[Gift] Lights Out

Fade watched from the dock as swimlings explored the waters on his left, and the older juveniles on his right tested their strength against the tides. From here, he could easily keep an eye out for dangers in the waters beyond - sharks that got a little too curious, or aristonectes that were after an easy meal. He could quickly slip into the water to help any of the little ones that needed it. At least out here, they didn’t have to worry about the utahs. Not as much as usual, anyway.

Inspirational was beside him. She couldn’t see, but she wasn’t blind to what was going on around them. Every now and then, her head would tilt, catching the sounds of the bask’s youngest members laughing and playing in the water. The steady rush of waves washing against the sand and lapping against the dock’s supports. It was a soothing sound, as opposed to the obnoxious, grating shriek of gulls overhead. If only they flew a little closer. With a quick snap of her jaws, she could quiet their piercing cries, and the swimlings could have a snack.

Fade sighed quietly. Inspirational didn’t need to ask to know what the matter was. Fade’s dark feathers soaked in the sun, and he was hot. He’d rather be in the water. But… he would suffer the heat of the sun for the safety of the little ones. Another of the queens would relieve them in time, and he didn’t want to endanger the safety of the bask’s children by losing focus. Nor did he want to risk inciting Hyperion’s wrath.

His brother was growing increasingly prickly as of late. Aggressive, even, beyond his usual blunt, bullying behaviour. He reminded Fade of their mother, but… worse, almost.

Susurrus wasn’t a kind mother, by any means, and hardly attentive. Fade turned his scarred head towards the swimlings, watching them splash around and strengthen their limbs and lungs as they swam and dove beneath the gentle waves.

She had gone so far as to name Inspirational “Eyeless,” which was cruel in its own way. Susurrus all but abandoned her when she thought that Inspirational wouldn’t survive her injuries, and gave her up to the bask when she finally realised that Inspirational had a strong enough will to live, but didn’t care enough to continue to try to help her thrive. It was simply too much work for too little reward.

But Susurrus didn’t lord her strength and power over Inspirational, as Hyperion did to the entire bask.

Hyperion’s words were cruel, abusive as he had always been. Fade had heard him gloat about how he had saved Inspirational’s life by taking her into the bask when Susurrus wanted nothing more of her. He was demeaning and belittling to Zaca for her timid nature, laughed at Austa’s attempts to prove herself worthy of being a full member of the bask. And, as of late, most of his decisions seemed to revolve around Obsidian and their clutch of hatchlings - which she had unceremoniously dumped on the queens to look after, rather than tending to them herself.

A quiet growl built in Fade’s throat. He wanted to challenge Hyperion for his insults. They were his family. He and Inspirational both, and the little ones that he had adopted as his daughters. Their time with Susurrus should have made their bonds stronger. They should have grown to know that they could depend on one another as brothers, yet he felt no kinship with Hyperion. Just a sense of twisted dependence.

Hyperion only had a mind for power and control over others, relishing in his hold over the bask’s swelling numbers. He didn’t care about others beyond what they could do for him, and being able to bully others into submission. Fade… could still feel the bite of Hyperion’s teeth, so close to his eyes. The wounds had left him half-blind for days while they healed.

A shriek ripped his attention from the past, and Fade heaved himself to his feet, Inspirational joining him. The juveniles were playing rough, and someone’s tail had been bitten. Inspirational couldn’t smell any blood - it was just a pinch, or some pulled feathers.

Fade rumbled a warning, which earned them guilty looks and apologies from the young ones in the water.

The swimlings were so full of energy today. They were chaotic, rambunctious. Even after the gentle warning, he didn’t imagine that they would be calm for long. It could only mean that a storm was coming. If their inability to sit still suggested anything, it was that this would be a big one. Inspirational agreed. She could feel it as well. Something in the air was different today, and the feeling had only strengthened as the day wore on.

Fade smiled faintly as they settled back down on the dock. Better that the swimlings get all their energy out now, because they were likely to be stuck together inside one of the old buildings when the storm broke.

And it was going to break. The clouds gathering in the distant horizon climbed higher into the skies, towering over where the ocean and the sky met. The line between them blurred, lit only by the flashes of lightning that were slowly approaching the shore as the dark anvil clouds reached towards the island. The waves were growing rougher as the storm approached, white caps breaking up the homogenous darkness of the water when their ferocious crests reached too high. To make matters worse, the sun was sinking below the horizon. Soon, they would all be blind and in the dark.

