Chapter 3Tria gasped at that, rushing over to the children herself. Ducky’s mother quickly made way for the horned dinosaur, her face being a touch too close to stabbing-height of a mother who had different priorities to aiming now.
“Why would you do that?” Grandma Longneck demanded sharply as Chomper’s mother readjusted herself, clearly intending to stay in an attack-ready position.
“Give me one good reason why I ought to let her keep it!” The dark-grey male countered angrily, having shaken off the discomfort of Littlefoot near-blinding him. “You are back, there’s no need for it.”
“I thought you objected to causing death.” Pterano landed on the female Longneck. “These stones can’t just be removed like that.”
“Which is why I tried to stop you!” Littlefoot called out, even as his grandmother headed over to him more calmly than Tria had. The older Longneck reached down, pressing her head against her grandchild’s to calm him down.
The tall Sharptooth towered over them all, red eyes narrowed.
“Perhaps we should have taken the offer to remove these for the children before resettling here...” “Hindsight is usually annoying.” The male flyer looked down on the children in question. “We should do some explaining however, Grandma. What would have happened had Littlefoot not had his own abilities to slow him down?”
“It certainly seems so.”
“Dear?” Grandpa looked between the Sharptooth and his wife, feeling somewhat confused as to how exactly they understood each other. After all, they had not been alone together for that long.
“Let’s move this to the stone circle.” Mrs. Swimmer gently lifted Tricia on her mother’s snout. “This will be a long story, depending on how elaborate we’re going to make it.” She led her son away from the scene, her family following hesitantly.
Old Threehorn almost looked like he would refuse, but the fact that his family did follow her meant he had little choice.
“I wonder if we’d ever have a calm Cold Time?” Littlefoot couldn’t help asking when his grandmother lifted him onto her back as Pterano flew up to make space for the youngster.
“Never.” Grandpa chuckled softly, walking between the two elder females. “I only hope that this will all be worth the trouble.”
“We’ll see about that.” His mate muttered, eyes narrowed a touch as she looked at the dark-grey form ahead of them. “At least we’re all back again?”
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
The talking took the better part of the rest of the day, old Threehorn being as accepting and accommodating as usual. Tellingly, Tria was surprisingly quiet as that all went down.
“Out of curiosity, are things alright?” Tyra had semi-ambushed the pink female.
“He tried to tear out his daughter’s stone… of course they are not.” Tria looked up at the light-green female standing nearby.
“Threehorn, I might not be the most social dinosaur, simply because Sharpteeth are not social, but even I can tell it’s more than that.” Chomper’s mother snarled.
“Don’t make me get Hadria or the old Longneck.”“Things are not that bad, I assure you.” The Threehorn settled down on the grassy hill. Confirming the other’s suspicions, the rest of the family was nowhere near. For the time-being, Tricia would stay away from her father until he calmed down about things. Cera had promptly declared she’d stay with her sister. Tria meanwhile had almost retreated to her mud-pools, staying with neither of them.
“Pull the other one, please.” Tyra’s eyes narrowed.
“If there’s one thing I am good at, it’s catching fear and all those other emotions that would make for good prey-targets. You are afraid of your mate, Tria and I’m pretty certain it wasn’t just because he nearly killed your daughter. Why?”“You are not going to leave until I talk to you, are you?” Blue eyes met blood-red.
“Of course. You lot do so appreciate talking. I was in the circle as well, even if I didn’t understand half of it myself.” The Sharptooth settled down beside her, shifting a bit to get comfortable on the hilly bit of the grassy field.
“Talk to me, Threehorn. I will get one of the others if you won’t. Or worse, my husband will come over demanding I get back to him.”“He’s just being himself.” Tria mused. “Which everyone can tell you means he’s distrustful of anything strange and which he is simply unused to. Heavily traditionalist and stubborn.” She looked up into a nearby tree, where Pterano had been sitting ever since the Sharptooth had come upon her. It was a given that he’d probably inform the Longnecks the moment talks here ended. She had felt their gazes on her during the entire debacle at the Stone Circle… “Which means this entire thing is beyond what he knows how to deal with. He is distrustful of me… of all of us, I guess, but me in particular.”
“Which is why he wanted to bring your daughter back to her… original state?” The other female supplied.
“Yes. He… doubts we are who we were before this entire mess.” Tria sighed in defeat. “It’s… painful to have him state that to my face. I’m just happy the girls had fallen asleep before that went down.”
“He has serious issues, I swear.” Pterano’s voice floated over, carried on a gentle breeze. Tria seemed not to hear, though he could tell that Tyra with her predatory hearing had caught it.