Find the Light

Freedom… That was what emerging from the underground meant.

The herd had learned that an exit had opened when islanders started to trickle into the facility in search of the source of the anteos and apparent oddities that had flooded the island when the anteos poured out. The visitors had been kind enough to tell them stories of what lay beyond, encouraging them to leave. It was still hard to believe that there could be enough food around to support the number and range of dinosaurs that were described to them.

Ouranos walked with others towards the exit, the Genesis herd that had come together as they woke and hatched to the cold and uncaring world that the upwalkers had left for them to inherit.

It was safer for them to walk together, as one, though if the stories were true and there was an entire world that was there for them to see and explore, he doubted that they would remain together as one herd for long. Maybe some would, those who had built strong bonds with one another, or those who had been awake for even longer than he and Ephialtes had been, hiding in the depths of Genesis and waiting.

Ouranos glanced towards his brother, hoping to catch his eye, but Ephialtes was ignoring him again. Ouranos sighed to himself and turned his gaze towards the ground. They had been drifting apart for some time. When they were young and it was just the two of them, it was easier. Growing up, meeting others and having to learn how to live cooperatively  with them… had strained their relationship. Ouranos still loved his brother, but trying to guide him towards kindness and benevolence, or even mere tolerance, had been nothing but one challenge after another. He didn’t think he would ever be successful in turning his brother’s temperament. He would keep trying.

Or maybe he would travel. He liked the idea of not being tethered to any one place anymore, of seeing new faces and being able to sleep under… a “sky.” It was hard to imagine such a thing, that the world beyond the facility was a building without walls or a ceiling. How did it hold up the floors above if there was nothing to hold it? Or was there just nothing? It was almost frightening to consider - a ceiling made of nothingness. A dark void hanging over them, waiting for them to stretch or jump too high and then they would fall in and disappear forever.

Ouranos shook himself, a motion which made another shuno rumble at him in mild annoyance. The young bull lowed a quiet apology, he had not meant to bump into them.

That was how they had lived as peacefully as they had - manners. Remembering that they were all stuck in the lower levels together, that coming to blows over something like an invasion of personal space was risky to all those involved and anyone else around if tail clubs started swinging. Some of the plants that the upwalkers had left behind to grow in their absence had healing properties, they had discovered, but those were a precious resource and grew slowly. It was better to save them for severe injuries, like when the anteos tried to take one of them.

The anteos had left ahead of the herd as soon as they realised that the path out was open to them, escaping rapidly into the world beyond what they knew. They would have spread across the island like a plague, ready to consume whatever they needed to in order to sustain themselves and recover from the hunger that being contained in the facility had plagued them with. Ouranos knew that he and the other shunos of the herd were fortunate that defending themselves from the anteos and occasional temperamental spats about personal space and belongings were some of the only things they really had to worry about, thanks to the sustainable food that the upwalkers had left for them.

He also hoped that the anteos did not immediately turn on any of the dinosaurs that lay beyond Genesis in an attempt to satiate their ravenous hunger. He hoped that they would not be laying in wait outside the facility to ambush them and try to tear them to pieces. It would not be smart to go against the entire herd, but the herd would not be without their own injuries. Some would likely fall, and not get up. The youngest, the eldest, the weakest were in the middle of the march of the giants, protected and surrounded by the healthy and strong. Ouranos bore this task with pride.

He had, unfortunately, seen what they could do to an elder or younger shuno. Even a healthy adult could sustain grievous injuries from their wicked teeth. His thoughts were cast back to Zuma’s jaws clamped around his forelimb. How close he had been to becoming nothing more than a memory, to not experiencing what life waited for them beyond the confining, caging walls that became ever closer and more cramped as he grew up.

What lay ahead, though… Ouranos squinted his eyes against the brightest light he had ever seen, brighter even than the fluorescent lights that forever hung and flickered overhead. There was tangible excitement and apprehension in the air as they approached the final doorway, the exit that would take them to what lay beyond. The herd started to move more quickly, driven by the scent of something new and fresh.

Clean air rushed into the facility - or maybe it was that old, stale air was being sucked out. A breeze ruffled Ouranos’s golden feathers. It was not an entirely novel experience - air circulated around the facility regularly - but this air tasted, smelled, even sounded entirely different. He could hear whistling, chirping, warbling over the sound of his herdmate’s footsteps until the excitement was too much and their thunderous steps drowned out everything else.

It was quieter when their feet suddenly touched concrete, and then grass and earth instead of tile and metal. The herd slowed, eyes adjusting to the brightness of their new surroundings and taking in… everything.

There were no anteos waiting for them at the exit, but… there was so much of everything else. Everything that the islanders had promised in their stories, and more. Ouranos could scarcely believe what he was seeing. No walls. No ceiling. No dark void threatening to fall down on them or pluck them from the floor - the ground. It was the most beautiful, endless expanse of blue he had ever seen. It stretched as far as he could see, encompassed their surroundings entirely. The breeze that ruffled his feathers was not caused by any central heating or cooling system. It just was, and carried on it so many interesting and new scents. The small animals that flew amongst the trees and through the great, open vast blue - the sky - were unlike any he had seen. Birds, insects, amphibians, reptiles, mammals. There were so many things that he had left to learn about.

He knew at exactly that point that he would never be able to stop exploring what the island had to offer. He would not be staying with the herd. He would travel, and he would never see it all, no matter how much he wandered.

There were trees taller than anything he had ever seen within Genesis, and he realised very suddenly that the trees that grew inside the facility were stunted and twisted.

With no ceiling to force them downwards, the trees here grew tall and strong. Ouranos closed his eyes and breathed in all the unfamiliar scents, listened to all the unfamiliar sounds, and committed them to memory. He was determined to one day learn each of them.

There was no ceiling to stunt him now, either.