Primeval Fanfic: A Small Walk Through Time
My contribution for the Anomaly Exchange 2009:
http://community.livejournal.com/anomalyexchange/3295.html
Title: A Small Walk Through Time
Author: TalliW
Recipient: Rodlox
Rating: K
Characters: Helen Cutter, Jenny Lewis, Connor Temple, Nick Cutter, Stephen Hart
Acknowledgments: Thanks to Fredbassett for beta-reading. I couldn't have done it without you.
Requirements:
Any kinks or special elements you'd like included: I'd like - but do not require - an element of
natural history and-or of ecology. The characters showing their smarts is sexy, too.
prompts:
1) Those who have passed through the Anomalies, are always alive somewhere.
2) In 3.01 we see brief glimpses of something *huge* and *massive* flapping its wings as it flies through the sky. What is it?
3) When she was alone, what games did Helen play? Did she invent any?
4) A romantic moonlit evening in the distant past.
5) Helen and Connor have a chat.
AN: The theory about the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction originates from geologist Gerta Keller of Princeton University and was presented recently in the "Journal of the Geological Society". No copyright infringement is intended. I just borrowed that thesis for a fictional character.
Here is a picture of a Chriacus reconstructed from skeletons: http://www.paleocene-mammals.de/chriacus.jpg
The short haired woman re-erected the logs in a different way. The game never got boring.
There were several ways of tossing the cube-shaped log to knock over the other pieces of wood and push them over the target line.
Every shot hit at a slightly different angle and presented new opportunities to win the game.
All you had to do was find the best way to reach your goal with as few throws as possible.
Helen threw her log and watched the rest scatter on the ground.
Just like she had accomplished so often in her game, in reality she had found the fastest way to save the world from ruin and she had been successful.
Involuntarily, her thoughts wandered back to the talk she'd had with Connor Temple three weeks ago in the building he'd recently been living in.
The boy had been angry at her and he had said some vile things. It had been wise to corner him in the lift and promptly strip him off his weapon.
Even so, he had lunged at her and had only been stopped by a well-aimed punch in his stomach.
Helen didn't blame him through. She had killed his mentor and role model, after all.
But she was sure some day the nice little guy would pay more attention to her words.
After inspecting the documents she had stuck into his waistband, Connor would have to accept the fact that Professor Cutter wasn't the big hero they all thought.
She'd believed in Nick herself once and the awakening had been hard.Most of her feelings for him had died in the moment she'd had seen him giving that dreadful order in the future.
Now the man she had once wanted to spent her life with was only a distant memory.
Helen Cutter knew what she'd done had been necessary. She had to change the future for the better.
In spite of everything, it still had hurt. Unlike Nick, she hadn't transmuted into a person who could kill others in cold blood.
"You're thinking about it again, about him, aren't you?" A soft voice said behind her and a hand touched her shoulder comfortingly.
Helen smiled sadly. It was reassuring to know that the other woman understood. She was also there holding her during those nights when his face haunted her in her dreams and she woke up in cold sweat.
It had been a big surprise to see Jenny Lewis standing in the Forest of Dean with a gun aimed at her.
And an even bigger surprise had been the fact that the woman had pushed her back into the Anomaly instead of waiting for the military to arrest her.
The first two weeks had been difficult.
Helen hadn't been used to company and so they had both stayed apart most of the time.
Then Helen, in desperate need of a human touch after a nightmare, had snuggled up to Jenny one night and that had been the beginning of a wonderful friendship.
By this stage, they did nearly everything together.
Jenny grasped a cube log and grinned, pleased when the first log slithered over the target line. She loved the game Helen had invented.
"It's your turn," she announced and followed Helen's graceful movements with her eyes.
Two points at a single stroke - the woman was really a master of that game, Jenny thought, impressed, and took her place to score the next point.
Jenny Lewis had tried to leave the ARC and all it entailed behind. But she had quickly realised she couldn't go back to a normal life after all the strange things she had witnessed.
