Sacrifice

The Waterfall

Rain. It had been raining all night long for these past couple of nights, but nothing too bad. Louise knew it was storm season on Nublar and she had everything necessary to survive a storm if it got bad. She just continued her day like normal, only today she decided to change her bandages after waking up. Then she strolled through the forest and ate some berries for breakfast, the grass was wet and the water was making her shoes wet and her socks too.

And then after eating some berries, she walked back to camp, where she drank some water from the waterfall. All the rain sometimes made the small body of water flood, but there wasn't anything that would get destroyed so Louise wasn't worried about it....too much. She could swim, and even with her still busted arm, her legs could keep her above the surface if anything got too bad. But for a precaution maybe today was the day she thought about a shelter.

During the rainy nights she had just slept under the cliffs of the waterfall with her emergency blanket and a small fire, the cliff served as an umbrella and the fire along with the blanket help her stay warm. However now, the idea of severe flooding popped in her head so she needed to brainstorm some ideas for how she could stay near the waterfall without it flooding her out.

Louise collected some banana leaves, followed by many large branches that had fallen from all the heavy winds and she even found some fallen down coconuts and mangoes that she could potentially eat later. She carried everything in her right arm that had started to scar over now, meaning it had been a while since she initially got them.

She was planning on building some sort of hut, standing up the branches and creating some insulation with the leaves. Now it wouldn't look like anything professional but it'd add some extra protection from the wind and rain. Building it took most of the day and it was nearing when she'd go down to the beach so she stopped focusing on the hut and grabbed her spear to head down to the beach.

Crack. Thunder...It was after she returned with just one fish that she happened to catch, it happened earlier then the days before. The sky began to go dark as she noticed more clouds forming in the distance. But it hadn't started to rain yet, she continued to descale the fish and she made a fire to cook it. She slowly turned the fish over the fire as she watched the sky above, waiting for something to change or get worse. "Ow!" She yelped after she felt some of the fire burnt at her pinkie.

Louise took the fish off the fire and blew the remaining flames out, she could relight it or make a new one if she needed it. She ate the fish as the wind started to pick up and once she was done, Louise took shelter underneath the cliff, sitting beside her hut. It wasn't raining, but thunder still continued to boom in the distance and the lightening lit up the sky.

It wasn't raining....Why wasn't it raining? It didn't matter too much but Louise certainly expected it to. It was just windy, dark and cold. She had prepared for a flood, but at least now she had somewhere to sleep. But then she looked over to where she had built her hut and......."Of course." She said.

"Of course it fell apart."

She'd just sleep on the floor, even though she wasn't all that tired. Louise wrapped herself in her emergency blanket and curled herself up on the ground, continuing to hear the cracks, the strikes, and the scream. "You're hearing things, Lou..." She told herself cause everyone had left the island.

Then the next morning came, and it was peaceful besides the damage from the storm. But it wasn't anything unusual, some branches had snapped off, some vines hung low, and more fruits had fallen. She could hear some Brachiosaurus' waking up, they made the normal sound that Darius had replicated the day the Indominus rex crash the observatory tower.

The storm had only made it easier for her to survive out here, Louise decided to sleep in, not for too long, but she could still get some extra sleep. She threw the blanket off of her and placed a branch on it so it wouldn't fly away. And she opened her eyes and decided she could do some clean up around the waterfall. Louise kicked away the ashes from her fire and she picked up the branches that were supposed to be her hut and placed them down next to the large rock so there'd be space for more thirsty dinosaurs.

She went for a morning walk, as she always did, and she picked up the fallen down coconuts and mangoes. She heard some calls of other herbivores in the distance like Sinoceratops' and Ankylosaurus' and as she turned a corner she came across some regular Ankylosaurus' eating some mangoes that had fallen. They were peacefully eating and didn't notice her, so Louise sat down against a nearby tree to observe them as she cut the top off of a coconut.

She drank the coconut water and watched the large herbivores get their beaks messy with the fresh, sweet juices of the mangoes, it was rather funny and Louise found herself giggling at them. Louise then cracked open the coconut and picked off the meat with her nails that had grown to be a little longer than before her time of Nublar, but she supposed she could use a rock or shell to file them down.

As soon as she heard another call of an Ankylosaurus, the one's eating the mangoes looked up and then stomped off. When the dinosaurs left, Louise decided it was a good time for her too. It could've been a warning call, or it could've just been a call that it was time for them to go and move. Either way, they had stopped eating and now they were leaving and it was for a reason.

Once she returned to the waterfall which took a little longer because of the herbivore detour, she wondered about building the shelter again, giving it another try, because if she was going to be out here long term, she'd need an actual shelter, she couldn't just expect the weather to be the same all the time, the storm from last night being an exhibit of that.

Louise went back into the jungle, it seemed to be a lot of back and forth for her, she reached up and pulled down the vines that hung down from below, because maybe she could tie the branches together and they'd be more secure, less likely to fall down.

And when her back was turned....screaming....splash!

Huh? Louise thought but she was cautious to turn around, not that dinosaur screamed but some did screech, and then she keep hearing more splish, splash....frantic panics? Something was familiar about that, and she also heard some slapping? And then....a loud....roar. Carnotaurus. It was above her, standing on the elevated cliff and roaring.....

She hadn't focused on the Carnotaurus in so long, not that the she didn't think about him every time she saw her injuries and felt her spurts of pain. But now it was up there, and he probably saw her...Not jumping down to eat her...taste her....kill her. She didn't want to see it, she wanted to forget that there was such a dinosaur called the Carnotaurus! She just needed to forget about it and he needed to go away, away from her and her lousy camp....He had to.

Louise kept hearing splashing....maybe a Pteranodon crash landed? And now it was drowning in the water. But, she still didn't turn around, she wanted to, she did, but something was stopping her. Maybe she was just hearing things....She had to be hearing things...

"Louise?" Ben asked. "Is that you?"