[Open] Open the doors get on the floor

[acrocanthosaurus]

WHO: Patience and OPEN
WHERE: Around the temple
WHAT: A newbie appears!
WHEN: Before plot starts up


She doesn't move noiselessly, but her steps are quiet for something that weighs a few tons. Patience roams the woods around the temple, casting about with her eyes and nose and trying to reach out for that vague warmth that means the amber key or her fellow Wetherford time travelers are in a particular direction. She casts about in vain, which follows with what the little voices have been saying, but that doesn't help her mood. Now it's going to be even longer before she gets home and now things are even less certain.

At least she can find things to eat. Chasing off wolves from their food, fishing in the streams. It means as she's resigning herself to the situation her hunger doesn't drive her to distraction. During this time she doesn't seek people out, but if someone makes eye contact she'll stop and stare and probably engage in conversation.

After a day or so she finally turns to the temple, whose main hall is easily large enough for her to move in. She makes a rumbling chuffing noise, accompanied by the soundless sense of a young woman's voice saying, "Don't freak out. I'm coming in."

Inside, she looks about and gets right to it. "Who are you, and what can you do?"

Comments

[awfulcer]

[The campfire where they're drying the clothes is in the main hall, for ventilation purposes. That means, generally, at least one person at a time is huddled under a cloak, waiting for their clothing to go through the tedious process of getting wearable. A few people tried wet clothes the first few days out of impatience, and are now paying the price in uncomfortable rashes and chafing.

Dixon's underwear are dry, so he's not completely naked under a big cloak and blanket, but denim takes forever to get wearable. When he hears a girl's voice, he pulls all the fabric into an even more covering position, looking like a head poking out of a pile of heavy cloth.

He startles when Patience comes in. He was not super expecting to see a dinosaur, and it never seems to get less weird to have an animal start talking to you. Does a dinosaur have lips? How are they making the "m" sound? Dixon's got no idea.]

Name's Dixon. And...uh... [He's got just about no idea what he can do. His skillset is extremely limited, especially out here.] I can talk to dinosaurs?

[Kobe.]

[acrocanthosaurus]

[Her inner acro doesn't care for the smell of fire, especially in a confined space. Where she just came from there had been an awful lot of it, though, and at least this is controlled, even if the scent of it obscures a lot of the rest of what she might be able to scent for. She hasn't brought this body around enough humans to confidently identify them by odor and to tell that some just aren't.

She fixes Dixon with an eye and gives a slight, ponderous nod, and makes a sort of guttral Uuuurrrrmmmmmmmmm that starts low and goes much lower. Overlaid she sounds highly resigned.]

Patience. You probably can't. I'm a human who got caught up in time travel and I'm supposed to be going and doing something that gets me out of this body and back, but you work with what you got.

[awfulcer]

Right.

[It's not the weirdest thing that Dixon's heard since arriving here, but it's definitely in the top five by virtue of combining both dinosaurs and time travel. It's like two calls to suspend disbelief for the price of one.]

Well, good luck with that. [The getting and doing something about being turned into a dinosaur, he means, and while it's a bit sarcastic there's also some measure of genuine well-wishing in it. At least someone here should get what they want.]

So are you, uh...local? [Is she part of the team or is the wildlife just coming in and claiming to be human? Who even knows! Nothing makes sense and this world is unpredictable chaos!]

[acrocanthosaurus]

Yep.

[She's annoyed in general, but Patience is not a completely ironic name.
Lashing out would be satisfying in only the shortest possible term.]

Definitely not. I'm from Montana. Nineteen ninety nine Montana, not one hundred million years BC Montana.

How old are you?

[Patience herself sounds like a tough teenaged girl, or at least she hopes so.]

[awfulcer]

Two thousand seventeen Missouri. [He's not sure why he's swapping home state information with a dinosaur-who-says-she's-a-girl but he's decided to just go with it. She seems a little terse, but given that he's been picking fights with anything that moves and a few things that don't for the last few days, maybe he shouldn't judge. It was disorienting when he first arrived here, and if what she's saying is true she's probably handling a similar upheaval remarkably well.]

Thirty-five. [If he looks older, it's because alcoholism and chainsmoking are not kind on one's body in the longterm.] Did you hear this whole thing in your head about how you're going to save the Green and all? Because that's kind of the secret password to this, uh...

[What even are all the denizens of this hellish ersatz camping trip?]

...group. Of people. And a few things that ain't people. I think.

[acrocanthosaurus]

Mm. World doesn't end with Y2K, huh? [She snorts, which is a weird forceful sound given the resonating chamber in her snout. No, Patience hadn't sincerely believed it will.]

Huh. [She would have pegged younger just because he probably only comes up to her hip and it's still wired into her brain, or energy-self or whatever because her brain is not here, that someone that small is a very young child.] Yeah, all that. Doesn't look like there's a way out of it. Here I am.

[...she's going to have to sell herself to the new team, isn't she. Oh this is going to suck.]

[awfulcer]

Nah. The computers didn't crash, the robots didn't take over. [He startles again at the sound she makes before he realizes that it's a sound of amusement. Or scorn. He's really not sure which.]

