Alsimada and Damien Chronicles

[Azonthus]

stefan de velociraptor
everpresent
omniannoying
guy
Posts: 12
(6/8/04 8:08 pm)

Alsimada and damien chronicles
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thread with the much aclaimed habitat partners series

stefan de velociraptor
everpresent
omniannoying
guy
Posts: 17
(6/8/04 10:38 pm)
A&D 1: predator and prey
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Alsimada darted through the lush undergrowth of the forest, scales snaring momentarily on thorns and splinters as the struthiomimus ran, close to the ground. She had dipped in a stream a few hundred metres back to try and shake her scent from the noses of the pursuing teams. Staying low to the ground she ran swiftly along a shallow ditch that looked, by the pebbles that littered it’s base, to be the remains of some ancient stream. Alsimada could hear the shouts and whoops of the ‘hunters’ behind her and paused momentarily to gauge the distance between them and her, as well as the distance she had to run to reach safety, the base of the waterfalls. The young dinosaur was flushed with the excitement of the game enjoying the thrill of the chase as much as those who sought her and she bounded from fallen tree to mossy rock with infinite grace. There was a loud yell from behind her as the hunters picked up the scent again, they seemed to be pressing into a group. Alsimada grinned and stopped, running sideways for a few seconds before sprinting back to her trail and running the other direction. She repeated this. Making sure that the trail leading straight ahead was the strongest, before taking a path that led her back on a forty-five degree angle to the direction she had come. She ran for a few more minutes in a wide arc, returning to the vector she had been travelling before, following the brilliant sun that shone down through the lush canopy, glinting through the remains of the morning dew. She jumped sideways occasionally to throw her scent over the floor, confusing even more the light trail that she left. Back behind her she heard a murmur of confusion, the hunters had obviously fallen for the trap that she had laid earlier, hopefully the series of false trails would slow the groups enough for her to escape out of their reach. The ditch she was following had begun to widen and slant, opening out into a wide Gully that led almost straight towards a distant murmur, the wide polongo, the greatest river on the island. Alsimada sprinted the last few metres to the wide sloping bend that marked the beginning of a straight, broad canal through the forest. It was only full of water during the rainy season and today not more than a trickle of moisture meandered in between the stones. The canal began to flow swiftly downhill and she darted, once more close to the pebbles on the side of the dry bed, near the overhanging ferns where her green and gold markings were less evident than against the stark white stones of the riverbed. She came to the river sooner than she had anticipated, reaching the base of the hill at a run, almost toppling into the water at the wide bank. She stopped a moment, looking for a trail through the rainforest that led towards the city but found none.
So be it, she thought I’ll just have to take the rough road
As she began to move again there was a sharp crack behind her and as she spun to see what it was her wide eyes met with Damien, one of her better friends. Behind him stalked Tabith, a young troodon. Damien was half-naked, with only short breeches on, dark ochre and tree-sap smeared across his body as crude but effective camouflage. As she turned to run she wondered whether his dress would have insulted some of the other humans. His nudity was nothing to her, in fact she had often seen him completely naked as they swam together in the slow pools of the upper polongo. She found the custom of humans dressing themselves almost amusing, and both apparel and bodies, including those parts that humans tabooed, were of interest to most young dinosaurs, who compared their own bodies to such strange creatures. However the thoughts lasted a mere moment as she spun, for today Damien was no friend, his whoop of triumph behind her as she began to run told her that much. No, he was a hunter and she was the prey. Darting a look behind her as she ran she saw him pounding along, feet digging deep into the peat moss of the forest. Turning back to her front she increased her pace, joy bubbling in her spirit as the saurian equivalent of adrenaline coursed through her flesh. It would be a long chase and she was going to enjoy every second of it.

