering his head, neck and front limbs. Balistidae has smooth skin and small spiky bumps forming on her neck, shoulders, and hips, and sports a beautiful grey-silver colour. She too does not have all of her markings yet, with only some dark giraffe-like spots starting to grace her head and tail, and a splash of white on her back.  

The car park has provided shade but the heat has still seeped in. The youngsters fidget in their sleep, pestered by flies and hounded by the sound of cicadas and locusts. Hecate in particular suffers from the heat-induced nightmares, mumbling and whimpering in her sleep. Her mother tries to offer some comfort with a tender touch but it does little to help. 

The sun begins to set. Everything is bathed in soft golden light. The shadows deepen into indulgent wine reds and purples. The Theri group begin to stir. Their destination is a few miles beyond this temporary stop, so if they can depart soon they should reach the forest before it gets too dark. Even as a group and with formidable defences, there are creatures on these Isles that are just as big, with sharp teeth and ravenous appetites. 

Hecate is gently nudged awake by her mother but it is a slow, groggy process. She is too young to understand yet but it just feels like she is pulled from her dreams and dragged through thick sludge. She blinks and tries to comprehend - the sheer scale of her mother; the vast expanse of grey space that is the car park interior; and the dark shadow beyond all of that. The immense…dark…shadow…

Balistidae and Resheph are easier to wake. The kindly female Theri that is acting as their adoptive mother rouses them with snuffles and nudges of her muzzle. Resheph wakes quickly and immediately begins to look around and observe. Balistidae wakes slower, with a lazy yawn and slow stretch. Their temporary mother rises to her feet - though has to stay slightly crouched because of the low ceiling of the car park - and the two paras follow suit. Resheph gives himself a short and smart little shake before trotting to keep pace with his adoptive mother, whilst Balistidae yawns again and saunters beside the female Theri’s tail. She had learned recently that the tail was just broad and fluffy enough to create shade beneath it. Walking in the sun was a fools errand. 

Hecate’s mother practically has to haul the youngster to her feet, which shakes her from her stupor. The grey becomes tarmac and concrete. Her mother is still huge in her vision but she is no longer a brown haze. And the shadow…the shadow is gone. A figment of her half-dreaming imagination…hopefully 

The guiding Theri gives out a resonant honk, the signal to follow. Hecate stays close to her mother but is clearly still dazed by her fitful sleep.

==

It feels only marginally cooler once the sun sets. Everything had been bathed in fiery orange light, turning the shadows into rich and indulgent shades of wine red and purple. In the wake of the setting sun now is a strange quality of light, like the hint of starlight if it had fallen to earth. The air is still thick and heavy. The insects are still deafening in their shouting match with each other.

The group have reached the forest. The shadows are inky blue and seem to vibrate in the heat. The moon, despite not being full, casts enough light to touch the upper branches of the trees.

Having slept through the hot afternoon, foraging becomes the priority now. The adults and adolescents take the juicy leaves from the top branches or otherwise strip the edible bark of some trees. Hecate’s mother pulls a curl of bark and offers it to the youngster but she doesn’t seem interested. She had been absent and aloof since waking in the car park but she is downright unsettled in the forest. Even Balistidae and Resheph had not been able to initiate any play, despite all their best efforts of trying to start a game of tag or ‘I spy.’

With (most) of the group satisfied and full for now, they settle for the night, making temporary nests from branches and shrubs. Hecate’s mother gives her daughter plenty of space to settle, hoping she might avoid any more fever dreams if she can stay cooler. But she still curls her neck and tail around the youngster in a protective gesture. 

Balistidae and Resheph are similarly surrounded by the vast neck and tail of their adoptive mother. They also have each other for comfort, a shared origin of each being orphans.

==

…Child…

Hecate shuffles and kicks in her sleep. 

…Child…young one…

Her mother sleeps deeply, unable to perceive her daughter’s whimpers and fidgeting. Hecate continues to writhe and wriggling. It is not the hot summer night that boils beneath her skin. It is something else. 

