Private Take a Jog on the Wild Side

Tasha's smile was infectious. Malina was happy too. She had missed wolf moon feasts.

She still distrusted Tasha, but that distrust was far outweighed by her longing for camaraderie. If Tasha did something to make Malina cut off their relationship, then that's how it would go. At least she would have given it a chance.

"Ah, it wasn't too bad. I need to have company over more often, anyway. Glad you came."

As they made their way into her home, a few things might pop out. She had some unusual hunting trophies, including one that looked almost like a mounted dragon head and another that looked like a raptor. Mounted among the hunting trophies, she had a well-worn looking axe. She also had quite a large TV mounted to the wall on some sort of mechanical arm. Right now that TV was showing a slideshow of Malina's favorite pictures from her trail cameras. Each picture had an annotation in the corner with the date, time, and location. Here was a picture of some deer, there was a picture of some wolves. Here was a tiger holding something in tis teeth. There was a small pack of velociraptors, or a twintailed fox.

"Don't worry about the floor," she said. "It's not hardwood, it's some special kind of bamboo. I still haven't managed to mess it up. So, make yourself at home."

"Something like that," Malina said. "I don't do trophy hunting for its own sake. Each of them has a story."

She led Tasha around the corner to the kitchen. The scents of food were almost overwhelming as she opened the oven and pulled out the food that had been kept warm within. She kept talking as she got to laying everything out on the kitchen island.

"The raptor is a little piece of history, actually. You remember the movie, Jurassic Park? It's about people who tried to make an amusement park with cloned dinosaurs as the main attraction. But they don't really know how to handle those animals, so they lose control of all the dinos, which all break out and wreak havoc on the entire island that dumb amusement park was on.

"So, this guy Zhukov, He saw that movie and thought, 'this is such a great idea! I'm going to start cloning dinosaurs and build an amusement park with them as the main attraction, and then I'll be rolling in cash.'"

Malina finished laying the food out and gave Tasha a smile. "Places are set on the dinner table over there, just grab a plate. Help yourself. Water is on the table, beer is in the fridge. And Tasha," she added dryly, "you will never believe what happened at Zhukov's little Jurassic Park copy."