Alone Again {Open}

[Spot]

The feeling of sleeping, snug and secure, amidst a family pile once more was nice. Better yet, his new sister would sometimes hug him. Siblings. It was a new concept, but one Spot was becoming accustomed too, and he liked both his sister, brother and new parents.

Humans communicated differently than dinosaurs, but Spot had been able to pass along the name that had sounded sort of familiar when Arlo said it, and which the Apatosaurus had given him. He would continue to be "Spot".

Spot felt a tap on his head, and thought it must be one of his siblings wanting to play. He pretended to not feel it for a few moments longer then prepared to playfully pounce when a new scent hit his nose. Wait...that wasn't his family...

Spot peeked one eye open, and then leapt back with a start and a startled noise. It was a human child but...older than his siblings and...fully upright and dressed oddly. She looked scared at first too, then smiled and peered at him again. "What...are you? And why are you wearing that...".

She stepped closer. Spot grunted again and glanced around him, his green eyes widening. None of it looked (or smelled) familiar! Where was he?

"Mom! I found a wild boy! Come here!", the girl was yelling louder now, in an excited tone.

Spot took off, running across the pavement, and wondering at the all rock ground. He bumped into a stroller, and then a man's legs. He blinked up at him curiously and then glanced around again. He had never seen this many humans in one place, and yet...they were hardly recognizable.

Spot was near a sort of tent, with games inside, and he quickly climbed this to get away from the crowd and look around easier. He spotted a giant Apatosaurus and made quizzical noises at it, to see if it was friendly, but it just stood there motionless.

The boy looked about him again. Whether un-moving dinosaur or people, everything and everyone he saw was new. Where was his family? "oww...", Spot gave a tentative sort of noise at first, almost searching, then longer and louder, calling. "Owooooo". It developed to a howl, but one that called with an expectation of being answered, instead of just longing, as his grief howl had been. He then paused, listening for a reply.

[Mowgli]

For many days, Mowgli had been to a small number of areas in the park, though he never settled down on one of them to stay. Now, he entered another area in the park, and it had a theme of a kind of animal that he never saw before, whether anywhere in the park or anywhere back in the jungle in India.

As usual, the man-cub found himself within a large crowd of guests walking in in various directions. After he made it through the crowd, he saw that there were carnival games in this part of the area. He watched some of the guests play these games and receive items after playing those games. The games did look kind of fun to him, he wasn’t planning to stay in this part of the area for too long due to it being unnatural and noisy, especially to the point where he ended up jumping and shaking in fear and having to cover his ears when a bell from a nearby game rang loudly.

A few moments later, the Indian jungle boy released his ears and felt more calm. Then, he heard a call that sounded like a howl. He looked around him in different directions to find where that call came from and who made that call. He then stopped looking around when he saw a small boy on a tent that housed one of the games. When he saw that boy up there, he thought of himself and Tarzan, someone he met before in a couple of other areas and had a father/son-like bond with. Having heard the call and found who made it, he chose to respond to that call with a howl of his own, just like he did to his wolf family back in his old home in the jungle and the three canines he met in another area. So, he cupped his hands around his mouth and let out a call to the boy.

“Woo-woo-woooooooooooooooo!” the man-cub howled, hoping that the boy would come down from that tent and come to him in response. “Woo-woo-wooooooooooooooooooooo!”

[Spot]

His call was answered! But not in the way in which he had hoped, and by his family. Just as Mowgli could have probably told differing wolves from each-other, Spot could detect both that his howl was different, personally, as well as from what even humans in his world had used to communicate.

The older boy used a more wolf dialect. Wolves being the easiest of all the other mammals to understand.

Either-way, it was still more familiar than the oddly dressed girl's cry of before. That had been almost like the dinosaurs had talked, back home.

Glancing down, Spot surveyed the area, and boy, for a bit from the top of the tent, before making his way down. He crouched, before, sort of recalling his 'manners' and standing, like his parents before had just begun to teach him before they went away and his new family had reinforced.

The older boy stood perfectly too, and Spot didn't want to embarrass himself so tried to copy just as perfectly. He still wobbled, not used to it, but caught himself and smiled before sniffing at the stranger. Still a very polite greeting where he was from.

He still had to figure out where his family was, but meeting this new boy would do for the moment. Sniff completed, Spot tilted his head curiously and made a small sort of bark noise that translated to "You stand good!". Almost better than his sister...but Spot wouldn't tell her that. If he could ever find her again.

[Mowgli]

Mowgli smiled at the small boy as he watched him come down from the top of the tent, stand up on his feet, and greet him by sniffing him. Being someone who was raised in a jungle by wolves for ten years, the man-cub was perfectly fine with the younger boy sniffing him as a way of greeting him.

From what Mowgli just saw of the younger boy, the latter seemed to have been raised in a jungle by wolves, very much like the former was. The man-cub got his chance, though, to find out some things about the small boy, such as who raised him and where he lived, when he heard him speak to him.

“Thanks,” said the Indian jungle boy. “And you sniff good. Were you raised by wolves like I was?“

[Spot]

“Thanks, And you sniff good."

