One Jenny, one Sookie, and no Egyptian goddesses, madmen with boxes or red-haired wives. The wee-his-pants fear hadn't set in yet, but it fluttered against Rory's chest as he took a long look at their surroundings, turning in a tight circle as it politely begged him to consider giving in. But he'd done this before. He'd faced unfamiliar surroundings and great big questions with no answers.
He could do this. Rory Williams could do this.
Oh, but it was cold. And where was his wife?
Coming around full circle just as the questions ended, Rory looked at the two girls and realized, as if for the first time because it was, that he had a jacket and both of them were in their nightclothes.
"I'm, uh, I'm Rory," he said. Best be honest and not give anything away. "And here." Stepping closer, he shrugged off the coattails, damp on the outside but dry within and warm from an evening of dancing. "She can have this. You should keep that blanket to yourself, cover your head. And we should find shelter, or at least get moving. Do you know where we are?"
Rory had the talent of asking competent questions with a quiver of uncertainty in his voice. He knew what to do, just not always how.
The jacket served almost as a sort of peace offering, from Sookie's point of view, and she accepted it gratefully, nodding her head with a quiet 'thanks' and immediately setting on wrapping Jenny in it, although she kept the blanket wrapped still outside of the jacket. Sookie had a fair amount of regard for her own existence, always strove to survive no matter how difficult the circumstances, but the fact still remained that she cared about the welfare of others more, much of the time. Jenny was young, Jenny had great potential, Jenny had so many people who cared for her on the island and was more or less a younger sister to Sookie herself- there was no way that Sookie was going to put her own health above the younger girl's, if she could help it.
At the same time, leaving the man in a dress shirt and slacks seemed a little much, enough for Sookie to send an apologetic glance his way- you understand, a teenager's welfare should come before our own, don't you? Still keeping her hands on Jenny's shoulders protectively, Sookie blinked through the rain and tried to look around them, both to get a sense of where they were- that was rather unsuccessful- and to try and find the shelter Rory suggested.
Turning back to look him in the eye, Sookie offered a smile, tentative but earnest, nervous but defiant. "It's nice to meet you, Rory, though I wish it was under better circumstances. I'm Sookie, this is Jenny, and you don't need to worry about me, I'm healthy as a horse- but I also wouldn't say no to shelter, or just tryin' to walk out of this mess. We're on an island, an island called Tabula Rasa, where people show up without rhyme or reason and no one's able to leave by choice. It does weird things sometimes, and I'm guessing this is one of those times, but I don't know where exactly where are on the island. Usually you can find paths no matter where you go, leadin' back to the Compound where a lot of us stay."
As much as it would have been the more polite thing to do, Jenny could decline neither blanket nor jacket, looking between the other two figures wide-eyed as she took in their conversation. With everything happening so quickly, it was really only just sinking in that none of them had any idea where they were, a fact more worrying than she was entirely comfortable with. That they were still on the island was a comfort, but only just; it didn't give them any bearings now, any idea of which way to go, and Rory didn't even know about this place to begin with. Basically, as far as she could see, they were fucked.
"Yeah, it's... it's complicated and weird and I really wish we could explain it better, but neither of us know how it works," she offered, not wanting to be totally useless, ducking her head, rain plastering her hair to her cheeks and back. "This is not usually how people show up, but this isn't really normal weather for us, either. Or normal at all. We should - can we walk? I don't know which way to go, but we'll probably figure it out if we don't just keep standing here." Her voice rose in pitch as she spoke, growing gradually higher and revealing her thinly-veiled panic. A little rain never hurt anyone, but this was a lot of rain, and they were lost and she didn't even have shoes on. She'd barely even woken up yet. She figured she was allowed to be pretty freaked.
The apologetic glance was taken with an awkward little nod. He knew what he was getting into in offering her his jacket, so he really didn't need it pointed out to him again. Besides, he felt strangely patronized by the look and decided, for the sake of his own well-being, that this wasn't a woman he wanted to upset.