Since the day she had found half of a taped-up photo of a woman who looked like herself she had wanted answers.
And there was only one person left who could provide them.
She hadn't felt guilty about hiding a portable anomaly detector in her bag the day she had walked out of the ARC. In all the chaos they wouldn't miss it. And she had been right. No one had missed the expensive device just like they hadn't missed her after she had left.
Only Lester had called her twice to ask if she was doing well.
The others seemed to have forgotten her already. Just as fast as they had forgotten Nick and his principles.
Jenny didn't know what to do after she had finally discovered Helen at the place where, according to the records she had read in the ARC, everything had started.
There wasn't much time before her former team members would arrive and she needed some hours alone with Helen.
In the spur of the moment, she had pushed Helen Cutter back into the shattered light and had followed her through.
The world on the other side had been lovely. Green lizards were flying through the air and she had seen snow-covered mountains and mighty trees in the distance.
Jenny had never been through an Anomaly herself and she had stared in awe at the world around her.
Surprisingly, Helen Cutter hadn't used the change to disarm her even though Jenny wouldn't have been much of a match for her in her confused state.
Instead Helen had just stood there with a curious expression on her face and had waited for Jenny to recover herself.
That had been four months ago and now she was streaking through the past with Helen Cutter, the woman she'd always considered the villain and who now had become a friend.
They had visited the future only once, shortly after her arrival in the Permian and Helen had shown her what had become of the nice caring man they had both liked.
At first Jenny couldn't believe Nick Cutter could have changed so much, even though she had seen it with her own eyes.
Then, Helen had revealed how differently the fungus incident had ended and she had closed her eyes in despair.
Losing his precious Claudia a second time had been too much for Nick and he'd snapped.
Jenny had laughed bitterly at the irony.
By killing Nick and therefore getting him replaced with Danny Quinn as team leader, Helen had also unintentionally saved Jenny's life, along with the lives of billions in the future.
Helen put her finger over her mouth to ask Jenny to keep quiet and waved her to come closer.
Some minutes later, both woman lay between the ferns and watched two tiny animals circle around each other, drooling.
"Look at this, Jenny. Isn't it beautiful? Two horny Charassognathus ready to mate," Helen whispered into her ear. "They're from the suborder of cynodontia and will eventually evolve into mammals during the Triassic."
Jenny looked at the small mammal-like reptiles, which reminded her of Least weasels and grinned when the cute little creatures finally got together.
"The first time I saw an Anomaly I was scared to death. It was glistening in an office building like a deathly extra-terrestrial force and it had produced nasty gigantic worms which tried to attack us. I nearly castrated Cutter with a samurai sword that day."
Helen giggled. "I wish I had been there to see his face. He must have cursed like a sailor."
"I don't think I made a good first impression on him."
"Mmm, I think he was impressed anyway. Nick liked strong women who could help themselves."
Jenny made a face and huffed. "Not that my first meeting with him at the ARC was any better. He babbled on about Claudia Brown and wanted to convince me that was my real name. I thought he was completely insane." She threw her head back in anger and hissed. "What a dork! He always saw her in me and called me Claudia most of the time. I never stood a real chance with him."
Helen put an arm around her and both of the women looked into the flames of the fire, their eyes suddenly burning from the smoke.
"You know when my grandmother died when I was a child, my mother told me she had gone into a vivid light and would now be united with grandfather and all her old friends and relatives."
Helen paused briefly and put some more wood on the camp fire.
It would keep the animals away and was their life insurance in the prehistoric night.
She poked the fire with a long stick before she carried on. "The first time I stepped through an Anomaly I really hoped it hadn't just been a fairy tale and that I would find my family there. Silly, eh?"
"No, just human. It's a beautiful thought. Everyone who vanishes into an Anomaly still lives somewhere happily ever after. It is a pity it's not true."