It may not have seemed like much of a compliment to anyone else, but Spot beamed at it, pleased.

"Were you raised by wolves like I was?“

Spot scrunched his face up as he thought. The wolves he was familiar with would have looked a bit different, a bit more long eared, as all the mammals back home were, than Mowgli was used to, but he could still think up the mostly similar animal. The question was just odd because Spot didn't think his circumstance were.

"Oh no", he shook his head, "I was raised by my parents, before...", he broke off. Even with the language barrier broken it was hard to say, and easier to say with sticks, as he had when telling Arlo, "But I have a new family now. Or did. You haven't seen them?", he asked, and thought over how best to describe them when one of the children playing one of the games won, causing another loud bell to go off!

Spot jumped and scurried behind Mowgli, peeking out from behind him and sniffing towards that direction before glancing up at the boy again, "What is that? And why does everyone...look like that?". He pointed to one of the many oddly dressed children running around and not even making familiar noises.

[Mowgli]

When Mowgli listened to the small boy telling him about his parents, he had a feeling that, with the one sentence left unfinished, the younger boy’s parents died. Then, the man-cub thought about the new family he had in the man-village when he heard that the younger boy now had a new family. The Indian jungle boy would tell the small boy about his new family in the man-village, but he chose not to, because not only did he not stay with them for long, but he also didn’t even want to think about them. He preferred to think about his wolf family and his animal friends over any humans in the man-village.

After the younger boy mentioned his new family, Mowgli was a bit surprised that the small boy just asked him if he saw them, for he never even knew them or what they looked like.

“No, I haven’t seen them,” the man-cub said, and he watched the small boy go behind him and point out one of the children in the area.

Mowgli looked at all the park guests around him and the small boy. Seeing all these people wearing clothes made him think about the conversation he had about clothes with Wart, another boy he met in another area he met in another area in the park.

“It must be their way of living,” the man-cub responded.

[Spot]

The older boy seemed sure he hadn't seen Spot's family, and even if Spot hadn't described them yet, to know for sure, he got the feeling he was right and that they weren't here. He wasn't even sure where here was, it all looked so different. "Oh...no...they're probably not here..., he realized, and looked sad for a moment.

Spot seemed to have a bad habit of losing everyone! First his birth parents. Then Arlo. Now his new family even!

Perhaps thankfully the suddenness of the bell, and all the oddly dressed humans around, distracted.

“It must be their way of living,”

Spot nodded, accepting that explanation, for the time being, and eased up, coming out from around behind the older boy. He glanced around again, and spotted the motionless Apatosaurus again. That was odd as well. It hadn't moved or talked at all since he had first seen it...and...it didn't even smell alive, he noticed, as he took a good sniff, even from a few steps back.

He shook his head, confused. "I've never been anywhere like here", he admitted, glancing back up at the older boy, "And how'd I get here...oh", he realized something else, "I'm Spot", he introduced himself.

[Mowgli]

The thought of families was still in Mowgli’s mind for about another minute. As he had that thought, he saw that the small boy was looking at the Apatosaurus, and he turned to look up at it, too. The man-cub stared at the Apatosaurus for a while before he slowly took some steps closer to it and reached out a hand to touch it. He then felt his hand all over one of the creature’s legs before realizing that it wasn’t real, which was something he should’ve figured out when he first looked at it and saw that it didn’t move at all.

Having found out that the Apatosaurus wasn’t real, Mowgli was reminded of when he and Tarzan found out in another area that the elephants there were man-made and not real. This made the man-cub feel really disappointed. Now, the longer the Indian jungle boy stayed in the park, the more he wished that all the animals in it were real and none of them were fake.

The thoughts of families and fake animals escaped him when he heard the bell ring loudly again, causing him to react to it the same way he did when he heard it the first time. He then got himself calmed down enough to respond to the small boy.

“I don’t know how you got here,” he said calmly. “I don’t even know how I got here.”

Mowgli looked back at the younger boy and heard him introduce himself.

“Great to meet you, Spot,” he said. “I’m Mowgli.”

[Spot]

“I don’t know how you got here, I don’t even know how I got here.”

Spot glanced down thoughtfully at this information. It was perplexing, and worrisome, in that he had once again been taken from his family, but...the boy lived with the mindset that he couldn't dwell on such things too long (not outwardly anyway) and, for survival's sake, had to move on to what he should do next.

Meeting his new friend for one.

“Great to meet you, Spot, I’m Mowgli.”

"Great to meet you too!", Spot even panted to reinforce this. Mowgli had been glancing at the odd, un-moving Apatosaurus also and, even if he knew now it wasn't real, Spot scampered up onto it to further investigate. He crawled all along, from the tail up to the head, taking in the odd cold feeling, and then knocking on the head once he reached it. It made a hollow sort of clang.

"Hey...!", something occurred to Spot and he grinned down at Mowgli happily again, "These things are sometimes filled with stuff, like corn! Corn's the best thing ever!". And if it looked like what guarded it...yeah! The thought didn't form that completely in the little boy's mind, and was more of a suggestion of the idea, but Spot could see a silo looking like a dinosaur!

