"CAWWRR!"
AH YES, the sound of a dying pterosaur. A call most predators of the primal age hated. It wasn't pretty, beautiful, or threatening by any means -- it was petty, and accomplished nothing more than bothering the many skulls that were forced to listen to it.
Riptide and Cora were sadly two of them.
As the injured (and loud) flyer squealed and screamed in desperation for an invisible savior, the male spinosaurus quickly slammed his foot upon the writhing flyer, entrapping it to the floor and sealing its fate. He snapped his jaws around the neck, applied as much pressure as a spinosaurus could, and twisted. An echoing crack rocked through the poor body before it seized, and stilled.
And I was there to collect the prize: a nice, still-screeching, pterosaur soul, ripe for the taking.
With a triumphant hiss, the spinosaurus nibbled upon the fallen creature's back and moved his catch over to Cora, who also bore a pterosaur in her jaws. But, unlike Riptide, she wasn't as happy about it.
"Bleh," Cora's snout wrinkled as the dead flyer's leathery skin rubbed against her pink tongue. "Remind me why we're killing this disgusting thing, and not hunting at the river?"
"Pest control," answered Riptide with a snort, gathering his kill as well, "and a fresh, warm breakfast for the two of us."
Cora growled. "Hrrr... It tastes like death."
Excuse me?
"Aren't you a meat-eater?" asked Riptide, beginning to grin through the lifeless corpse swinging beneath his maw. "Come on, it's not that bad! See-" He threw his head back, gobbling up his prey -- wings and all -- with one sharp pull and a hard swallow. His stomach gurgled at the strange meal entering his system, forcing the longsnout to garner a guttural hiss before it was fully welcomed. "T-There..." Riptide finally exhaled, licking at his chops. "Believe me... I've had worse."
"Yeah, no..." the female dropped the flyer on the ground and kicked it away. "I'm sure someone else will enjoy the flavor of scrawny, dried up skin and bone."
"Well, it's best we all get used to it," muttered the male, leaning down to pull Cora's kill to his feet. "These things have been gnawing at our buried kills for months. And Mother needs food to sustain herself from that sickness she has. At the rate this is going for us eight, we'll be starving throughout the winter."
Cora's jaws dropped. "So it wasn't Jagger! Oh..." Her tail drooped. "I guess I owe him an apology. I always assumed he was stealing our patch."
"Oh, I'm sure he has," chuckled Riptide, who playfully swished his thick tail from side to side. "He smells like fish everyday. I wouldn't be surprised if it was true-"
"C-CORA!"
Both longsnouts whirled to the sound; a creature suddenly burst out of the foliage with a heart-broken roar of pain. A roar they both knew by heart. But that wasn't what froze the two predators in their tracks; it was Thorn... and he was covered from head to tail in blood. The crimson color spoiled his scales and drooled down his body like tar from the deep grooves in his body. And it was real; their nostrils inhaled the familiar metallic aroma, which quickly flooded the forest surrounding them. That alone shook the longsnouts to the core.
"O-Oh my..."
"THORN?!" Cora rushed to him first, catching the male as he safely staggered into his sibling's arms. She delivered quick, frantic licks to the crying longsnout, her heart thrumming faster and faster as she uncovered each wound. From above, Riptide could see sharp thorns of splintered wood lodged into his brother's scales, and a fresh coat of mud oozing around the damages. It looked as if he had been thrown by something, but what?
"W-What happened?!"
"Who hurt you?!"
Thorn shook his head mid-sob. "I-I don't k-know!"
"What?"
"T-There were trees and stars..." Thorn cried, squeezing a claw over a blood-soaked bruise planted on his skull. "Hrrr... Something f-followed us... in the s-sky..."
To Riptide and Cora, the ones who cared to listen, nothing made perfect sense. Flying trees? Three stars? A circle in the sky? But the moment they heard:
"—Able's hurt—"
— the very foundation of their spirits shattered into a million pieces. Riptide had ordered Jagger to watch over their youngest brothers for the night while they went out hunting; clearly, that never happened. Mother wasn't home — she had gone out to Father's grave. Fossil was somewhere, and Speck and Ripple were still asleep. The last thing he wanted was to lose someone else, someone close. Someone he knew they could protect.