"We're both still alive," Helen reminded her with a wink. "And I don't have any intention of changing that in the future. So let's stop the sentimentality and prepare food before it gets darker."
The huge Quetzalcoatlus glided majestically in the air over their heads.
Jenny gulped and ducked her head but as always, Helen soothed her with a touch and a brief statement.
"They're not dangerous as long we stay away from the nests.They feed mostly on fish and small animals just like storks. And on the ground they're so slow a turtle could outrun them. They're really funny how they stalk around, braced on their wings and waddling on their legs."
"I've seen a similar creature carry away a person in Jurassic Park."
Helen furrowed her brow. "Really? I don't remember there being pterodactyloids in the two movies."
"It was in Jurassic Park 3."
"Oh," Helen blinked, looking astonished. "Either way, the Quetzalcoatlus doesn't even weigh as much as 70 kilogrammes. It's absolutely impossible for it to carry someone its own weight or even heavier. They're really harmless, Jenny, quite different to the birds I've seen in the future. I would never have guessed that I might be afraid of a flock of swallows one day."
"Swallows?"
"Killer swallows! Gigantic, meat-eating and very dangerous. I lost three of my dumb clucks and nearly ended up as bird food myself."
"Tempting prospects!"
Helen squinted against the sun to track the flight path of the flying reptile. "Don't worry. That future is history. It will never have killer swallows and future predators."
"It's a relief to know that. We've enough problem running from the land-based carnivores here."
Jenny knelt down and checked her shoe laces then grinned mischievously at Helen. "Well, what about fried eggs tonight? I'll keep watch for the oh-so-harmless creatures and you can steal the eggs."
The two women huddled up to one another beside the campfire and looked up into the sky. The full moon bathed the world around them in silvery pale light. Helen combed gently through Jenny's long hair and smiled as the woman sighed with pleasure.
"On a night like this you could almost imagine we're sitting somewhere by the sea in England, only the ecology is still intact. No environmental pollution. No machine noises. Everything is so peaceful."
Helen snickered beside her. "Wait a hundred and fifty more years and all hell will be breaking loose here and the atmospheric pollution will beat the smog of rush hour traffic in London very easily. We're not far from the time that the volcanic activity will cause the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction of the dinosaurs."
"I thought the extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by a huge meteorite impact..."
"That's nonsense dressed up as scientific fact," Helen said heatedly, her voice sounding unusually loud in the illusion of peaceful silence.
She felt Jenny cringe and said in a more calm voice. "Well, I have a different point of view. I'm sure the real cause of the demise of the various species was the extreme volcanic activity in the Indian Dekkan-region. Through the eruptions, enormous amounts of gas like carbon dioxide, and dust were hurled into the atmosphere and triggered a change in climate.
"Of course the meteorite had an effect on the environment too. The impact caused tsunamis, raised dust and and produced a cloud of sulphur dioxide, which brought about acid rain and killed off some plants and plankton. But nature is so wonderfully tough. The fauna and flora recovered from that disaster rather well. Only a few species, the most inadaptable ones, died out," Helen declared, with her eyes sharp.
"And I could ascertain beyond doubt that there wasn't any global dimming after the meteorite impact at the Chicxulub coast in Mexico. Otherwise we would be freezing our arses off here already. Not until more than three hundred thousand years after the impact, the sun became so heavily obscured by cloud that it turned into a cold snap and so brought about the global extinction of the dinosaurs."
Jenny listened in fascination to Helen enthusiastically explaining her theory. She would have been a great lecturer at the university.
There was so much Helen had come to know about the evolutionary history in the last eight years but wouldn't ever be able to share with the scientific world. What a waste!
A feeble cry echoed through the trees and Jenny smiled. Helen had taught her a lot about the creatures they shared the world with.
By now she knew that one of the small nocturnal mammals had found its end in the teeth of a predatory dinosaur somewhere in the forest.
With recovered appetite, Jenny Lewis took a piece of the Hesperornis, a flightless aquatic bird which Helen had killed and roasted on a spit, and bit into the delicate meat with gusto.
