Mattress-mart

It had been almost an entire week since Åra welcomed Ära and Öre, a Suchomimus and a raptor into her old warehouse. It had quickly gone from weird to well adjusted for them all. It was surprisingly how easy all of it felt as Åra, the one that started living in the warehouse first out of the three of them, had gone from waking up alone - except for all of her rubber duckies and duck plushies - to waking up in the company of two dinosaurs, one of them being almost twice as big as both Åra and Öre together. Yet he was perhaps the kindest out of all three of them. He couldn’t speak and instead did his best to gesture to anything he wanted help with. It had made communications a bit hard for Åra to adjust to in the beginning but by the fifth day she was already accustomed to it.
Yet there was one problem that they had not solved yet. It was that the amount of blankets and pillows Åra had collected before Öre and Ära had arrived wasn’t really enough. Especially not for the big Suchomimus. Öre had tried to say that it was no big problem. She had said that she would simply sleep on Ära and Ära could sleep on the blankets. But Ära didn’t really fit on the blankets unless they were completely stretched out and in Åra’s mind, barely better than just laying on the floor.
“If it’s a problem we will get around it.” Ära said. Öre stood, as he usually did, behind her and nodded in agreement to her statement.
“No. No. No.” Åra said strongly as she shook her head. “I will not have my guests just scraping by. And we do need to get more stuff for the cold anyway. What if it snows so much we can’t make it into the buildings anymore.” Both Ära and Öre looked at Åra with big, almost sparkly eyes as she spoke. To them she was perhaps the best survivalist raptor in the entire world.
“Alright,” Öre had a new energy in her voice as she spoke, “we will make sure to help as well so we can collect a lot!” The raptor jumped into the air slightly and the Suchomimus made a slow circle to try and show a similar energy of excitement as the raptor. He couldn’t really jump as they did.

They all made their way to the loading dock and the only door that could fit Ära except for the enormous, steel, garage ports that they so far hadn’t figured out how to open yet. Åra was the first one to look outside. Scouting for shady things as she liked to call it and when the coast was clear she gave off a little chirp to tell the other two that it was okay for them to also exit the warehouse.
The three of them made their way into the bigger city. It wasn’t far, but neither Öre nor Ära had really walked into the city. They had gone around it as they were terrified of meeting any other dinosaurs inside the city. Instead they had managed to meet Åra outside of it despite their best effort to hide in a bush.
“There I found two duckies.” Åra pointed at a drain not far away from it. It was covered in snow but you could still see the holes where the drain was as they had managed to keep snow from stacking too high. “And over there I found the pillows.” She pointed towards an old storefront that at one point had sold wedding clothes. There was a shell of an old sofa barely visible through the frosted up snow. Both Ära and Öre hung on every word that Åra said. Ära would let out awe’s and oh’s on both her and Öre’s behalf as they walked past different places where Åra had found different things.

After walking a while, Ära didn’t really have the same speed as the two raptors did and they would try and match his speed, which wasn’t too easy as they both just wanted to go faster and faster. But they had to make sure that he was with them. He couldn’t really tell them that he was falling behind either. He could only try to kick and throw things around him to get their attention if he needed to.
“Now this is the place we’re looking for.” Åra said with a big smile. She had to fight the urge to jump in excitement as they stood outside of the big outlet building. “It’s even got a door big enough for you Ära.” She gestured towards the old broken display window. The glass on the ground and long since managed to either break down or get swept away somehow. Åra was the first to enter the store, followed closely by both Öre and Ära. There were rows and rows of beds and sofas inside the store. Many had been picked to shreds. Either by birds looking for nesting materials or by other dinosaurs who also fancied the softer of beddings. But the enormous store still had much to offer. Åra quickly jumped up on one of the beds that still had its mattress. She noted that she was still not long enough, even on top of one of the beds, to reach past the Suchomimus height. Åra jumped from one bed to another and quickly Öre decided to try it as well. The two raptors couldn’t really help it. It was pretty much like a playground for raptors. Ära tried to climb up on one of the bigger beds that looked like two beds beside each other but he still managed to reach well beyond the beds. They played around a bit. Wasting energy just for the fun of it. Before they decided to actually do what they came into the city to do.

“We need as many of these,” Åra gestured to the pile of blankets that had fallen out of the shelves, “and we need as many of these as we can carry.” She pointed over at the big pillows. They were easily more than half of the raptors' size.
“Can’t we take one of these.” Öre jumped on one of the mattresses that laid on the ground. “A few of these could probably fit all of us together!” Åra looked over on the mattress. It was most definitely too heavy for a raptor to even try and carry. Ära stuck his head past the raptor and took a couple of quick sniffs off the mattress. It was too heavy for a raptor to carry. But maybe two raptors and a Suchomimus could manage to carry it all the way back to the warehouse.
“I think we should try it! If it works we can go back and get even more of them. What do you say Ära?” Ära nodded in response as he put his foot carefully on the mattress to test how soft it was.
All three of them tried to lift the mattress off the ground multiple times until they finally found one way that worked. They decided, in a last minute effort, to try and put a few blankets over their backs in hopes that they would stay there until they got back to the warehouse with the mattress. If it worked they would have a lot of new things in the warehouse again.
They carefully carried the mattress back to the warehouse. Öre lost his blanket very early on but decided to keep on going forward instead of getting it back. They had to take a few breaks as they walked. Ära could probably have made it further. His size helped a lot in carrying the mattress. But both Öre and Åra had to take breaks. But when they finally got back with the first mattress it had barely gotten any dirt on it from the ground. They left it in the corner of the loading dock and rushed back as fast as the Suchomimus could to grab another mattress. When they were finally done, and the sun was disappearing quickly over the horizon, they had managed to grab four mattresses and seven blankets. They hadn’t bothered with any pillows because they couldn’t really figure out how to carry all of it at the same time. The mattresses were, for the moment, so much better for Ära and Öre. They barely left the comfort of the mattresses that evening.