Mesozoic Arrival

The air is wrong. Too wet, too green, thick with the smell of crushed fern and sun-heated mud. You have been walking long enough for the shock of the arrival to thin into something simpler: trees you do not recognize, no path, no voices, and the low insect-hum of a forest that has never heard a road.

Then the undergrowth ahead of you starts to move.

Not a sway. A line. Something is coming through the ferns at a run, fast enough to cover ground at nineteen miles an hour, and the sound of it arrives a heartbeat late — claws punching soil, a body shouldering fronds aside, breath punching out in short hot bursts. It has already seen you. The run breaks. A sudden stop, close enough that the leaves are still shivering from the passage.

What steps into the gap is not a person, and not an animal in any way you have a word for.

Rust-orange scales, glossy where the light hits them, paling to a soft cream down the throat, the belly, and the heavy chest. The stop sets that chest moving: full, pale, and bouncing once with the leftover momentum before they settle, heavy against the scaled ribs. Clawed hands hang open at her sides, black talons still curled from the run. A long tail lashes once behind her for balance, thick at the base, tapering off into the ferns. The head is narrow, muzzled, with a short crest of spines flicked up, and the eyes fixed on you are bright and unmistakably thinking.

She does not lunge. She is already moving again, a quick half-circle, then another, claws whispering on the packed earth, tail held out so she doesn't brush you with it. Up close the size of her is harder to argue with. Taller than you in the shoulder even half-crouched, heavier in every line of the hips and the thighs, the kind of weight that would not need to try very hard to put you on the ground.

"Hold still — don't move, I want to see." The voice is low and quick, words stacked on each other, curious more than afraid. "You don't smell like anything I hunt. Or anything I know. What is that." She circles back in front of you before the question has finished settling. Nostrils flare. The cream of her front rises and falls with her breathing. She watches your face, then your hands, then the place where a tail should be and isn't, and circles again because standing still does not seem to be in her.

"You... have no tail. That's strange. And this..." one claw lifts, not quite touching, at your clothes "This isn't scale, or skin, still it sits on top of you. Why? What are you? And what are you doing in my trees?"

The forest here is older than the one you left. The trunks are farther apart, the light comes down in wide pale shafts, and the ground is a give of moss, shed fronds, and mud that holds the shape of things much larger than you.

You are still working out which way is forward when the canopy above you shakes.

Not wind. A reach. Somewhere overhead, branches complain and then give, and a rain of torn leaves comes down across your shoulders. The ground under your boots dips. A shadow that has no business being a shadow slides over the moss, and you have just enough time to see the foot — broad as a cart, hide plated and golden, claws worn blunt — coming down where you are standing.

It stops a hand's width from you. The impact still hits. Mud jumps. Your balance goes, and the sound that leaves you is not a word so much as a yell thrown upward at whoever almost put that weight through your ribs.

Then you look up.

The leg does not end. It rises, thick as a tree, into a body that blocks the light: gold-brown hide gone glossy in the sun, a vast soft belly, hips and thighs that could shoulder a hillside aside, and a chest so heavy the breasts rest against it and shift with her breathing. A pale tail drags a slow line through the ferns behind her. Jewelry glints where the neck meets the shoulders, a strand of worked stones, and higher still — much higher — a small head on an impossible neck, turned down toward the noise you made. Blue stones swing from her ears.

"Oh." The word arrives late, low, and unhurried, as if it had a long way to travel. "I didn't see you. I was only after the new leaves. I am sorry." The foot eases back. The whole of her shifts, slow enough that the ground rolls under it, and the long neck folds down out of the canopy in a careful arc, the way she checks on anything small enough to be under her and far from her head. Warm breath reaches you before her face does. Up close the head is almost delicate against the rest of her, dark eyes wide, nostrils working over a scent she cannot place. Her gaze travels from your face to your clothes to the empty place behind you where a tail should be.

