Forsaken Heir

Introspection

11 years following the attack on Moran, Jerry is now 18 years old in dinosaur years and things in the city have more or less gone back to normal.

In the soft morning light, Jerry sat at the top of one of the grassy hills  that looked out upon the many buildings and homes that made up the city that had been his home for his whole life as well as the vast plans surrounding it. Beneath the shade of the trees, surrounded by wildflowers, he just sat in silence from his vantage point looking on as the city, with its many little wooden house and great stone buildings, below slowly started to wake, thinking about what his life had been thus far. In some ways it felt as if he wasn't supposed to be alive but yet, here he was on the morning of his first day of the Royal Combat Training Academy as prince regent to his grandfather. Ever since he lost his arms it felt as if a piece of him had gone with them. 

As he faced the future that was coming toward him, it felt like an avalanche on the far away mountains. He didn't feel like he knew who he was entirely, let alone the prince regent. After his father abdicated the throne for the wild lands and forsook his only son after his mothers disappearance never to have shown his face again, Jerry felt loss that he had never experienced. His father had be such a pillar for his sense of self identity as he was ruler of Moran  and that made Jerry the heir, but take his father and what does that make him? It also seemed that many of the townsfolk took on this logic too, with some of them resenting Jerry and taking out there feelings of betray toward his father on him. 

It also didn't help that he would never look like a normal parasaurolophus again, he thought as his mechanical arms made sure of that. The prosthetics really were attributed to the local metal work expert and tinkerer of all trades, Griffin the Plateosaurus. But even with their advantages, such as being able to pick things up with his hands, unlike most of the other Moranians, and he could deal fairly extensive damage in a fight with metal claws at the end of each mechanical finger, they would always serve as a way to make him different. Although their where still a few who stood by him in the face of indifference.

His was dragged away from his thoughts by the sound of bushes rustling and footsteps he would recognize anywhere. 

"I thought I would find you up here," said a soft yet steady voice behind him. "The nerves getting to you?" 

Jerry turned his head to see none other than his older cousin Garry slowly coming up the hill behind him and into the clearing. 

"I guess, just thinking mainly," Jerry replied with a slight smile. He then sighed, pulling at the spring grass with his metallic hands.  "Honestly, I'm doubting whether the Training Academy and price regent is for me. I mean I don't think the townsfolk could make it any more clear they don't want me as the heir."

Garry calmly wandered out of the shade and over to Jerry and playfully butted him with his crest.

"Well it's either me or you," Garry chuckles, "and I for one don't think they want a bookworm for a king." His voice then turns serious again, "You know that they don't really mean all that. They just... are still processing what happened with uncle ...."

"Yeah but I am his son so that pretty much makes me the same. Except I've been mutilated, which doesn't help with my image," Jerry self consciously looked down at his claws that, he was now sinking into the dirt as he had now run out of grass to pick. 

"Oh come, you have never shown any sign of wavering loyalty and what your father does does not have to define you," Garry says in his wise manner, "and just cause you don't have arms doesn't make you any less of a Moranian. They'll come around eventually." He glanced at the city below where the morning market was now being set up with air of slight concern.