"Notostylops?"
"That was the creature we had yesterday for dinner, the one with the strong legs, broad bottom and the short tail, right?"
Helen just nodded slightly and Jenny licked her lips at the memory of the fantastic stew. "I will recognize the taste of a rabbit in every time period," she announced, cheerfully. "All right, my turn. What's about the animal we found a short while ago, battered to death by the falling rocks? What will become of it in the future?"
"Oh, that could be difficult. Let's see, it looked like a viverrid but its teeth were the wrong shape and then the fangs... Mmmh." Suddenly Helen's face light up. "I think it was a Hesperocyon, one of the oldest representatives of the canids."
Jenny looked doubtful. "It's a dog?"
"Yeah, I know, it's hard to see it will evolve into the 'man's best friend' some day," the other woman smiled and carefully considered the next question in the game.
By now Jenny could outflank some palaeontology professors with her knowledge and Helen Cutter was proud of her protege.
But that didn't mean she liked to lose a game.
"Chriacus?" she asked, with a devilish grin.
"Helen, don't you miss human society sometimes?"
"With you here I've got more company than I had for over eight years. But I can imagine it's getting a bit lonely for you. You see, we're not bound to the prehistoric world. We can go everywhere you want."
Jenny pursed her lips than whispered something in Helen's ear.
"You're a romantic at heart, aren't you? I hope you won't be disappointed. It wasn't anything near the glorified view made of it in films."
"Of course, I know that, but the men are always so cute in those clothes. I want to see it for myself. Just for a little while."
Jenny's eyes nearly popped out of her head. "This cannot be happening."
Beside her, Helen took a deep breath and stared, flabbergasted, in the same direction.
"Have you ever believed in reincarnation?"
"No, but since I've learnt about the Anomalies I think everything is possible."
"Bloody hell, they resemble them and they're working together, even in the past."
"No, they don't just resemble them. They look exactly like them."
Jenny snorted. "I'm sure you do know that, in the minutest detail."
Helen smirked and licked her lips lasciviously. "I had almost forgotten how attractive they both were. Now the big question is who gets whom?"
A faint red coloured Jenny' cheeks and she sheepishly put a strand of hair behind her ear. "I always found them both nice but how you do know I'm more fond of the older one..."
Helen swayed her head to and fro. "I'm not sure I can decide between them."
The grin on Helen's face didn't bode well in Jenny Lewis' experience and she poked Helen in the side.
"No way! I won't settle for sharing," she declared, scandalised.
Helen gave a laugh, "Sometimes you're really old fashioned. You would fit perfectly in this century."
With a deep sigh, she took a box filled with five dice out of her bag.
"OK, let's roll the dice. The winner gets free choice."
In the distance on the small field, the two men, clothed in simple knee-length linen tunics and braies, fought with the heavy soil.
The older one, with blond hair and blue eyes, looked up and swept the sweat from his face. It was unusually warm that spring day and he adjusted the straw hat which protected him from the blazing sun.
The slender man with a coife covering his dark hair gripped his mattock more firmly. They had to finish with that field before dusk or the landowner would get angry and punish them.
"Do you think they can understand our speech? I didn't bother with Old English at university."
The short-haired woman shrugged her shoulders, unconcerned. "They will learn what they need to know."
"And you really think we can take them with us? Couldn't that change history?"
"I've already changed history and it made the future a better place," Helen declared and rattled the dice box. "I'm sure two serfs will not be important for the world at all but for us they mean everything."
A cheer of triumph sounded from the trees across the field and the two men paused for a moment before they dedicated themselves to their work again.
Jenny Lewis observed the woman sitting across her, with a puzzled expression. She had expected Helen to make a different choice.
Helen noticed it and grinned in amusement.
She certainly didn't intend to make the same mistake twice. In her next relationship, she would be the one to wear the trousers.