"You are not what is usually under me," she says, softer still, each word set down before the next one starts. The neck tips, bringing her eye level with yours. "No hide I know. No tail. And that over your skin — it isn't you." A pause, long enough to hear the forest settle. "What are you? And what are you doing down here, so far from my head?"

The path, such as it is, has narrowed to a gap between ferns. You have been walking long enough that the quiet has started to feel ordinary. Then something behind you breaks it. Not a footfall you can place. A weight, settling. A breath big enough to move the leaves at your back.

You turn.

For a moment there is only green, and the sense of a shape that was not there when you passed. You take a step backward. Then another, eyes still on the gap you came through, until the instinct finishes the thought for you and you turn again and run.

It does not last. The thing you hit is not a trunk. It gives, barely, warm and scaled and solid as a hillside, and the impact folds you against it before you can get your hands up. Hide. Pale along the belly, dark gray over the ribs, and above that a chest so heavy the breasts overhang you, soft only until you register the mass behind them. Tiny arms hang useless at either side. They are not what stopped you.

You look up.

The head is already there, tipped down, jaws parted just enough to show the teeth. One yellow eye finds you. The nostrils flare, and the breath that comes out is hot enough to damp your face. She does not lunge. She does not need to. The body you ran into has not moved, and the body behind you is the same animal.

"Running." The word is quiet. Almost gentle. The gentleness sits on top of something that is not. "In my trees. Toward me. You call that a plan?" A clawed foot shifts, blocking the way you came. The ground complains. Her head lowers until the teeth are a handspan from your hair, and the voice stays level, the way a sergeant stays level when the shouting would be redundant.

"You don't smell like anything that belongs here. No tail. No hide. That over your skin isn't skin." A pause, long enough for you to hear your own pulse. "So. What are you? And what are you doing in my woods?"

The jaw closes. Not all the way. The yellow eye doesn't leave you.

"Doesn't matter," she says, softer still, which is worse. "You're mine now. I'll claim you anyway."

The trees finally break. After long enough in the ferns that every direction looked the same, the ground opens into a pale dirt track, wide enough for something much larger than you, worn smooth by weight. You follow it because it is the first thing in this place that resembles a way forward.

You have been on it a while when the track ahead fills.

She is low to the ground and moving on all fours, and the reason is obvious the moment you see the back. Armor. Plates of gray-green hide ridged into spikes, a whole hillside of them, catching the light that comes down between the trunks. A clubbed tail rides out behind her, heavy enough to score the dirt. The head is small for the body, horned at the cheeks, and it swings toward you before the rest of her has finished stopping. Under the armor the belly is bare and pale, and what hangs there is not armor at all: heavy, soft, and shifting with the last of her step.

She does not charge. The club settles. One eye finds you, then the rest of her attention follows, curious in the way of someone who has already decided you are not a threat and is now trying to decide what you are.

"Hold there." The voice is rough, unhurried, close to the ground. She takes two more steps on those pillar legs, claws biting the track, until the armored flank is beside you and the head has come around. Warm breath. A nostril working. "You don't smell like the things that use this path."

Her gaze drops. No tail behind you. No hide worth the name. The clothes get a longer look than the rest. "That isn't skin. It sits on you." A huff, almost a laugh, and the plates along her back shift as she eases her weight. "What are you? And what are you doing on my path?"

She doesn't wait for the forest to answer. The forelegs fold. The armor settles into the dirt with a sound like stone, and the bare front of her comes out from under it: pale chest, heavy breasts, thick thighs spreading as she sits back on the club of her tail and opens the way between them. Heat comes off her. The season is not subtle. Her eye stays on you, and the curiosity has not left it. It has only changed jobs. "It's the season," she says, plain as the path. "I've been using the trees for it, or aything that would take the edge off. But now that you stumbled onto my path..." A blunt claw taps the dirt between her spread thighs. "Well, I don't mind what you are. If you can help me with it, I'll try you instead."