Remembrance

           When Damian opened his eyes, the last thing that he expected to see was sunlight.  More than sunlight, though, his eyes were treated to an expanse of green in every direction; towering trees covered with hanging vines and creeping mosses, bright flowers resembling hibiscus dangling between enormous leaves the size of his torso, and even gigantic ferns that sprouted up around the bases of the gigantic trees.  It was like the scene out of an old drawing of a jungle, of the way they used to look, long before he had been born.

            Shaking his head and closing his eyes, he drew in a deep breath, but realized it was more than just the vision before his eyes that was unexpected.  The air filling his lungs was warm, moist and heady, tasting of wet earth and life.  At least, that was what came to his mind, that the strange tastes tingling on the tip of his tongue are what one would taste in a genuine rainforest.  His tongue, too long accustomed to dry, cool, sterile air did not know how to cope with the dirty, natural, vibrant flavors.  He could not help but to gag.

            Opening his eyes once more, he tried to take in the alien landscape around him, wondering how he had gotten here - if here was anywhere at all.  Still recovering from the brief gag, he suddenly came to the realization that he was standing upright rather than lying down, as he had last remembered, as his body insisted that it should be.  Feeling his body pitch forward at the sudden sensation of vertigo, he flailed for something to grab hold on, something to steady himself against, when he noticed that his hands were already occupied.  A long, crude wooden spear, topped by a spearhead of what might have been flint and tied off with some kind of natural fiber; it was a weapon as primitive as it was unexpected.  He reacted by planting the end of the staff in the ground to balance himself.  It was enough to keep him from falling over.

            Recovering his balance, Damian noticed a little flurry of activity around him - or, at least, the sounds of it.  Small creatures scurried through the underbrush, too quick and too small for him to see, made frightened little chirps and squeaks as they scampered away, leaving the oversized ferns to sway and dance in their wake.  Soon they were lost in the sounds of the forest beyond, a vague cacophony of sounds that filtered in through the foliage, distant yelps and squawks and trumpeting sounds that made the entire jungle itself seem alive, as if it might begin moving all at once, of its own accord, and perhaps swallow him whole.

            A strange sound behind him met his ears, a sort of grunt followed by a soft little hiss.  It was not the sound itself that confused him as much as the fact that, somehow, he understood the implicit message behind that sound: Be quiet.  Startled by the fact that the sound could somehow carry some kind of meaning to it, he quickly turned around to look behind him, looking for the source of the sound.  At first, his eyes saw little other than the continuing expanse of green, foliage swaying gently from one side to the other, trunks so old that the moss covering their trunks was beginning to grow a coat of moss of its own.  But then, a little hint of motion caught his eyes, betraying the shape that didn't quite fit in the array of foliage before him.

            An old memory, buried deep among the myriad of other bits of information gathered from his childhood days, rose to the surface of his conscious mind.  The animal crouched beneath the tree looked like a curious cross between reptile and avian, covered half in scales and half in feathers.  Any school-aged child could identify the beast that was looking right back at him - it was a dinosaur.  It had been too long since he had read on the subject to identify the exact species, but some dusty recollection in his head told him it was one of the Maniraptoran dinosaurs, looking like an oversized bird with hands and wicked claws.  The creature was every bit as tall as he was, and it was staring right back at him.