Fade remembered these kinds of storms well - it was the sort that swept Hyperion away from their home after Hyperion and their mother had fought. It had almost killed Hyperion. Suchomimus were powerful swimmers, the most capable of the land-dwelling dinosaurs, but even they were no match for the might of the ocean.

They had already gathered the swimlings from the water. The swimlings had protested, of course. They were young enough that they didn’t realise the danger. Even with the bulk of the storm still out at sea, the surge was already starting to rush up between the channels that the docks created. If someone got carried out by the surge… the riptide would almost guarantee that they would never be seen again.

And the lightning… Fade had seen trees stripped of their bark after a lightning strike, and found dinosaurs lying dead with no mark on them after a storm. Fires that disobeyed rain as it fell, struck up from a single bolt from the sky. Lightning was to blame. Lightning was dangerous, and it was getting closer.

Thunder rumbled through the air, louder and more frequent as the clouds reached out over the island and cast their shadow over the shipyard. They could feel the tremours in their bones after every bolt of lightning.

Zaca all but clung to Fade as he and Inspirational helped spread the word of the coming dangers. To some degree, he was glad for it. Zaca was still so small. It would be easy for the strong winds coming off the sea to blow her over, or for the strengthening waves to take her. She should be gathered with the other swimlings, but she wouldn’t leave him out in the rain, and he was thankful to at least know where she was. She would be safe with him, he would make sure of it.

The energy around the shipyard was rapidly shifting. Rain had started to fall upon the bask, and strong winds brought the scents and feelings of salt spray and lightning. The waves had turned black under the shadow of the storm clouds and the coming night, churning up the shallows that the swimlings had been swimming in not long ago. The whitecaps now looked like gnashing teeth, the waves were great jaws opening and closing, ready to claim their victims.

The swimlings were quiet and anxious, and ushered away from the shore for their safety. It was better that they all take refuge in the buildings near the train tracks until the storm passed over, and thankfully, the bask had plenty of buildings with mostly intact roofs to shelter inside.

Unfortunately, not all members of the bask were around to benefit from the safety that the buildings offered.

Some of the floats hadn’t returned yet from fishing trips and patrols in the sea, and Fade was beginning to fear the worst. If they hadn’t been dragged out into deeper water, they could’ve been smashed against the docks or rocks at the shore, or tangled in kelp or whatever netting the humans had left behind. Inspirational shared the sentiment. She… knew the dangers posed by the things that the humans left behind. She’d been lucky to escape with her life, as had Shane when she found him.

Which was why when Hyperion ordered them inside without so much as looking for the others, Fade felt his lip curl into a snarl.

The longer Hyperion was in power, the more he proved himself to be a terrible leader. Here he was, only looking out for himself, his mate, and their offspring again. Only they mattered, none of the others. Hyperion was content to leave the floats to their fate, bask members who depended on him. He wouldn’t even bother spending a moment looking to even see if they’d made it back to shore.

“Foolish,” Hyperion called it, to risk members to look for someone who might already be dead. The storm wasn’t even fully here yet. The rain was still light enough that they could see through it, the waves not yet tall enough to sweep them off their feet if they stayed far enough from the edge of the shore. There would be very little danger to look for their fellows, but still, Hyperion was adamant. He was the leader. It was his decision.

If Fade didn’t know any better, he would almost suspect that Hyperion was scared of the storm, but he didn’t dare say as much.

Inspirational grew tense beside him. She wanted to go out and search for the others as well. Despite her disability, she stood a better chance than any of them at finding someone who’d been washed ashore. If they were close enough, she could smell the others through the rain, or at least track their scent to where they might be.

Fade turned his gaze to Inspirational as she argued with Hyperion, then Shane as he backed her up, then to Austa who argued to help as well. He felt a touch of fear for them when Hyperion’s eyes hardened. They didn’t need to fight now. They needed to be strong to weather the storm. And… if they left to search for those left outside, it was doubtless that Zaca and Austa would try to join them. He couldn’t let that happen.

Fade bowed his head, rain plastering his feathers to his thin frame and dripping off his snout. Austa’s shouts of outrage echoed in his ears, but Inspirational backed down and sided with him when Zaca nosed her. She was thinking of the swimlings, too.

Fade was also thinking of Inspirational. She was strong, physically and mentally, but even she was in danger from the storm surge. If the water caught her and dragged her out beyond the docks, she might never find her way back. There were no scent trails in the ocean, just an endless expanse of salt water, and whatever lurked beneath the waves waiting to drag her down into the deep.

