Only You

Gloam lounged against Rime, her body pressed against the giant acro’s flank with her head resting over Rime’s shoulder. They had gotten much closer since their first hunt together outside the Alpha lab. It felt almost as though things were back to normal, the way that they had been before the hunting accident that had spelled their division.

Almost, because Rime had been off again. Ever since the Atlantean’s “festival” at the house of death, human trinkets, and shiny stones, ever since they had crossed paths with the odd pair of cryolophosaurus, Rime had been quieter than usual. Withdrawn to her thoughts more than she so often tended to be. Gloam knew it was because of what the lantern-bearer said - that there were no more of them. There were no more of their kin contained and confined within the depths of the earth. That they were entirely alone, except for each other.

Gloam would have thought that that would bring Rime comfort. There were no others to be liberated before they suffocated in their human-made prison, yet it only seemed to make Rime sad. She had thought that, by this point, Rime would have come around to the realisation and would have refocused on their lives beyond Zone C again, and yet…

“I have yet to be graced by your voice this evening,” Gloam mused quietly. She pulled back just to faintly nip at the hide on Rime’s neck. Not enough to break the hide and cause injury, just a light peck before she again rested her jaw on Rime’s shoulder. “What are you thinking about now?”

Rime inhaled deeply and blinked, as though Gloam’s voice had drawn her from whatever accursed depths of the earth that her thoughts had gone to this time. “I want to hunt tomorrow,” Rime replied. Her voice rumbled deep in her chest when she spoke.

Gloam exhaled in amusement. That was what Rime was devoting all of her thoughts and silence to? A hunt? She was not entirely starved, but finding a fresh meal would be good.

“Then we will hunt,” Gloam agreed, and sighed deeply as she settled her weight against Rime. It was not a complex problem, she was not sure why the thought had been giving Rime so much trouble. They had hunted together dozens of times now; the problems of the past were far behind them.

Rime was not so sure that it was as simple as Gloam thought it was, though. She wanted to hunt something in particular. She knew that Gloam enjoyed the succulent, oily flesh of a therizinosaurus, and they were a challenging creature to hunt thanks to the length and strength of their scythe-like claws. They had to find one first, and then take it down. After that… Rime exhaled and rested her head on the cool, damp grass, her snout turned towards Gloam. After that, she had more plans that she hoped that Gloam would be amenable to.

Finding a theri large enough to satisfy their hunger proved to be easier than Rime anticipated. A feathered female, patterned similarly to migratory geese that came and went from the archipelago, stared them down with her claws opened in what was meant to be  a threatening display of ferocity that would ward the carnivores away from her. Red stained the white bib under her chin, and it could have been interpreted as a foreboding omen had Rime and Gloam not been watching her accidentally colouring her feathers with the fresh fruit that she had been eating before they made their approach.

Vitra’s display had an unfortunate consequence - both Rime and Gloam had been sizing her up for a fight, and both acros had noticed her unusually short claws. Long enough to be dangerous, still, but not as great a threat as others of her kind. It was not nearly enough to ward the pair of behemoths away, not when they had been once more perfecting their hunts and were working as a unit.

As ever, Rime drew the brunt of their prey’s attention while trying to dodge or otherwise stay out of reach of the theri’s claws. Each time Gloam drew close to try to land a bite on the theri - Vitra’s tail, her legs, her body, her neck, anywhere that Gloam could get access to without being in Rime’s way or in front of Vitra’s claws - Rime drew the theri’s attention back with a roar so that Gloam could get away safely. A bite, a swing of her quill-studded tail. More and more red stained the theri’s feathers as wounds were drawn over her body, and eventually, she grew weak enough that she could no longer stand up against their onslaught of attacks.

The theri fell, and Gloam and Rime basked in their shared victory. Rime had earned a few cuts on her hide but most were superficial, and none were so deep that they were in desperate need of attention. They ate side by side before the body began to cool and briefly, Gloam thought that things were returning to normalcy again and that she had imagined Rime's apparent unusual silence - until she realised that Rime was letting her eat more than Rime was actually eating, herself.

