Spyglass

The warm, gentle sun shined brightly overhead, intermittently warming the hide of an irritable young utahraptor as she strode throught the dappled light that filtered down through the forest canopy. Petrichor had decided that she would walk herself around the territory again. Glass was able to take care of herself without any babysitters, so why couldn’t she do the same?

The young utahraptor paused, listening and after one sound in particular. She could hear it, faintly. The quiet burbling of a shallow river which meandered through the forest that sprawled across this part of the island. A bit of respite, a quiet place to get a drink and maybe something to eat while she reveled in her escape. In truth, she had decided that she needed to go on this adventure because she was beginning to feel the stifling weight of her grandmother’s authority. As she had grown older, she had noticed more and more that Glass’s authority was not just getting the clan to do as she ordered - it was that she wanted to control every aspect of their lives, and would do whatever she felt necessary in order to maintain that control. It was infuriating sometimes, and Petrichor found little ways to rebel to make living under her grandmother's ever-watchful gaze just a little bit more tolerable.

Like going off on her own. Again.

It hurt to not be her grandmother’s favourite. Belltoll still held all her attention, and Petrichor knew deep down that this petty act of rebellion was unlikely to earn her any favours. If anything, it was more likely to earn her a verbal lashing for doing something so foolish as this. This was not even a place that she had been before, only heard of from her aunts and uncles as they discussed and described features of the area. This was apparently a prime hunting ground, though what the prey was, Petrichor wasn’t sure.

The young utahraptor tilted her head. She could just hear the sound of running water. She was going in the right direction then, that was a relief. It would not be long before she reached her destination.

When she reached the river, it was quite unlike anything that she had seen, and nothing that she would have ever expected simply because she did not have the worldly experience to even begin to conceive of it. It was not just a shallow river studded with rocks and bordered by thick forest foliage, as she had heard it be described. There was an odd stone-like structure with supports as thick as tree trunks; it had once crossed over the river but now fallen in, broken into pieces that almost made a perfect ramp up onto the structure, where it continued across the landscape like a winding stone river speckled with patches of grass growing in the asphalt cracks. Metal boxes, considerably larger than her and painted in bright colours that were weathering away to rust and mildew, sat abandoned and scattered along the length of it - some fallen into the water, where twigs and branches had become caught on the crushed metal frame. Aquatic plants grew inside, growing up around the metal before the current took the stalks and pulled the plant to grow pointing downriver. There were openings along all faces of the boxes, yet some were open and others appeared to be shielded by a clear, very faintly blue-green material. Some of it was intact but most of it was broken, either by the impact of the fall when the structure collapsed or simply damaged by weather and time.

Petrichor recognised it as her grandmother’s namesake - glass. Her grandmother had a small collection of fragments of this reflective material, and Petrichor felt a tug at her heart that was so strong that it felt like it flipped her stomach. She knew she had done something wrong by wandering off again, but maybe… maybe if she brought Glass back a gift, she would be forgiven. Maybe if she brought back enough of it, she would even gain Glass’s favor. Maybe even more than Belltoll.

The thought filled her with an absurd amount of childish confidence - arrogance, even. Pink, bright eyes watched from above as Petrichor studied the edge of the river. The utahraptor had no idea that she was being followed, and had been for some time. She was at least smart enough to test the quality of the riverbank before getting too close. The water was shallow - but she was small. How well could the utahraptor swim?

Petrichor turned her gaze downwards towards the water’s surface, trying to see through the ripples and her reflection down to the bottom of the water to see if any of the glass was close enough that she wouldn’t have to swim. She squinted against the bright reflections, only to relax her eyes after a moment as clouds - and fog? - started to roll in. The shadows in the sky made it very easy to see that no, she was not so lucky for there to be glass in reach right here. She was upriver from the collapsed section of the bridge, and none of the glass had made its way to the bank here.

The obvious answer would be to climb around the bank and up to where the bridge was still intact and just harvest glass from one of the cars there, but she was set on pulling pieces from the cars in the water. Even from a distance she could see that they looked special: slightly warped, but the constantly flowing water had kept them clean and shiny except for speckles of algae, which she could easily wash off. They were the perfect gift to get her grandmother's attention.

And all she had to do was reach them. There were a few moss-covered boulders strewn across the river that she would be able to hop across, and Burdock watched, quiet and curious and patient as Petrichor stood up taller to try to get a better view so she could choose the best route to take. Burdock tilted her head faintly. Surely, nothing bad would happen to the young utahraptor on her quest to obtain a placatory gift.

Petrichor huffed quietly. The fog that was rolling in over the water seemed to have come out of nowhere, and it was making it hard to see exactly where she needed to land if she were to successfully jump from the bank to a boulder. She did not have time to sit here and wait all day for it to clear up, and she wasn’t going to be dissuaded from her goals by some wet air. Petrichor took a few steps back, gauging the distance, before she ran forwards and leapt.

