Will 'o Wisp

Genesis - a place where all things begin. If Ouranos didn’t find food, it would also be the place where he ended.

He wasn’t so hungry to feel the pressure of starvation just yet, though. He and his brother, Ephialtes, had only hatched in this strange place recently. They were still nourished by the yolk of their eggs, though the nest they had hatched from was one unlike any other. Things like polymer plastic, plexiglass, acrylic, and cold metal took the place of plush down feathers, moss, reeds and twigs. Rather than sunlight to light the path and warm the earth there were cool-toned fluorescent lights overhead, occasionally flickering because the tube was starting to fail, or the wiring was starting to corrode.

Those that dwelled within were fortunate that there had not yet been a fire. They were fortunate that the humans were long gone, that the ones who hatched or awakened now would not be subjected to their cruel experiments. They were fortunate that the facility was starting to degrade and the mechanism locking them inside had failed - Genesis would slowly empty as more and more evacuated to explore the island that waited for them beyond previously closed doors.

All of this was far from Ouranos’s mind. He was simply hungry, and he wasn’t sure where his brother had wandered off to - or had he wandered off from Ephialtes? - in search of something to quell the growing ache in his belly.

He paused when he felt the texture of the ground abruptly turn into something tacky. He lifted one of his front feet, his thumb claw hardly grown in at all just yet, and felt the ground stick to the pad of his foot. It was deep, dark red, and there was a lot of it - he stood at the very edge of what used to be a pool of blood.

“Ephialtes?” he called uncertainly into the lonely, listening hallways. He didn’t know exactly what he had stumbled across, but his instincts told him it was not safe to stay here. He wanted his brother.

It was not another hatchling shuno that Ouranos got the attention of, but a cryo. Ghostlight turned her snout away from the human junk that she was digging through towards the sound of a tiny, distant voice. An unfamiliar voice, with an unusual essence that she did not recognise. Not a cryo, not a styracosaur. Something lost, something that should not yet be awake.

Blind eyes were unaffected by the flickering darkness as she started down a narrow hallway. It was made for humans to traverse, not for dinosaurs, but she was a species small enough that she could maneuver through the man-made spaces with little problem. Something larger and less nimble, like what Ouranos would grow up to be, would eventually struggle greatly. For now, though, the facility would keep him safe. There were just as many places to hide in here as there were on the island beyond for something so small.

But he would be alone, almost undoubtedly. The other shunos either hadn’t awoken yet or had not yet been freed from their confines deeper within the facility. Something had failed to grant him this early life. Without guidance, he would likely perish before he got the chance to thrive.

Ouranos didn’t notice the approaching cryo until she was almost standing on top of him, her footsteps near-silent even on the unnatural tile surface. He didn’t look up at her in fear, even though the top of his head barely reached her ankle when he stood at his tallest. He had the curiosity of a hatchling that had never known the horrors of being alive, an expression which was reflected in Ghostlight’s sightless gaze when she crouched before him.

They stood in silence for a moment, Ouranos staring at her and Ghostlight considering the hatchling’s future. Ghostlight… would not stay with him. She had her own calling, and he would not have been well-raised by others of his kind if they had awoken at the same time that he hatched, but she could at least point him in the right direction. Guide him on his way - and his brother, by extension.

“You are hungry,” she said quietly. Not a question, but a statement that she knew to be true.

The scent of old blood hung heavily in the air here, but it wasn’t because of anything the hatchling had done, nothing that had been done to him. Someone had died. Someone had been killed, slaughtered in cold blood. There was not a struggle.

“There is food here for you that was left behind to grow under the false sun.” It wasn’t time for him to emerge just yet. Kela would not know the presence of shunosaurus for some time. It would be safer for him to stay here as well, where there were no large birds or lizards to hunt him down or pluck him from the earth before his club was developed. “Come with me.” She could find his brother later, and unite them again.

With hatchling naïvety, Ouranos dutifully followed, entirely trusting of the carnivore that was willfully sparing his life and even helping him so that he could grow larger and strong enough to one day fight to defend those who could not defend themselves. Ghostlight was confident in this.

It wasn’t a long walk for her, but for a shuno the size of a house cat, it was a journey. He was tuckered out by the time they got into one of the green rooms - a growing room where humans had once grown and tended to young plants to study the impact of seeding things deep in their code that should not have been there. There were other rooms like this as well, where they had taken their successful experiments and raised them to flower and seed, and others where they had revived what was once lost, as they had done with the dinosaurs themselves.

No longer attended to by human biologists, geneticists, botanists and more, the plants had been left to grow and run rampant in the various locations spread across this facility. Plenty of food for a pair of young herbivores, and the styras who roamed the halls and the other herbivores who would one day follow, when they were released.

Ouranos settled down in a comfortable-looking plant that was overgrown and had poured over its container onto the ground. It was as nice a bed as it was a meal; he happily grazed on the small leaves while he recovered his energy. He would find Ephialtes afterwards.

He stopped chewing when Ghostlight once again crouched to be closer to his level. “Look at my teeth, little one,” she said. “Remember how sharp they are. Not everyone like me will be as kind to you as I have been. You must be more careful, until you are older and large enough to defend yourself from those who would do you harm.”

Ouranos stared up at Ghostlight, not fully understanding her words just yet but hearing them all the same. Ghostlight exhaled quietly as she stood, satisfied with her warning. He would be alright, if he was careful.

She left him there, amongst the plants that he would grow strong on, and headed towards the entryway once more. Now to find the brother.