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Chapter 14

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The little dinosaur had snuggled down in his lair when the cold stuff began to fall outside and cover everything. He didn’t like it much. It made him sleepy, and his body wouldn’t stop vibrating.

When the cold stuff from the sky had gone back where it came from, and there were no more traces of it anywhere, the little dinosaur ventured out again. It had been searching for the big bad dinosaur with a missing eye for a long while, many bright and dark times, but had not found it anywhere. That made the little dinosaur nervous. Everywhere he went, he had to be cautious.

More wet cold stuff came from the sky and covered the earth, again and again. The brightness and darkness added up, and still there was no enemy dinosaur.

Where was the big bad one? Was it hiding, or lying in wait to attack him? The little dinosaur was frightened, every time he left his lair, that the fiend would jump out at him and eat him. He wondered where the sticks were. Had his stick friend not understood what he had wanted? He had wanted the sticks and their noisy monsters to come and kill the big bad one. But the sticks had not come. The little dinosaur was bewildered. He thought the sticks he knew were his friends. But where were they? Maybe the cold stuff from the sky had kept them away. That was it. The cold stuff. It was easier to believe that, than the sticks he knew didn’t care about him, or their own kind’s safety.

As the time went by, he became increasingly worried. He could not find the big bad monster anywhere. There were no sticks, but there was also no big bad dinosaur lumbering about.

He broadened his search, and scrambled through the trees and brush into sections of his woods he usually didn’t go into. He had to know where his enemy was, or it might catch him unaware and get him.

He spent time meandering through other holes in the earth. When he found eggs that weren’t of his kind, he destroyed them. There weren’t many. Still, he didn’t see his enemy anywhere.

He explored further and further from his lair, and he finally found the dinosaur with one eye. It was at the same place, the sticks’ home, the long sprawling lair with the holes he used to look into, where he had first met his stick friends. His enemy was lurking around it, observing the sticks coming and going. Then it attacked, surprised and grabbed some of them. It tore them apart. They were unprepared and caught off guard. Their screams echoed through the forest, and made the little dinosaur very sad.

He couldn’t do anything to help the doomed sticks. He wanted to, but he was too small. His enemy had grown so much larger since he had last seen it. He watched in horror from behind the trees, perched up on his hind feet, so he could see better, his claws on both sides of his face. He rocked his body back and forth, grieving for the poor sticks who were being slaughtered. The outside carnage didn’t last long. The sticks retreated into their lair.

The bloodthirsty fiend roared and ranted and slammed at the outside of their home. But their lair was strong, and the monster couldn’t break in. So, it began to attack the area around the sticks’ lair, knocking trees and other things down, bellowing to the sky.

When it grew tired of raging and destructing, the fiend swung around, paused as it sniffed the air, and crashed back into the forest. It wasn’t returning the way it had come.

The small monkey dinosaur followed it at a safe distance. Where was it going? What was it going to do? Was it looking for more sticks to kill?

The big predator thundered through the woods, and left the place of trees, and began to follow the hard path that led to his best friend stick’s lair, or to the strange place he had stumbled onto where there were many of the sticks’ lairs. The place he had journeyed to not long ago. He didn’t know which place the monster was heading to, but he knew he had to follow it. It was a dangerous, bad creature, and the one thing he did know was, the monster was up to more no good. It was looking for more sticks to terrorize and eat, or looking for something else to destroy. That’s what it did.

He flitted from tree to tree along the side of the path, tracking the larger dinosaur. He was afraid of being seen by his nemesis, but something drew him on. Something inside him was crying, danger, danger! This beast is on a killing spree. Who is it looking to kill? Sticks.

The big dinosaur was moving rapidly, its actions full of explosive wrath and breaking things behavior. The small dinosaur had to hurry to keep it in his sight. The beast was growling and hissing, ramming any tree down that got in its way. It was pausing and gulping in the air. Its one eye was full of hatred...and revenge. The thing acted as if it knew where it was going. That was not good. He was scared for his stick friends.

Then the truth came to the little dinosaur. The big bad monster was looking for that stick. The stick the monster had injured. The stick who had taken its eye. The small dinosaur’s best friend stick. He was scared for his best stick friend, the one who now lived with its mate, far from his home. That was where the monster was going.

There was only one thing he could do. He had to beat his enemy to his stick friend’s lair. He had to warn his stick friend that great danger was on its way. Hurry. Hurry.

He climbed up into a tree and began to swing from lofty branch to lofty branch. He might not be as huge or as strong as his nemesis below but he was small enough, light enough, to move faster. He had to save his stick friend. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.