Morgan paused and took a final breath of hot, tasteless air.

Goodbye alien range. Hello Earth landscape.

Her next step took her over the sharp cut border between the blank, desert-like environment of the unmade range and back into human territory. Instantly, the temperature plunged a good twenty degrees; from oven-scorching to a warm summer's day.

Behind her was a featureless wasteland. In front of her lay a lush field of calf-high wheat.

Closing her eyes, she breathed in the rich scents of grass, dark rich soil, and a million growing things. Al liked to tease her about her dead human nose, but everything in that first breath of air told her she was home.

But this isn't home, she reminded herself fiercely.

No. She wasn't home. Not even on Earth. She was in a world-sized zoo—or a battleground depending on which theory she believed. The picturesque meadow before her and the line of trees a few football field lengths away had been created for her comfort by the Makers: The zookeepers, who created artificial habitats to keep their animals calm and happy.

Morgan had not been a calm or happy person even on Earth. Now, she only had to look at the pair of suns and her traveling companion to remember she was far, far from home.

Beside her, Al fluffed his feathers and shook himself from his razor-sharp claws to the plume at the end of his tail. He looked a lot like a velociraptor... if velociraptors had ever had beautiful magpie black and white feathers, an extra set of wings, and a yellow cockatoo-like crest on the top of their heads. He was an alien, and also not of this planet.

"Finally," Al said after he’d shaken hard enough to dislodge a cloud of dust and grit. He looked around hopefully. "What is good to eat here?”

Morgan shrugged her backpack a little higher on the shoulder of her good arm. Her left hand was tucked in a makeshift sling torn from the remains of her jacket. The swelling from her broken wrist had gone down a few days ago. Now, her wrist was sore but no worse than the long scratches she'd accidentally received from Al—soft human flesh and raptor claws didn't mix.

Luckily, nothing seemed infected. Whatever bizarre fluid that had been in the Stone Seeker pools either didn't host bacteria that liked humans, or she had gotten very lucky.

It had been a long, hard journey back from the Stone Seeker city. She was tired, windblown, and sunburned from the punishing sun of the unmade range. Part of her wanted to just sit in the meadow and have a good cry from exhaustion and relief that it was over. But Al was right. They needed to find food first.

"I think, technically, everything is edible." She glanced down at the grass, which looked like some kind of barley. The seeds were fat and green, bending the tallest stalks. Did they have to be golden to be ripe? Would it be bad to eat them if they weren’t? She couldn’t remember.

Al curled one lip to show off impressive fangs. "Plants," he said with enough disgust to make any four-year-old facing down a salad, proud.

Morgan dredged up a tired smile. "Most of the meadows have streams or pools in them. Are you sick of fish yet?"

They'd been on a very fishy diet while guests in the Stone Seeker city. Or, the alien equivalent of fish, which had looked very… bug-like. Recognizing that humans were omnivores, Morgan had also been given a version of seaweed that hadn't been too bad after she scraped the slime off.

"I like fish, as long as they are still fresh enough to wiggle," Al replied.

“I could go for sushi.” She was about to ask what the fish in the raptor's range looked like when Al suddenly stiffened. Lifting his muzzle into the air, he inhaled in deep gusts. The brilliantly yellow feathers spiking the top of his head raised in interest. One day, it would be a beautiful plume extending to his mid-back, but Al was the equivalent of a teenager. His crest was still growing in.

Morgan looked around and saw nothing but a field of green gently waving in the breeze. “What’s wrong—”

Al leaped upward, shockingly high. Tucking in feet and arms, he spread his black and white wings to glide a short way across the meadow.

He struck a bushel of grass with all claws out.

There was a sharp, eerily human-like scream that raised all the hairs on the back of Morgan's neck. She rushed forward, horrified. It sounded just like a human baby. Why would a baby be here? How could Al attack a child—

The scream cut off, and Al stood with a limp rabbit dead in his claws.

Morgan stopped. Of course. She had heard that rabbits could scream when frightened, but had never heard it in real life.

I should think better of him, she scolded herself and covered her alarm by glancing over her shoulder toward the way they had come.

The barrier between the ranges was marked by where the grass simply ended. It was as if someone had cut through the soil with a hot knife. One inch was entirely lush Earth vegetation, the next a barren... nothing. Just hard packed sand that stretched all the way to the horizon.

There wasn't a hint of movement out there. No sign she and Al had been followed, or that someone else had heard the scream.

But she had been around Al long enough to know that there were other, intelligent species who didn't hunt by sight and hearing alone. Maybe the Blood Wolves had other senses which were completely alien to her.

Considering they were aliens, that seemed likely.

"That was a terrible noise," Al grumped. Morgan turned back to see him holding the dead rabbit by the ears. He twisted his own head first one way and then the other to examine it closely. "What is this called?"

"A rabbit, or a hare. I don't know the difference."

Al made a low growling sound deep in his throat, which was equivalent for a pensive noise among his people. His lizard-like tongue flicked to lick the rabbit’s gray-brown fur. "How do you eat it without getting all this stuff stuck in your teeth?"

She made herself turn fully away from the blank range. Al never seemed to be bothered too much by the idea of pursuit, but he had a way of putting his anxieties to the side and getting on with the day. Either he was very good at hiding trauma or was much better at compartmentalizing his emotions in a way humans weren’t.

He had seen his people, his own family, slaughtered in front of him. Morgan would have fallen apart. Al had picked himself up and found new allies. Now his biggest immediate worry was figuring out how to eat a rabbit without getting fur in his teeth.

Maybe she should take a page out of his book and stop worrying about what was behind. There were sure to be enough troubles ahead to keep her busy.

That in mind, she walked over to join him. “It's fur, and you skin it first. Might be a good idea to gut it, too.”

"Cooking," he sighed and flipped the dead rabbit to her.

She caught it, bobbling it a little with her good arm. His exasperation made her smile. "It won't take long,” she promised and nodded towards the distant trees. "The suns will be down in a few hours. Let's see if we can't make a good campsite under cover.”

Then, once their stomachs were full, she would worry about how in the world she was going to introduce a dinosaur to her friends.