Brothers

Chapter 2: Talking With a Friend

I was just starting to hunt breakfast when I heard a familiar voice.

"Spiny!" Tappy called out as she flew in. Since I was standing in the water, the small tapejara landed on my nose. "Good morning," she chirped.

I smiled at her, going cross-eyed as I looked at her. "Good morning,"

"I'm ready to talk now," she said.

I laughed. "If you give me a minute to catch breakfast, I'll be ready to talk, too."

She looked down, only now realizing what she interrupted. "Oh! I'm so sorry, sure, take your time," she said and fluttered over to the shore.

There was no need to take my time with how good of a fisher I was, and soon I trudged out of the waters with a full stomach. Tappy was over by the tree-thing, messing about with the pieces of wood. I walked up beside her.

"So, are you going to tell me what that is?" I asked her.

"Yep," she said at the same time she ripped off a piece of wood that helped make the roof. "It's a sentry tower." she replied and dropped the wood, perching comfortably on another piece to talk to me.

"Long, long ago these sentry towers were constantly manned by the apes and other fuzzy creatures. They were built to keep us off of the island, so when a dinosaur approached the water or flew over the water, they'd kill it. Soon, the dinosaurs had such a fear of the coastline that they seemed to forget it ever existed. And those who still do, like my family, avoid fishing away from our cliff for fear of the towers. I decided to take a risk and fly out here, and without you, I would have deeply regretted it." she told me and peered all the way over to the second one that loomed in the distance.

"I do hope that one's still empty. No pterosaur has spotted a floating hut in years, I think they stopped supplying the towers and just forgot about that one." she said and pointed to the ape I killed.

Her answer only caused more questions to float in my head. "Why did they want to keep dinosaurs away from the coast?"

"Because they were afraid of us. There's an even older story of a war that we fought against the fuzzy things, a war that we ended up losing. I don't remember it, haven't heard it since I was a chick, but I think we used to be in competition with the fuzzy things. Something about 'The Day our Gods Turned Against us'." she said with a shrug.

"War? What's war?" I asked her, fully intrigued by what she said.

"You don't know what war means?" she asked back.

I shook my head. "I've never heard of the word."

"Hmm, I guess we don't get into too many wars with each other, 'cause I don't remember ever hearing about a recent one. But, anyway, the definition of war is a conflict. A big, bad and deadly conflict." she replied.

"Oh, so like the conflict Deinonychus and I had with the Western Troodon Tribe." I replied.

She cocked her head just as I realized what I said. "Deinonychus? Like the dinosaur?"

I shifted awkwardly as I thought of how to escape this. But I wasn't smart enough for that and decided to embrace it with a sigh. "Yeah, I was friends with a deinonychus named Deinonychus. I ran into him shortly after my parents were killed by tyrannosaurs. His family was also killed by the same tyrannosaurs, so we quickly became friends, having found that common ground." I replied.

Obviously noticing my drop in mood, she reached out to put a wing on my nose to comfort me. "What happened to him?"

"We decided to form a pack of orphans and runaways, a brotherhood of carnivores. But I started to disagree with Deinonychus' point of view, and after many years of helping him lead, he kicked me out. That's why I was on the run."