[Azonthus]

stefan de velociraptor
everpresent
omniannoying
guy
Posts: 18
(6/8/04 10:39 pm)
A&D 2 drugs and growing up
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Alsimada reclined on her specially built couch, nursing the several bruises along her flank she had received as she tripped over a hidden dip in the forest. The fall had stripped her of several scales and the bare flesh stung as it was exposed to her delicate prod.
“I think I’ll live.” She looked up at Damien who sat opposite her in a comfortable armchair “I don’t think I hurt anything else. Anyway, I should have been looking where I was going. You sure can run fast. It’s been a while but I never remember you being able to even near keep up with me before”<br>“Thanks, I’ve been working on it” he replied, laughing. He pulled up the hem of his crimson robe. His legs were cut and bloody from their exposure to whipping vines and sharp sticks but Alsimada could easily see that there was no fat on them. The muscle was harder than her own. The boy was maturing faster than her, a phenomenon that was a problem for many humans and dinosaurs that grew up together. While humans grew at an exponential rate, dinosaurs, for every year a human grew, would mature only a quarter of that. In that sense, most of the smaller dinosaurs went through ‘puberty’, as she had heard the human version of the saurian body changes referred to, at around twenty to thirty years of age, only being sexually mature at forty or fifty. This meant that humans would often be adults while their best friends were still little more than young teenagers. It was possibly this that meant that many human children on Dinotopia did not lose their childlike love for games and fun until they were well on in life, the influence of their saurian counterparts aiding them in holding onto the dearest part of Dinotopian life for much longer than their counterparts on the world outside.
At that moment, Dimitri, Damien’s father walked in with a small plate of leaves dipped in hot water. The aroma of the crushed vegetation was extremely strong. Alsimada’s mind leapt as she recognised the aroma. Pth’anka. Sometimes Arthur Denison had called it, what was it now, Marijuana. Apparently the drug had a different effect on humans, but for dinosaurs it was a definite treat. According to Arthur’s Research, the pleasure sensors in a dinosaur’s brain were much more developed than a human’s, and, as a result the effects were multiplied many times over. However the drug was a special commodity on the island with only a few fields a year worth on the island, much the same as Cacao. The drug was therefore only used on special occasions. Dimitri placed the bowl on the side table.
“ Now you two know what this is. I should also tell you, especially you, Damien” he said, turning to his son “ that this is a rare privilege. Savour it while you can, it should get rid of those aches and pains for a while, but be warned you’ll probably have a bit of a hangover when it wears off, even diluted like this. As they say, ‘handle at your own risk’ I just can’t say how proud I am of you two. You showed the greatest spirit ever seen in the Waterfall hunt. Much better than me when I did it. Enjoy”. He left the room, quietly shutting the door. Alsimada looked up at Damien expectantly. He politely bowed is head and gestured to the steaming bowl
“ Winners first”
She picked up a little leaf cup, woven especially for the ceremony, for as with all such matters, the dinotopians had a system that prevented misuse. Though relatively harmless, bingeing on any sort of drug was a bad thing. All children on the island learned the self-discipline at an early age to not partake of too much, and hence alcohol was a regular part of the diet for many children. Only rarely did a situation occur when a human or dinosaur would over indulge in mentally altering substances, and this was normally a result of a simple under-estimation in one’s tolerance to a drug. There was one major exception to this. Nicotine was forbidden on the entire island, not because of it’s effects on humans, but because the drug was lethal to almost all kinds of dinosaurs whose avian anatomy was much less adapted to the effects of the drug. Even inhaling a deep breath of passive cigar or cigarette smoke could cause potentially fatal damage to the nervous system of a dinosaur. So smoking was mutually not performed for the safety of the island. Alsimada dipped the cup into the sweet smelling water and gulped down the liquid with an elaborate gurgle, passing the little container to her best friend. He took it gratefully and dipped the cup and drank as the first soft waves of sensation washed through her body. One of her cheekier friends who had partaken of the drug had called it ‘an orgasm that lasted twenty minutes’ causing most of the humans in the group to split their sides laughing for quite some time. However, Alsimada guessed that this was a bit of an overstatement, knowing that her saurian friend could not have experienced both for the comparing. (More on that in a later story).
She relaxed as the first deep, drowsy wave rolled over her.