Rory took their explanations with a series of nods that achieved little but making him look like a bobble-head doll, thinking all the time of his own explanation. Something happened in the TARDIS. Maybe they veered off course. Maybe the Silence got them already; then again, there wasn't a lot of silence around here, just rain. Maybe they got transported out of the TARDIS and someone was holding it prisoner. Maybe holding the Doctor prisoner. Maybe holding Amy prisoner. The more Rory thought about it, the more he knew -- even if he didn't really know -- that they needed to get moving.
"Okay. Okay, well, let's just..." He took in the direction Sookie had come from and the direction that Jenny had come from, and made a rough guess as to what path would be perpendicular and backwards to that. The sky looked somewhat lighter in that direction anyway, or maybe that was just wishful thinking. "How about we head that way," he suggested, pointing, "and maybe we can find my friends. They were travelling with me, but we must have gotten separated in.. whatever this is. Maybe they'll even know how to get to that um, Compound, was it?"
If the man's appearance didn't seem to inspire too much confidence, the fact that he seemed to be reacting more calmly than either Sookie or Jenny only made the former suspicious. Of course, Sookie's suspicions were more often met with curiosity than aggression; she wondered if Rory was accustomed to being thrown around from place to place, if he had dealt with such pocket realities before. It was even possible that he was a being conjured up by the island or somehow crafted specifically for the sort of hijinks that it was putting them all through at that moment. The problem was, there really was no reason to either trust or mistrust Rory, and given the fact that staying put for a rescue party could potentially take days and leave them all ill, there seemed to be no other choice than to nod. How much did they have to lose?
Or, really, maybe they had too much, and that was the problem.
"Okay," Sookie agreed, before pausing, then blurting out still more words on the matter. "But you shouldn't count on your friends bein' here, Rory, much as I hate to say it, 'cause even if you're right by their side prior to arrivin', that unfortunately doesn't mean much. I don't think I've ever heard of two people comin' to the island together, though I've only been here a couple of months, so Jenny would know better than I do, but I was right beside my brother and- and boyfriend before I came to Tabula Rasa, and neither of them came with me. Actually, my brother Jason had been here for a whole year, as it turns out."
She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, fighting down the sudden wave of longing for Bill to come and show her the way out, and suppressing still the impulse to expect it. Like he would just run out from the trees and call her name in that breathy tone of voice, then haul her out altogether until they were safe and warm by the fire. Sookie wondered, too, if Mitchell would have any idea that she disappeared, or worse still if he was similarly caught out somewhere in all the rain- although with over a century under his belt, Sookie imagined that he would probably know how to deal with the situation a fair amount better than she did. Swallowing thickly and resolving not to need either of them- not Bill, nor Mitchell, though not for lack of want- and instead setting the goal of keeping her companions safe until they got back to some semblance of civilization, she steeled her nerves and stepped ahead, trying to keep Jenny close behind her.
"But we should keep movin'," Sookie concluded, as much for herself as the others. "So that we don't freeze out here. You okay, Jenny? Or as okay as any of us can be, right now?"
"I, uh," Jenny began, suddenly unsure of herself, feeling put on the spot, though Sookie's question was an entirely natural one. Her instinct, of course, was to say that no, she wasn't okay, how could she be, when they had no idea where the hell they were or how to get back to the closest approximation to civilization they had, but it wouldn't have been entirely true, and anyway, panicked though she may have been, she didn't want to worry the rest of them. That she had other people here was enough of a relief; that one of them was Sookie, someone whom she inherently trusted, was even better. "I guess? I mean, not really, I'd be a lot better if we knew where we were going or if I at least had shoes, but... as okay as I can be, yeah."
She'd only barely paid attention to what had been said before that, but with a moment to process it now, she turned her attention once more to Rory, even while staying as close to Sookie as she could. "People have shown up together before, but it really doesn't happen all that often. It's more likely that someone will have been here for a while already and you never knew it. Time here... is weird like that." There was probably a better explanation to be given, but none that came to mind just yet, when she had so much else going through her head. It sucked for Rory, having to deal with showing up under these circumstances, but there was nothing more they could do about it, and there would be plenty of time later for him to be filled in properly on the island and its ways.