Helen stood up and moved with firm steps in the direction of her prize....
http://community.livejournal.com/anomalyexchange/3295.html
Title: A Small Walk Through Time
Author: TalliW
Recipient: Rodlox
Rating: K
Characters: Helen Cutter, Jenny Lewis, Connor Temple, Nick Cutter, Stephen Hart
Acknowledgments: Thanks to Fredbassett for beta-reading. I couldn't have done it without you.
Requirements:
Any kinks or special elements you'd like included: I'd like - but do not require - an element of
natural history and-or of ecology. The characters showing their smarts is sexy, too.
prompts:
1) Those who have passed through the Anomalies, are always alive somewhere.
2) In 3.01 we see brief glimpses of something *huge* and *massive* flapping its wings as it flies through the sky. What is it?
3) When she was alone, what games did Helen play? Did she invent any?
4) A romantic moonlit evening in the distant past.
5) Helen and Connor have a chat.
AN: The theory about the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction originates from geologist Gerta Keller of Princeton University and was presented recently in the "Journal of the Geological Society". No copyright infringement is intended. I just borrowed that thesis for a fictional character.
Here is a picture of a Chriacus reconstructed from skeletons: http://www.paleocene-mammals.de/chriacus.jpg
The short haired woman re-erected the logs in a different way. The game never got boring.
There were several ways of tossing the cube-shaped log to knock over the other pieces of wood and push them over the target line.
Every shot hit at a slightly different angle and presented new opportunities to win the game.
All you had to do was find the best way to reach your goal with as few throws as possible.
Helen threw her log and watched the rest scatter on the ground.
Just like she had accomplished so often in her game, in reality she had found the fastest way to save the world from ruin and she had been successful.
Involuntarily, her thoughts wandered back to the talk she'd had with Connor Temple three weeks ago in the building he'd recently been living in.
The boy had been angry at her and he had said some vile things. It had been wise to corner him in the lift and promptly strip him off his weapon.
Even so, he had lunged at her and had only been stopped by a well-aimed punch in his stomach.
Helen didn't blame him through. She had killed his mentor and role model, after all.
But she was sure some day the nice little guy would pay more attention to her words.
After inspecting the documents she had stuck into his waistband, Connor would have to accept the fact that Professor Cutter wasn't the big hero they all thought.
She'd believed in Nick herself once and the awakening had been hard.Most of her feelings for him had died in the moment she'd had seen him giving that dreadful order in the future.
Now the man she had once wanted to spent her life with was only a distant memory.
Helen Cutter knew what she'd done had been necessary. She had to change the future for the better.
In spite of everything, it still had hurt. Unlike Nick, she hadn't transmuted into a person who could kill others in cold blood.
"You're thinking about it again, about him, aren't you?" A soft voice said behind her and a hand touched her shoulder comfortingly.
Helen smiled sadly. It was reassuring to know that the other woman understood. She was also there holding her during those nights when his face haunted her in her dreams and she woke up in cold sweat.
It had been a big surprise to see Jenny Lewis standing in the Forest of Dean with a gun aimed at her.
And an even bigger surprise had been the fact that the woman had pushed her back into the Anomaly instead of waiting for the military to arrest her.
The first two weeks had been difficult.
Helen hadn't been used to company and so they had both stayed apart most of the time.
Then Helen, in desperate need of a human touch after a nightmare, had snuggled up to Jenny one night and that had been the beginning of a wonderful friendship.
By this stage, they did nearly everything together.
Jenny grasped a cube log and grinned, pleased when the first log slithered over the target line. She loved the game Helen had invented.
"It's your turn," she announced and followed Helen's graceful movements with her eyes.
Two points at a single stroke - the woman was really a master of that game, Jenny thought, impressed, and took her place to score the next point.
Jenny Lewis had tried to leave the ARC and all it entailed behind. But she had quickly realised she couldn't go back to a normal life after all the strange things she had witnessed.