Alsimada woke up the next morning with only the slightest headache, the last ten hours all a pleasant dream. The aches and pains from the hunt had disappeared entirely and she was curled comfortably on the carpet with Damien snoozing in a similar ball next to her. She almost laughed at how like her he looked, head tucked on his knees, arms circling his legs. The headache grew a little and she poked her head up on her long neck, looking around. A large bowl of water was placed near her shoulder and she plunged her head into the bowl, tiny clear membranes sliding down to cover her eyes, an evolutionary cut off that had allowed her ancestors to fish with their long necks. The icy water seeped under her scales as she took a long drink from the bowl, the headache vanishing under the invigorating chill. She curled back up and shook the water clear of her head. Eying Damien she decided he had slept long enough. She softly took hold of the bowl of water and held it above his head…<br>

[Azonthus]

stefan de velociraptor
everpresent
omniannoying
guy
Posts: 19
(6/8/04 10:40 pm)
A&D 3, love and celebration
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Alsimada stood in the kitchen watching Damien dry the last droplets of water off his face. Her ruse had worked rather too well and she had spent the last five or so minutes cleaning up the water that had been sinking into the carpet. Both Damien and his parents took the joke in good humour, though, and within minutes they were talking happily together again. Damien wanted to talk more about the hunt of yesterday but he refrained himself for her sake. Both knew that one had a genetic background radically different to the other, one being herbivorous and the other carnivorous sometimes caused differences and divides between humans and saurians as the dinosaurs had much less natural tolerance for blood, sweat and pain than the mammals who had evolved in a kill or be killed system. Instead the two chatted about what they were going to do today. They had just decided to have a break from everything and go and rest up and read up in the great library when Dimitri walked in with a long blue robe slung over one arm and a soft creamy coloured band of cloth over the other.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said “but as tired as you are, you both have a final thing to do today”<br>He walked over to Damien and placed the clothes at his feet. “You should put these on. They used to be mine, but I’d say that you need them a little more than me”<br>Alsimada could sense something was up. Though Dimitri was outwardly concealing his emotions very well, she could almost see a faint glow of turbulence radiating from his body. He was either very scared, worried or immensely happy. Alsimada secretly hoped it was the latter. It took a lot to scare the big, formerly Russian, man. Dimitri left the room and Damien obeyed his father, stripping down to singlet and leggings before sliding the heavy robe over his head. The soft, thick fabric concealed his form amazingly well, and his movements seemed to ripple and flow rather than jerk, as was his habit.
Alsimada was startled at the change it wrought over him. He seemed so sophisticated with it on, almost as if a scarred gigantosaurus suddenly became a smooth witted saltosaurus. Only his bright face and callused hands remained showing. At that moment Dimitri re-entered the room and looked his son up and down, this time visibly struggling to contain some emotion. He picked up the band of cloth from where it lay. And with a gesture motioned for Damien to raise his arms to the horizontal. The man wound the cloth in an x shape around Damien’s torso, finishing with a few loops around the waist, tying the sash at the back. He produced a comb from somewhere inside his shirt and combed Damien’s hair in the swept forward manner that made the boy look even more startled, and a tiny flush of embarrassment hinted in his cheeks as Dimitri stood away again.
“ Now you are ready. I suggest you head off to the library. I doubt you’ll have time for any R&R though.”<br>Glancing at each other the two friends proceeded out the door and up towards the great library. A few people turned to watch the boy and dinosaur as they walked purposefully up to the great oaken doors. Alsimada reached out her neck and placed her head on Damien’s shoulder as he grasped the time worn handle, the gesture equivalent to a slowing hand.
“Damien, I just want you to know, that if I scream ‘run’ at any point in time, feel free to follow me” they both laughed as he turned the handle.