Sookie's blunt reply, however unintentional it might have been, hit Rory like a slap in the face, unwarranted and unnecessary. Only a couple of minutes had passed; he wasn't even near ready to begin to consider that something was wrong (even though he knew it so obviously, definitely was) and was at least a week and thorough search of this place away from allowing the thought that neither Amy nor the Doctor were in the same mess as he to settle in like an unwanted guest. And then she had to go and throw the word "boyfriend" in, like she knew full well (when of course he knew she didn't) that his wife had been at his side, finally, miraculously, after two thousand years and some change. Like someone had shown her a toy dollhouse of Rory's life and she'd stomped all over it and left it muddy and wet.
He stared at her blankly for a second. At least the girl had the decency to sound apologetic about it. His jaw, weak though it was, set as he stepped forward into the direction he had pointed and he loosened his tie. "I'd give you my shoes," he said, passing Jenny, "but they'd probably be more of a hassle than a help." His feet were really quite a bit larger than hers, easily. "And my friends have done half a dozen things that you've never heard of before by breakfast, so I wouldn't be so quick to discount them," he added to Sookie. "Either way, let's just get moving," he said, continuing his walk with a brief stumble over a mossy and slippery log.
The gall of the statement- or maybe it wasn't even gall at all, but instead the fact that everyone seemed so quick to make those hasty judgments about Sookie, all blonde and clueless and clearly sheltered- had Sookie blinking for a few moments. Who was Rory to say what she'd heard of and what she hadn't? Maybe if they had been warm and dry in the Compound, she would have corrected him. Challenged him to present something that would knock her socks off. But as things stood, Sookie had more than enough sense to know that it was best left until later to discuss, even if part of her was always tempted to ease people's hopes down a little upon arriving on the island. She didn't like waiting to watch their hopes to fall and shatter on the ground.
"Here, take my shoes," Sookie smiled at Jenny, one that trembled from fear and uncertainty as she slipped off her sandals. "I think our sizes are probably closer, and I've walked around barefoot often enough that my feet aren't dainty anymore to begin with."
That fear, though, was quick to fester, Sookie's chest feeling tight even as she started after Rory, trying her best to constantly match his pace. Every sound that seemed to break the pattern, every strange howl of wind and snap of a branch, made Sookie more prone to jumping, until the sound of a roar in the distance pulled a yelp out of her. "I think- I think there's somethin' out there. Should we hide? Wait until it passes?" she asked, voice as hushed as Sookie could manage without being swallowed altogether by the sound of rain.
"Oh, you don't have to -" Jenny tried to protest, but Sookie's shoes were already off and she was already stepping into them, hurrying, then, to close the distance put between herself and the others in the few moments it had taken. The last thing she wanted was to risk getting lost out here; she didn't think either of them - or Sookie, at least - would leave her behind, but they were in enough trouble already, and she wasn't about to add to that. Stumbling forward, teeth worrying at her lower lip, she followed along, trying to stay at Sookie's side. Jenny prided herself on not being outwardly too clingy, but here in the middle of nowhere with a stranger, she supposed it was understandable.
It served her well, too, at the sound of a noise, her hand going to Sookie's arm as she looked around, wide-eyed. Under other circumstances, it might have been funny, how much she probably looked like a character out of a horror movie, but as it was, she could focus on nothing but sheer terror, teeth worrying at her lower lip. "Do we even know what that was?" she asked, voice unsteady, then decided that it didn't matter and shook her head. "Either way, I think we should get out of the way. We don't want... whatever made that noise... to find us."
About to snap a response at her (though it shouldn't really be called snapping as Rory did such things infrequently at best and usually when he had some better reason to be snappish than being soaking wet and alone), Rory spun around with a hand raised just as that sound reverberated through the forest. He stood, frozen, finger pointing to the sky and realized that they were all very, very unarmed. Suddenly he felt a bit more naked than either of the girls in their nightclothes.
"Right, we should... definitely just move away from... that," Rory said, dropping his hand a bit so as to waggle his finger in the direction of the sound. "Let's just... yeah, let's just keep moving. Maybe a little faster."