Okay, well, we have a talking mouse too, so maybe a girl trapped as a dinosaur ain't the weirdest person we'll have joining us. We got dragons, too, at least two. And space people. [He pulls his pile of blankets and cloaks tighter.] You run into anyone else? I'm guessing we're near thirty now.

[He sounds like he's vaguely trying to comfort her that she's not the weirdest person here, but it's likely to only go so far given that he's still giving her the side-eye.]

[acrocanthosaurus]

Guess conspiracy theorists will have to pick something else.

[Patience listens, keeping still, not doing the dinosaur equivalent of those little nods and I'm listening noises. Her big face is very hard to read.]

I met that mouse. She's all right.

[From her, that's high praise. This is honestly more talking than she's used to, but she's had to talk more on her Cretaceous adventure too. This is just how these things go, she guesses.

Dixon does sound like he's trying to make her feel better, and she doesn't trust it. The side-eye, well, that doesn't register very hard.]

That's a lot of people. You all show up in that library?

[awfulcer]

She is, ain’t she? [Dixon is very fond of Mrs. Brisby. She’s one of the few people at the camp he hasn’t managed to totally offend with his trigger-happy, aggressive mood swings and backwards opinions. If anything, she even likes him in turn.

He gives her a very blank look, not sure what library she’s talking about.] Huh?

[By now it’s probably a bit obvious Dixon’s not the sharpest lightbulb in the toolbox.]

We didn’t all show up in the same place, I don’t think. We kind of teleported around until we got stuck together. Bet if you run in the other direction from this place you’ll teleport back here too. [He snaps his fingers.] Even fast as you look.

[acrocanthosaurus]

Bold for a little thing, yeah.

[Admittedly, Patience grades on a curve that depends on how small and helpless something is and Mrs. Brisby is about at the lower limit for things Patience can really interact with in this body.]

Right. Well. I'm this. [Selling herself. Right. She raises one big clawed foot and puts it down.] I'm muscle. I can kind of track by scent too.

[awfulcer]

Must be hard being a mouse. [I mean, probably not as hard as being a human trapped in a dinosaur body, but as Dixon has experience with neither he doesn't imagine judging will serve him well.]

I see that. [Patience vaunting her talents reminds Dixon of how few he has; he's nurturing a complex for how useless he is to this caravan of people.]

Can you pass me my pants? [He gestures towards the jeans drying over the fire. They're probably at least minimally damp by now. He realizes a moment delayed that maybe he should ask her to do it without her mouth, but doesn't know if she can with her stubby arms. Hey, maybe he'll have 'can use opposable thumbs' as an edge on her.]

[acrocanthosaurus]

Mmmm.

[She eyeballs him, her first thought being a flat rejection just on the grounds of hating being told what to do, then the thought that she probably should try to get along, then-]

Is that why you're wrapped up like someone's grandma?

[awfulcer]

[He looks at her like she just asked a really stupid question.] What, am I just supposed to sit here in my underwear for dinosaur girls to walk in on?

[He rolls his eyes and scoots under the blankets towards the fire, where he just gets his damn pants himself and pulls them under the blanket, wiggling himself into them while preserving modesty.]

[acrocanthosaurus]

[She shrugs, or tries to. Her shoulder structure doesn't work quite like it'd have to for that.]

They get blood on them or were you just here long enough to need laundry day?

[Which she will not have to participate in. That's something.]

[awfulcer]

Both. [Most of Dixon's clothing has some degree of bloodstain on it, between the fight with the Wheelers and his absolutely disastrous attempts at hunting game. The last time he caught anything he beat it to death with a rock and probably got more of it on him than in the food stores. He tosses the cloak and blanket aside, not bothering to fold them up or anything.]

You need a tour?

[He doesn't know what she'd be interested in; most of the set-up here is around what humans need to camp. Whether or not she's a dinosaur or a person turned into a dinosaur, he can't imagine she'll get much use out of the clotheslines and all.]

[acrocanthosaurus]

This is one of those places, huh? [Like the Cretaceous. Well. The M.I.N.D. Machine assigned her the right body in both cases, then.] All right.

[She hopes it doesn't show how weird it is how small he seems.]

Sure. I know outside fine, but I haven't been in here before.

[awfulcer]

A place where everything's trying to kill you? It is, a little. I mean, we got jumped by monsters our first day here, but other than that we ain't even seen bears.

[He looks momentarily very excited, like he's just remembered something he wants to share with her. It's not that it's anything he can lay any claim to, but somehow by virtue of knowing where it is and being able to present it to someone, he feels quite proud.]

I just realized. You need to see the singing statues.

[acrocanthosaurus]

Give it time. They'll show up.

[Probably. If there's humans here, why not bears? They'll have to be pretty big to face her, though.]

The singing what now? Is this because there's wind blowing around them or something?

[awfulcer]

No, it's because they actually sing. [Dixon sounds like he's explaining something obvious to Patience, like hey, you're a person trapped as a dinosaur, how dare you second-guess singing statues?]

Can you get through all the doors and halls in this place?