Sacrifice

Go Fish?

Louise continued to watch the Sinoceratops' drink from the waterfall as she slowly sat up and stretched her right arm out as she started to wake up. Then suddenly, she heard a T-Rex roar....T-Rex? Rexy! Not that Louise was the one to name her, but Rexy was the only T-Rex on the island and Louise did some prior research before coming to Isla Nublar.

As Rexy roared, the Sinoceratops' looked up and stampeded off. And then Louise wondered why she'd be roaring at this hour, evening though she didn't know what "this hour" necessarily was. It was sunny, so it could've been morning, but since it was sunny....It could've also been the afternoon. It was incredibly hard to keep track of time, and Louise didn't wear a watch but it'd be broken by now....

How long had it been since she saw the campers? A week? Two weeks? A few days? How long would she be out here before someone came to safe her? If anyone would come to save her....Louise would be alone now, she had already relived all the memories of the campers that she had and she could revisit them for comfort but what was the point? She would never get to experience them in person again.

Louise needed to focus on something else, she couldn't survive on berries, she could but did she want to? She knew she'd get tired of the fruity taste. Louise knew how to fish, only problem was...no rod, and the beach? Where was the beach? She saw the beach surrounding the island when the boat dropped her off, and it shouldn't be hard to find....

Right? I mean the change in grass from sand would be highly noticeable, yes? She didn't necessarily need a fishing rod to get fish, she could make a spear and patiently wait for a fish to swim by and then use the spear to kill it...Which might take a while to do.

But if there was a shot at getting more filling food, she'd want to take it. And she knew that walking to the beach would heighten her chances of running into a dinosaur, but even just sitting near the waterfall would also eventually lead a dinosaur to stumble upon her, like the Carnotaurus or the T-Rex....Louise stood up and took a moment to figure out which way the beach might be.

The island was just so large, she could be walking around for hours...."Maybe this isn't the right choice," Louise said, "It's not like another Compy will lead the way." She added and then sighed. She needed to get to the beach, where was that? Left? Right? Forward? Backwards? Well she needed a spear before doing any sort of hunting....

Louise picked up the vine she didn't use for her sling and then she began to walk to her right, figuring she could pick up some supplies along the way and maybe run into some signage to guide her. She bent over and grabbed a medium sized rock, and then after walking a bit more she picked up another rock of the same size. And then she picked up a large branch, which made her arms completely full.

Louise sat down, crisscrossed on the grass and she laid out the supplies in front of her; rocks, vine, branch. All the things she needed to make a spear, she reached in her pocket to grab her pocket knife that now had a small indent of Compy teeth on the handle. She flipped the blade out and began to carve at the tip of the stick so that she could stick the arrowhead into it. And then she began to spark rocks together, using her blade to help shape or at least sharpen it.

Once she finished, she secured the pieces together using her some of the vine. "Huh, well would you look at that," Louise said, almost proudly. "I made a spear!" Louise shot up to her feet. She began walking some more, eventually seeing the beach through a clearing. Louise stepped onto the sand before kicking her shoes off and removing her socks so they wouldn't get wet. She approached the shore and stepped into the water, which was rather cold.

She would only go up to her knees at max, she couldn't risk getting her waist or stomach wet. The sun was peering down at her but she had noticed that it was lower in the sky, like it was starting to set, so she would have to act fast if she wanted any dinner tonight. The shallow end was clear enough so she could see through it and she stayed as still as possible, her feet sinking into the wet sand.

Louise only turned her head to look around for some fish, she'd probably catch something small, but once she healed, she could go out deeper, even though she wouldn't have any goggles to see clearly under the water....So far, no movement, no fish, no crabs...no food. She walked a bit deeper, trying her best not to step on pieces of dead coral and seaweed. And she waited some more, until she saw a shadow swimming close to her, a fish, she hoped.

Cause she didn't want to be attacked by a shark.

Louise waited until the shadow swam closer to her, and then she moved her arm back and threw the spear forward. But, to her luck, the fish swam away, leaving her spear sticking out of the water. She walked over to her spear and pulled it out with her hand, kicking up the sand and leaving a murky cloud in the water. Louise was about to head back to shore but she noticed that as the murky cloud cleared....

A shell! A full shell, it looked to be a clam shell and Louise liked clam...enough, that she could be happy eating it in this moment. She bent over and picked up the large clam shell, it was just one but she knew there were probably some more if she tried to look. She put the clam in her pocket and poked around the sand to see if she could find another shell or two.

After collecting her bounty of only three shells that were all relatively medium sized, she got out of the water and walked back over to her shoes and socks. Louise should've considered building a bag or at least a pouch so she could carry all her stuff, she couldn't stay on the beach because she needed the semi-fresh water from the waterfall so she could wash them and she needed to gather branches for a fire so she could cook them.

Her pockets only held two out of the three clams. Louise shoved her socks in her shoes and then tied her shoes to either end of her spear so she wouldn't have to carry them and for the last shell, she held it in her left hand. Louise would have to hurry back to her camp, it was going to get dark, the sun was already setting, the smell of cooking seafood at this hour would attract dinosaurs. God, what was she thinking? If it was the afternoon when she woke up, she started hunting too late. Why didn't she think of this whole fishing idea sooner? Geez, Louise!

Night was prime time for dinosaurs, she heard them lurking around as she practically tip toed back to the waterfall. She heard roars and screeches, the flapping of Pteranodons, the campers had ran into them as they were running to the river ride, they swooped down and tried to scoop her and the campers up! She heard the buzzing of mosquitoes, and a snap of a branch after she stepped on one with her bare foot.

She never had to find the waterfall at night, but she just needed to follow the sound of it. And once she found her way back to it, she immediately dropped the clams into the water so that they could start to clean. She wasn't quite sure what she was doing, but she knew that clams needed to be cleaned because they lived in the sand so they'd be sandy. Louise untied her shoes from her spear and only put her socks back on, she walked back into the jungle to collect some wood for fire.

She collected some branches and twigs, and then she got down to the ground and pulled out a tuff of dry grass. Louise was no survivalist but thanks to her family and all the survival shows they grew up watching, she had picked up a thing or two. She grabbed a rock before heading back to the waterfall. Louise built a standard fire, she piled up the wood but didn't light it just yet. She still needed to shuck these clams, in the dark nonetheless without a proper knife to shuck.....

There was a moment where she thought about giving up as she grabbed the clams from the water, these wouldn't sustain her hunger and she'd be indulging in bland clam with bits of sand because she didn't have the proper tools, skills, or technique necessary to actually do a good job cleaning them or cooking them. But, it was clams or starve. If she couldn't have fish, she supposed shellfish was another option.

She just needed to fill her tank, even if that meant eating overcooked clam meat because she didn't want to get some underwater version of salmonella. Louise's first attempt at fishing wasn't a total disaster, she could and would keep at it. From this day on, she walked down to the beach to see if she could catch her breakfast, lunch, or dinner. It gave her something to do each day. She still ate the berries because they were tastier then her seafood.

It was a tedious process but on the days where she did get lucky and get a small fish to eat, those were good days. And then those countless times when Louise yelled, "No, you can't have my food!" to a Compy. She had developed a bit of a routine now, and she was somewhat comfortable on Nublar. Expect when she had the occasional run in and it didn't matter if it was a herbivore or carnivore.