Mysterious Blue Flower

Silvercloud treaded carefully on the soft moss, placing each step with care. Her gait, tense but also distinctly graceful, was almost silent. The moss, saturated with water from the winter thaw, soaked her bare, featherless feet. Silver was somewhat frustrated by this.

The grey female had been roaming the surrounding forest for a good hour. She had no deeper purpose in doing so - she was not looking for a new shelter, nor was she hunting. Her defining characteristic was simply an aversion to stagnation. She was far too nervous and emotional a representative of her species to be content with spending most of her day in one place.

Lately, luck had been on her side. She had managed to find a place that was the perfect location for someone like her. For some time now, she had been living in a small rainforest that seemed to be a strange, lonely fragment of the proper jungle on Isla Kela – surely, at one time, the two places must have been connected. The small, evergreen and densely vegetated forest abounded in various small animals (perfect prey for a lone utahraptor), but fortunately, it rarely became home to larger predators.

Lost in her own thoughts, Silvercloud definitely felt safe in this place. Judging by her dormant vigilance, a little too safe. Although she took each step carefully (more out of ingrained habit than caution), she did not pay much attention to her surroundings. She was sure that she would not encounter any animal larger than herself here, let alone one that could harm her in any way.

She was wrong. Well, partially. 

Just a few metres away from her, in the dense, impenetrable bushes, Dart was sleeping. Although still young (in fact, far from proper adulthood), the female had already had many unpleasant experiences with strangers, so she preferred to hide from their gaze. This was particularly difficult, given her bright blue feathers, visible from afar, which is why she chose the densely wooded jungle as her resting place.

Silvercloud, still enjoying her walk, was completely unaware of two things: that the bushes she was about to enter were really very dense, and that, at least for the moment, they were inhabited. It was no surprise. Even if she had been paying close attention to the path, she would probably have missed these subtle details.

The rest of the events unfolded at a comically fast pace. The raptor entered the thicket with optimistic hope, completely ignoring the dozens of small twigs that tried to convince her to turn back. Silvercloud did notice the intense blue colour shining through the lush green leaves, but she ignored it - after all, the jungle was full of colourful flowers and plants, wasn't it? So her next step fell right in the middle of that blue spot.

Dart jumped up from the ground, brutally awakened from her peaceful sleep. She did not know where the attack came from, but she was sure of one thing - she had to fight or flee. With an impressive leap, she jumped out of the thicket, wanting to increase the distance between herself and her potential aggressor. Immediately, as soon as she felt more solid ground under her feet, she assumed a threatening stance, ruffling the feathers on her head and tail.

Silvercloud, frightened by this sudden commotion, also jumped up, in a much more impressive manner - she landed on a low, heavily slanted tree to the left of the clump of bushes. She hissed reflexively, feeling her heart begin to pound in her chest. The sudden stress barely allowed her to think.

It took a good few seconds before either female realised they were looking at another dinosaur. One that, judging by the fact that it hadn't done so yet, was unlikely to attack. Dart's crest slowly began to lower, and Silvercloud stopped displaying her razor-sharp claws. The tension between them slowly eased.

The females looked at each other closely, paying attention to every detail. Although it was difficult to say where these conclusions came from, they quickly realised that, despite their radically different appearances, they actually had a lot in common. The silhouettes of both of them showed chronic tension and stress that accompanied them almost every day. Their scent, filled with cortisol and without a doubt without any admixture of the scent of any other individual of the same species, spoke volumes about the past of these females, frightened of each other. Since the events in the laboratory, Silvercloud had lost her confidence and curiosity about the world. Dart, on the other hand, who had been bullied in one way or another since her early youth because of her appearance, also had good reasons not to trust strangers.

Finally, encouraged by the increasingly comfortable silence, Dart decided to introduce herself. Silvercloud, after returning the courtesy, sincerely apologised for waking the albertosaurus from her sleep in such a terrible (though completely unintentional) manner. The conversation, though rather awkward at first, developed quite naturally. As it turned out, similar past experiences are a fairly strong basis for building relationships...

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