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The return to the archipelago bore the duty of finding a new nest on old territory.

The land had hosted them before- had been home to the antediluvian predators in a place where the jungle straddled the shoreline. But their nest was desolate. If it had not been destroyed by the volcano already, then the countless months of neglect would have certainly done it for them.

Their bed of before had been one of twigs and bone and flat, broad-hand palm leaves in the gentle swell of the golden sand's cradle.

The utahraptor didn't remember much but she remembered feasting in the sandy dirt, under the spartan shadows of the cliff's crags—gorging on steaks of flank, yawning as the hot sun sailed overhead and the shade slowly slid out from under their feet. green flies hummed in their faces, flitting between eyes and damp chops, drinking whatever dripped or oozed. Exodus herself twisting to lick the mites from her rump. They'd speak open to each other, each sentence a lyric—songbirds that had taken the roles of tigers.

Those good days were erased in the moments the volcano crackled. Seams of red pervaded the simmering, heaving rock like fresh wounds. Small fires kicked up as the burning river met tree and bush, roaring urgently. But when those fires died, the whispers of the hot froth filled the air again, spewing coals and ash and sparks and liquid stone. The sky went to red and choking black, and it terrified the animals. They thundered across the land. Birds lifted from the trees in clouds and flooded the air, wings beating. It was an exodus of terror.
The earth tore itself open and bled flame; a fountain of molten rock hissed from the wound. Cascades of burning thumped against the ground in sudden, erratic rhythms. It ended with their nest pressed soon into sooty beds.

Her tipping point had been a night of resting on mulch and barely awakening to the skitter of crustacean legs against the floor. Something devilish and red had clamped down onto the fan-end of her tail feathers with suddenness, though the grip had thankfully landed on a spot where nerve endings and flesh and veins were absent, empty slaves filled with nothing but bristules and filaments. However that moment had been spent in complete and utter terror like one she'd never felt before. Exodus had stared down lion beast and hybrids and ghosts and deformed reptilia without a blink in her eye or even a hitch in the breath, and yet for all of it, always one animal to precede them that made the blood chill in her vessels.

The maniraptora knew this through a hard lesson many moons prior from seeing her alpha sister pinched on a tender little snout and the heart stopping cacophony of terrified cries that followed after. If something that powerful could make her alpha howl like a rooster for sunrise with a single tweezer of a claw, she didn't want to stop to imagine what it could do to her. It was a fear in childhood deeply seeded from youth. Like a tree with roots, it clung to the soil and spread its influence deep below.

It'd taken much thrashing and rolling and hopping like a freak, a rabbit deranged, something parasite infested to dislodge the crab, a wail just barely there in her throat, too panicked in the heat of the moment to warble a scream even.

For the utahraptor, the idea of that vulnerable moment happening once more but potentially away from privy of the pack circle was not a favorite.

The following morning, the predator made it a point to look for somewhere to make a proper perch.
A place hope willing, to be far from the reach of the abominable crab creatures.

The sun peeks briefly through the sunbaked morning and with things warming up, gnats begin to noisily cloud. Light lunged from both sides of the world.

Sure as day, dawn climbs over her, paints her hide in golds, colors the sky into a vast glowing ember, a tangerine bloom that promises deeper heat the following mornings.

Exodus moves quiet for something as young as herself. She treads lightly and does not whistle or flute. She has learned the art of absolute silence. The jungle is noisier. It's filled with the sound of life- life she can rob.

True to the feathered reptile's nature as a creature of instinct, seldom able to focus on too many a topic or see the forest for the trees, Exodus is a one track mind today.

The sight of the dromaeosaur beta was akin to a rarity. The female and local life was more oft than not, a disastrous mix. The inclination to hunt was as natural as flicking her tail to clear flies. She was beta for a reason- quick enough on two sickle clawed feet not to mull anything over. She already made up her mind about how she'd view the world. Curiosity was not for her, and what capacity she had for pondering and wonderment in her earlier moons had been shed to make room for the primitive nature in DNA's sound logic. Hesitation did not fill gizzards and save lives. Threat could be prey. Neutrality could be prey. Confidence could be prey. A stuffed belly wasn't enough to stop her- what could not be eaten now could be killed and buried to be eaten later. In her little head there was only rabbit swift decisiveness, and no two ways about it.

The idea she'd have to re acquaint herself with the boundaries of what may be Luciferus's company was not a pleasant thought. It meant making room for measured thought when everything should be automatic. Any level, restrained performance she could give was a precursor to the thinly held tension beneath, the shiny teeth, the salivating throat. All the calculated ways she could kill and probably shouldn't. Some of them could be lucky. The guarantee to anything was naught but a sliver.