And, upon hearing Thorn, Riptide feared his nightmare would come true.
"Where is he?!"
"I-I don't... k-know! I—" the triangular-green longsnout continued to sob, fighting past the concussion. "N-Near the lake, b-by a tree! T-There's a clearing—"
"Did you leave a trail?" asked Cora. Thorn head bobbed, showing them his bleeding tail.
"I t-think I did it right... tail to the trees that I pass?"
"So we can track, yes," Cora nodded, looking up to Riptide. The elder male inhaled sharp, looking back over at Thorn's terrible injury, and shuddered.
"Cora—"
"I'll tend to him!" the turquoise spinosaur growled. "Go!"
Riptide burst into a sprint, thundering straight into the jungle, bellowing one ground-shattering roar. Each stomp taken shook the mud beneath his talons, his sail and tail whipping out of control from behind. Riptide's nostrils flared, sampling the faint scent of Thorn's markings from tree to tree. He rumbled in thanks to this — he was glad Mother taught his youngest how to leave a trail if ever in danger. For a predator of both day and night, blood was the strongest scent of all, and the easiest to disperse freely among the forest. Riptide just hoped Thorn's travels weren't far — if he timed this wrong a predator would easily get to him first.
Just the thought propelled him faster, a second screech from Riptide resounding the misty forest.
I'm coming, Able, I'm coming, he whimpered. Hold on.
The blood trail was starting to fail now. Riptide was forced to sniff lower and heavier, individually distinguishing scents from one other and the pheromones they gave off. He'd coil right, then left, slipping over toppled logs and broken saplings until finally pushing out into a clearing he'd never seen before.
The scent died here.
"Able?!"
Riptide's snout filled with falling dust and soot, a terrible concoction that made his eyes water and lungs gag. Narrowing his sights, Riptide snarled into the smog, keeping two eyes peeled for the ground and his instincts alert as he strayed across the expanse. It was deadly quiet out here. Not a trace of noise seemed to stir his soul, but the sound of his lonesome breath made everything sinister. Along with the debris of a flattened forest sculpture to the ground, Riptide had never felt so unsure of himself. So he dipped his head, his walk turning into a crawl, each jagged talon scraping the soil and coiling inward. The other end of the forest was starting to rise up ahead; tall black torches in a blanket of frozen gray cloud. Once his snout met the tipped edge of a torn tree, Riptide backed away, looking down at the other end of the circle.
"Hello?"
No reply. Riptide changed course to walk the edge of the clearing, now studying the flattened foliage that spiraled outward. To him, it looked as if a tall-neck had stepped on it. A big one, larger than anything Mother had ever hunted. His tail draped, skinning the earth, and his steps slowed to meet a diverging path. He didn't think of going this way until his toeclaw kicked something away. Something that didn't belong. So he picked it up.
All Riptide saw was a rock. A weirdly shaped rock. He felt its roughness between each talon, then sampled the scent that it held with interest. Volcanic, he wondered. Obsidian? Whatever it was, Riptide could not help staring at the shape of it, perplexed and curious as to why it looked like a heart—
Heart Rock. That's Thorn's rock. The one he gave to Mother...
He turned it over... there was an blood sprinkle on it. Warm. Fresh. And, by sniffing it, Riptide realized why.
Oh no... Oh no, no, no! Not again! Not Able!
His stomach had never lurched so hard before.
"ABLE!"
Clutching to the heart like a savage beast Riptide slammed into the open path, ignoring scent and sound just to reach the end. Riptide begged the stars for his youngest brother to be okay. He begged anyone to make sure of it. But he knew what he'd find anyway, his heart said so the moment he discovered Thorn's prized possession lost in the foliage. With tears in his eyes, and a tremor in his soul, Riptide faltered once when the path ended. All that he found there was a lake.
And a blood trail leading to the water.
⋯•●:●•⋯
What is the most sickening feeling to a mortal? I assume you know some by hand.
I have had the distinct pleasure of studying them all; Fear, anxiety, depression, helplessness, loneliness, regret, guilt... just to name a few. They exist when you least expect it, and they thrive beneath the flesh. But what they offer is far worse than pain. Far deadlier than death. They could kill you if you will it, but they won't. These feelings only take pride in agony, like a fresh pit in the stomach (an emptiness), suffocating your fragile heart until you plead the heavens to cave it out.
