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The little dinosaur was confused, which wasn’t like him. His sense of where he was and where he was going, was usually true. Not now. He was lost. It might have been because of the wetness coming from the sky, the darkness of the mist roiling above and around him, that was causing his direction confusion. That, and his nervousness at what he had just experienced with the sticks he didn’t know. He’d been seen, and he hadn’t expected that.
Now he was running, afraid some of the sticks were chasing him. They mustn’t catch him. He knew that. They weren’t his sticks. The time of the darkness was almost on him, and when that happened, his eyesight changed. He could see things, but sometimes they were only shadows and shapes. Should he go this way, or should he go that way?
He rose on his hind legs, stretched himself up as high as he could get, sniffing at the air, trying to get his bearings, his eyes taking in the trees and horizons around him. The wetness flowed down his head, along his body, into his eyes, and he swiped it away. He’d left the sticks’ settlement behind and, as before, had followed the hard path to where he had thought would return him to his home. He’d been gone too long, and some instinct had pushed him along faster and faster. His lair was unprotected, and if one of the big bad creatures found it and what remained of his eggs, they’d smash them, and he would be alone forever. He couldn’t have that. He had to get home. He had never meant to be away so long.
But, which way to go? Which way?
One of the stick’s large growling monsters roared by him, and he hid behind the trees. Another one was prowling behind it, and he waited until they were both gone before he continued his journey home. He had to be careful, because the growling monsters were so quick. They just appeared behind or before him, and he had to scramble to avoid their seeing him. It was all so tiring. He had to keep stopping to hide and to rest, to sleep, for a while. His body still hadn’t healed, was still dripping what was usually inside of him, and his one leg still dragged behind him, slowing him down.
He was weak, unsteady, still nursing his many wounds from the last battle with the evil creature with one eye. The one who had slain his family, ruined his eggs and hurt his friend stick. He worried about evading the beast when he reentered his forest. He would have to do something about it if the sticks didn’t help him destroy it.
The good sticks would help, he was sure of it. They hated the beast with one eye, as much as he did. It had killed one of them, too. So, they also wanted it to go away forever. His friend stick, he hoped, had understood what he needed from him and the other sticks. He had done his best to get his plea across. The good sticks would come, and they would help him. They would. They had such power with their growling monsters and with their objects that threw something that could bring down any creature. It was good to have friends as strong as his good sticks were.
As he limped down the path in the gloom of coming darkness, he kept seeing the sticks’ settlement, the one he’d left, behind his eyes. It had been nothing like the place his stick friends in the woods had their home in. When he’d looked at that lair, it was all of one thing, and so large, with holes in it where he could look in and see the sticks. But in the other place he had just been, there had been many objects dotting the earth, and of all different sizes and shapes. Some had holes in them, and some had none. Some looked so different from the others surrounding them, it puzzled him. Were they all stick caves, or something else? He did not know. Why didn’t they all live together, as his family did? Or had. A sadness washed over him. His family was gone. Gone. But, he concluded, there were an awful lot of sticks. Perhaps they could become part of his family. That cheered him up a little.
He feared he would never get to his lair, as the black deepened and the wetness increased. The air whipped around him and nearly pushed him down a few times. He had no idea where he was, because he couldn’t see or smell good enough. There was white stuff now swirling in the world around him. The pieces hit his hide, and they were hard and cold.
And suddenly he was so drained he could not go any further. Time to rest again. He made himself a lair, burrowing into a small depression in the earth beneath some trees, snuggled in, and covered himself with anything he found around him. He was lonely since his family had been slaughtered, and so sad. He closed his eyes, still feeling sad, until everything went away.
*****
WHEN HIS EYES SAW THE world again, it was bright. No wet stuff coming from the sky, either. He struggled to come upright, all his wounds and muscles aching, and continued his journey home, dragging his one leg behind because it didn’t want to do as he wanted it to do. But in the dry brightness, he found his bearings without too much trouble. Soon, he was shuffling through familiar woods and honing in on where his lair and his precious eggs were.
He didn’t quite make it.
For a long time, he felt something was observing and tracking him through the forest. He could sense it, and at times, hear its breathing. The trees were cracking and crying, as something enormous increasingly closed the gap between them, and he barely kept ahead of it. His inner voice was warning him to not let whatever it was get too near. Run. Run. Hide. Escape.
The tiny creatures that flew above in the air were scattering in strange circling patterns, and disappearing. Silence had begun to descend everywhere. Something bad was in the woods, and it was stalking him. Run. Run. Hide. Escape.
He pushed himself to move at a quicker pace, though his body cried out in more pain. The noise behind him grew louder, and in desperation, he took to the trees and climbed up as far as he could get. Hide. Up, up, up above the tree line, where the air met the place above where the tiny creatures flew. Peering down, remaining motionless, he waited for his pursuer to show up.