Inside the foyer of the library was completely transformed. A huge semi-circular table stood in the centre of the foyer and the normal charts had been removed in favour of long hangings, resplendent with the habitat symbols of the island. Around the table stood people with beaming faces. Some of the pair’s greatest heroes were there. Frail old Arthur Denison, leaning on the arm of his son Will, the middle-aged man resplendent in his full master’s uniform. Magnolia and Draco were there to and, greatest of all, standing above the others, scales bleached white by time, eyes blazing with knowledge and faith stood brokehorn, the jagged stump of his horn the only feature not worn smooth by the sand of time. Then, on the edges of the table stood their parents Dimitri and Kara stood, grasping each other’s hands tightly while Mino and Petra stood, scales raised with emotion, necks almost intertwined.
Alsimada gaped, tongue lolling out the side of her mouth. A soft smile rose on Arthur Denison’s face as brokehorn spoke
“Alsimada and Damien. You finally made it.” A lopsided grin crossed his face as he continued speaking “you have come here ignorant, a thing few do, yet you seem so, eh, ready. You two have been close to one another since I watched you play together in the sands of the polongo almost two decades ago. Today comes a choice. Due to your outstanding performance in the great hunt, and your obvious deep feeling for each other, we have gathered here today to ask you a question. Both of you,” here he paused and looked deeply into each of the astonished children’s eyes “have the potential to be great aides to this island and through your life bring love and peace to our society. I therefore ask you this: The road of the habitats lies before you. Do you wish to take it?” Alsimada’s heart switched places with her brain. The throbbing in her head was almost unbearable as she turned to Damien. The look in his eyes said it all. As one, they turned and almost shouted “yes!”<br>It was as if they had walked into a thunderstorm. Every person that could clap had done so, and those that could not cheered uproariously. Damien turned again to her and grabbed her in a bear hug. She could just here his voice over the applause.
“I was wondering when you are going to shout ‘RUN!’”

Alsimada sat with her new partner, their dress of honour cast aside and the practical garments and accessories of a habitat partner now adorned them. They had spent the last few hours talking to the greatest bodies and greatest minds on Dinotopia and now both were thoroughly worn out. Neither could find any words for the other yet and so they just sat, watching the last light of the day come through the dusty windows in pure, visible, almost tangible rays, pondering times to come

[Azonthus]