Feeling the curl of fingers over her arm, Sookie's hand immediately moved to cover Jenny's, clutching tightly and feeling no more reassured when Rory also began to clearly panic. It wasn't entirely the fact that he was the man of the group- although, being from a rather traditional region, the tendency to look to the 'man' of the house was instinctual- but instead the fact that he had clearly taken it upon himself to look over the both of them, fording a path through the forest, only to then lose so much of his resolve over whatever that sound had been. And where a leader fumbled, those who followed inevitably tripped, to the point that Sookie could only feel fear sliding down her back with a chill greater than the pouring rain.
Not even sure what to say to Rory, the situation possibly twice as foreign to him as herself and Jenny and him already hanging off the end of some sort of tether, Sookie turned instead to the other blonde, her breath snagging as rain dripped from her chin. "J-Jenny, when you think of- of places on the island that aren't... really occupied by people and don't even have paths. That doesn't- does it make you think of the place I'm thinkin' about? Fenced off."
Unwilling to put it in words until absolutely necessary, Sookie squeezed her eyes shut after an apologetic glance in Rory's direction, even as the three of them continued to move through the thick of the forest. "Dinosaurs."
If the possibility had occurred to Jenny before, she had made a point of ignoring it, not needing to panic any more than she was already. Having it spelled out, though, she couldn't pretend it wasn't an option anymore, and probably the most likely one. It wouldn't be the first time it had happened, from what she'd been told, groups of people just appearing in dinosaur territory at the same time and having to find their way back. That wasn't remotely comforting when now it was happening to her.
"Holy shit," she breathed, still staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at Sookie, tempted, too, to grab Rory, though that instinct was one she suppressed, him still being a stranger to the other two of them. "That was a dinosaur. Oh, God, oh, God, we have to hide, we can't - that thing could get us, he's right, we need to move."
"Oh that's great," Rory let slip, more a huff of air than a statement. Maybe they were still wherever Jenny and Sookie thought they were and that could very well be a dinosaur. (Rory, for the moment and for the sake of mental argument, decided not to question that the girls had been living near actual dinosaurs. If there could be vampires in Venice, there could be dinosaurs on an island.) But maybe it had been something else all-together and sending a teenager into a panic could be the worst possible option.
His sigh of frustration could have also related to the fact that Rory had a bad track record when it came to reptilian creatures from millions of years ago. He glanced side to side, ostensibly looking for the proper path (or rather space with less foliage) but also (perhaps foolishly) looking for a blue box or a large crack. Anything familiar.
"If it's a predator, if we run, it might just make it want to chase us more," Rory reasoned, seemingly pulling information out of nowhere. Actually it came from an ancient but surprisingly sturdy man in the early second century AD. Not a natural memory of Rory's, but one he'd take. "We may need to hide though. Maybe it wouldn't be able to scent us with all this mud and crap around." Even so, Rory took a few steps to the side and, with minor difficulty, wrenched a somewhat intimidating branch from a fallen log. He stripped it of its leaves as they carried on, Rory setting a swift pace but not about to leave the girls behind.
Funny, how Sookie never really had exposure to the notion of predators other than vampires, and yet they matched unquestionably with the description. Vampires liked the chase, liked the struggle as much as they liked the ability to hook people in quietly, under the radar. Sookie looked over her shoulder for just a moment, almost expecting to find something, someone, but finding nothing but sweeping foliage, she ducked down to tug a second branch away from the log. Stubbornly, she winced as she placed a foot over the bark to help brace herself as she pulled the makeshift weapon away, pulling her hand away from Jenny's for a moment as she similarly stripped the branch down.
"Well, we can't hide forever, wherever we go," Sookie reasoned, occasionally sputtering through heavy rain as she dropped a hand to hold Jenny's, squeezing tight in hopes of reassuring the young woman. "We can't expect that people will come to look for us, and the dinosaurs aren't exactly gonna leave the place they've been livin' for years. Maybe we keep on walkin' until dark? And duck for cover if we hear anythin' approaching too quickly."
