The New Adventures of Raptor Trainer

New Faces

That was the day everything changed.

I awoke to a strange sensation across my side and limbs. My eyes fluttered open slowly, and I found myself lying on warm, white sand; something I'd never felt before. But I immediately decided I liked it, so I rolled over only my other side and purred as the soft granules beneath me shifted with my movement. Upon looking ahead of myself, I caught sight of what looked like a giant pool of water.

...Wait...No...Not pool.

Ocean.

How did I know what I was looking at? I'd never seen the ocean before, and I never picked the idea, or even the name of it up from anywhere. I just...knew.

It turned out I knew a lot of things now; so much that it almost made my head hurt once I realized it, as though the words had been crammed right into my head, swimming around faster the more of them I realized were there. I was on a beach, and small waves crashed onto the shore. I watched the foaming ripples as they were drawn back into the sea, only to return just mere moments later. The sight of it was mesmerizing; hypnotic, almost. For a moment, I felt like I could watch this all day.

But it was then, upon staring out at the blue water for so long, that I realized just how thirsty I was.

How long had I been lying there? It must have been for a while; I felt dried out. The sun always felt good on my cold skin, but if I was in it for too long it would dry me out. Still eyeing the water ahead, I licked my parched lips and shifted my feet back onto the ground, then pushed myself up so that I could make my way to the shore and have a drink, not caring how salty it might be, or how I even knew the ocean was salty at all. And then...

Pain.

The sharp, sudden shockwave of it coursed all the way through to my insides, as though I'd been badly stabbed by one of my sister's claws. I let out a gurgle of a scream as the metallic taste of blood began to fill my mouth. Not the blood of any prey, but my own. Coming out of my mouth from where it hurt.

I screamed again. Was I dying?

...Would I die alone?

...No. Something heard me scream.

I caught the familiar scent of those strange, skinny creatures that had been around me and my siblings our whole lives. The ones that raised us, trained us, fed us...

Humans. That's what they were called.

Two of them came, one male and one female, both of them clad in white. They towered over me, gasped and exchanged glances, then began speaking to each other.

For the first time in my life, I actually understood what they were saying; word for word.

"What IS this thing...? I've never seen anything like it!"

"D-do you think it's dangerous?"

"I don't know, but it's definitely in bad shape. Look at all the blood it's lost..."

"Are we going to...Do we need to bring it in?"

"We're going to have to; this is gonna require a trip to the operating table."

Now those were words I didn't know, that I hadn't somehow figured out. Blood loss? Operating table? What were they going to do to me? What was wrong with me? I wanted to get up and run, or perhaps muster the strength to fix whatever was wrong with myself, but I found myself losing strength quickly; I could barely breathe where I lay without exerting myself, no part of me moving except for my shifting eyes and my pained side as it rose and fell with each sharp, agonizing breath.