stefan de velociraptor
everpresent
omniannoying
guy
Posts: 20
(6/8/04 10:40 pm)
Re: A&D 4, mental issues
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Damien trudged miserably, knee deep in rotting vegetation as Alsimada danced nimbly from tree root to tree root, weaving and dodging as if she could avoid the incessant hail of table-tennis ball sized raindrops that splashed through the loft foliage of hadro swamp. The pair of apprentice habitat partners were finding that the profession was far from the glamorous portrayals that they had heard from the travelling bards that frequented the haven of the muses. They were making their slow way towards a tiny hut that Damien could see vaguely through the curtain of water, the only clue to it’s presence a flickering light that Damien took to be a fire. His strides lengthened as the ground rose towards the hut, the stinking quagmire growing shallower and shallower. They had been assigned as messengers in the swamp area as their beginning assignment and it was quickly becoming evident that they hadn’t gotten the post because it was easy. Alsimada landed on a rock right next to him, tail whipping out to provide balance and almost pushing him over on the slippery soil.
“Hey! Watch out!” he exclaimed, digging his heel into the slope to prevent his weight sending him flying into the bog. She grabbed onto his shirt with both tail and teeth, holding him upright until he regained his balance.
“I’m sorry, the rocks are a bit more slippery than I anticipated, C’mon, it’s only a few hundred metres more” she darted up the hill and turned around “the marsh stops about here so it doesn’t matter about getting your feet any wetter.”<br>“It’s not my feet I’m worried about” shouted Damien back “I’m more concerned about the thirty odd litres of iced water that are flowing down my pants. This really isn’t pleasant.” Alsimada tapped his head with hers affectionately causing an unstable mass of water to cascade from his hood, splashing down his neck.
“Sheesh. It’s not as if I made it rain or anything. Quit grousing and let’s get to somewhere where it’s warmer”<br>
The pair set off quickly now that the bog was behind them and within a few minutes they stood, one bedraggled and cold, the other sparkling in comfortable light as rivulets of water ran down her waterproof scales. Damien rapped on the door, shedding his woven overcoat as he did so. They waited for a few moments before soft footfalls were audible in the hut. The latch turned and opened as an elderly woman stepped forth into the doorway. Her expression was harsh at first but the hard lines in her gaze melted when she saw the two bedraggled teenagers.
“What! What on earth are you doing out here on a night like this?” she asked, opening the door wider
“We are the, uh, messengers for this part of the forest. We got caught out in the storm and we were wondering if you had a couple of places spare for us to bunk down till this thing has blown over. Oh, and maybe a towel or two”<br>The woman sighed
“I don’t often get guests but I’m sure I can make a little room for you two. Hang on for a moment while I fetch a bucket for those clothes and a towel”<br>
A few minutes later they were sitting in front of a leaping fire, reclining on the floor while the old lady asked them why they were here. Alsimada did all the talking as Damien was literally white from the cold and so took a prime position in front of the fire until some warmth seeped back into his body. The woman was talking about why she had so few guests
“I am, or you might call me, a hermit by my own choice. When I was about a hundred and twenty years old I had an accident that led to me developing a highly cynical attitude to society. There was nothing I could do to help it. I had guidance from the best of aides on our island and I assume that the problem was caused by my accident. By this stage I was becoming so disruptive to my friends that I decided to come and live away from the society I was forced to hate. Now all I have is the wind and rain to help me, other than the occasional wandering messenger such as you two. Other than that, I am content to live out here, Come I will show you what I do.
In the next room, there were only three in the cottage, were a huge collection of leafbound books and a pile of parchment lay on the table.
“Here I collect all my wisdom, every medicine I have found, every meditative technique that I have used, so that those who come to this place after I am dead might live as I did. Happily and without fear of disease, sorrow or regret.” Alsimada looked at her
“How can you not miss the society of other creatures. Surely you must have some form of regret.” For a moment the lines on the woman’s face returned
“I have told you child, there is something wrong with my brain. Nothing you or I could do can change that. I simply cannot love Dinotopia. It is not my choice to make. However, I love my life and all that surrounds me here. Do not mourn for me, I am quite happy”<br>
Alsimada’s mind was racing as she curled herself next to Damien on the floor in front of the fire. Conserving body warmth was the first thing they had learnt from their mentor. However, with dinosaur and human it was more a give-and-take relationship as the saurians gave off far less warmth than their mammalian companion. The young struthie was wondering about their host. True, mental illness was still an issue in Dinotopia but this was mainly such things as retardation and other birth based issues as well as illnesses caused by brain damage later in life, relatively few were due to social problems. Acute depression, schizophrenia, and psychosis were almost non-existent on the island due to the general mental state of most of its inhabitants. Normally, mental cases were treated with immense tenderness and respect until they recovered and if the condition was incurable then a suitable niche for them was found in society. One of the pair’s best friends was retarded by almost a decade, he was almost thirty years old but still was on perfect terms with the two. In fact, he had been the first to congratulate them on the position they had attained. As usual Dinotopia was proud of every part of itself, even those great or small, useless or amazingly productive, everything was known and respected. Indeed a few insane dinosaurs had learnt to master their sanity and could voluntarily lapse in and out of sanity. They had produced a theory that led to a single quote that was now immensely respected throughout Dinotopia: the term insanity is just a mass propaganda. For those who are insane know that the so-called ‘sane’ creatures live in their own world of delusion. The term insane simply means ‘people who’s minds do not work as the majority’s’<br>Damien curled his arms around her and whispered in her ear as she dropped off to sleep. A final thought floated through and down into her subconscious. “Nothing is true unless there are more people to prove it than those to disprove it”.

