The apples only lasted for eighteen days. Nora and I limited ourselves to only eating one apple a day because we didn’t know when we’d find more fruit and I really didn’t want to get scurvy. I wanted to make sure that I could have apples in the future, so I saved as many seeds as I could. I cut a small square of leather off of one of my spare leathers, which I had washed clean of Nora’s blood, folded the square in half, dumped the seeds in, and sewed the sides of the leather to make a makeshift envelope. I stuffed the seed envelope to the bottom of my bag. If I ever settled down, then I’d try and plant them. If I ever found civilization then, who knows, I could become an apple farmer, but if I never found civilization, then I could settle down and have a source of fruit. If the seeds even grew after so long of course.
Besides the apples, we continued hunting for our food. It was really strange just how easy it was to hunt. It’s like when we were just traveling, we only occasionally saw other animals, but when we set out to hunt something we almost immediately found an animal to kill. It was amazing.
The problem though, was that my speartips got dull. And it’s not like I could sharpen a tooth, so I had to occasionally replace the tooth with another tooth. The only things with sharp teeth are the predators, and there aren’t that many around with teeth big enough or sharp enough. I just ended up using raptor teeth. They were smaller, but they were sharp.
Of course, in a world of dinosaurs the spears weren’t much of a protection. Nora was my biggest defense. I mean, hopefully I could get a good shot in and survive... but I still remembered that huge beast I saw when traveling to Camp Rock. My spears wouldn’t do much to that thing. So, yeah, Nora was my biggest defense.
Just the other day I saw another gigantic creature moving in the distance. At first I thought that it was just another hill, but then I saw it move. Was it another Ankylosaurus? They shouldn’t get that big though. Was it a giant tortoise? I didn’t know, but it was big. Good thing we didn’t see anything that big again.
But we did see something else... and by ‘see something else’ I mean that we saw it charging right at us.
The thing about grasslands is that you can see things from pretty far away. Except for when that thing was sitting on the river bank behind a small hill and you round the bend and realize that it’s too late to hide because it’s staring right at you.
It immediately stood up to its full height, which was about three feet taller than Nora, and charged right at us. I would say that it was a T-rex but its arms were almost long enough to scratch its own head with and it also had two stubby horns on its head.
{<{<{<>}>}>}
Seth reached over and tapped the description of the dinosaur on the page.
“I didn’t know the name of the beast back then, but it was an allosaurus that attacked us. Well... the beast has different names on the different worlds it is on but it was called allosaurus on the planet I was born on.”
Kadari just grunted and kept reading.
{<{<{<>}>}>}
Nora’s hackles rose and she snarled and barked wildly to try to scare it off or discourage it from attacking, but it just kept coming.
I nocked a spear to my atlatl and flung it as hard as I could at the dinosaur. The spear flew fast and true, sticking into the dinosaur’s chest. But it didn’t stab deep enough, the spear just fell out and broke when it got stepped on. I tried again, throwing another spear at its face. I tried to hit it in the eyes, but the spear just glanced off, only cutting it a little.
The beast roared. Its rage was obvious in its eyes. It stared right at me as it changed its target from Nora to me. Which, in hindsight, was good because it was distracted when it finally reached us. Nora was able to lunge forward and latch her teeth onto one of the dinosaur’s arms.
She quickly let go, so the dinosaur didn’t bite down on the back of her neck. Nora had the beast’s attention again. It roared in her face and lunged at Nora. Their two massive bodies collided. Jaws snapped, claws raked, blood flew.
I looked for an opportunity to throw another spear, but they were moving around too quickly. I couldn’t risk hitting Nora, but I was ready. The moment I had an opportunity I would throw. My spears didn’t do anything against it, but it would get distracted and hopefully Nora would be able to seize that chance.
The clash was deafening. The sound of snapping jaws, battering flesh, and the roars and snarls. It was unlike anything I had ever seen or heard before.
Will Nora win? Will she be ok? If Nora loses, I’m dead.
There was nothing I could do. It was terrifying. Our fates were on the line and I couldn’t do anything.
Nora fell!
It managed to force Nora down and she fell onto her back with a yelp. The beast roared its victory and lunged down with its jaws stretched wide.
“NORA!” I screamed, and threw as hard as I could.
A spear sprouted from its eye.
It reared backwards with a howl. Nora scrambled to her feet and lunged forward. Her jaws clamped around its throat and she tore at it viciously. The beast’s howl turned into gurgling grunts. It fought back, managing to force Nora off of its throat, but it was too late. Blood sprayed out of its throat, painting the ground red. It staggered and lunged at Nora again, but fell face first into the ground. Its labored gurgles continued for a few minutes before the beast finally went still.
