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The Spinosaur was discovered by Jessie on a hot July day, the sort of lazy, hazy day when most sensible creatures take shelter in the shade and pant. But she liked the heat, and was out foraging in the river for tasty weeds.
The first thing she noticed was the acrid taste of blood in the water.
He had drifted up against an outcropping of smooth river stones; quite battered and torn, and the flies were already gathering on his blood-dappled hide. The surprised sauropod's immediate thought was pity—and then that he had been attacked by some larger predator, and she immediately, instinctively, wanted to hide. And take this bedraggled, long-snouted, sad little thing with her. With great effort (not having hands and all) she brought him up onto the pebbly shore, rumbling a warning towards a too-curious crow.
"He may be almosht dead," she said between her teeth, attempting to pull him over her shoulders—"but I'm going t' try and make sure he doeshn't make it all the way there."
The crow merely blinked and tilted its head.
• • •
Her resting-place was a shady nook in a stand of ponderosa pines, a short distance away from the glade where her herd grazed, and screened from their gaze by the thick boughs of the forest. Jessie was the independent sort, perhaps foolishly, the sort often destined to roam alone. She already did spend quite a bit of time by herself, wandering the forest and seeking the lonely company of the chuckling river and rustling trees over her kind. Not that she was particularly antisocial—she simply liked quiet.
She deposited her limp burden, left to warn the others of a potential predator, and returned to settle down and wait.
For five days, the young dinosaur lay unconscious of the world around him. The sun passed overhead and the moon rose in its eternal cycle, waning thinner every night until on the fourth it appeared not at all. Jessie spent much of her time at his side, making a daily trip twice to the river to bring water in an old tortoise shell and pour it on his face, careful to not get it in his nostrils. At times he barely breathed, and she would press her great muzzle gently to his chest to feel the faint pulse and reassure herself.
Sometimes she wondered why she cared. He was a predator, after all. Spinosaurs probably ate baby brachys without a second thought. But it felt wrong to leave the limp, tawny body floating there to get devoured by compsognathus' and turkey vultures. Perhaps it was his smaller size, perhaps it was the pained furrow of his brow as he lay inert on the pine needles. Whatever it was, it stirred something soft in her, a pity that she had never known could extend to something as dangerous as this. He may have sharp teeth, she thought, but he wasn't simply an entity, as the herbivores often thought of the flesh-eaters. He came from somewhere. He had thoughts—though not at the present—and feelings, and perhaps a family somewhere. Maybe he set out looking for adventure.