There was little reassurance to be found in a situation like this, with so much uncertainty and their one possible option being something so, so awful, but Sookie's clasping her hand gave about as much as was possible, Jenny holding tight in return. On their own out here, she was going to take whatever comfort she could get. It was better than nothing, better than being completely alone. While she wasn't sure that that was a sentiment she would ever be able to vocalize, she could at least act on it, especially when she wasn't sure what was going to happen next, if they were even going to make it.
And Jenny really, really did not want to die.
"If we can make it to the fence," she said, and paused to gasp, breathless in her attempts to keep up the pace, not wanting to fall behind or slow the others down. "If we can make it to the fence, then - then they can't get to us. The dinosaurs, I mean. They can't cross it." The prospect was admittedly a glimmer of hope, but one that didn't last long. "It would just be nice if we knew which way it is."
"There's a fence?" Rory boggled, shooting a bewildered look over his shoulder at the two. "You fence up the local dinosaurs like pets? Or is this like that Jurassic Park movie?" Dinosaurs? Good. Fine. Well, not good, but fine. Rory could accept that. He learned to accept homo reptilia; he could accept their stupider cousins existing. But a fence? It was too mundane to fit in the scenario, like remembering that the Silurians lived beneath Wales.
He shifted his gaze forward again, now searching the dense foliage for some sign of Rory and the Doctor with more than a hint of desperation. Was this some kind of joke? It couldn't have been. It'd be an awful, terrible joke if it were, and he knew the Doctor might take a shot at him but not an actual, dangerous shot. No, this was serious, and it needed fixing now.
"We can hide forever. People do it all the time," Rory reasoned, clearing his throat once after, wary now of letting fear creep through. "We just.. keep walking. Stop at night and try to build some shelter or at least get off the ground. The fence has got to-- it's not like a wall, right? It's a fence around an area? We've got to run into it no matter which way we go, right?"
He could do this. Rory Williams could do this.
Oh, but it was cold. And where was his wife?
Coming around full circle just as the questions ended, Rory looked at the two girls and realized, as if for the first time because it was, that he had a jacket and both of them were in their nightclothes.
"I'm, uh, I'm Rory," he said. Best be honest and not give anything away. "And here." Stepping closer, he shrugged off the coattails, damp on the outside but dry within and warm from an evening of dancing. "She can have this. You should keep that blanket to yourself, cover your head. And we should find shelter, or at least get moving. Do you know where we are?"
Rory had the talent of asking competent questions with a quiver of uncertainty in his voice. He knew what to do, just not always how.
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At the same time, leaving the man in a dress shirt and slacks seemed a little much, enough for Sookie to send an apologetic glance his way- you understand, a teenager's welfare should come before our own, don't you? Still keeping her hands on Jenny's shoulders protectively, Sookie blinked through the rain and tried to look around them, both to get a sense of where they were- that was rather unsuccessful- and to try and find the shelter Rory suggested.
Turning back to look him in the eye, Sookie offered a smile, tentative but earnest, nervous but defiant. "It's nice to meet you, Rory, though I wish it was under better circumstances. I'm Sookie, this is Jenny, and you don't need to worry about me, I'm healthy as a horse- but I also wouldn't say no to shelter, or just tryin' to walk out of this mess. We're on an island, an island called Tabula Rasa, where people show up without rhyme or reason and no one's able to leave by choice. It does weird things sometimes, and I'm guessing this is one of those times, but I don't know where exactly where are on the island. Usually you can find paths no matter where you go, leadin' back to the Compound where a lot of us stay."
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"Yeah, it's... it's complicated and weird and I really wish we could explain it better, but neither of us know how it works," she offered, not wanting to be totally useless, ducking her head, rain plastering her hair to her cheeks and back. "This is not usually how people show up, but this isn't really normal weather for us, either. Or normal at all. We should - can we walk? I don't know which way to go, but we'll probably figure it out if we don't just keep standing here." Her voice rose in pitch as she spoke, growing gradually higher and revealing her thinly-veiled panic. A little rain never hurt anyone, but this was a lot of rain, and they were lost and she didn't even have shoes on. She'd barely even woken up yet. She figured she was allowed to be pretty freaked.