Something to ask about later, she decided. She did not want to spoil such a successful hunt when they had worked so beautifully together.

When they had eaten their fill, they left the carcass for smaller carnivores to scavenge. The sounds and bloody scents of their hunt had already attracted the attention of a few cryolophosaurus, but neither giant was concerned by the presence of the much smaller carnivores. They had barely left the corpse behind when it was swarmed by the considerably smaller dinosaurs, and Rime and Gloam left the sounds of tearing flesh behind as Rime directed Gloam across the island’s landscape.

Gloam would have rather laid down to sleep off the bulk of their considerable meal, especially given how rich and succulent the meat had been, but Rime had been uncharacteristically insistent that Gloam follow her.

The trek, which was faster than their usual pace, was uncomfortable at the start given how much they had recently eaten, but given Rime’s determination to reach their as of yet unrevealed destination, Gloam pushed through the discomfort of exercising on a full stomach which eventually settled out as they continued to travel.

Rime lead them away from the river valley that they had found themselves in and back into the lahar forest that flourished on the East-facing side of the mountains of Pera. Though there were not often many words shared between them when they travelled like this, this time there was a different kind of silence between them as they walked. Urgent, tense, like Rime could scarcely bear the time it took to get from where they were to where she was taking them. Birds scattered before them, singing again only when they had flown some distance away. Leaves and stones crunched quietly underfoot, accompanied by the quiet snap of small branches and twigs that they pushed out of their way when the forest dared to attempt to slow their progress.

If the sound of their footsteps was not enough, the strong scent of blood and viscera that clung to their hides was enough warning that no other dinosaur crossed their path, though occasionally they encountered the scent of others when they passed over old trails. These scents became fewer and harder to pick up the higher up the mountain they climbed, especially as the forest began to thicken and darken as the canopy overhead grew thicker and more densely packed with foliage. Night had again fallen by the time the forest had fully transitioned into a jungle landscape. Their view of their surroundings was restricted to just a few meters around them before it was cut off by dense, leafy foliage and the massive trunks of towering trees that reached far over their heads.

It reminded Rime an uncomfortable amount of the cramped nature of living in the Alpha lab, and Gloam felt no more comfortable about their surroundings than she did. Despite the discomfort that they shared, or perhaps because of that discomfort, Rime showed no signs of stopping or slowing down any time soon. She still had not spoken of their destination so Gloam still had to wonder - what exactly was the purpose of this frantic migration?

She was even more confused on exactly what Rime’s intent was when her insistent push forwards became more meandering, like she was searching for something in particular but was not exactly sure of what it was she was searching for, or where it was. Gloam continued to follow without question, if only because she was curious where this adventure was ultimately going to take them.

Rime did know that the location she was looking for was near here. She had come across this place once before, not long after she had first emerged from the Alpha lab and began her wandering across Isla Pera. When she had first come here, it had been such an awakening experience for her that she knew that she needed Gloam to see it, too.

Finally, she heard something familiar. Promising. The rush of water moving rapidly over the edge of the landscape and cascading into nothingness. They were almost there, and Rime assured Gloam of as much with a quiet rumble. It was the first bit of any real communication between them since they had departed the corpse, and Gloam found it to be only vaguely reassuring.

The dense jungle growth opened up abruptly to reveal a river rushing through the forest, and Rime was eager to follow it. She guided Gloam along its bank, following the flow of the river downstream. It was there that they finally reached what Rime considered to be their destination: a massive waterfall where part of the mountain fell away into nothing, leaving no trees or leafy plants to bar their view of the endless expanse that was revealed to the pair of acros. The sun had long ago sunk down below the horizon and had left the face of the island darkened by shadows, yet its light still painted the sky with a soft gradient of orange, teal, and the darkest, deepest blue, streaked by bands of purple and other, fainter shades of teal and blue. There was no moon, which left stars to populate the night sky so densely that not even an inch was left bare. The light of the stars was plenty enough to see by, and the acros could look on forever to see just how far the ocean stretched across the horizon, unbroken and in the same deep, dark blue-violet of the sky.