Austa glared at Fade for backing down from Hyperion again, but it just wasn’t his place to fight.

Fade was tired. He was always tired these days, run ragged as he tried to prove to Hyperion that he was worth keeping in the bask. If he didn’t give Hyperion a reason to throw him out, then his adopted children would get to stay as well. They could grow strong and healthy under the watchful eye of the bask, something he just couldn’t give to them on his own.

As they turned away, Inspirational soothed the feisty young sucho with teasing words and gentle promises. She would also need Austa’s help to keep an eye on the others as they settled in for the night, to make sure no one wandered off.

Hyperion, satisfied, broadcast the message: they were all to retreat to the safety of the buildings for the night.

Hyperion, of course, took a building for himself and Obsidian, guiding their children away from the others. They couldn’t have them mingling with the other, lesser swimlings, and far be it from Hyperion to cosy up to another sucho and share the space.

Fade, Inspirational, and Shane took up a building near the oil tank cars. The tank cars reeked of oil if you got close enough. They forever rested on the train tracks, but thankfully, the wind didn’t often blow their stink into the shipyard.

They, and other queens that had joined them, built rough “nests” for the swimlings. It wasn’t anything particularly comfortable, just some grass and whatever scraps of cloth could be found roughly shaped into a circle for the swimlings to hunker down in, but it was better than nothing.

The adults made a sort of living, hulking barrier between the swimlings and the storm that raged on outside the protection of the building. They kept an eye out for any of the local utahraptors as well, who had proven to be a menace on more than one occasion. Sometimes they even hunted the bask swimlings, and neither Fade nor Inspirational would put it past the utahs to try to take advantage of the storm to try to pick off a swimling that got too far from the safety of the bask.

Fade was quiet, looking out through the large, open door as the rain continued to fall. It was picking up now, coming down in sheets and illuminated regularly by brief, intense flashes of light. He caught sight of the silhouette of another suchomimus from time to time, left out in the rain on Hyperion’s order. They were on the lookout for any float returning from the water, no doubt, but it was too little and too late, and now the most that the guards would catch was a chill from the icy rain.

From time to time, Fade looked over his company, and his charge. His friends and family. And… Shane. He wasn’t particularly fond of the male, didn’t see what Inspirational saw in him. He seemed a little too nonchalant about the bask’s business, while at the same time provocative, and really only interested in Inspirational more than anything else to do with the bask.

Fade still didn’t trust him, either. But… that was Inspirational’s business. Fade could only keep an eye on the male, and stay out of her relationship with him.

The rain drummed on the roof, and would have almost been soothing to Inspirational, if it didn’t block out everything. It was difficult to tell, but she thought she could hear the sound of the waves growing closer to the buildings that they huddled under. It only added to the growing feeling of unease that she was experiencing.

Inspirational rarely felt more useless than when it rained like this. Everything just smelled wet, and she couldn’t hear much beyond the sounds of the heavy rain and the constant rumbling of thunder. The thunder actually sounded louder now that they were inside the big buildings, and Inspirational ducked her head whenever lightning struck particularly close to them. The resulting boom whenever a new bolt of lightning struck nearby was almost deafening.

What was worse, the wind was howling, whistling through the building’s open doors and through every crack and crevice that had been exposed over time. It was awful, and it upset the swimlings. She did her best to quiet their fears. The storm would blow over, everything would be okay. Tomorrow, they could go out along the shore and find what things the waves had washed onto the sand.

After… the adults went out and looked, first. They didn’t need to see the bloated bodies of any unfortunates that might have washed ashore.

The swimlings started to settle down as the storm droned on. It helped that Inspirational distracted a few of them with some gentle play-fighting, ever so carefully rolling them with her snout and letting them play with her scarf and tail. Eventually, they were taken by sleep when they grew too tired and their eyelids grew too heavy. Gentle, quiet snores joined the sounds of the rain, and with the swimlings finally sleeping, a small number of the queens allowed themselves to rest as well.

As exhausted as Fade was, he couldn’t sleep. He shared Inspirational’s sense of unease, even as the thunder started to quiet and the rain started to let up. Water dripped from the roof rather than pouring off of it in buckets, and lighting came less frequently. When morning came, they would see what damage the storm had done to the shipyard, and if they had lost any members to Hyperion’s narcissistic tendencies.