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Rory took their explanations with a series of nods that achieved little but making him look like a bobble-head doll, thinking all the time of his own explanation. Something happened in the TARDIS. Maybe they veered off course. Maybe the Silence got them already; then again, there wasn't a lot of silence around here, just rain. Maybe they got transported out of the TARDIS and someone was holding it prisoner. Maybe holding the Doctor prisoner. Maybe holding Amy prisoner. The more Rory thought about it, the more he knew -- even if he didn't really know -- that they needed to get moving.
"Okay. Okay, well, let's just..." He took in the direction Sookie had come from and the direction that Jenny had come from, and made a rough guess as to what path would be perpendicular and backwards to that. The sky looked somewhat lighter in that direction anyway, or maybe that was just wishful thinking. "How about we head that way," he suggested, pointing, "and maybe we can find my friends. They were travelling with me, but we must have gotten separated in.. whatever this is. Maybe they'll even know how to get to that um, Compound, was it?"
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Or, really, maybe they had too much, and that was the problem.
"Okay," Sookie agreed, before pausing, then blurting out still more words on the matter. "But you shouldn't count on your friends bein' here, Rory, much as I hate to say it, 'cause even if you're right by their side prior to arrivin', that unfortunately doesn't mean much. I don't think I've ever heard of two people comin' to the island together, though I've only been here a couple of months, so Jenny would know better than I do, but I was right beside my brother and- and boyfriend before I came to Tabula Rasa, and neither of them came with me. Actually, my brother Jason had been here for a whole year, as it turns out."
She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, fighting down the sudden wave of longing for Bill to come and show her the way out, and suppressing still the impulse to expect it. Like he would just run out from the trees and call her name in that breathy tone of voice, then haul her out altogether until they were safe and warm by the fire. Sookie wondered, too, if Mitchell would have any idea that she disappeared, or worse still if he was similarly caught out somewhere in all the rain- although with over a century under his belt, Sookie imagined that he would probably know how to deal with the situation a fair amount better than she did. Swallowing thickly and resolving not to need either of them- not Bill, nor Mitchell, though not for lack of want- and instead setting the goal of keeping her companions safe until they got back to some semblance of civilization, she steeled her nerves and stepped ahead, trying to keep Jenny close behind her.
"But we should keep movin'," Sookie concluded, as much for herself as the others. "So that we don't freeze out here. You okay, Jenny? Or as okay as any of us can be, right now?"
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She'd only barely paid attention to what had been said before that, but with a moment to process it now, she turned her attention once more to Rory, even while staying as close to Sookie as she could. "People have shown up together before, but it really doesn't happen all that often. It's more likely that someone will have been here for a while already and you never knew it. Time here... is weird like that." There was probably a better explanation to be given, but none that came to mind just yet, when she had so much else going through her head. It sucked for Rory, having to deal with showing up under these circumstances, but there was nothing more they could do about it, and there would be plenty of time later for him to be filled in properly on the island and its ways.
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He stared at her blankly for a second. At least the girl had the decency to sound apologetic about it. His jaw, weak though it was, set as he stepped forward into the direction he had pointed and he loosened his tie. "I'd give you my shoes," he said, passing Jenny, "but they'd probably be more of a hassle than a help." His feet were really quite a bit larger than hers, easily. "And my friends have done half a dozen things that you've never heard of before by breakfast, so I wouldn't be so quick to discount them," he added to Sookie. "Either way, let's just get moving," he said, continuing his walk with a brief stumble over a mossy and slippery log.
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"Here, take my shoes," Sookie smiled at Jenny, one that trembled from fear and uncertainty as she slipped off her sandals. "I think our sizes are probably closer, and I've walked around barefoot often enough that my feet aren't dainty anymore to begin with."
