Jurassic Park: Trespasser

I smiled in return, his enthusiasm was contagious. I liked working with people like him, people who loved the work as much as I did.

"Lead the way, it is your island afterall," I raised an eyebrow.

It was not often I let myself relax around colleagues. Perhaps the sleep deprivation was kicking in.

We hiked a little ways, I quietly observed the trail and surroundings. He must walk this way regularly as the narrow path was worn bare to the earth. The cloud cover started encroaching on the azure sky. It would be overcast before long and my finely tuned senses smelled rain. More telling than that, my collarbone ached as it always did when the dampness approached. I rubbed it absently and shifted my pack to be a little more comfortable.

It was a good walk to the high ground but worth every moment.

We had walked a good ways through royal palms and their resulting underbrush. The stream had begun to show itself, and it moved faster as we ascended higher ground.

Movement in the underbrush came fairly suddenly as the juvenile stegosaurus stepped onto the trail to greet us.

I stopped to talk to him for a minute, scratching under his chin as he craned his neck to and fro.

"He will follow us all the way up," I told Doctor Harding. "It's what he does. He is definitely a curious creature, and likes people. Probably because of all the dried fruit he gets," I added with a smile. "But, I guess he's a friend."

I gave the dinosaur one more pat on the top of his head and continued up the trail.

The perimeter fence could be seen in places, way down the hillside and through the ferns and palms. At one point, I saw something that made me stop for just a moment. Judith was there, well away from the fence, but watching nonetheless. There was no mistaking her with the yellow stripe on her snout. Another snout came into view, and Judith made a chirping sound that carried up the hillside. The velociraptor that had poked its head into her field of view immediately withdrew.

She was watching us. Studying us (me?). He head moved from side-to-side the way a dog's might if he's trying to figure something out.

There could be many reasons why she was doing this, but the one that played its way into my mind didn't make any sense. I had long thought that Judith seemed to think I was a part of this environment, and as such, a part of her pack. She knew me as the island's protector, therefore as her protector. Now, I didn't have any delusions that she wasn't a living killing machine. I knew too much about raptors to think otherwise. But, the way she was watching us made me think that she was being a bit more than curious. Protective, maybe?

Whatever the case, she was trying to understand what Doctor Harding and I were doing, and maybe even why we were doing it. Maybe she was trying to figure out the reason we were just out for a walk.

Clever girl.

Ooc

hey anybody online