She could only surmise they were mother's allies. She did not like to think what that that meant for her- couldn't quite make that connection. There was plenty of prey in the islands, but with each passing day Exodus remembered the group that lived here, and never before had she considered anything other than pack with fondness or reverence and respect. She could trust Luciferus though, as much as she could try to keep nature from rearing its ugly head.

In spite of facts, the yearling was up and about. She was looking for the ideal nook. A place all to her pack where few could access at any given time, a lifestyle they would be suited for. Few knew what dromaeosaurs were capable of still. There was more beyond the stalking-slashing lifestyle of the high speed low-terrain chases. Young bodies came with more advantages.

The aerie would have to be massive- big. Big enough to fit all three of them with room enough to stand. Space wasn't so much an issue though. Deep down the youth imagined they all relished being close to one another as packmates. Exo knew it was such a case for her.

So they’d need an aerie the creature resolved firmly- and branches fit for a larder too- A place to store the food where the common grounders couldn’t get to it.

She was in the thick of the vegetation and at a steady jog.

The shade of the underbrush is a very very handsome thing.

But not so more than the overhang of a canopy. Temptingly, tantalizing, it stares down at the prehistoric beast from above, sunlight flashing through the spaces between branches, thin rivers of light in the pollen-colored air that dappled the back of the carnivore as if it had taken to winking.
'Come nest in my sprigs,' it seemed to say. 'Sit with me.'

Exodus doesn't think on it for more than a second.

Obligated like a primitive bird trying the safety of the trees, yearning to be closer to the beyond.

Utahrapter pulls themself up, legs stretched, ribs pressed against the jagged trunk, neck craning the head up, body priming itself for attractive force.

It was a quiet climb, plains of skin shuddering, folds twitching as talon dug into the bark with a rough hold. It was a memory learned from her time without the pack, when she lived long enough in the lowlands for it to become part of her, rather than the other way around. As she ascended the climb became easier, instinct taking advantage of her lithe anatomy all at once.

The yearling was made for life up here.

But she wasn't alone in the trees. She smelled life and heard chirping. Like a good predator she came snooping.

Snack break it was then.

Exodus is nothing but a belly full of egg and maw dripping in amniotic fluid. Even the flying-kind and their young, eye-searing, fledglings and unborn both, weren’t safe from her now. She skipped from the limbs of the tree like a child out for yolk and blood to the next roost, denying gravity for a few brief seconds, daring silently at the earth’s demands. It wanted their child back and she could feel it on the pull of her legs, but she was a child playing hopscotch on twigs. Nothing could ruin her moment.

For the birds it was a fine morning spoiled by the threat of death.

She could see their brightly colored forms in the trees. Appalling. She could imagine it'd take only a move to crush their heads into so many shades of carnage. She'd snap hard enough to breach the spinal fluid, and the body would loll in her jaws.

They never expected it. She'd have the element of surprise on her side, and what was once and impossible for her to reach- a far dream from her molting days, became an easeful game. A laughably easy one at that, and like rolling thunder, she was the smoothness of impending doom.

But even the few that escaped her snapping jaws, she found herself jealous, how easily they could breach the sky with wings. The carnivore owned her own, shafts and vanes for feathers. Useless for flight but as suited for balance as they ever could be. No matter how displeased the menace was though, nature knew better than anyone. Primaries, secondaries, tertiaries- they belonged on birds, to give the lesser things a fighting chance.

And still she's specialized in this kind of stalking, and as she saw it, a means to stifle her appetite. Call it a bit of house cleaning before the others arrived. But should they come early, then they could get their share of breakfast as well. She wasn't stingy. It was a behavior severely discouraged by pack bonds. She knew to play fair.

Triumphant and confident in the idea she found the ideal spot, she let loose a trumpeting call.

The tree was solid at the base, the same deal at the crown where the trunk had branched out. There there was a wide cranny beneath the spindly arms of it. Big enough to support their weight individually, and densely packed enough that a nest could be woven and reinforced by the thickness of two branches. If they truly wanted, they could sleep away from each other.

For now, the theropod scouted a portion of tree where the branches had grown the firmest, the strongest. Weeding out an odd pair of limbs that had grown too close together-- fused at the trunks, she settled at the base where it met the crown and began stripping the surrounding vegetation, bark, leaf and all, for a proper aerie. These were one of the few moments of the maniraptora's life that required careful skill, like a work of art that almost didn't betray the life of viscera she lived.