But I didn’t care about the beast anymore, because Nora had also collapsed. She was bleeding from multiple deep cuts around her face and shoulders. I ran to her side and immediately threw off my backpack. I quickly brought out the two spare leathers and all my rope again. It worked once before, so hopefully it’ll work again. I flopped the leathers over her shoulders and tied the ropes around as tightly as I could. For her face, I didn’t have anything else, so I took off my shirt and threw it over her face and held it there with a tight hug. My arms couldn’t even wrap around her muzzle completely, but I tried my best.
“Come on, Nora,” I said, placing my forehead between her eyes, “You’re going to be okay... you have to be.”
Nora didn’t respond, she just continued breathing slowly.
After who knows how long, I pulled back from Nora to really get a look. My shirt stuck to her face. She was asleep. I didn’t know if that was a bad thing or a good thing, but I just let her keep sleeping. There was a little bit of blood pooled under her, but considering the amount of cuts she had, I was glad that it was just a small pool. Seeing that there wasn’t really anything else that I could do for her, I gave her a scratch behind the ears and went to check the body of the dinosaur.
The beast’s body was massive. It was twice as long as Nora with its long tail, but its torso was about the same size as Nora’s. It was the longer legs and the neck that made it taller than Nora. It had wickedly sharp claws that only had the slightest curve to them and were as long as my arm. The claws on the beast’s feet were curved, almost a half-circle, and were also as long as my arm. The teeth were as long as my forearm and were also sharp and straight.
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I could probably use the teeth as speartips. The teeth are longer than the raptor teeth I’m using now, so they would penetrate even further before hitting the rope... man the rope really stops it from going in deep.
On normal sized animals it wouldn’t be a problem that the spear doesn’t stab in deep, but with dinosaurs out and about it made the spear useless. I needed a new way to connect the speartip to the haft.
Some steel would be nice. I can’t sharpen teeth, but I could sharpen metal. Razor sharp speartips would be great.
I sighed and got to work chopping off all the talons, claws, and teeth. I used my stone axe to get them all off the corpse, but used a raptor tooth to scrape off all the bits that I didn’t want. The claws were like swords, sharp on one side and curved slightly inward. They were sharper than my stone axe, but I can resharpen the stone, so I could use the claws as an axe until they got dull. The talons from the feet... I didn’t know what to do with them, so I set them aside for now. The teeth, I used a stone to grind the base away, so they would fit better on my spear shafts and then I replaced the raptor teeth. Now, I had three spears with the new teeth. My fourth spear shaft broke and there weren’t any trees conveniently nearby. I would replace the spear later.
By the time I was finished upgrading my spears, the sun was starting to set. I quickly went around to gather as much dried grass and sticks from bushes as I could and started a fire.
“This guy better be at least an eight out of ten for all the pain he’s caused Nora,” I growled, chopping into the beast’s thigh with its own claw.
The meat ended up being pretty tasty but super tough. Maybe if the meat marinated for a while it might become more tender, but for now I just bore with it. I ate in silence, watching over Nora as she slept.
Night fell, but the usual sounds of night life were gone. The fight between Nora and the dinosaur was really loud, so maybe everything had been scared off. I didn’t know, but hey, that means nothing is going to attack us tonight... Right? That’s what that means, right?
I wrapped my fur blanket around my bare shoulders and poked at the fire with a stick. It was going to be a long night. I would have snuggled up to Nora but with her wounds it would be best to just leave her be. Besides, I was too worried to sleep, so I decided to just keep watch and to keep the fire going.
If I had some sort of metal to make speartips out of, then maybe Nora wouldn’t be so hurt. The raptor attack a couple weeks ago and now this T-Rex looking dinosaur... Dinosaur attacks are a thing now I guess, and I can’t just let Nora take care of it. I don’t want her to get hurt like this every time something happens. But what metal would be best? Iron? Can I even forge it with the tools I have? Where would I even find metal... and how? What does ore even look like?
I sighed and pulled the blanket tighter.
Maybe it’ll be like Minecraft and it’ll just be obviously different from the other rocks.
The night was long and quiet. In the morning, Nora woke up with the sunrise.
“Nora!” I got up and rushed to her side. “How are you?”
My shirt was just over her muzzle and didn’t cover her eyes, so she could still see. She looked over at me and whimpered quietly.
“I know,” I said, scratching behind her ears. “You were hurt pretty bad. But you’ll be fine, you heal pretty fast. Are you hungry? That big guy is tasty but it’s really tough and chewy. I’d give it a four out of ten, with potential to be a ten out of ten. I just need to tenderize it properly.”
