#gerine

citron | clemin | gerine

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she awakens.

Her stomach is crying out for sustenance. But that isn't what woke her. The crisscrossing beams of sunlight shining from the airholes situated in the walls and ceilings of her burrow are responsible for that. She sits up, yawns, looks across at her father, still asleep. His bed of dirt is sagging again, she'll have to remove him soon to build it back up, taking care to keep the discretionary blanket placed over his lap.

That can wait until later. Now she needs to hunt.

Giving her paternal figure a quick kiss goodbye, she collects her the holster containing her choice weapons crawls up the dome of dirt toward the largest light source and pokes her head out into the luscious Lianhua morning.

This is the best part of the day; before the savage sun brings the bogs to a boil, filling the forests with a foul smell. For now, the sweet scent of morning dew dominated. And her fellow foragers were also coming out to catch a whiff.

She recognizes the playful patterns of neon green markings on the band of well-built bodies crawling over the dirt wall protecting their colony as her regular crew of hunters and rushes to meet them at the precipice. They carry on noiselessly into the nearby woods, where they split up in different directions. She chooses to stand by and wait for the others to discuss strategy in their wordless language before making her own plans. Whatever region of the woods they leave unexplored will be her jurisdiction for today. No passing prey would go unseen by the eyes of the mighty huntress Gerine.

Time passes. Gerine occasionally shifts her position, from poised behind the trunk of a makabout tree to crouching up in its crown, scrutinously scanning the ground below for any hint of movement. Her stomach growls again. She reaches up without looking, grabs hold of a makabout fruit from the branch above. She cradles the black ball in her palm, turns it around, searching for the tell-tale incisions left by slitworms, finally takes a bite. This is insubstantial to her hunger. Or at least, it ought to be. Her tribe sees no value in these pathetic planets. They don't provide the proper nutrition provided by raw meat. Most hunters wouldn't even bother picking them out of shear curiosity. And yet Gerine honestly enjoys them. She would feed on them almost exclusively if she could. But she can't. She needs to hunt. It's her responsibility. It's her very essence. It's all she has. All she is.

A leaf shakes. Gerine draws her spear, throws it in the same second. A dull thud. The sight of skinny leg sticking out from behind the bush. Gerine clambers down, brushes aside the foliage, stares down at the impaled anterloper, twitching feebly, its hollow eyes staring up into hers, blood and bile pouring from its pierced stomach sack. It dies after a few seconds. A few seconds of indescribable fear and suffering, but a few seconds none the less.

Gerine pulls out the sunken spear, wipes the remaining residue off onto the grass, holsters her weapon. A knife is what she needs now. Pulling her blade from a pocket at the bottom of the same holster, she kneels down and begins cutting at the vines the buck had become tangled in, thanking her fortunes all the while that it had been an anterloper and not another teammate. Now to do the whole thing over again.

Breaks are few and far between. She stops only to quench her thirst from the closest running river, to relieve herself, and once in a while, to stare wonderingly at the sunny sky. She catches one more anterloper, a doe, and after that the forest is quiet for the remaining daylight hours. As dusk falls, Gerine returns to her colony, dragging the doe by the scruff of her neck and the buck by an antler. She basks in the admiring gazes from her grateful tribespeople as she carries the corpses to the pit at the center of the community. She sees three bucks and four does have already been deposited, and now lay sprawled atop one another at the bottom of the bone-filled bowl. Not a bad haul.

She sits in a circle with the others hunters and waits quietly. Soon, a rumbling fills the air, and from the bottomless burrow-hole beside the carcass pit arises the Grand Chief, drawn by the scent of a hearty meal. A mighty presence, imposing a stunned silence on the crowd regardless of how many times they've witnessed it. To see a fellow forager like themselves, distorted by decades of unobjected power and mindless feeding, towering above all, yet wavering drunkenly from a lack of spinal support, granting him a more wormlike appearance than what should be possible for vertebrates like them, it makes Gerine sick.

The Grand Chief's beastly body leans over, allowing his massive mandibles to bite into the body he likes best, then retreats into the abyss, leaving the rest for his awestruck audience.

Each tribe member crawls toward the precipice of the pit, reaches in, gnaws off an appropriately sized piece of flesh, returns to their own abodes to feast in peace. Gerine herself takes an exceptionally larger piece, but faces no backlash from her peers. Even without ever being told, they understand she has another mouth to feed.

She climbs back into burrow to find her father wide awake. There's no telling how long he's been up, practically suffocating in this hot, dry burrow. She wishes she could ask him. It seems like the polite thing to do. But how to do it escapes her mind. Instead, she carefully cuts into the pound of flesh she retrieved, sets aside half for herself, and feeds her father the other. Despite only being paralyzed from the waist down, he seems insistent that she hold his food while he eats, resulting in an occasionally tickle on her hand when his mandibles miss the meat. It reminds Gerine eerily of a kiss, which she knows her father is incapable of giving. He doesn't have lips like her. But there's more to it than that. It isn't just physically. Psychologically, there's something separating her from her father, from all her peers. They don't think the way she does. They don't feel in the ways she does. And deep down, she knows, her father doesn't love her like she loves him.

Or maybe she just doesn't understand the way his love manifests. Maybe he makes her feed him everyday as a way to covertly plant those imitation kisses, something he wishes to do, but which escapes him. Gerine likes to think so. But she doesn't know. And that scares her.

The differing paths of the twin moons cast conflicting shadows across the land. Gerine sits and admires the sight through an aerial opening for a few minutes, letting the quiet calm her to sleep. In her last waking moments, more thoughts come to her. Thoughts. Inconvenient things to have. Only serving to put her own edge. But they can't be ignored. Because in moments like these, what else is there to fill the silent space in her brain?

Am I happy? Is this what I want to be doing? Is this all I want out of life? How will I know when its time for things to change? Will somebody tell me? I sure hope so, otherwise, how else would I figure it out?

Hello lovely artists! I'm interested in commissioning someone who's good with reptiles to draw my iguana/amargasaurus character, Gerine! Refs:

http://www.furaffinity.net/full/7822889/ http://www.furaffinity.net/full/8082822/ http://www.furaffinity.net/full/7866026/

She is only a little bit anthro-ized, as you can see, mostly in her torso and expressions. She is mostly iguana, but I always loved the (now rejected :c) concept of skin sails on the amargasaurus, so I just sorta tacked them on P: She has some traits that are more prevalent in male iguanas, such as the bigger jowls, "brain bumps", and more pronounced nuchal crest (See: http://www.herpcenter.com/green-iguana-care/green-iguana-anatomy/ ). She loves dinosaur toys, fruit, playing in the dirt, tropical climates, and pretty sundresses.

Styles that would portray accurate anatomy rather than toony liberties would be preferred! And a WIP to review would be great. Hopeful for a turn-around of 1-2 months at most, but would be happy with it taking much longer as long as you would keep me updated every few weeks or so. I've waited up to 2 years on commissions in the past lol so I'm pretty patient when I have to be. :3