Since the day she had found half of a taped-up photo of a woman who looked like herself she had wanted answers.
And there was only one person left who could provide them.
She hadn't felt guilty about hiding a portable anomaly detector in her bag the day she had walked out of the ARC. In all the chaos they wouldn't miss it. And she had been right. No one had missed the expensive device just like they hadn't missed her after she had left.
Only Lester had called her twice to ask if she was doing well.
The others seemed to have forgotten her already. Just as fast as they had forgotten Nick and his principles.
Jenny didn't know what to do after she had finally discovered Helen at the place where, according to the records she had read in the ARC, everything had started.
There wasn't much time before her former team members would arrive and she needed some hours alone with Helen.
In the spur of the moment, she had pushed Helen Cutter back into the shattered light and had followed her through.
The world on the other side had been lovely. Green lizards were flying through the air and she had seen snow-covered mountains and mighty trees in the distance.
Jenny had never been through an Anomaly herself and she had stared in awe at the world around her.
Surprisingly, Helen Cutter hadn't used the change to disarm her even though Jenny wouldn't have been much of a match for her in her confused state.
Instead Helen had just stood there with a curious expression on her face and had waited for Jenny to recover herself.
That had been four months ago and now she was streaking through the past with Helen Cutter, the woman she'd always considered the villain and who now had become a friend.
They had visited the future only once, shortly after her arrival in the Permian and Helen had shown her what had become of the nice caring man they had both liked.
At first Jenny couldn't believe Nick Cutter could have changed so much, even though she had seen it with her own eyes.
Then, Helen had revealed how differently the fungus incident had ended and she had closed her eyes in despair.
Losing his precious Claudia a second time had been too much for Nick and he'd snapped.
Jenny had laughed bitterly at the irony.
By killing Nick and therefore getting him replaced with Danny Quinn as team leader, Helen had also unintentionally saved Jenny's life, along with the lives of billions in the future.
Helen put her finger over her mouth to ask Jenny to keep quiet and waved her to come closer.
Some minutes later, both woman lay between the ferns and watched two tiny animals circle around each other, drooling.
"Look at this, Jenny. Isn't it beautiful? Two horny Charassognathus ready to mate," Helen whispered into her ear. "They're from the suborder of cynodontia and will eventually evolve into mammals during the Triassic."
Jenny looked at the small mammal-like reptiles, which reminded her of Least weasels and grinned when the cute little creatures finally got together.
"The first time I saw an Anomaly I was scared to death. It was glistening in an office building like a deathly extra-terrestrial force and it had produced nasty gigantic worms which tried to attack us. I nearly castrated Cutter with a samurai sword that day."
Helen giggled. "I wish I had been there to see his face. He must have cursed like a sailor."
"I don't think I made a good first impression on him."
"Mmm, I think he was impressed anyway. Nick liked strong women who could help themselves."
Jenny made a face and huffed. "Not that my first meeting with him at the ARC was any better. He babbled on about Claudia Brown and wanted to convince me that was my real name. I thought he was completely insane." She threw her head back in anger and hissed. "What a dork! He always saw her in me and called me Claudia most of the time. I never stood a real chance with him."
Helen put an arm around her and both of the women looked into the flames of the fire, their eyes suddenly burning from the smoke.
"You know when my grandmother died when I was a child, my mother told me she had gone into a vivid light and would now be united with grandfather and all her old friends and relatives."
Helen paused briefly and put some more wood on the camp fire.
It would keep the animals away and was their life insurance in the prehistoric night.
She poked the fire with a long stick before she carried on. "The first time I stepped through an Anomaly I really hoped it hadn't just been a fairy tale and that I would find my family there. Silly, eh?"
"No, just human. It's a beautiful thought. Everyone who vanishes into an Anomaly still lives somewhere happily ever after. It is a pity it's not true."
"We're both still alive," Helen reminded her with a wink. "And I don't have any intention of changing that in the future. So let's stop the sentimentality and prepare food before it gets darker."