[Azonthus]

stefan de velociraptor
everpresent
omniannoying
guy
Posts: 21
(6/8/04 10:41 pm)
Re: A&D 5, instinct and animal products (first half)
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Alsimada lay snugly, almost completely sunken into the rich carpet that covered the floor of Sabertooth lodge. A great, roaring fire crackled and danced above her, roaring up the chimney with vigour as it ripped hydrocarbons to shreds and created its own nemesis. In between the bricks of the walls, sheets of thick glass gave a panoramic view of the mountainside without letting the bitter cold air seep in to the cozy room. Outside, Damien frolicked wildly, hurling snowballs and rolling through the snow with several children and a couple of very exited Sabertooth cubs. Alsimada wished she could be out there with them, dancing through the snow and dodging and screaming, but her body would not allow it. Though warm-blooded, dinosaurs did require a hotter clime than humans to survive, and to expend all of her energy in such revelry for to long a period could be harmful, even fatal for her part reptilian body. Dinosaurs lacked the thickness of human skin and insulating fat, trading survivability and readiness to adapt for speed, strength and, as Alsimada’s saurian friends always joked, intelligence.
But for all their strengths, dinosaurs could not survive long in the snows. The long trek out to the alpine marshes just below the snowline that they had been sent to check on were torture for the young female. Today, she had literally collapsed about twenty metres from the door from exhaustion and had had to be carried the last steps by Pheren straightooth, the father of the cubs who were frolicking in the snow, and the second in charge of this lodge. The experience had not been at all pleasant. Alsimada now knew what it must have felt like for her ancestors when a Theropod finally got its mouth around them. She shuddered at the way those jaws, so tender and moist, could have, with but a single twitch thrust no few long, dagger like teeth into her vitals.
She was distracted from her thoughts as a soft tread made her look up. A woman had entered the room, carrying a wide tray and a cloth. Rubbing against her side was Pheren, the huge Sabertooth grinning was only members of his species can. The woman, a middle aged lady by the name of Hosain, walked softly over to where Alsimada was curled and knelt down, placing the tray in front of her. A tray of herbs and fresh fruit lay in front of her, as well as some steaming vegetables and a bowl of thick, creamy liquid, which was all foamy and dark brown.
“Come on, dig in. you were almost dead from the cold, and just getting warmed up isn’t going to help you out enough. you need to get some protein and carbohydrate in to you. It’s a wonder you aren’t dead with hypothermia, the state you were in when Pheren brought you in.” the woman shook her head “it amazes me that they sent you up here at all, normally they send some of the smaller sauropods, at least they have enough fat around them to not freeze to death in a few hours. Anyway, eat up, Pheren has offered to keep you company.”<br>The great tiger lay down next to Alsimada and curled into a similar ball. The dinosaur marvelled at the grace that the massive cat possessed. The huge tiger must have weight over two hundred and fifty kilos and yet he moved with the grace of a human ballet dancer on tiptoe. She turned to the food, snapping rapidly at the bits of vegetation that lay on the plate. She heard Pheren growl deeply behind her, sending another run of instinctive fear through her limbs.
“Not drink drink quickly. Is hot. You hurt yourself more, that would be not good”<br>Alsimada looked over at the curled tiger, his tail curling itself in the air. Sabertooth’s mouths were not made for talking and their brains were not really designed for philosophical thinking and imagery. Most had only a very limited lingual ability and Alsimada was impressed with the eloquence and accent with which Pheren spoke.
“Thanks for the warning” she replied, smiling struthie fashion, a widening of the eyes and display of teeth
“You warm enough?” his voice was just accented enough for Alsimada to recognise the phrase as a question
“Yes, I am, thanks to you” this provoked a wide, toothy smile from the tiger
“No thank me, my father you ought to thank, it his he who warm you”<br>“What do you mean?”<br>“You lie on him, and his fur keep you warm” the tiger looked slightly puzzled at her reaction. Alsimada was even more confused. Lying on his father? What was Pheren talking about. Then she looked up and round at the carpet. And realised that it had legs. She was lying on a pelt.

