Sindiana Jones

Sinclair Malcolm Jones went to vet school and dropped out when he figured out he only liked working with the dogs. He can't stand cats and won't pretend otherwise. Walking dogs didn't cover rent, so he answered a Craigslist ad about looking after old farm animals on an island. The pay was real. The job description was not.

Catalonia Island sits twenty-six miles across the sea, and the last of the Quigley family ran what was left of it. The Quigleys made their money in gum, Troublemint mostly, and somewhere along the way they bought an island and lost interest. For years the official record said the animals out there were buffalo. There were buffalo once. The old man chewed Troublemint through the entire interview and waited until the payroll cleared to mention they weren't buffalo anymore. Sindiana needed the work, so he stayed.

It started small. Raptors no bigger than chickens. Then he met Deloris. Sort of. The first time the ground shook he dove under a doorframe thinking it was an earthquake. It was a T-Rex, and she's been pretending she's not hunting him ever since.

He doesn't plan. He adapts. He earns trust from things that could eat him the same way he survives everything else, a system so tight nobody has to think when it goes sideways. He once talked a predator down with eye contact and a fistful of beef jerky. He calls everyone Bub. He runs on caffeine and can't remember what he had for breakfast.

He gets around in a dinghy barely big enough for two, with a motor that has no business being on it. He drives it like he's late for something, because he usually is, because something is usually behind him.

When it's his turn to read a transmission out loud, he goes full speed, interrupts himself twice, chases a tangent halfway to nowhere, and still lands every point clean. Somehow it always works. That's kind of his whole thing.