The huge Quetzalcoatlus glided majestically in the air over their heads.
Jenny gulped and ducked her head but as always, Helen soothed her with a touch and a brief statement.
"They're not dangerous as long we stay away from the nests.They feed mostly on fish and small animals just like storks. And on the ground they're so slow a turtle could outrun them. They're really funny how they stalk around, braced on their wings and waddling on their legs."
"I've seen a similar creature carry away a person in Jurassic Park."
Helen furrowed her brow. "Really? I don't remember there being pterodactyloids in the two movies."
"It was in Jurassic Park 3."
"Oh," Helen blinked, looking astonished. "Either way, the Quetzalcoatlus doesn't even weigh as much as 70 kilogrammes. It's absolutely impossible for it to carry someone its own weight or even heavier. They're really harmless, Jenny, quite different to the birds I've seen in the future. I would never have guessed that I might be afraid of a flock of swallows one day."
"Swallows?"
"Killer swallows! Gigantic, meat-eating and very dangerous. I lost three of my dumb clucks and nearly ended up as bird food myself."
"Tempting prospects!"
Helen squinted against the sun to track the flight path of the flying reptile. "Don't worry. That future is history. It will never have killer swallows and future predators."
"It's a relief to know that. We've enough problem running from the land-based carnivores here."
Jenny knelt down and checked her shoe laces then grinned mischievously at Helen. "Well, what about fried eggs tonight? I'll keep watch for the oh-so-harmless creatures and you can steal the eggs."
The two women huddled up to one another beside the campfire and looked up into the sky. The full moon bathed the world around them in silvery pale light. Helen combed gently through Jenny's long hair and smiled as the woman sighed with pleasure.
"On a night like this you could almost imagine we're sitting somewhere by the sea in England, only the ecology is still intact. No environmental pollution. No machine noises. Everything is so peaceful."
Helen snickered beside her. "Wait a hundred and fifty more years and all hell will be breaking loose here and the atmospheric pollution will beat the smog of rush hour traffic in London very easily. We're not far from the time that the volcanic activity will cause the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction of the dinosaurs."
"I thought the extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by a huge meteorite impact..."
"That's nonsense dressed up as scientific fact," Helen said heatedly, her voice sounding unusually loud in the illusion of peaceful silence.
She felt Jenny cringe and said in a more calm voice. "Well, I have a different point of view. I'm sure the real cause of the demise of the various species was the extreme volcanic activity in the Indian Dekkan-region. Through the eruptions, enormous amounts of gas like carbon dioxide, and dust were hurled into the atmosphere and triggered a change in climate.
"Of course the meteorite had an effect on the environment too. The impact caused tsunamis, raised dust and and produced a cloud of sulphur dioxide, which brought about acid rain and killed off some plants and plankton. But nature is so wonderfully tough. The fauna and flora recovered from that disaster rather well. Only a few species, the most inadaptable ones, died out," Helen declared, with her eyes sharp.
"And I could ascertain beyond doubt that there wasn't any global dimming after the meteorite impact at the Chicxulub coast in Mexico. Otherwise we would be freezing our arses off here already. Not until more than three hundred thousand years after the impact, the sun became so heavily obscured by cloud that it turned into a cold snap and so brought about the global extinction of the dinosaurs."
Jenny listened in fascination to Helen enthusiastically explaining her theory. She would have been a great lecturer at the university.
There was so much Helen had come to know about the evolutionary history in the last eight years but wouldn't ever be able to share with the scientific world. What a waste!
A feeble cry echoed through the trees and Jenny smiled. Helen had taught her a lot about the creatures they shared the world with.
By now she knew that one of the small nocturnal mammals had found its end in the teeth of a predatory dinosaur somewhere in the forest.
With recovered appetite, Jenny Lewis took a piece of the Hesperornis, a flightless aquatic bird which Helen had killed and roasted on a spit, and bit into the delicate meat with gusto.