He began investigating, looking for a loose part of the structure and, hanging from one of the massive legs, soon spotted an air vent, which he stuck his fingers into to try to see if it came loose.

[Mowgli]

Still keeping his hand on the fake Apatosaurus, Mowgli watched Spot climb up it and look further to it. From what the man-cub just got out of the small boy about the fake Apatosaurus, it wasn’t like the fake elephants back at the Jungle Cruise, which the fake skin could be removed and had a man-made setup under it that made those fake animals move.

Mowgli then knocked on the left side of the fake Apatosaurus’s torso, which made the same sound that was made when Spot knocked on the fake animal’s head. He went with Spot’s belief that the thing was filled with something, though he never even knew what corn was.

“What’s corn?” the man-cub asked the younger boy, feeling a little silly for just having asked that to him, of all people, as he watched the younger boy work with the air vent on the fake Apatosaurus.

[Spot]

Mowgli's question was enough to cause Spot to temporarily pause his work trying to pry into the gap in the underside of the fake Apatosaurus. He glanced over to the older boy. "Corn is the best thing ever! It...", He pondered. It was hard to explain why corn was so good, it just...was.

"It grows on long stalks, in fields the dinosaurs have, and is best when they take off the outer part and store it. Plus it's easier to sneak in and get some without them knowing. They chase you off if they know".

Despite his seeming indifference to Arlo's father trying to keep him out of the silo, Spot knew that much, just in that he'd been trapped while trying to get some of the corn, as well as from other farmer's reactions as well. It was why he mostly snuck in when no one was around.

Spot pried at the hole again, finally removing it, and stuck his head to see what was inside the fake Apatosaurus.

[Mowgli]

Mowgli wasn’t sure after hearing from Spot whether or not he himself would be interested in trying out corn if and when he got to it. From what the small boy said to him about corn, it sounded tempting to the man-cub, but there were still some things about it that he still had to learn.

The Indian jungle boy watched Spot stick his head into where the hole was on the fake Apatosaurus and waited a few moments for the younger boy to find something in there. Little did he know that some of the guests passing by in the area stopped at where the two feral boys were and watched them, particularly what Spot was doing.

“Have you found anything?” Mowgli called out to Spot.

[Spot]

The inside of the dinosaur shaped silo (or so Spot thought it was) smelled funny, but not like it stored stuff. It was also dark. Both of these facts making it seem like there wasn't much of a reason to continue exploring, but still, Spot was half debating it when Mowgli asked if he'd found anything.

"No", Spot admitted, pulling his head (and most of his body) back out and lightly dropping back to the ground. He debated what next when he did catch a familiar scent! The item he had just been trying to explain and had hoped to find inside the fake dinosaur!

Corn!

Glancing around, Spot soon saw where it came from! One of the guest walked by holding a large piece of it! Spot scampered forward, but the man was already walking off from where he had been. He had dropped part of the outer husk though!

Spot picked it up and sniffed it. "That! That's corn!", he turned to show Mowgli the husk, "Well the green part, the rest is better".

The boy began sniffing the ground, "I think he came from over there! So the corn must be over there, come on!", Spot scampered forward, but waited to see if Mowgli was following too, wanting to show his new friend the corn, if they could find it. It seemed to come from close by though.

{For Spot I looked up where they sell giant ears of corn, and it said in front of Kilimanjaro Safaris in Animal Kingdom, so that's where he's heading}

[Mowgli]

As Mowgli watched Spot check out the inside of the fake Apatosaurus, he became sure that it was even more fake than the animatronic elephants he saw before. He was also disappointed to find out from the younger boy that there was nothing found in the fake animal.

The man-cub had nothing else on his mind when the small boy came back down from the fake Apatosaurus. That, of course, seemed to have changed when Spot picked up the scent of corn. When a guest walked by with what the scent of was that was just picked up and Spot mentioned about it, the Indian jungle boy felt that what the younger boy finally found one of the things he was looking for, and the older boy would finally get a chance to try some of this corn.

At Spot’s last statement, Mowgli followed him to find the corn.

[Spot]

Spot glanced back, and found that Mowgli was indeed following him! He smiled, pleased, and kept on. He would have kept on towards the corn either-way, and maybe still tried to find Mowgli to give him some, if he could, and if the boy didn't follow, but was also well used to things changing by now and even with the current, most recent change of being brought here for some reason!

Spot was also used to leading, like he had when he helped the T-rexes find their herd, and knew not to run so fast that Mowgli couldn't follow. He still stopped and sniffed a few times, getting another lead on the scent, anyway. Soon they came to where the scent was strongest, and as people left a stall that was crowded with fruit.

They were grilling corn back behind the stall, and that seemed to be what most people were getting. Having no concept of lines, or paying for food, Spot rushed over to where the raw corn was, ready to be grilled, and grabbed two before he spotted what one of the Cast Members was doing, grilling some and putting some odd smelling stuff on it!

Still clutching the two ears of corn he held, Spot leaned over to sniff curiously...before another Cast Member grabbed him. "Whoa, what are you doing back here?", she sounded friendly, but also glanced at the wild boy curiously.

"Put me down!", Spot growled, wiggling, though the other human only heard his growls.