He turned his gaze towards Inspirational, about to suggest that they try to get some sleep, only to see her jerk her head towards him. Even without eyes, she still looked afraid. The thing that Inspirational had been feeling, that fear, that energy, suddenly came to a point. The air was alive, electrified. They had to get out. They had to go now.

Inspirational all but jumped to her feet, scrambling over bodies in attempts to escape whatever was coming, driven by an intense feeling of wrongness and fear. Fade didn’t have time to react or even guess what was happening before a flash of light changed night to day and a crash of thunder shattered the peace.

Everyone inside scattered in different directions, confused and disoriented. Inspirational’s ears rang, echoing with the thunder as it continued to rumble out away from the shipyard. Fade could scarcely see, blinded by the abrupt shift from dark to blinding light to pitch black night again. Swimlings shrieked, terrified and ripped from the comfort of sleep that they’d finally settled into. She’d lost track of the others, her senses scattered by the shock of what had happened. She still didn’t know what had happened - had the building been struck? She thought that the storm had been receding!

Instead, the storm was backbuilding. Strengthening again as it was fed by the moist air coming off the sea, growing in intensity once more - directly over the shipyard.

Fade’s heart hammered in his chest. He squinted as he tried to track who had gone where, but it was useless. He didn’t know where Zaca or Austa had gone, could only vaguely make out the shape of Inspirational beyond the oil tank car he stood beside. His eyes hadn’t yet adjusted back to the darkness of a night without stars or moonlight. 

He could distantly hear Hyperion’s voice from the building that he’d decided to spend the night in, for once taking interest in the bask and making sure that everyone was alright. He couldn’t quite make out what Hyperion was saying, his own ears still ringing, but it wouldn’t matter anyway.

Once again, a streak of blinding light burned through the air in a flash. Another sound ripped through the air, but it wasn’t just thunder. It was more colossal, more catastrophic.

Inspirational realised first that she was on the ground. Something had hit her so hard  and so fast that she had been knocked from her feet before she even had a chance to register what was happening, and several points along her body burned like she’d had feathers ripped from her hide. Her whole body ached. Her ears rang even worse now. She was so disoriented, feeling as though the ground were tilting beneath her. She felt ill just thinking about getting up just yet.

There were distant shouts of alarm, and through the rain and the scents of wet pavement, she could smell something else that terrified her to her core. Smoke. Blood. A lot of both. It pushed her to move.

The smoke had a horrible, acrid scent that burned her nostrils and threatened to choke her. She staggered to her feet, only to stumble and catch herself on her knuckles. She focused on the scent of blood. Who was bleeding, where was the source?

Inspirational called out into the night, hoping for a response. Her heart sank when there wasn’t one. The scent of burned flesh and feathers mingled with whatever else was burning with that awful, viscous liquid that clung to her feathers and feet as she made her way over.

When she neared the source of the blood, her body stiffened, her veins turned to ice. It was Fade. She’d thought that she could smell him beneath the scents of carnage, but she had wanted it desperately to not be.

She nosed at him, tried to urge him to get to his feet, but found him unresponsive. She could hear the crackle of fire around them. She could feel the inferno that raged where one of the oil tank cars had once stood. Pieces of metal were scattered around the epicenter of the explosion, coated with oil and burning brightly, rebellious of the rain that tried to put it out. They had to move, or be consumed by flames.

Inspirational brushed her claws over Fade to get a grip on him and haul him away, only to stop dead when she heard the faintest sound of a pained protest when her claws knocked against something hard and unyielding that shouldn’t have been there. Bits of metal were embedded in Fade’s body - shrapnel from the blast.

She bellowed a desperate call into the night, agony and fear in her voice. She needed Greyson. The sucho was smaller than her, but he knew herbs. He could help. She apologised to Fade, her voice shaking, as she tried again to drag him away from the flames.

Another explosion rocked the shipyard as lightning struck again. Another oil tank went up in flames, bathing the surrounding area in sticky fire. The forest was alight.

More cries of panic and pain. Hyperion’s voice joined the others as he roared and urged the bask to evacuate nearer the water.

What had they done to deserve such a cataclysmic turn of events?

Fade protested weakly. His whole body hurt so much. Needles stabbed into him with every breath, cut his hide with even the smallest movement. He couldn’t open his left eye.

More cries came from inside the forest. Not even the utahs, who had taken shelter under the trees to ride out the storm, were safe.