I lived in the Mysterious Beyond. But you want to know more, huh? Hm. Mom and dad called my hatch place "the Ponds". I know there are ponds everywhere, but you know swimmers. They just go from water to water, and momma told me once that "it would be silly to give each puddle a name". *laughs
Huh? Still not good enough? Oh well. The Ponds were not just any pond. Oh no. Mom and dad visited it many times, before there were any ponds there. It was all a big water. And they did not go alone, but in a really big herd. See, swimmers are the most plentiful kind of dinosaur in the world. And before there were much, much morer of them. My dad said where there were leafs, there were swimmers. Flyers used to say that if you throw a stone into the bush, you will hit a swimmer. And some mean threehorns said that you can be sure the stone hit a swimmer's head if you hear a hollow sound.
My mom told me about the time when she was little. They did not spend much time in the ponds. No, they did not. They spent most of the time in the open. The herd was so big they did not fear other leafeaters or even sharpteeth. When it was hatch time, there were nests as far as the eye could see, each nest full of eggs. There were entire hatchling herds going from nest to nest.
The place they lived in was called the Always New Plain. It was called that way because it was so big that no dinosaur ever saw the whole plain with its eyes. And even if a dinosaur could see it all, it would spend so much time walking that the parts it left would change. And you could never return to the same place you lefted. No, you could not. And that's why places would often change names, like the Ponds I was hatched in. Even in such a big open place, my mommy felt safe. He had her mommy and many, many other swimmers to protect her.
Then sad things started to happen. The Always New Plain became drierer and drierer, and then every part of the herd went its own way. All the swimmers were sad, because nothing hurts a swimmer more than loneliness. We are happy when there are many, many of us together. But there was not enough food, so they had to go. And then scary things started to happen. Sharpteeth started attacking the new tiny herds, and these little herds did not give good protection to the hatchlings.
No, no, no.
My mom and dad were together in one such tiny herd, and being together they became really close. "It's not like a swimmer needs much to fall in love", mom would say. *laughs
The herd went for Big Water, to hide from the sharpteeth in the thick woods, but sadly when they saw it, they had to rename it to Ponds. The woods were still thick, thankfully. And then I was born. And there we lived for a while, safe from sharpteeth, until me and my brothers and sisters grew big enough to run.
Then we moved from water to water. And then one day I was diving in a pond, when the earthshake separated me from my family. The rest you should know, I hope.
Now excuse me, I am very thirsty from all this talking. This is too much even for a bigmouth, it is, it is.
What are your plans for the future, Tria?
