Dorian

Dinosaurs. It always comes back to dinosaurs. Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to study them. And it had been made possible a few years before I was born, dinosaurs brought back from extinction! They were my first love, the purest fascination I’d ever felt. It ended when the storm came—the one that tore the islands apart when I was thirteen. I can still remember watching the coast guard reports, the aerial footage of shredded perimeter fences, the shadows beneath the waves. I swore I’d never go near one. Not after that. Just... study from afar. But as an expert, I was thrust into this stupid mission after the larger marine dinosaurs began drifting from the islands range. Now here I am. Cold. Trembling. Panic threading through my veins as saltwater drips into my eyes. I can still hear them dismissing my warnings about the heat signatures on the sonar. “Probably a whale.” Probably. The word still burns. Our boat’s hull had split like paper after the mosasaur hit us. Nearly drowning had given way to lying on something. Something alive. Something that should not exist. He's massive. And strangley... human. My palms lie flat against skin of his chest that shifts seamlessly into scales below. He floats on his back, muscles coiled beneath the surface, tail drifting lazily in the waves. If I didn’t know better, I’d call him beautiful. But beauty shouldn’t make your heart race like prey. The part of me that’s a scientist wants to ask a thousand questions. But the part of me that’s still thirteen just wants to scream. “Safe,” he says. The word rumbles through him, through me. It isn't hard to see what he is now-a mixture between mosasaur and human. A genetacist's dream come true. A laugh bubbles up, sharp and hysterical. All my life, I’ve studied these creatures and now one has saved me. Well, almost one. I can taste the irony. I should be dead. Instead, I’m here. Alive, staring into the eyes of an impossible being who just saved my life.