[Azonthus]

stefan de velociraptor
everpresent
omniannoying
guy
Posts: 22
(6/8/04 10:42 pm)

Re: A&D 6, stress, dreams and meditations
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Alsimada woke, cradling her long teal neck in a three fingered hand, her legs and tail dangling over the side of the soft nest. Nothing seemed to have gone right since they had come back from the forbidden mountains. Damien’s mother had contracted a serious illness and so far the healers had not found the cause, let alone the cure for it. Alsimada herself was still feeling off from the near death experience she’d had from tramping in the snow for too long. The weather had been awful and the storms had interrupted supplies to sauropolis so that the city was without fruits or vegetables, meaning Alsimada and her herbivorous companions had to either eat grains, which were tough and hard to crush with her delicate mouth, or go outside in the rain to eat the almost unpalatable grasses. Alsimada’s kind had evolved almost before grass plants were in existence so they could eat it only with extreme difficulty and often painful indigestion. She stretched her torso and writhed out of the nestbed, straightening up and performing a series of wild contortions with her neck to loosen the muscle. As she did so she caught sight of herself in the small glass window that looked out onto the storm-washed street. The constant illness and malnutrition was already beginning to tell. Her normally golden face was lackluster and dull, and the scintillating stripes gleamed only at the edges, where the tiny scales hung loosely from her skin, instead of being tightly bonded to her. She walked over to the little fire that kept her dormitory warm and curled herself up by it, pulling over a scroll. She looked up to where Damien lay sleeping on his bed, chest rising and falling softly in time with his breathing. For a person with a parent on the threshold of oblivion, Damien looked amazingly peaceful. He never seemed disrupted by nightmares like some other humans, though, as she noticed a slight bulge halfway down the blanket, he probably had better things to dream about. Saurians never had dreams, or what a human would call a dream. Most saurians woke up with a vague memory of various colors and many swore they had a familiar scent of one sort or another in their nostrils. Healers on the island believed that this was because, while humans used dreams to catalogue their thoughts and experiences in the subconscious, dinosaurs had no such mechanism. Dinosaurs, while easily the intellectual and physical equals of humans were much slower to evolve. Dinosaurs relied on diversity and toughness rather than adaptability to survive and so were a lot more pickish about living conditions and food. This was why, though grass had been around her race for millions of years, she had still not the methods of digesting it properly while humanity, should it wish to, could probably evolve into a herbivorous race within a few hundred generations. This also, she felt, explained the differences in stress between herself and her partner. Dinosaurs were still conditioned to act on instinct, as she had felt herself with the saberteeth up in the forbidden mountains. Though she knew they were harmless, her body still wanted to get up and run until it could run no more. Damien, on the other hand, had seemed perfectly at home and even joyful to be around the sabertooth and had enjoyed hours playing with the cubs in the snow. While Damien’s instincts had almost disappeared with a quick bit of training, she still felt like wetting herself whenever she saw one, even after over fifty encounters with them. She actually quite liked the feel of their soft, shaggy fur, but something deep inside simply wanted to be as far away as quickly as possible. It was not entirely true that saurians did not have dreams, for though they did not have normal ones, young saurians would often have ‘dreams’ which were much to realistic to be dreams, in which they confronted some ancestral danger to their race- poisonous foods, predators or hazardous environments, and acted effectively to counteract them. Saurians knew these as ‘screams’ as more often than not, the child would writhe in bed and scream, very loudly, as the predator came closer or whitewater swept them downstream among the rocks. If woken up during the climax of the scream, they would appear to see nothing, still living in the fantasy world, though wide awake, and often a concerned human who was not educated enough to not wake the sleeper had been injured by a flailing youngster who thought they were a gribbling carnivore of some kind. Screams remained seared into the subconscious of a dinosaur for life and were regarded as built in manuals for survival. One young Apatosaurus who had become separated with his family in the basin had wandered near to one of the entrances to the world beneath and had been attacked by the guardians. He reported that the only reason he had survived was he had once had a scream in which he had survived an almost identical situation. Carnosaurs, thinking him weak and inexperienced were surprised to find ribs splintering under the instinctive but accurate blows of the young sauropod’s tail. The Apatosaur had fled and eventually found his way back to the road
Then again, Alsimada thought as Damien groaned and rolled a little in his sleep, maybe dreams and screams weren’t so different, Dinosaurs main instinct was to survive. Humans, obviously, placed their priorities in a different area. She watched with interest as Damien moaned again and a little patch of darkness appeared on the blanket, at which point he woke up with a start and sat, not noticing her curled form by the fire, sat up quickly, looked down at the blanket, uttered a different kind of groan and fell back onto the pillows, his excitement rapidly disappearing as he was confronted with reality.

