Spotlighting

Duckweed was laying on a bed of soft grass, sunbathing in the middle of a small meadow that gently rose up from the wetlands. Mama Osa lay beside her, the heavy-built suchomimus dozing with her head flat on the ground and completely unconcerned about any threat that might try to approach. There were few things in her swamp that were large enough to be a threat, and all of them thought better of approaching when they noticed her presence.

It was such a nice day, with fluffy white clouds drifting overhead and a warm and gentle wind tousling her scruffy, partially-developed coat of feathers. The swampland was, as ever, alive with sounds of insects, birds, and frogs. It created the most beautiful, perfect background hum as she bathed in the warmth of the sun.

Or it did until she noticed a distant, frantic call disturbing the peace. She realised, rapidly, that she recognised the owner of the voice.

“Mama! Mama wake up, it’s Deaglán!” She nudged Osa with her muzzle and claws, but the older suchomimus had awoken the moment she heard the distant roars. She rumbled deep in her throat and crawled through the grass, slipping into the water with Duckweed just beside her as they swam towards the Deaglán’s frantic cries.

Deaglán had been calling for his younger sister from the moment that he realised she was missing. He had looked everywhere for her, all around where they usually nested at, her usual hiding places. Everywhere he had looked, she was nowhere to be seen. Her scent trail was fading quickly, but he had caught just enough of one to realise that she had traveled upriver, to the swamplands, and what little scent trail he had managed to follow was rapidly disappearing with the rhythmic rise and fall of the water that flooded the swampy terrain. Maybe she thought she could find him there, maybe she wanted to see what he got up to when he wandered away from home. The why did not really matter, the only thing that mattered was that he was supposed to be watching her, and she was gone.

He called for her again, his voice hoarse from shouting her name. Still his heart was racing as he scanned the horizon, looking for any sign of her small form amongst the grasses, reeds, and trees that slowly built up into the swampland he frequently visited.

The faces he saw emerge from the swamp were familiar, but not the ones he was hoping to see.

“Deaglán, what’s - “ 

“Have you seen her?” Deaglán demanded, cutting Duckweed off. “My younger sister, have you seen her around here? She’s small, she has a smooth hide and dark patches with a light underbelly. I've been looking everywhere for her and I can't find her - have you seen her at all?”

The flurry of questions and description poured out in a rush, Deaglán almost tripping over his words as though speaking more quickly would make her appear before him any faster. Water dripped from Duckweed’s feathers and snout as she glanced towards Mama Osa, who merely made a deep rumbling in her chest as she crawled out of the water onto the bank. Neither of them had seen a young suchomimus fitting the description he gave.

Deaglán hissed under his breath, frustrated and angry more at himself than anything, and scared of the feeling of hopelessness that was clawing its way through his chest. The scent trail was still fading and with as much time as he had spent searching already, it was going to be getting dark soon.

“Hey, we’ll help you look,” Duckweed offered carefully, trying to give Deaglán just a little hope. “Mama Osa knows the whole swamp like the back of her claw. If your sister’s here, we’ll find her!”

Osa did not like the idea of leaving the two of them to fend for themselves. As comfortable as she had been resting beside Duckweed on the island, there were dangerous things in the swamp, and the two suchomimus were still quite young. Crocodilians just as long as Duckweed and Deaglán were, or longer. Maybe with the two of them together, though, they would be alright.

Time was of the essence in this circumstance, and splitting up did seem like the better idea. A suchomimus even smaller than Duckweed and Deaglán, unaware of the dangers the swamp presented, would be an easy meal for all manner of things, not just the large, ancient reptiles that prowled the waters.

Osa hummed in agreement and touched her snout briefly to Duckweed’s neck before she crawled back into the water.

Deaglán watched Osa disappear beneath the surface before he sent Duckweed a brief, thankful look. He started calling again, Duckweed’s voice joining his own as they began the painfully slow process of trawling the sprawling expanse of the swamp in search of a single young suchomimus.

The longer they searched, the less hope that Deaglán had and the more a painful, cavernous hole clawed its way into his chest. He had well and truly lost his voice now, leaving Duckweed trying over and over to get his younger sister to call back to them from the darkening swamp. Deaglán was exhausted, hungry, and his throat hurt - but it felt painful to even think about giving up, or even stopping to find food or rest. Like if he stopped now, he was accepting that she was well and truly gone. And it would be all his fault. He was supposed to be watching her.

