Cavedweller

Click’s first conscious, waking thought after he hatched into the world was that he was alone. There were eggshells around him, those from his cradle and from others, but there was not another suchomimus in sight.

He could… hear them though. His siblings. The only two left, their eggs rocking and wobbling in the roughly cobbled-together nest as they worked on pipping through the tough shells that encased them.

He waited quietly, patiently, instinctively pressed low into the disorganised nest to hide himself. When his siblings whistled occasionally from within their eggs, he whistled back, encouraging them to join him. He was so alone right now. His stomach was still full of nourishing yolk from within the egg and he would not know hunger for another day or two, but something told him there should be others here. That it was strange that there was no one else around. There was not even the scent of another suchomimus on the nest, save for something very old.

When finally his siblings joined him, they huddled together, just the three of them as they waited for something to happen. Anything.

Their hope was naïve, their waiting futile. For all their patience, they were awarded… nothing. Unbeknownst to the hatchlings, the nest that they had hatched into had been abandoned some time ago. After they were developed, yet before they could hatch.

Whenever there was a strange sound that came from near to the nest the trio shrank together, finding comfort in this small amount of companionship. When an alarming shadow passed overhead, they fell silent. Still they waited, hoping to one day be greeted by a warm and loving face, coming to bestow upon them the gift of their first real meal. Those days passed by slowly, and they became increasingly restless. They were not so much aware that no one was coming, but feeling the instinct to find something to eat since nothing was provided, and their stomachs were emptying. They had to move before they were too weak to do so.

Click and his siblings were naturally drawn to the sound of water as it burbled quietly, gently, over smooth stones. Cold spring water hit his stomach with force when he swallowed it down. It would satisfy the worst of their hunger pangs for now, but they needed sustenance if they were to survive.

Downstream of the trickling water lead to uncertainty, but upstream, there was shelter. The cold, clean, clear water originated from a small, dark cave with a low roof. The face of the cliff was covered in moss and lichen, framed by ferns and trees which drank thankfully from the constant source of water.

The light of day was bright and harsh on Click’s eyes and made his pale, fragile hide itch. He, and the others, elected to enter the cave, if only to escape the sun.

The blanketing shadows were at first a relief, bringing a welcoming coolness and lower light levels which made it easier to see. Click followed his siblings along the winding stream, hoping for food to appear or make itself known, but nothing ever came of their adventure but fatigue. They curled up together, as they had in their nest, and rested.

There was no sense of time in the dark. Minutes, or hours, or perhaps days came and went like this, with the trio becoming lost in the depths of the cave and resting and finding no relief from the growing hunger in their bellies. At one point when Click woke, one of his siblings did not rise with the other.

Click’s stomach growled as he and his remaining sibling stared at the one still laying on the stone. There was a source of food, laying in the darkness of the cave. Click leaned forwards, jaws parted to tentatively take a bite, only pausing when he felt the faintest whisper of a breath from his sibling. They were alive, if only just.

It was enough to put the thought from Click’s mind, and he and his remaining sibling turned to wandering the cave, their search seemingly unending.

The layout was beginning to become familiar to Click, and navigating was becoming both easier as he learned how to travel in the darkness and harder as he grew more hungry and weak. At some point, he realised he was alone. His were the only footsteps he could hear as his claws clicked against the cool, damp stone. There was no body walking through the dark beside him, he could not even smell his sibling anymore. 

When he grunted, it was a small and high-pitched sound of distress. The cry echoed briefly through the cave, with no answer but the shuffling and fluttering of tiny wings. Bats, disturbed by the sound.

A sharp, intense spike of hunger brought on by the signs of life urged him to grunt again. More sounds of wings and chittering creatures. He hurried towards them on wobbly legs, grunting and following the sounds through the cave to their source.

When he left the narrow tunnel and emerged in a larger and unfamiliar cavern, he grunted again, aiming to cause the bats to stir once more. The chittering bats were still far away, but directly above him. Every grunt he made told him the same thing: they clung to the ceiling, far from his reach.

The disappointment of being so close and yet so far from finally sating his hunger was almost worse than the hunger itself. Despondency weighed heavily on him, almost physically dragging him to the ground. He took a step back only for the algae-slick stones beneath his unsteady feet to send him crashing into shallow water that trickled over smooth pebbles.

Click could have just lain there forever at that point. He was too tired to get up and continue this useless search anymore.

Then there was a ripple, the most gentle disturbance in the water, slowly drew his attention from his exhausted melancholy. Something was moving in the water. It was small, very small, and fast. Tiny fish which had been scared away by the sudden movements were slowly swimming back towards the edge, picking over the pebbles and stones for what food they could find. There had been food in the water this whole time, but neither he nor his siblings had the experience to know.

Click reflexively snapped his jaws when the feeling of movement got closer to his snout. He was awarded a mouth full of - nothing. Just more cold water. He tried again with the same result, and again only to end up with a pebble held fast in his jaws. He flicked it away and rolled to his feet, a surge of hunger and hope-driven energy encouraging him to keep trying even though he was exhausted.

Even if he couldn’t catch the fish, the water revealed other things as he poked his snout amongst the rocks. Smooth-shelled snails which retracted into their shells when he tried to pull them off of the stones that they clung to, though his jaws were too weak and his teeth too small to as of yet crunch into them to reach the meat he so desperately wanted and needed. Once, when he overturned a stone, he was rewarded with something else -  a cave-dwelling crustacean, a crayfish of some kind wearing pale, keratinous armour. He snapped at it, but even if his teeth could pierce the carapace, he couldn’t get past the claws that the crayfish wielded. Click squealed when it pinched the tip of his snout and vigorously swung and shook his head until it released its grip and sailed through the air. It landed back in the water with a distant, quiet plop.

He panted quietly, exhausted again from the exertion of his tiny, shadow-cloaked hunt. He was so hungry and the food was right here, he just couldn’t get it. The longer he stood still though, the more subtle vibrations he began to feel again as fish started to return to the area they had quickly evacuated.

That… was the key, maybe.

Slowly, as quietly and gently as he could, he dipped his snout into the water and parted his jaws. A trap laying in wait for anything to swim through. The fish swam away from the disturbance again, but the longer he waited, the more he began to notice the vibrations growing closer again. His legs were starting to shake with the effort that it took to stand so still for this long, and his jaw ached, but still he waited. He could almost taste the fish.

Click’s jaws SNAPPED shut around a small, wriggling body. He ripped it from the water and stumbled backwards onto more dry land. It slipped from his jaws and landed wetly on the stone, flipping and wriggling and trying desperately to get back to the water. Click snagged it again, following the sounds of its struggles.

It was a minnow - a tiny, useless fish to anything else, but a feast for one as small as him. He scarfed it down as quickly as he could, panting with the effort and the size of the meal that he had had after his stomach being empty for so long. He sat back on the stone, drained of energy, but at last, full. For now.

There were more quiet ripples in the water as the cave’s tiny, near-sightless inhabitants returned to the site of the disruption, looking for scraps that had been left behind in the water. When Click recovered enough energy to try again, there would be more for him to hunt. This cave, and others, would provide him with everything he needed, save for companionship.