Then, there was the one-eyed monster below, its jaws yawning open and its fangs flashing in the brightness as it lifted its ugly head with the empty eye and scented the air. It was searching for him. It wanted to kill and eat him. His enemy cried into the wind. It stomped on the earth and knocked smaller trees down in frustration at not catching him. So far, it hadn’t targeted the tree the little dinosaur was sheltering in, but it had come close.
The little dinosaur quivered high up in the branches, arms wrapped around himself, and fought to keep his body from shaking. The beast below would hear it if he made any movement or noise, and if it cornered or caught him, he knew he didn’t stand a chance. The one eyed monster was hard to escape from. The only advantage he had over his nemesis was his smallness and speed, his ability to squeeze into tiny places. But his enemy was so big. So strong. And he wasn’t himself. He was weak. Sick. He needed to reach his home and to have time to heal.
The little dinosaur climbed higher, and only stopped when he knew the limbs would no longer support him. There was nowhere else to go now, and he was afraid. The monster below had not moved on. It was beneath him, listening and gulping in the air. It settled itself to the earth. Was it sleeping? Waiting? The little guy did not know.
He wrapped his arms around the nearest limb, leaned against it, and waited. The brightness began to wane, and the darkness returned, and still, the beast below had not moved on. The little dinosaur drifted into his other place. The place where he saw all his family again, and everything was good, and he was happy. When he left that other place and opened his eyes once more, it was still dark, and there was noise below him. He looked down. His enemy had roused and was leaving.
He didn’t know why he did it, he just had an urgent feeling he needed to, but he followed the monster, hanging far enough behind so it wouldn’t see or smell him. Something inside him made him do it. A tiny voice he always listened to. He had to be sure of something.
The monster led him through the forest to a hole in the ground he had not known was there, and not the one he’d discovered the first time, where he’d found the monster’s eggs. The monster had another lair. This was what his inner voice had led him to, had wanted him to see.
He made a note of where the cave was, and headed back to his own home. He was worried for his eggs. Worried that the monster hadn’t somehow found the rest of them and eaten them.
His precious hidden eggs were safe, and, comforted, he nestled in beside them, covered them with part of his body, shut his eyes, and revisited his special place.
When he left his special place, the brightness was once more with the world. He abandoned his lair and carefully made his way through the woods to where he’d seen the monster go into the hole in the earth. He sniffed the air at the entrance, and listened. The monster was not inside. Not anywhere around. It was probably out hunting for him.
He went into the hole and began to search. He found the eggs, and quickly picked them up one by one and gleefully smashed them against the walls. When he was sure he had destroyed every last one, he snuck out and ran away. He had suspected the monster had more eggs somewhere, and was glad he had tracked the beast and found them.
After the beast had killed his family, shattered his eggs and tried to kill him, he had to make sure no more of its kind ever came into the world. The big bad ones were his deadliest enemies. It was a matter of his and his future family’s survival, and perhaps even the sticks’ survival, to rid the world of them. So, he had to keep looking and destroying. Always. There might be other lairs with more eggs, and he must make sure they never hatched.
*****
AFTER THAT, THE LITTLE dinosaur’s days fell into a frantic pattern. He fought, ran and hid to stay out of the monster’s clutches, which wasn’t easy at times; he relentlessly searched for more of its lairs so he could obliterate its progeny, and he waited for the good sticks to come so they could help him kill the enemy he couldn’t kill alone. It was a hard time for the little dinosaur. He was lonely, and afraid for himself and for his unhatched family, but he persisted. He stalked the monster with one eye, and took notice of its many lairs, and as soon as the monster went off to hunt and feed, he slipped into those lairs and got rid of the eggs. There were never many eggs in one lair, but when he found them, he destroyed them.
He looked for the sticks as well. He looked everywhere, but could not find them. There were no more sticks’ growling noisy things anywhere. Where were they?
And at times, in the air high above him, he would see these huge flying creatures. He’d watch them in awe, and when they landed, he would try to find them. Once, he even caught up to one, but as he got near it must have seen or sensed him, and it took flight before he could catch it. He wondered what they were. There was a distant memory in his head of creatures like them he had once known. They had belonged to the sticks, and the sticks used to fly around in them. The sticks were amazing. They could do so much. From then on, he keep an eye on the skies, always on the lookout for them. If he caught one, he was sure the good sticks would flow from them. Then he could lead them to the monster with one eye, and their problem would be solved.
The forest, his home, though, in the meantime, was no longer safe. He lived in constant fear. The monster owned the woods, and the little dinosaur fought every day to remain alive until the sticks would come to help him. He knew they would come soon. Trusting them, he knew they would. He just had to be patient, and wait.