…Let me see you child…

…Come speak with me…

Resheph blinks his eyes open slowly. He can hear Hecate’s whimpers and squeaks. Like earlier today, he assumes it will pass and it is nothing more than fever dreams from the heat. He has not been able to get wholly comfortable either and can only imagine it is harder for those covered in lots of feathers. He checks that Balistidae is still sleeping soundly - her little snores confirm that she is.

But as Resheph looks back to Hecate one last time, he finds that she is awake! Or…no…not quite awake. She is standing up and her eyes are partially open…but even Resheph in his youthful ignorance can tell her eyes are glazed over. He watches intently, feeling suddenly very awake himself, as Hecate delicately picks her way through the sleeping group.

Towards the dark depths of the forest.

“…she can’t go alone…” Resheph whispers. His mind fills with the nights he spent alone before he was found by the Theris. The encroaching, unknowable dark. Even children know that it is a bad thing.

Resheph awkwardly wriggles free from the cuddle pile he and Balistidae had formed. Remarkably, the silvery female remains asleep. 

“…really? You could sleep through a stampede!” he huffs and then proceeds to poke her with his front little hoofs.

“…wha…huh?” Balistidae groggily responds, blinking her eyes open.

“Come on Balis, we need to do something…” Resheph continues to poke and then resorts to shaking her.

“…alright alright…stop with the shaking…or I’m gonna barf…” Balistidae grumbles and slowly gets to her feet.

Resheph is keen to catch up to Hecate, but Balistidae is still stirring from slumber and lumbers behind. As the dark little parasaur reaches the soft brown Theri, he slows down to walk at the same pace beside her. He tries to get a good look at her face, her eyes in particular. 

“…Hecate…Hecate? Can you hear me?” he asks, his voice laced with concern. 

The same blank expression, almost on the edge of fright, eyes locked forward. If she can hear him, she’s not showing any acknowledgement. By now, they have entered the dark of the forest and the safety of the adults is several yards away. Resheph slows down to resume a position behind Hecate, closer to Balistidae.

“I…I don’t think she knows…what she’s doing…its like…she’s asleep…” Resheph whispers to the silvery female.

“Why we whisperin?” was her first response.

“Because there could be ANYTHING in the woods!” Resheph snaps back, his voice raising higher than he wanted. “…which is why…we gotta keep her safe…”

“Okaaaaay….” Balistidae replies with a sleepy drawl. She looks about idly as they continue deeper into the forest, occasionally being lit by little shafts of moonlight from above. “Is…there a reason…we didn’t…wake up a grown-up…for this?”

Resheph’s face drops for a second. That was a searingly good point. Why didn’t they wake up an adult, who could do a much better job of defending a youngster from monsters in the woods.

“Uuhhh….well…maybe she would…have disappeared before any of them woke up enough…yeah…and look, we can’t go back now…we might lose her in this place,” Resheph has to scrabble for his logic. It made perfect sense to him…at the time…

“Yu-huh…” Balistidae replies, sounding thoroughly unconvinced.

The two parasaurs could not be more opposite, with Resheph being observant but tightly-wound and Balistidae embodying the laidback laissez-faire of a beach resident.

For now, they have a plan and that is to follow Hecate.

==

In the darkness, distance doesn’t seem to mean much. Neither does time. Both Resheph and Balistidae feel like they have walked for hours and must be miles away from the adults by now. Nothing had looked familiar along the way, but the dark did a good job of masking everything. Shifting everything into long shadows.

Hecate has said nothing and barely altered her course, basically walking in a straight line. On a few occasions, the two parasaurs have had to scurry ahead to move large debris out of the way or hold branches to one side so that Hecate did not get a face full of spiky twigs or leaves. 

They reach a clearing. It is almost perfectly circular. Scattered across the floor are patches of beautiful night-blooming white flowers confined only to this clearing. Hecate comes to a stop right in the middle. She isn’t aware that she has been sleep-walking. As far as she knows, she is awake and has been following this gentle tug through this forest. Every bone in her body has wanted to turn back, but that little tug has been irrepressible, impossible to ignore, and somehow, it has felt important.