"Notostylops?"
"That was the creature we had yesterday for dinner, the one with the strong legs, broad bottom and the short tail, right?"
Helen just nodded slightly and Jenny licked her lips at the memory of the fantastic stew. "I will recognize the taste of a rabbit in every time period," she announced, cheerfully. "All right, my turn. What's about the animal we found a short while ago, battered to death by the falling rocks? What will become of it in the future?"
"Oh, that could be difficult. Let's see, it looked like a viverrid but its teeth were the wrong shape and then the fangs... Mmmh." Suddenly Helen's face light up. "I think it was a Hesperocyon, one of the oldest representatives of the canids."
Jenny looked doubtful. "It's a dog?"
"Yeah, I know, it's hard to see it will evolve into the 'man's best friend' some day," the other woman smiled and carefully considered the next question in the game.
By now Jenny could outflank some palaeontology professors with her knowledge and Helen Cutter was proud of her protege.
But that didn't mean she liked to lose a game.
"Chriacus?" she asked, with a devilish grin.
"Helen, don't you miss human society sometimes?"
"With you here I've got more company than I had for over eight years. But I can imagine it's getting a bit lonely for you. You see, we're not bound to the prehistoric world. We can go everywhere you want."
Jenny pursed her lips than whispered something in Helen's ear.
"You're a romantic at heart, aren't you? I hope you won't be disappointed. It wasn't anything near the glorified view made of it in films."
"Of course, I know that, but the men are always so cute in those clothes. I want to see it for myself. Just for a little while."
Jenny's eyes nearly popped out of her head. "This cannot be happening."
Beside her, Helen took a deep breath and stared, flabbergasted, in the same direction.
"Have you ever believed in reincarnation?"
"No, but since I've learnt about the Anomalies I think everything is possible."
"Bloody hell, they resemble them and they're working together, even in the past."
"No, they don't just resemble them. They look exactly like them."
Jenny snorted. "I'm sure you do know that, in the minutest detail."
Helen smirked and licked her lips lasciviously. "I had almost forgotten how attractive they both were. Now the big question is who gets whom?"
A faint red coloured Jenny' cheeks and she sheepishly put a strand of hair behind her ear. "I always found them both nice but how you do know I'm more fond of the older one..."
Helen swayed her head to and fro. "I'm not sure I can decide between them."
The grin on Helen's face didn't bode well in Jenny Lewis' experience and she poked Helen in the side.
"No way! I won't settle for sharing," she declared, scandalised.
Helen gave a laugh, "Sometimes you're really old fashioned. You would fit perfectly in this century."
With a deep sigh, she took a box filled with five dice out of her bag.
"OK, let's roll the dice. The winner gets free choice."
In the distance on the small field, the two men, clothed in simple knee-length linen tunics and braies, fought with the heavy soil.
The older one, with blond hair and blue eyes, looked up and swept the sweat from his face. It was unusually warm that spring day and he adjusted the straw hat which protected him from the blazing sun.
The slender man with a coife covering his dark hair gripped his mattock more firmly. They had to finish with that field before dusk or the landowner would get angry and punish them.
"Do you think they can understand our speech? I didn't bother with Old English at university."
The short-haired woman shrugged her shoulders, unconcerned. "They will learn what they need to know."
"And you really think we can take them with us? Couldn't that change history?"
"I've already changed history and it made the future a better place," Helen declared and rattled the dice box. "I'm sure two serfs will not be important for the world at all but for us they mean everything."
A cheer of triumph sounded from the trees across the field and the two men paused for a moment before they dedicated themselves to their work again.
Jenny Lewis observed the woman sitting across her, with a puzzled expression. She had expected Helen to make a different choice.
Helen noticed it and grinned in amusement.
She certainly didn't intend to make the same mistake twice. In her next relationship, she would be the one to wear the trousers.
Helen stood up and moved with firm steps in the direction of her prize....