Claws of the Crocodile (Fem! reader)

Chapter 1

y/n Granger is off to Australia!
y/n Granger has typed those words with a song in his heart. Finally, a month into the longest and most boring summer holidays ever, something was going to happen.

That was before supper. Now she had come back upstairs and checked her laptop to see how many frieds had noticed her new status. She smiled when she saw the first name in the list of comments.
Peter Grey- Awesome sauce! You kept that quite. Wish I was going with you but parents would have a fit lol.

Peter was her oldest friend from school. Their last two holidays together had been eventful: during the first they had been forced to parachute out of a plane into the middle of the Sahara, escaping from murderous diamond smugglers. On the next one, a volcanic eruption had left them stranded in the Indonesian jungle. Threatened by illegal loggers, tigers and crocodiles, they had finally made their way back to civilisation.

Yes, Peter's parents woukd certainly think twice before letting their son go off with y/n again. Except for the people trying to kill him. That was a little more usual.

Y/Ns earliest memories were of travelling with her parents before they went  missing. The reason was always the same: y/n' s father had been special operations directors of an environmental organization called green force, which worked for change through direct action. Weather it was highlighting the plight of an endangered species, or championing the cause of a native people, or encouraging sustainable development in an area where modern farming was wreaking havoc green force were there at the front line.

The work had taken her parents around the world, so y/n had found herself with remote tribes in the most exreme spots, from the poles to the equator. And for a white English girl  (sorry is you are not white just image your skin colour) she had proven unusually good at lerning how to stay alive. After hee parents had vanished, y/n had travelled with her uncle Al instead.

Now she was in her early teens. When it came to school grades, she knew she would never be more than so-so. When it came to survival, she knew she was up their with the best; but always with more to learn like how to put up a long, tedious English summer at home.

She typed a quick reply to Peter. Didnt know till just now. I'll get you a cuddly Koala!
It had seemed like a good idea to keep the summer break empty. She  had enjoyed the rest at first. Spending every night in her own bed. Eating cooked food that you'd actully bought in a shop. No one trying to kill her. These were all things she had felt she needed more of.

But now, halfway through the summer, she was itching for some excitement. She had been spending too much time on PlaceSpace, where her friends shared their holiday plans; she had never imagined that she would be envious of anyone heading for a hotel in Spain.

She had realized how bad it was when she found herself typing out survival advice to Peter.
Look out for hypothermia. It's not just shivering. Your speech gets sluggish and you lose coordination...

Peter and his family were in a caravan park in Wales. Hypothermia, a fatal cooling of the body's core temperature, was not going to be a problem. Y/N had the problem. She just wasn't used to being the one stuck at home.

But then Uncle Al had dropped his bombshell.
'How do you fancy a trip Down Under?' He had asked.

Y/n had almost cheered. Almost. But one thing he had learned: always get all the facts. And so she had just glanced sideways at her uncle. 'Why...?'
Al had smiled at the wary tone. There was always a reason when they went traveling. 'It won't be five star, I'm afraid. We'll be saying on the Casuarina campus of the University if Charles Darwin. It's all academic stuff. But for you well, there's beaches, there's the national park, there's sailing...'

Al did not have to sell the idea to y/n. Just getting out of the house was enough.
'And what are you doing?' Y/n asked.
Al looked slightly embarrassed, but pleased at the same time.
'They want to award me an Honorary doctorate for my work on the impact of the first Aboriginal people on the prehistoric Australian environment.'

'Cool!' Y/n was impressed, and glad for her uncle.

Uncle Al Professes Sir Alan Grainger, to the outside world had dedicated his life to environmental causes. Becoming y/n's guardian when y/n's parents went missing in an air crash hadn't slowed him down. It wasn't always easy; sometimes it was downright dangerous. Al had upset a lot of powerful people in his time, and y/n reckoned it was only right for his work to be recognized.

'Sure, let's go down under!'
It was all too complicated to explain on PlaceSpace. Y/n would give peter the full story the next time they saw eachother. She ran her eyes down the list of comments to the next name. What she  saw made her sit up.

Brihony Stewart- that's great news! We can catch up. Come and see us in Broome?
Brihony! She hadn't seen her in years not since...well, not since the last trip to Australia. She had been pretty cool, but she still tried not to think much about that particular trip. She had had a great time mostly. But she had gone out with two parents and come home an orphan.

As representatives of Green Force, y/n's parents had gone out to Kimberley, the region at the top end of Western Australia, to help an Aboriginal tribe fight a legal cause. Y/n had been taken under the wing of the tribal elders once they realized that this English kid really did want to learn from them. She had assimilated a huge amount about surviving in the Outback.

What had been the name of her teacher? Pen...Pan...Pindari, that was it. A tough old guy, really hard to please, so that when you did please him, you really felt it had been worth it. His name ment 'high rock's, and he really was as tough as the ancient, sun-baked rocks of the Kimberley. Y/n wondered where he was now.

So, yes, a great time...up until the moment her parents plane crashed and y/n's life changed for ever. Y/n called up Google Maps to look up broken, and also Darwin, where she and Al were going. Darwin was in the Northern Territory, nowhere near the Kimberley.

If Australia was a clock, then Darwin was perched on the north coast at the twelve o'clock position. Broome was at about ten o'clock. It looked no distance at all, but y/n wasn't fooled. The thing she remembered most clearly about Australia was that it was enormous. You could drop several United Kingdoms into it and they would just rattle around.

She looked at the scale in the corner of the screen, and saw that there was a good 600 miles between the two places. That was as bye crow flies a vert ling distance crow with extra fuel tanks added. Go by road and it was 1,000 miles or more. Australia was big

So, nice as it would be, she had to accept that she might not be seeing Brihony on thsu trip. But she didn't want to be negative, and who knew?
So she typed:
Yeah that would be cool. I'll let Al know.