Ill Met By Moonlight

Skele used one of his growing claws to poke another hole in the carcass he found, slowly piercing the flesh and just as slowly pulling it out again, watching the blood drip down. It… maybe hadn’t been a carcass when he found it. It had become a carcass after he started poking it. “Hugged” it. He was only doing as Uncle Ninnan had shown him. When someone didn’t give him what he wanted, he was supposed to poke them. Cut them.

He looked at the still form of the young suchomimus that he had poked full of holes. It was hard to see at night, and he had strayed too far from familiar territory. He only wanted to know why the sucho smelled like water and where the water might be that it had come from. He was thirsty. He was still thirsty.

Maybe he had poked it too much, too quickly. Uncle Ninnan was better at this. Maybe if he talked first, like Uncle Ninnan did, and poked them more slowly, then he could get more answers.

The blood that pooled around the body as it wept out was… almost like water, wasn’t it? And he had seen others chew on the bones from bodies, even herbivores. The bodies that those bones were harvested from were usually long-dead, of course, and no longer covered in meat and hide and feathers. He could see blood-stained bone through the holes he had poked. He could get to it, he just had to make the holes bigger.

Click watched from his hiding spot (just a shallow depression in the ground of a grassy clearing) in horror, petrified, as the young, gangly therizinosaur then began to rip into the carcass with its claws. He was filled with abject terror again when the theri lowered his head to the mangled remains of the suchomimus body and shoved his beak into the flesh, twisting his head this way and that until a sickening crunch split the night air and a rib broke free from the corpse.

The moon rising overhead cast an ominous silver glow on the landscape, illuminating the carnage and bloodshed. As if Click couldn't see it clearly enough already. Blood and viscera clung to the theri’s bald head and stained his feathers a dark red. Skele’s eyes reflected in the moonlight as he sat up, chewing the bone. It… had a strange taste, but a good texture. It crunched between his teeth, like a nut or an especially tough piece of bark. The interior was soft and spongy, more like fruit with a meaty flavour. He couldn’t decide if he liked the whole thing or not.

Click’s heart pounded in his chest, fear sending adrenaline coursing through his veins. This was precisely the reason that he only travelled through the caves and waterways that the island was riddled with - to avoid these kinds of encounters. He had been wary of other carnivores since the first moment he spied one attacking another dinosaur, and wary again of herbivores and their considerable defenses. He had never expected to need to fear herbivores because they could hunt and eat other dinosaurs as well. Other suchomimus. And the one that the theri was feasting on was barely larger than Click was.

Fortunately, it seemed that the theri hadn’t noticed him there as of yet. Maybe it would even be satisfied with the other young sucho that it had killed and it would ignore him entirely, even if it saw him crouched down there in the grass.

As the moon continued to rise, it betrayed Click entirely. His pale hide all but glowed in the moonlight as the moon climbed higher into the sky, drawing Skele’s attention to the almost snow-white shape that had appeared in the distance.

He crunched through another rib as he peered over to the increasingly-defined shape that was trying its best to appear flattened amongst the grass. Skele tilted his head, staring. The pale suchomimus wasn’t very good at hiding.

Click watched silently as the theri got to his feet, rising above the mangled mess that he had created. Even for a juvenile theri, he towered over the landscape, made even more menacing by the sharp outline the moonlight gave him and the long shadow that it threw out ahead of him, reaching across the grass with jagged, clawed shapes towards where Click lay.

Click tried even harder to press himself into the grass, terrified and in denial that the gangly theri had seen him. The bloodstained herbivore was the stuff of nightmares with his long, curved claws spread out before him.

Skele made a sound in his throat as he stepped towards Click, a sound that was oscillating between a warble and a rumble, like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to be intimidating or friendly. Click found it nothing short of horrific. He wanted to run but found that he couldn’t move; he was paralysed by fear.

He parted his jaws, a hiss forcing itself from his chest as he puffed up in his best attempt to look menacing. While Skele was larger than most theris his age, Click was unusually small. Click’s breath came fast as he hissed again. He looked as menacing as a housecat. A malnourished kitten, even.

But still, Skele stopped when he grew close enough. He continued to stare at the suchomimus in silence while blood dried to his face, neck, and claws.

A beat passed. Two beats, and Click was beginning to remember how to use his limbs. He could run - but the horrific, rasping sound of Skele’s voice stopped him all over again.

“Water?”

Click stared up at Skele, almost as confused as he was scared. What?

Skele stared down at Click, waiting for a response this time rather than immediately poking holes into the small suchomimus. When Click didn’t reply, Skele spread his arms and claws in the same way that he had seen Uncle Ninnan do countless times, unblinking as he threatened Click with violence. “Where is the water? I am thirsty.”

Click silently promised himself that he would never cross through an open field like this again, or at the very least he would pay better attention to what scents and sounds were in the area before doing so.

He turned his muzzle slightly, pointing over his shoulder in the direction that he had come yet never taking his eyes off of Skele or his claws. They were longer than any other tooth or claw he had ever seen. They looked like they could go straight through him.

Skele spread his arms wider, growing impatient with the suchomimus's silence. Why wasn’t Click replying? He would poke him until he did, as Uncle Ninnan had shown him.

Click flinched back and froze, eyes squeezed shut - but the attack he was anticipating didn’t come. Skele’s attention was drawn by another sound coming from the distance. A familiar, rumbling call that echoed across the field, coming from an overpass that reached above the horizon.

Click took his chance and darted away while Skele as distracted, running as fast as he could knowing that eventually, he would run into either a river or a cave and he would be safe and out of sight again.

Skele warbled quietly. The suchomimus had looked so scared, and he didn’t understand why. Something to ask Uncle Ninnan about when he got to the overpass. Uncle Ninnan had all the answers.