“You’ve got some hanging moss in your spikes,” Duckweed said quietly when they paused at the edge of yet another emerging meadow. Deaglán huffed, the sound broken and wheezy. He didn’t care about moss. But… still, he shook himself and turned his head to pull it off of himself. The bony spikes that were growing along his spine were nothing but trouble, getting caught on things and making certain sleeping positions uncomfortable.

Duckweed gave the male a long, sad look. She had not been able to pick up his sister’s scent from the other smells of the swamplands for the entire time they had been searching. They had seen no sign of her, but she did not want to suggest that they stop looking either. She… did not have any siblings, not really, but she still could not imagine how painful it must be to be on the verge of losing someone so precious. The moon was rising, at least, which would give them a little more light to aid them in their search for however long into the night their search took them.

She gave him a light nudge to the shoulder with the back of her claws, her pupils reflecting in the moonlight. “We’ll keep looking. We’ll find her.”

Hers were not the only eyes flashing in the dark. Deaglán saw something strange in the water just over Duckweed’s shoulder, approaching them increasingly quickly. Eyes, too spread apart to be a suchomimus’s.

He tried to shout to warn her but hardly any sound at all came out, and instead he hooked his claws into her shoulders and tried to pull her quickly away from the water’s edge.

A behemoth of a crocodile surged forwards, throwing itself from the water with jaws parted wide. In a lightning-fast motion, it whipped its head to the side and seized the end of Duckweed’s tail in its mouth. It jerked, twisting back towards the water with as much strength as it could muster while Deaglán tried to hold fast on Duckweed’s shoulders. Duckweed at first grunted in surprise when Deaglán grabbed her, then roared shrilly in pain and terror as she was pulled between the two of them.

Deaglán could feel Duckweed slipping out of his grasp even as he tried to tighten his grip. He was going to lose her too. The thought both horrified him and filled him with rage.

A ragged roar ripped through his throat, the sound broken in pieces with as many times as he had shouted into the sky today only to get no response back. The crocodile did not care for the young sucho’s near-voiceless roars nor Duckweed’s cries as she tried to keep her footing and escape further up into the meadow grasses. She pleaded to Deaglán not to let her go, her cries becoming shrieks when the crocodile started to twist and roll with her tail still held fast in its jaws. It was not cruelty that drove the crocodile’s actions, just hunger.

Then, all of the sudden, Duckweed felt a pop and lurched forwards at the same time that there was a tremendous crash in the water. Duckweed fell against Deaglán before the pair scrambled away from the water’s edge, leaving the horrifying sounds of bellowing, thrashing, and hissing behind.

Through their terror the pair realised that they recognised one of the voices - Osa had been searching for them when the night had begun to set in, and rushed to Duckweed’s defense when she heard her young one’s sounds of distress.

The crocodile, though massive compared to Deaglán and Duckweed, barely reached over half of Osa’s length. It was only a brief fight, with jaws, claws, and tails lashing through the murky water, before the crocodile decided that this meal was not worth the effort. It struggled to get away from the furious mother, and Osa only relented in her aggressive chase when she was certain that it would not be returning.

In a rare show of speed, she rushed through the water and galloped through the reeds and meadow grasses on all fours rather than walking to her child’s side. Duckweed was whimpering as she clung to Deaglán, making the same tiny sounds that she had made when she was just a hatchling, calling to her mother.

As soon as Osa was within sight, Deaglán released Duckweed and the mottled green suchomimus rushed to her mother, hiding in her feathers as though that simple act alone would take away the ache in her shoulders and tail. Osa hummed deeply, soothing her as she rubbed the tip of her snout through the feathers on Duckweed’s back.

Deaglán’s heart was still hammering in his chest, adrenaline coursing through his veins. The world was slowing down again, though, and with the sudden calm came the harsh reality that he had been avoiding since he started looking for his sister in the swamplands. He turned his gaze towards Duckweed, curled even closer to Osa. Her blood was rapidly cooling on his claws where he had sunk them into her shoulders. This was his fault. He had almost lost his only friend because she had wanted to help him avoid facing the truth. 

If a monster like that was confident enough to go after a pair of juvenile suchomimus… his sister had not stood a chance. She was so much smaller than him. They had been looking for hours for someone who would never be seen again.