Quite a few years have passed since the incidents regarding Jurassic Park. In that time, Normani and Dinah got married and had two beautiful baby girls - Tia and Mia. With Normani now getting opportunities to speak at different paleontology conferen...
Yanking the starter rope one last time, Lauren finally got the engine to turn over, puttering along. Meagan was beside her, bailing water.
"My own kid was right in front of me..." the raven-haired woman said, "...and I didn't do a damn thing."
"Baby," Meagan said, "you couldn't have made that jump."
"I should've tried. It should've been me on that beach back there. Not Billy."
"Lo, how would you have helped? Micah needs you...he needs us."
Lauren looked at her wife with tearful eyes, Meagan kissing her before wiping her dampened cheeks.
"He could've died..." the raven-haired woman uttered shakily.
"But he didn't," Meagan assured. "And neither did you. And I'm so glad about that."
Up on the bow, Normani sat beside Micah. The ebony had stopped crying a while ago, but she now felt empty. It was enough to have Micah feel the weight of Billy's death.
"Do you have any kids, Dr. Hamilton?" the young boy asked, trying to get the ebony to talk.
"I do..." Normani answered, her voice soft and distant as the thought of her daughters caused a smile to form on her lips, "...two beautiful girls."
"Aw man," Micah said. "No boys?"
Normani chuckled before looking at him.
"Nah...Dr. Hansen never thought of herself as a boy mom, anyway."
Micah's eyes lit up as he looked up at Normani.
"You married Dr. Hansen!?" he asked excitedly.
"I did," Normani smiled. "It's the single greatest adventure I've ever taken in my life...one that'll never end..."
Micah smiled up at her before looking to his own mothers, seeing Lauren hold Meagan as they looked out onto the river.
"You love her like my moms love each other?" he asked.
"Oh, absolutely," Normani answered immediately. "With all my heart. I can't wait to get back to her and my babies."
"Do your daughters wanna be paleontologists like you?"
"Honestly? My oldest, Tia, might. We don't know about Mia, though. She's the youngest. She's at that age where she just does whatever she sees her big sister do..."
Normani chuckled at the thought.
"I actually wanna be an astronaut," Micah said after a beat of silence.
Normani eyed him in shock.
"That's surprising. Especially with your deep fascination for dinosaurs."
"Dinosaurs were always a hobby of mine...but being out in space is something I've always dreamed of doing."
"This is the first time that you and I differ," Normani smiled. "I was the opposite as a kid. I never understood why anyone wanted to go into space. It's so dangerous. You do one thing wrong and you're dead. The astronomer – or in my case, the paleontologist – gets to study these amazing things from a place of complete safety. And truthfully, everything you really need to learn, you can learn it from the ground."
"But then you'd never actually get to go into space," Micah said.
"Exactly," Normani said. "The difference between imagining how things might be and seeing how they really are. To be able to touch them. That's what Billy wanted to do..."
The barge started to round a bend. On the bow, Normani and Micah were the first to see something remarkable. Micah gasped, unprepared for the sight he beheld. Normani smiled at the sound as she enjoyed the view.
"I can blame the people who made this island," she continued. "But I can't blame the people who want to see it...to study it..."
At the rear of the barge, Lauren was finally able to see what was ahead. Awestruck, she slowed the motor and motioned for Meagan to take a look. The ebony came up next to her wife and marveled at the sight. Up ahead, the setting sun illuminated an incredible valley filled with dinosaurs. There were armored Ankylosaurs with clubbed tails, duck-billed Corythosaurs, and they began to float under the gigantic, arching necks of eighty-foot Brachiosaurs. With the mist from the river and the play of light, the group of four were witnessing a kind of primal Eden.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"How's a kid supposed to resist this?" Normani asked aloud in wonder.
Seeing all of this took Normani back – back to that night up in a tall tree, hugging Chloe and Halle close to her as they beheld a sight similar to this one. It was in that moment that Normani realized she did want children of her own. More importantly, she wanted children with the love of her life. Though her and Dinah never spoke on it after returning home from the first island, Chloe and Halle were, in theory, their first set of children. The four of them had kept contact with one another, with permission from their mother, and made sure they were okay. Normani and Dinah were there for every promotion, graduation, celebration, and heart ache. The couple just couldn't bring themselves to lose connection with them. Especially after looking out for them while at the Costa Rican hospital. Time spent with them was what prepared the couple to have children of their own.
Though they weren't twins, Tia and Mia reminded the couple of Chloe and Halle in many ways. And once the girls got to meet them during their visit to Arizona, they absolutely melted. Normani would be forever indebted to them for showing her that she could expand her love to more than just Dinah and herself. Thinking on it caused her to yearn for the blonde even more. She missed everything about her – her smile, her eyes, her laughter, her touch...she just wanted her. She determined that she would have her soon. Dinah and their princesses were the sole reason for her to continue her fight to survive on this island...