The pair gazed out across the night-blanketed island in shared silence, the roar of the waterfall little more than background sound. Gloam pressed her shoulder against Rime’s. She understood, she thought, why Rime had brought her here. This was what she had left the Alpha lab for. Gloam wanted space. Freedom. Rime had not wanted to leave, initially, but Gloam had not wanted to spend the rest of her life confined within the concrete walls of a tomb created by humans that they had been forced into at the moment of their hatching. Rime felt great connection to the bones of the ones who came before that they had left behind - this was what she felt a connection to.

She just didn’t understand why Rime was showing her this now.

Gloam’s jaws parted as she started to ask, but Rime spoke before she could. “I need to leave to look for something tomorrow,” she rumbled quietly. “Alone.”

Gloam pulled back, giving Rime a look of almost annoyed confusion. “What is going on with you?” Her voice was firm, but not harsh as she demanded an answer, but Rime seemed surprised all the same. Was it not clear?

Rime stepped back as well, mindful of their somewhat precarious surroundings, and turned her gaze more fully towards Gloam. Her mate’s expression was riddled with apprehension that Rime had not intended to impress upon her. Rime was silent for a moment, thinking about how to reply.

The truth was that Ghostlight and Tobias’s words had gotten to her, and opened up old wounds as well as creating fresh ones. It was as Ghostlight had said - she had not been focusing on what was right in front of her. She did not need to seek out the company of others of their kin. She had Gloam, but since the first whispers that there might be another lab locked deep below the earth, she had put all her focus on finding it, of finding another isolated population of their kin so that they could be freed as well. Gloam, despite her doubts, had done nothing but give her support and had followed her in search of something that was likely not there. That would never be there. She had pushed aside Gloam’s attention and affection for imaginary ghosts.

“I want… to find something. To bring you a gift, a surprise. I could not do that if you came with me,” Rime replied after a moment. “The theri. This place.” They were things of value, both tangible and intangible. More things that she had wanted to give to Gloam. “So that you would know what you mean to me.“

That was all that it took for Gloam to understand. This was about what the cryos had said at the festival. Their words had worked their way into Rime’s head, crawled under her hide and burrowed deep into her flesh like a festering wound. If Rime had been doing these things just because of what the cryos said then she would not have wanted them - but Gloam knew that, however misguided Rime’s present attempts to impress her were, her interest in Gloam had been seeded in Rime’s heart long before the meddling seers had spoken such things aloud.

Rime watched as the look on Gloam’s face shifted from one of confusion to one of amusement, and Rime shifted her feet uncertainly. Perhaps she had done these things wrong, somehow. She was not sure what she had done wrong. Although they lived in a place of plenty, now, she still wanted to do as she had seen her kin do in the Alpha lab - give her loved one a thing of rarity and of precious value.

But Gloam brushed the end of her muzzle tenderly along Rime’s snout, relaxed now that she knew that Rime was not going to do something so rash as to leave her on a mountain that they had hiked up so urgently. Their choice of prey also made sense, now.

“The hunt was very good,” she assured Rime, “and this place is beautiful.” When she drew back, her eyes were still light with amusement. “But I don’t need a gift. I have enjoyed spending this time with you far more than I do being doted on.” Rime's affection and attention were far more precious to her than a simple meal or any physical thing.

Rime’s hide warmed, and she huffed in embarrassed amusement. Now she just felt foolish. “We could have just stayed in the valley?”

Gloam hummed in agreement. “We could have. Though… “ She pulled away from Rime again to look out across the island and into the star-speckled night. “I am glad that you brought us here. This is… ” Gloam trailed off into silence, letting the scenery speak for itself.

Rime gently butted her head against Gloam’s jaw. “We can stay.”

After all, if Gloam was happy enough with only her company, then she was in no rush to depart. They had the whole night to themselves up here.