Nora woofed. I went over to the dinosaur to cut off a large portion for her.
Wait... I thought, mid cut. Shouldn’t it be all hard and stiff by now? It’s still... fresh? Well, it’s not stiff... I guess it doesn’t really matter, it's good that it didn’t get stiff. We can still eat it.
I brought Nora a chunk of meat and went back to cut off a piece for my breakfast.
Nora was too injured to travel, so we just stayed there by the river. We didn’t need to hunt either, we just ate the dinosaur. That night I was too tired to stand watch again, so I fell asleep by the fire. We stayed a second day there as well, but on the morning of the third day Nora was all healed again.
“Wow...” I said, after I pulled off the makeshift bandages. “You really do heal fast.”
Nora barked and licked my face.
“What’s your secret? You’re not hiding some secret magic medicine from me are you?”
Nora rolled her eyes and nudged my bare chest with her nose. I looked down at the jagged pink scars and shrugged.
“You could’ve given me the magic medicine while I was asleep.”
Nora huffed and rolled her eyes even harder.
“Alright, alright,” I laughed, “I healed pretty fast too. Maybe there’s something in the air... Did you heal this fast in the world you came from?”
Nora growled.
“Neither did I. Maybe it really is this world. Maybe things just heal fast here.”
I shrugged then peeled my shirt off of her snout. The two spare leathers and my shirt were all crusted with blood, so I went to the river bank and washed them. Nora leapt into the river next to me, sending a wave of water crashing over me. Nora’s huge head peeked out of the water to see me soaking wet and glaring at her. I carefully set the leathers and shirt aside, stood up, then I jumped in next to her.
“Cannonball!”
We splashed each other and swam around. The water was clear, cool, and refreshing.
After playing around we both climbed out and dried off as best as we could. I went back to washing and she went over to the fire. When I was done, I propped up my shirt, pants, and the spare leathers as best as I could using rocks and spears next to the fire. I wasn’t really in a rush, so I could wait until everything was dry before we headed out.
I sat all nakey on some grass next to Nora.
“Hey Nora, weird question, but can you sniff out metal ores?”
Nora tilted her head at me, then barked and growled.
“Is that a maybe?”
She growled.
“Hmm, then does it depend on the metal?”
She growled again.
“Do you have to be close to it?”
This time she barked.
“Like how close do you have to be? A hundred feet? Ninety? Eighty?”
She growled and kept on growling as I counted down by ten until I got to twenty feet, then she barked.
“Twenty feet huh?... Oh well. I asked because my spears didn’t do much against that thing’s hide.” I waved at the carcass. “I thought that if I had sharp, metal speartips then I could have help more... and in future fights you wouldn't get so injured again.”
Nora licked my face again.
“Just tell me if you smell any metals, ok? I’ll keep a lookout as well.”
She barked.
Once all my clothes and the spare leathers were dry, I clothed myself again and packed everything away. I folded the leathers tightly and stuffed them in the bottom of my bag. Then I stuffed in the cords next. Then five of the dinosaur's teeth, as speartip replacements. I tied the stone axe and one of the claws to the side of the bag. I tied my blanket to the bottom of my bag. I didn’t have any food, but that was fine, I could just hunt. I held my spears in the crook of one arm and stuffed the atlatl into the mouth of my bag so it was sticking out over my shoulder so I could pull it out at a moment’s notice.
When I was ready, we set out down the river once again. This time we were on the lookout for rocky hills that might contain metal. We traveled another thirty days before we entered another forest, leaving the rolling hills of grassland behind. This forest had large, rocky hills and tough looking pine trees and other trees I didn’t recognize. The good thing about following a river downstream was that we went down hill. The path of least resistance. But it was still rocky so we had to watch our step.
Well, by rocky I mean that there was still dirt and everything, it was just that there were also large boulders and stones strewn about as well.
I was glad to be in the forest again. Tons of wood was around and I didn’t have to spend so long gathering fuel for the campfire. I was also able to get a fourth spear. I found berries again, not the steelthorn berries, but another berry that was tiny, orange, and came in bundles like grapes. The seeds weren’t noticeable when I ate them, because they were so small. They tasted like lemon mixed with pomegranate. They grew on vines that covered some trees. I collected as much as I could in my bag.
I decided that it currently must be in the summer. It was starting to get hot during the day, and only pleasantly cool in the night. I didn’t even need my blanket any more.
After another ten days I saw it. A shiny blue line cutting across the side of a small rocky cliff.
“Hey,” I nudged Nora, “I think I see something.”
We walked over and I pointed out the blue line to Nora.
“Is that a metal?”
Nora barked.
... But what kind of metal is blue?