Rinen cringed in a mixture of concern and slight fear as his companion disappeared among the dry leaves of the small bush. There was a real chance, especially with his earlier injuries, that Aquarius had really hurt himself badly with his unfortunate fall. Moreover, the sound of his crash had been a loud one and every dinosaur that wandered the surrounding plains had most likely heard it. Rinen narrowed his eyes as he ran towards the bush, his mind fixed on the implications of this development. All his life he had been trained to stand his ground against other dinosaurs whenever possible but he certainly didn’t want to fight these mysterious strangers in the case they happened to be hostile. Aquarius’ fall had given any element of surprise to their counterpart. However, all of that mattered little for now. Before the possible upcoming encounter, he’d have to check up on Aquarius to see if he was alright. Even then, he couldn’t avoid some ironical thoughts about the latest development. This really was the best time to reveal our position, wasn’t it? Heh, at least it looks like swimmers are just as clumsy as grandfather told me. He got at least that much right.
“Get out of there, now! It was bad enough that you told everyone where we are, don’t make this any worse!” The threehorn hissed as he looked into the bush, realizing the implications of his remark. Rinen knew his old herd would despise him even more for this cowardice to face an opponent but if they had been self-righteous enough to exile him, why should he listen to their advice anymore? At least there was nobody telling him what to do all the time these days.
The boy twitched in slight surprise as he suddenly noticed Aquarius rising to his feet near him, bringing Rinen at least some relief. The swimmer looked somewhat pained and there seemed to be even more wounds on his body than before but it couldn’t be helped in times like these. Due to the swimmer’s earlier failure, the duo’s location was known to everybody nearby and in certain situations that would have been a mistake the world wouldn’t forgive to the swimmer. However, Rinen soon realized something highly unsavory. There was nowhere to hide from any unwanted attention except… except a large formation of rocks just behind the bush Aquarius had dropped into! With any luck, it could serve as the duo’s hiding place from the mysterious dinosaurs long enough for the duo to learn about their intentions.
“Hey, we could hide behind those rocks! We cannot let the strangers find us before we find them so move, now, before they see us!”