That fear, though, was quick to fester, Sookie's chest feeling tight even as she started after Rory, trying her best to constantly match his pace. Every sound that seemed to break the pattern, every strange howl of wind and snap of a branch, made Sookie more prone to jumping, until the sound of a roar in the distance pulled a yelp out of her. "I think- I think there's somethin' out there. Should we hide? Wait until it passes?" she asked, voice as hushed as Sookie could manage without being swallowed altogether by the sound of rain.
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It served her well, too, at the sound of a noise, her hand going to Sookie's arm as she looked around, wide-eyed. Under other circumstances, it might have been funny, how much she probably looked like a character out of a horror movie, but as it was, she could focus on nothing but sheer terror, teeth worrying at her lower lip. "Do we even know what that was?" she asked, voice unsteady, then decided that it didn't matter and shook her head. "Either way, I think we should get out of the way. We don't want... whatever made that noise... to find us."
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"Right, we should... definitely just move away from... that," Rory said, dropping his hand a bit so as to waggle his finger in the direction of the sound. "Let's just... yeah, let's just keep moving. Maybe a little faster."
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Not even sure what to say to Rory, the situation possibly twice as foreign to him as herself and Jenny and him already hanging off the end of some sort of tether, Sookie turned instead to the other blonde, her breath snagging as rain dripped from her chin. "J-Jenny, when you think of- of places on the island that aren't... really occupied by people and don't even have paths. That doesn't- does it make you think of the place I'm thinkin' about? Fenced off."
Unwilling to put it in words until absolutely necessary, Sookie squeezed her eyes shut after an apologetic glance in Rory's direction, even as the three of them continued to move through the thick of the forest. "Dinosaurs."
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"Holy shit," she breathed, still staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at Sookie, tempted, too, to grab Rory, though that instinct was one she suppressed, him still being a stranger to the other two of them. "That was a dinosaur. Oh, God, oh, God, we have to hide, we can't - that thing could get us, he's right, we need to move."
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His sigh of frustration could have also related to the fact that Rory had a bad track record when it came to reptilian creatures from millions of years ago. He glanced side to side, ostensibly looking for the proper path (or rather space with less foliage) but also (perhaps foolishly) looking for a blue box or a large crack. Anything familiar.
"If it's a predator, if we run, it might just make it want to chase us more," Rory reasoned, seemingly pulling information out of nowhere. Actually it came from an ancient but surprisingly sturdy man in the early second century AD. Not a natural memory of Rory's, but one he'd take. "We may need to hide though. Maybe it wouldn't be able to scent us with all this mud and crap around." Even so, Rory took a few steps to the side and, with minor difficulty, wrenched a somewhat intimidating branch from a fallen log. He stripped it of its leaves as they carried on, Rory setting a swift pace but not about to leave the girls behind.
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"Well, we can't hide forever, wherever we go," Sookie reasoned, occasionally sputtering through heavy rain as she dropped a hand to hold Jenny's, squeezing tight in hopes of reassuring the young woman. "We can't expect that people will come to look for us, and the dinosaurs aren't exactly gonna leave the place they've been livin' for years. Maybe we keep on walkin' until dark? And duck for cover if we hear anythin' approaching too quickly."
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And Jenny really, really did not want to die.
"If we can make it to the fence," she said, and paused to gasp, breathless in her attempts to keep up the pace, not wanting to fall behind or slow the others down. "If we can make it to the fence, then - then they can't get to us. The dinosaurs, I mean. They can't cross it." The prospect was admittedly a glimmer of hope, but one that didn't last long. "It would just be nice if we knew which way it is."
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He shifted his gaze forward again, now searching the dense foliage for some sign of Rory and the Doctor with more than a hint of desperation. Was this some kind of joke? It couldn't have been. It'd be an awful, terrible joke if it were, and he knew the Doctor might take a shot at him but not an actual, dangerous shot. No, this was serious, and it needed fixing now.
"We can hide forever. People do it all the time," Rory reasoned, clearing his throat once after, wary now of letting fear creep through. "We just.. keep walking. Stop at night and try to build some shelter or at least get off the ground. The fence has got to-- it's not like a wall, right? It's a fence around an area? We've got to run into it no matter which way we go, right?"
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