The fog was deceiving, though, and she landed just short of where she intended to. Her feet slipped on the damp moss and algae that grew on top of the mostly-submerged boulder. Panic flared briefly in her chest as she scrabbled over the stone and moss, using her front claws as well to grab at its surface. Her heart was racing when she made it on top of the stone and, when she realised she was safe, she laughed quietly at herself. That was ridiculous, there was no need to have panicked like that. The water wasn’t even that deep or fast, and she had made it onto the boulder perfectly fine. No one was around to see her fumble.

The next rocks were closer and easier to jump to. Large, broken pieces of asphalt made stable surfaces even more populous the closer she got to where the bridge was collapsed into the water, and from there, she could climb on top of one of the cars. She had choice pick now, she just had to be careful to not fall into the water as she leaned over to prise a large shard from its socket in the broken side window.

As Petrichor worked on the glass, taking it carefully in her teeth and pulling her head this way and that to try to wrestle it free, Burdock watched. These hunting grounds were hers, and her prey was well and truly distracted. The sounds of glass squeaking as it scraped against teeth and metal disguised her footsteps as she approached, walking along the fog-dampened asphalt of the bridge above. It was a straight drop down from the right side of the bridge onto the car that Petrichor was perched on, and all the young cryo had to do was make it there without alerting the utahraptor.

Just as Petrichor pulled a considerably sized fragment of glass free from the window slot, just as she enjoyed her brief moment of triumph, a heavy body dropped onto the car beside her. Petrichor squawked in alarm, the sound partly muffled by the glass still held in her teeth. Burdock reeled for a moment - the drop was a lot further than she had thought and her ankles and knees suffered for it.

The sudden, forceful impact caused the car to shift on the rubble it had been perched on for so long, ripping Petrichor from her state of confused fear as she tried to find purchase on the smooth, slippery metal, desperate to keep from falling off. She couldn’t swim well yet, she could only run.

Burdock snapped her jaws a hair’s breadth away from Petrichor’s hide as the utahraptor turned and slipped down the back of the car onto the trunk. She winced as she lunged after her prey, her right ankle complaining more sharply than her left. Her miscalculation cost her the bite - Petrichor was just barely out of reach.

The utahraptor thought only briefly about how far she needed to jump to reach the next surface. Her mind was racing, looking for an out that didn’t end with her in the water and swimming for her life. She leapt the short distance to the closest pile of asphalt, feeling Burdock’s teeth snap just short of her again. Her claws scrabbled against the steeply inclined surface.

She scurried across the rubble, only to fall when Burdock hooked her claws around one of her legs. She hissed quietly when the edge of the glass cut into the corners of her mouth, driven backwards by the impact. It was fortunate that it hadn't shattered between her teeth. No time to think about it. Petrichor twisted and kicked at Burdock’s face, terror shooting through her when her eyes landed on the devilish appearance of the larger cryo.

Burdock hissed and pulled away from the wicked hooks of Petrichor’s kill claws when the utahraptor lashed out at her, but the shift in weight sent another twinge up and down her leg which made her stagger back. Petrichor took advantage of the temporary distraction and twisted again, scurrying away as fast as she could and leaping with as much force as she could muster to make the vertical jump up to the lowest intact section of asphalt of the ramp-like section of the bridge.

Burdock glared up at Petrichor who dangled from the bridge just briefly before she managed to haul herself up. The cryo snapped her jaws, furious that one miscalculation had been enough to cost her her prey.

Petrichor stood, panting, blood dripping from the corners of her mouth as she stared back at the smoke-patterned cryo. She inhaled deeply, her pale gaze latched onto the cryo, as she released a loud and drawn-out, threatening, snake-like hiss.

Burdock was unfazed, and snarled in response. She was already looking for a way back up, though she knew now that the hunt likely was forfeit. A sprained ankle would slow her until it healed, but that didn’t stop her from trying. The water was cold when she slipped into the river, but soothing on the swelling joint.

Petrichor watched for a moment more before she realised that the cryo was swimming towards the left side of the riverbank - her side, where the bridge connected to the land. She didn’t have any more time to stand there catching her breath. She scrambled up broken asphalt and raced along the roadway towards the trees as quickly as she could, blood still dripping down from the corners of her mouth, down her chin and neck, and onto the ground all the while. It would make an easy scent trail for Burdock to follow, but that was fine. As soon as Petrichor reached the treeline, she was safe again. There were rocks to jump on top of, trees that she could easily leap up the branches to get out of her assailant’s reach. And when she reached her family again, Burdock would be no match for the noble clan of Glass.