It comes when the living lies to the heart. When one cheats another, or steals. Some sense it before I arrive, hoping by some miracle they'd make it out alive. And some feel it when they know wrong is in the air, a terrible feeling indeed. But there is one that many do not understand — an emotion that only I create, and only I destroy.
The lump in the throat.
The single worst prodigy I could burden a living creature with. It is the emotion that knots all others — a power, like magic, that controls your darkest fears. The guilt. The shame. That horrible, gut-wrenching realization that the worst has already happened.
And as I watched our poor eldest longsnout stare upon the splatter of longsnout blood leading to the lake, I fear I had already given it to him.
Who's to say a storyteller can't burden the 'lump in the throat', too?
Riptide double checked. Triple checked. He sampled every pheromone, cell, and fiber strewn through the mud until his nares burned with that rustic heed. The scent was still Able's.
The longsnout roared his heart out for his dear brother, Able. He'd round the earth and hunt the seas just to prove himself wrong, for there was no greater fear than losing a brother. Riptide's family already lost a father. One was enough. Talons shredded through leaf and bark, as two adept eyes searched under every tree, rock, and cavern imaginable. He then scoured the lake for hours, hoping his luck would spawn the killer responsible.
Nothing.
It was as if he vanished without a trace.
Night came without warning. The fog had long receded back to its shadowy girth, leaving the scarred remains of a fractured forest. Trees had crumbled. Roots have uprooted. Schools of fish fled the wrath of the apex, but now they returned to watch, to hear his moans and complaints of terror rotting away at his selfless spirit. Riptide's talons were bloody and torn, his tail much the same, and his eyes were bloodshot from holding it all back. Over and over, he rounded that streak of blood leading to the lake, trying not to accept it.
It was coming; that gut-wrenching truth. A painful, sickening fact that even I was too frightened to whisper. And as the moon crested over the broken hope of the eldest longsnout, Riptide's spirit finally gave in. He took a breath, nodded, then wandered away.
He wished it was longer, that second of recollection. For the hours he spent hunting his brother's whereabouts, it took Riptide less than a minute to limp home, pushing past the cloud of ferns, and find himself before a new nightmare: his family.
They were all there. Excluding Mother, she had left to Fintail's grave that evening. But that made it worse.
Six pairs of eyes locked onto him. Riptide froze in place, moving the heart-shaped rock closer to his chest. He could feel his own heartbeat skyrocket, the gentle 'th-thumps' of life turning vicious and hungry. Riptide watched Fossil take a step left of the group, his ruby eyes raising and falling as if expecting something more. He peeked over at Jagger, then refaced Riptide, pale on the scales.
"Where is he?"
Riptide's underjaw jutted out an inch. His mind struggled to find something to say; it couldn't. All he could see was that splatter of red on the beach of the lake. But he willed on — begging, whimpering — fighting his flaccid tongue as if withholding a cursed spell. It was no good. Soon, a strange pressure began growing in the back of his skull, squeezing the eyes from his skull, pushing his heart a foot deeper into his gut. Deep enough for those pounding drums to rattle his body like an earthquake. He knew this feeling, this impossibly powerful wreath of torment. It had found him here, now.
The lump in the throat.
He watched Cora stand up and motion toward him, each step taken only burdening the eldest with further pain. Riptide's jaws then squeezed, holding that pressure, building it, feeding it until he could not fight it anymore. His head suddenly swayed, left to right, pointed lips pursing and trembling the closer she came.
"I-I'm..."
Cora's blue eyes started to crack, too. She recognized that look. She sensed that pain. And the scent on his scales — that was all Cora needed to know what happened. He never found Able. Bobbing her head, she drew her turquoise snout over his trembling neck and curled inward, embracing her brother for as long as he needed.
Riptide's grip on the heart-shaped rock suddenly loosened; it struck the ground with a soulless thud. One violent inhale later, his jaws fell open, a silent cry slipping past his jaws. He slumped to the ground before his sister could react.
And broke into tears.