Resheph and Balistidae stay at the edges, just out of the light but not fully in shadow. They watch carefully. What happens next is only for Hecate to witness.

For her, she is facing a large dark shadow. It lingers among the trees, shifting in shape and size like billowing smoke. She can hear nothing but the whispers of the forest…and the tinkling of metal and chains…

…There you are child…

The voice is smooth and disturbingly pleasant, but it seems somehow hollow and echo-y. There but also everywhere. 

Hecate dare not respond. She isn’t even sure where she is. The whole journey out here feels like a blur. 

…You are where you need to be…

“…wha…h-how did you…?” Hecate whispers.

…I know many things…

The shadow ahead of Hecate takes a more solid form briefly, something as large as a Theri but a different shape. Stocky. A large head. Two bright-white points suddenly appear. Eyes. The shadow looks more like a living thing now. The sound of tinkling metal still fills the air.

“…why am I here?” Hecate asks.

…Because you need to be here…at this very moment…

“…wha-…I don’t understand…”

…It will make sense soon…

Hecate scrunkles her nose in confusion and frustration.

Meanwhile, Balistidae and Resheph watch this whole conversation unfold, except they only hear Hecate’s side of things. Resheph even dares to walk up to Hecate’s side as she speaks, trying to look past her to where her attention is drawn. 

Nothing there but trees.

He walks back to Balistidae.

“She must…be dreaming…she must see something in her dream,” Resheph tries to reason.

“I…don’t like this…” Balistidae replies, sounding frightened for the first time in this whole strange adventure. 

Their collective smallness and helplessness dawns on Resheph. The forest feels suddenly as big as the sky, the shadows as fathomless as the sea, and the ground yawns in every direction away from them.

“Let’s wake her up…” Resheph decides. “But we have to be gentle…we don’t know what she’s dreamin.”

Balistidae nods in agreement and joins her pseudo-brother by his side as they softly approach Hecate. 

The young Theri is still looking perturbed and deep in conversation with some invisible entity.

“…so you won’t tell me anything…?” she tries to press again.

…You will find out…soon enough…

Hecate scowls and gives an involuntary angry grumble. At this, everything suddenly changes. It feels like the shadows intensify and close in. The shadowy form ahead of her steps forward. And again. And again. It never becomes visible, it never becomes a tangible thing, but still looms above.

From the perspective of Resheph and Balistidae, they see Hecate’s demeanour change. She shrinks back in fear, and starts to retreat. They are by her side now but still feel unsure of what to do to wake her up.

Hecate just stares up at her aggressor. Suddenly, hundreds of intense fierce eyes appear, staring right back at Hecate. They defy all logic and physics and nature. Huge, intense eyes. 

Hecate screams and falls back, kicking her legs and thrashing her forearms. She may only be a youngster but her talons could still do damage.

Something that was not lost on Resheph and Balistidae. They startle at the sudden scream and movement, taking several steps back before then rushing to Hecate’s side. The two parasaurs have to duck and weave to avoid the claws, but in-between dodging they poke her and shove her and shout at her.

“Hecate! HECATE! WAKE UP!” 

In fits and starts, the words make it through the miasma. Her vision is full of smoke and piercing eyes, and then…slowly…it isn’t. The shadowy creature is replaced by the two shadows of Balistidae and Resheph. They shift in and out of focus as they each move around the flailing Hecate.

“Aaahhhhh! Aaaaahhhhhhh…” Hecate’s screams start to lessen to whimpers. Her breathing is panicked but she starts to slow her body. She blinks furiously as she tries to take everything in.

“Whhaa…where…where are we?” Hecate pants.

Resheph and Balistidae take a step back to let her breathe. There is a silence between them as they all recover from what had just happened. Its not every day that you have wake up another youngster from some kind of walking nightmare.

“We…don’t know…we followed you,” Resheph finally responds.