[Azonthus]

stefan de velociraptor
everpresent
omniannoying
guy
Posts: 23
(6/8/04 10:43 pm)
Re: A&D 7, the troubles of habitat partnering
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Alsimada laughed inwardly as Damien slumped back onto the pillows. She raised her head and looked his way from her curled position by the fire.
“Enjoying yourself, partner?” she said, grinning even wider as he spun on the spot, looking towards her with a blush already reddening his face.
“HEY! Come on, Alsie, no watching sleeping people, remember? I can’t help it, unless of course I wanted to operate on myself to remove my hormonal glands, and the parts where they are I would rather stay away from with a knife, kay?”
Alsimada laughed, the clicking sound bouncing off the walls of the room. ‘No watching sleeping people’ was the teenagers’ 13th code of dinotopia. Unwritten, but well known. Both saurian and human teenagers had personal and sometimes rather private, as Damien had just proved, habits and despite all dinotopians knowing such things were just natural and right, it could sometimes be embarrassing and, especially with dolphinbacks who were pre-conditioned by outside life, lead to arguments and annoyance. Alsimada and Damien who had practically grown up sleeping next to each other had no such qualms about seeing each other in the midst of such events, it was an inevitability that they encounter such hormone induced behavior in each other, and as both were healthily interested in science they tended to turn such occurrences into interesting discussions rather than shagging matches. However, Damien had always been still a little embarrassed about his occasional wet dreams, not because of what they were, but because it represented the fact he had yet to find a girlfriend, a point that Alsimada often teased him about. Contrary to outsider beliefs, habitat partnering held no sexual bonding, the calling was much deeper than that. The spiritual link that habitat partners felt was almost supernatural. They could sense each other’s emotions implicitly and felt a bond deeper than words could express. They respected each other utterly, and trusted each other with the same fervour, yet they felt nothing like the feelings that human partners felt for each other, so both were free to form bonds with members of their own species. It was a point taken that people who wished to become the physical and emotional partner of a habitat partner would have to accept that half of their being was already linked to another, and that they would have to live with this. Dinotopians, on the whole, didn’t mind. Becoming a habitat partner was a demonstration of the participant’s dedication to a cause and if they could be as dedicated to that cause as they were, they were definitely someone you could trust in a relationship. Not that it wasn’t trying sometimes, Alsimada thought in a flash as a little shiver of pain shot through her again, another reminder of her freezing encounter in the mountains.
Damien swung himself out of bed, covering himself with a sheet. Alsimada found it amusing how he concealed himself with clothes all the time. She knew that in the open humans were woefully unprepared for facing the elements and even slight heat and wind changes could hurt them severely, but that didn’t mean they needed to cover up indoors. As a saurian, she found clothes a foolish item. Her own skin and the tiny scale-like, cartilaginous feathers that covered her body were impervious to most medium temperature changes and they served as a more effective temperature control system than sweating. However, when cold did penetrate through that skin it was devastating. She did not need shoes, her own feet being thick and supple from years of walking un-shod. Not only this, but with her normally brilliant coat, designed as a radiant camouflage from her native jungle predators, formed as intricate a decoration as any clothing. They even had to take them off to bathe or go to the toilet, inconvenienced by their own foolish customs. As Damien got dressed she unfurled herself and rose, rolling up her scroll. Taking a swift run across the room, she stopped in front of him and laid her head on his shoulder. He stroked her back comfortingly, well aware of the sensitivity of her face and neck, as she whispered
“No insult meant, partner.”
Damien laughed “none taken Alsie, but can you do me a favor?”
“Just ask”<br>“Run downstairs for me and grab a new sheet. Oh, and no teasing about the girlfriend, Okay”<br>Alsimada smiled, her worn face taking on a little of its former colour. Life still meant something, no matter how bad it got, when you had a partner.