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prologue

a/n: hello and welcome to my very first scomiche fic!!

before i start, 1. i just want you to know this is all one huge experiment to me. i'm experimenting with everything, my style, my imagination, my beliefs even to some extent. but i hope it turns out okay bc i have really wanted to write it for a while. 2. please point out ANY mistakes you find. 3. this is vaguely based off of the movie "The Good Dinosaur." 4. this is so short, but only because it's a prologue. the chapter will be longer. 5. i'm not a fast updater.

chapter (is a prologue considered a chapter?) dedicated to ptxquinn bc 1. she is an amazing person, and 2. her story "Chronometer" was one of the main reasons i decided to post this.

i hope you enjoy.
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The Hoyings had always represented a good example of the families that appear in television commercials or cliché Hollywood movies that never grossed much. A mother who works as an Art teacher, cooks the best for her children and is a very compassionate person; a father who works as a business man and always keeps a smile on his face; two good daughters, one engaged and another studying in college; and a young boy that always scored the highest in his class. They were a loving family, one that appreciated each other's mere presence and cherished it. Every weekend, they sat together in their cozy living room and pretended to watch television together, or intended to but ended up ignoring the television and chatting with each other about their weeks, each of them coming up with a funny or interesting situation that they had come across whether during that week or another era from their lives. On the nights that Scott wasn't over at Kirstin's or she was over at his, he enjoyed those meetings, listening to his sisters and parents tell funny stories from their worlds and laughing so hard his that his stomach hurt.

His father always told interesting stories from where he travels for work. Scott often found himself wishing he could go wherever his father went to experience everything his father talked about firsthand. Whatever his father said was always so amusing to him, making him wish he could find something as interesting to tell the family about other than how he nailed that exam nobody could pass.

It was one of those nights that his father talked about going to a trip to Egypt for a shipment passing through Suez Canal, and Scott said he would love to go to Egypt some time. The next day, his father came from work and told him that he should start buying whatever he needed for their trip to Egypt. Surprised, Scott thought he was joking at first; his father usually took jokes to a more serious level. But sometimes he didn't. Sometimes he said things that sounded insane, and nobody believed him even though he was being completely serious. This was one of those times.

"Didn't you say you think Egypt was fun?" His father asked.

"Yeah," Scott replied, completely aware of how disheveled he looked and not bothering to hide it because he had also said this about every other country his father ever mentioned from work.

"Well now you're going there."

His mother was distraught at the mere idea that Scott was spending 10 days away from her. The furthest Scott had gone from his mother all his life was to a summer camp in Houston, and for the week that it had lasted, his mother didn't sleep once. Not ever in his life will he be able to forget how she looked when he came back - with dark hollow circles around her eyes and her face void of color. But his father tried reassuring her, saying that Egypt was safe and that Scott was old enough for her to stop worrying about him like this. In the end, he had promised her that Scott would call her twice every day. Scott had a feeling, from the look on his mother's face, that there was more to her worry than the fact that Scott was leaving, but he told himself that it was only because it was somewhere across the world. And he dismissed the thought with that.

However, his worry didn't abandon him. Or he didn't abandon worry; it was somewhat the same to him. For as long as he can remember, Scott had always wanted to do something out of the norm, or at least out of his routine, but he had also always known that he was too afraid to accomplish any of his wild dreams. Too often, he wouldn't let himself consider his fear a factor, though, and he wouldn't blame it on any of his other traits, either, because it was all hypothetical to him, so he allowed his imagination create a fearless version of him. You don't pay to imagine.

He wasn't imagining now, however.

It was all falling into place; his hypothetical fantasies were no more hypothetical, and he was truly going on a trip of those he wildly wanted. He was going to get a passport, and be an important person with more than just an ID card, a person with an interesting life to tell about. He was going to get on a plane, and he was going to fly for almost two days, landing halfway in a foreign country then getting on a plane again to land in another foreign country. Dumbly, he wondered if planes were as comfortable as they seemed in movies because that was too much time sitting in one place. It didn't matter, though; even if places are not cozy, he was willing to spend this long uncomfortable because afterwards, he was going to start his adventures.

He wondered if he should be excited or nervous. There were too many changes and too many situations to grasp; he couldn't quite process yet that this was it. It was still a difficult thing to adapt to. Maybe because it hadn't yet happened; until this very moment, Scott was in his bed in Arlington, but it was strange him that he couldn't quite make an impression of it. He knew he should be afraid. After all, this was who he was; he was a generally afraid person, usually so nervous, or - like his school counselor would say - anxious. Except that he wasn't afraid or nervous or anxious, he was feeling something pretty close to all of those yet also pretty close to excitement, having the same fast heartbeat, the same constant irritable movements, the same unnecessary finger cracking. He decided he would call it, "beyond excited" because it felt like he had taken excitement to a new level. Or rather, he was experiencing a new level of excitement - he couldn't tell.

As he lay that night, he let his mind liberally wander in a desperate attempt to free it of the fear that he did not fear enough and the enthusiastic buzz of adrenaline. He thought of all the things he could do there. He thought of all he knew about Egypt. A scene from Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets (or was it The Prisoner of Azkaban? He couldn't quite remember) popped in his head, in which Ron tells Harry in a letter about their visit to Egypt and how Ancient Egyptians were so good at magic. A vague memory of reading that in the book itself also came to him.

He knew he was not going to the same place Ron went to in both the book and the movie. According to his father, they were going to Suez first, and when his father finishes his business, they were going to Sharm El-Sheikh. However, he couldn't help but try to guess the differences between Cairo and Suez or Sharm El-Sheikh. His father had gotten him pictures of both, and had shown him where they are on the map. Recalling the picture of the map, he was fascinated all over again. It was as plain as any other map is, but Scott was especially excited to think that he would be visiting those places, walking down their streets and ultimately just breathing the air there. That and the fact that Scott has always been exceptionally interested in maps.

He huffed and flipped onto his right side for what he was sure was the 10th time that night. It occurred to Scott that probably none of his friends' parents would take them on a business trip with them even when they can (if they even go on business trips, he would strongly doubt any of them had gone anywhere further than Canada), and he felt like he should appreciate his father more. Then it occurred to him that probably none of his friends think about appreciating their parents more if they even appreciate them, - well, except maybe for Kirstin - and he felt blessed; he had an amazing father, was heading toward an amazing place, and, unlike the usual, he was in an amazingly positive mindset. After hours and hours of flipping and tossing and being beyond excited, he fell asleep with the thought pleasantly roaming around the corners of my mind.