“Followed me…? But…I…I followed…” Hecate starts, but then the shock and fright and enormity of everything starts to wash over her. She sniffles and winces, tears forming in her eyes. “It was awful…why did it sound so nice…did you see it too?”

Resheph and Balistidae look between each other. Their pause says everything. 

“…I feel so stupid…I wanna go home…” Hecate chokes through soft sobs.

“Can you remember the way?” Resheph asks hopefully. 

Hecate looks around the immediate clearing, and then out into the forest. By now, whatever moonlight there was is being slowly replaced by a soft dawning yellow. Some shadows have shifted, changing the shapes of things. She’s not sure…if she remembers anything she saw along the way. 

“…no…no…” she begins, now looking up at the trees. 

“Okay,” Resheph replies. “…its okay…we can work this out…”

The young para is already showing so much resolve and determination, a future glimmer of the leader he would become. It starts here. On this one quest to get Hecate back home. Resheph starts to scan the immediate surroundings now that the light is changing. But it is not his keen eyes that spots something.

“I remember that branch…it hit me in the face instead of Hecate,” Balistidae gestures to a yearling tree several yards away. Indeed, the low-hanging branches are missing some leaves and look a little fragile. 

“…so we musta come that way…” Resheph says brightly.

“So…we can…trace our steps?” Balistidae ponders. 

They had no actual foot steps to follow alas because of the dry conditions. But they had moved logs, been smacked by enough branches, and hopped over rocks and boulders in their efforts to keep the sleep-walking Hecate safe. They will have left evidence.

With the dedication and focus of detectives, Resheph and Balistidae begin to pick a route back through the forest. In a drastic switch of roles compared to the night-time, the two parasaurs lead the way and Hecate follows sheepishly behind them. It would take many years for her to understand the thoughts and emotions that took root on this adventure. She glances around the forest frequently, watching the dawning light turn it into something beautiful on a balmy summer morning. But her attention is mostly fixed on the two youngsters ahead of her. They excitedly work their way back home - back to the adults, the dinosaurs that aren’t even the same species as them - after spending a whole night as guardians. They know Hecate but they were not close. And yet, here they are…they have put themselves in harms way to keep her safe…and now to get her home. Her young mind can’t readily focus on what she is feeling now. When she later reflects on this moment, it is admiration and respect. And a kind of love. A huge driving force that will shape her adult life.

Before the sun has fully risen, the trio are within viewing distance of the adults. Large shapes glanced through the trees. They all exchange wide smiles, even Hecate, and begin to quicken their pace. But as they approach, they can tell something is not quite right.

All of the adults are wide awake before dawn, moving around with panicked little movements, and actively sweeping their vision across the clearing and into the trees. Looking for something. Those that weren’t active were visibly inspecting either their own bodies or that of someone else.

The air is tinged with the smell of blood.

Hecate’s mother spots her first. Her audible gasp is enough to draw the attention of every adult, their gaze following Hecate’s mother to the tree-line. Swiftly after that, the surrogate mother joins Hecate’s mother in checking over the youngsters. They are showered in a mixture of reprimands and affection.

It takes all morning for the group as a whole to recover from the events of the night. Tiredness is catching up to the three youngsters but they fight off sleep long enough to piece together what had happened. None of the adults had seen them leave. During the night, a small band of carnivores - a mixed pack of cryos, carnos, and even an alberto or two - had charged the group. It was a small miracle that no one was killed but nearly everyone sported an injury or two. Their panicked searching in the morning was for the children. In the chaos, no one had ever seen them and so they feared the worst. To see two young paras and a theri emerge from the forest, unscathed, was like witnessing mythical creatures step into sunlight.

They must move - to get away from the smell of spilled blood and to find a new place to shelter - but everyone is subdued. The youngsters are practically asleep on their feet but they plod onwards. They can sleep when they find safety.

On Hecate’s mind are the smooth words from the shapeshifting shadows.

…You are where you need to be…

Did…did her nightmare save her life?