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I might not feel fear, but I still have basic survival instincts, and right now every single one of them is telling me to Stop. Fucking. Moving.
This entire planet is making me feel as my ancestors must have felt an impossibly long time ago. Once upon a time people were prey to pretty much every animal on ancient Earth. Here, I feel much the same. The little mammal in the middle of my brain is crouched, alert, and helping me survive.
There are only two more thudding impacts before this force of nature is upon me. Each one of them is louder than the last, and by the time it is atop me, the shaking and the cracking of ground and foliage fills my ears to the exclusion of all other sounds. It is though the world is ending and beginning all at once. Even if I could feel fear, I think I would be too overwhelmed to process it. This is one of those events in life where one forgets about oneself and is instead entirely overwhelmed by that which is happening instead.
It’s not an animal. It’s an event.
A truly leviathan scaled creature standing at least forty feet tall is standing over me, head as big as a small shuttle swinging back and forth, scanning the area. It senses something, because it has stopped moving entirely.
Three moons have risen since the sun set, and the silvery light from those triple orbs reflects and bounces around the landscape in ways that illuminate this creature all too well. Even at this relatively great distance from my head to its head, I can see that the jaws are powerful. The teeth seem to be longer than I am.
A little worm of logic tells me that there is no way a massive predator like the one above me feeds on creatures my size. It looks like it is made to kill creatures far, far larger. I tell myself I’m like a fly to this thing. It doesn’t want me. It’s just passing through.
I hear the bushes behind me being crushed by its tail swinging as the leviathan lowers its head. I feel a fetid breeze blow across me from nostrils practically large enough for me to crawl up onto. Then the air is sucked up around me, little pieces of leaf and stick being drawn up with the dust around me. My hair flows up with the breath too, and I know that a few of my particles are making their way into the beast. There is a brief snort, a shower of dinosaur snot raining around me as the beast attempts to work out what is happening beneath its nose. I know I stand out among the typical scents for this planet, and that is going to make any animal curious.
I hunker down next to the bike, hoping its scent will cover mine. It has to smell like saurian alpha and hot oil. This is the most tense of moments, in which literal death hangs mere inches above my head. One little snap of monstrous jaws and that is the end of me.
There’s a grunt. A grunt that sounds like the universe itself trying to work out a problem. And then the jaws open, and heat rushes out around me, the wetness of the interior of something that wants to eat me.
There’s a snap, and the beast grabs the seat of the bike and its handlebars, and crunches them both, sharp teeth going right through the metal and mechanical bits and pieces like a hot knife through cotton candy. There’s a small snacking sound as it tests what it put in its mouth.
Pthlew!
It spits out little bits of bike, twisted metal shrapnel dropping around me in a heavy but languid rain.
Then the ground creaks, the animal lifts its foot, and it moves on, one, two big strides taking it away from me as it continues its hunt through the night. The bike and I were nothing but a passing curiosity to the leviathan.
In a matter of minutes, the creature is gone, heavy footsteps receding into the distance. I look at what remains of the bike. The poor thing is bleeding heavy black and green liquid. The seat is missing. The handlebars and steering column are gone.
Thorn
Following Avel is possible because he does a good job of going just high enough to stay in my field of view.
I am at a sprint, moving through the forest at high speed. It feels good to move my body this way, to be on the hunt. My size can make it seem as though I might not be capable of much in the way of haste, but that is an illusion. I was made to hunt, and that means I was made to chase. Running turns some of the fury at having been robbed out of my blood, and reminds me how satisfying it is to move under my own power. I am not as fast as my bike, but I am faster than most.
Ahead of me, I see Avel start wheeling around, signaling he has found something. When I wave to indicate I’ve seen him, he puts his wings back and swoops down in a dive. I wonder if he has caught the human. She deserves to be snatched up by him, though I do feel a pang of something like possession and jealousy at the very idea of her being touched by anyone else.
Seeing him disappear gives me an extra boost of motivation and speed. I reach the place he landed within minutes, amped by the process of catching the human again.
When I arrive, Avel is standing in the middle of a narrow path, his wings extended slightly as if to obscure what is behind him.
“Bad news,” he says as I approach.
“Did the human get herself killed?”
“Worse.”
“Worse?”
For a moment, I don’t know what could be considered worse, and then I see them. The mangled remains of my bike laying in a roadside clearing made not by any technological means, but with the downed trees and crushed underbrush that is the unmistakeable mark of the passing of a primal.
Avel is standing solemnly in the clearing, his wings now wrapped forward around him. True primals are rare now. Sightings of them are uncommon even from the sky, and actual interactions with the beasts themselves are so remarkable that scholars will develop entire careers based on one fleeting moment.
There is something about the human that makes me feel as though I should not be surprised to discover yet another scene of impossible chaos. My poor bike is destroyed. No amount of restoration is going to put that back together. It’s ruined. An hour or two ago, if someone had told me my bike was going to be primal chow and end up in ten thousand pieces, I would have felt my body absolutely flood with rage.
For reasons I don’t dare to begin to explore, I find myself slightly more worried about where the human is than what state my bike is in.
“She was here.”
