Ambedo. That’s what he was feeling as he ran after Selena through the tall grass (having awakened with a knot on his head to find her fleeing) and tried not to think about the danger. Ambedo: that trance-like state in which one became so absorbed by their surroundings—the wind massaging the green hills so that they undulated like sea anemones or the red-gold chiaroscuro sky lending palette and poetry to everything or the sun glaring over the horizon like a burning but indifferent god—that they forgot what they were doing or even why they were there. But he knew what he was doing and why he was there; why he was sprinting through the fields even though the velociraptor, Silent Jim, might be anywhere—on any side.
He wanted answers.
And so he pursued her even as she pursued him, the raptor
