Abstraction ➳ Owen Grady

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ALLY STOOD BY the pay phone at the airport, lucky enough that her backpack had a few pieces of forgotten spare change in the bottom. She braced most of her weight on the wall and pressed in a ten digit number. The phone rang twice before someone picked up on the other end, she could vaguely make out the television in the background. "Mom?" Ally's voice cracked.

"Ally?" Her mom sounded sick with worry. "Oh my god, I saw what happened on the news." She bit down on the inside of her cheek. "Are you alright?"

Ally didn't know how to respond to that question. "Yeah-" she rubbed away a tear and looked over at Owen "-I'll be alright." It wasn't a very convincing answer, but for now, her mother would accept it. Alysanne grew silent, her eyes drifting up to a television screen displaying the time and date. It was December eighteenth. Ally bit down on her lip as if that could somehow magically stop the tears that wanted to well up in her eyes. In these past two days, Ally had come to realize just how much she missed her mother. "I'll be home for Christmas too."

Two days later, Ally's mom was at the airport with her sister, waiting to pick her up. Tears had begun streaming down both her and Ellie's cheeks as they saw her descending on the escalator, banged up but still pushing on. When Alysanne Sattler hugged her mother, it felt like everything had settled back into place and the world wasn't so bad anymore.

After tearful embraces, Ally looked up at Owen. Her mother, though, didn't need an introduction, not really, having heard of the infamous and nettlesome raptor trainer before. She loved Owen from the very beginning. He had saved her little girl and for that, he was already like a member of the family. Ellie had taken a liking to him as well.

In the backseat of Ellie's Subaru, Ally leaned her head on Owen's shoulder. He reached down and loosely entwined their fingers.

✹✹✹

Dr. Alysanne Sattler resumed her research, but instead of trilobites, she continued the work that had been started on Jurassic World on sauropods and theropods. Her new position was as an assistant professor at the University of Kansas, though it couldn't compete with the excitement of her previous job, after the incident though, something humdrum didn't seem like such a bad choice. She went in at seven and worked till five, taught two different classes three times a week and had plenty of time to research and even get the first words down for a memoir.

Owen easily got on with one of the wildlife reserves. He still worked with raptors, but these were much smaller and completely feathered. He was a natural when it came to working with animals and whenever Ally visited him, it made her heart swell to think how much he missed his raptors.

There was a particular barn owl, though, that had taken a keen liking to him during her rehabilitation process. One more than one occasion after her release, Owen and Ally had come home at night to find a single owl resting on the eave of their small home.

Soon even the media had forgotten about the incident at Jurassic World and everything fell into quickly settled into a routine, a quiet and comfortable routine.

✹✹✹

The summer storm woke her with a loud crack of thunder and then she noticed the empty side of the bed. The sheets were rumpled but still warm. Ally frowned and pulled herself from the bed.

He was sitting at the kitchen table, laptop open and on the Weather Channel's website. Ally stumbled into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes, "Owen? What're you doing up?"

Owen Grady looked over his shoulder, "I was just checking the weather," he responded, lightning flashed through the windows and seconds later there was a deep rumble of thunder. It wasn't the weather for Lawrence, Kansas though, but for Isla Nublar.

The abandoned island had a dark cloud and lightning bolt on the forecast for the next five days. Ally draped her arms around his neck and propped her chin up on his shoulder. Lightning flashed through the kitchen windows again. Owen frowned. "Blue doesn't like thunderstorms."

✹✹✹

"What's wrong?" Owen asked, hands working the tension from her shoulders as he leaned over her to look at the laptop screen too. It didn't necessarily make sense to him, just looked like some sort of graph with a few spikes here and there.

She had pulled more than a couple late nights at work but now this new discovery was looming over her conscious. Alysanne rubbed her eyes and looked at the live stream of data that was coming from the island's seismometer network.

"I've been getting a lot of seismic activity from Isla Nublar," she admitted. The sensors had been tied to her computer and it still picked up the transmission. She refreshed the application page and watched as another strong peak appeared in the graph.

Ally flipped between several applications, one showing tectonic plate motion, another with surface temperature and GPS data, and lastly the seismometer readings. Her eyes widened as she saw the pattern and pieced everything together. "Owen," she breathed, "I think the volcano is waking up."