Threehorns are the Best at Pranks 
It was a perfect morning in the Great Valley. The sky, free of puffies, seemed to be bluer than ever. The bright circle cast its golden rays over the Great Wall, illuminating the rolling green hills of the valley. Hungry dinosaurs of all kinds were waking up to greet this beautiful day, and some had already begun grazing on their breakfast.
Tria yawned as she sat up from her sleeping place next to her husband. “Honey, I’m going to look for some sweet bubbles,” she told him. “It’s so nice today, I think it calls for a special breakfast treat.”
She received only a tired grunt as a response. That was good enough for Tria, however, as she then set off through the grass.
Cera was awakened by a sharp poke in her stomach. “OW!” After her eyes snapped open to reveal her baby sister nuzzling against her, she grumbled, “Tricia!”
Tricia babbled apologetically, shrinking back.
Even Cera couldn’t be angry at such a sweet hatchling. “Oh…” she sighed, getting on her feet, “come here.” As Tricia toddled back over to rub against her sister’s face, Cera couldn’t help but smile.
Mr. Threehorn groaned wearily as he stretched his limbs.
“Morning, Dad,” Cera greeted him.
“Morning, Cera, Tricia,” he gruffly replied.
Unusually, however, there was no response from Tricia.
“Tricia?” Cera asked, realizing the hatchling was no longer by her side.
When Cera turned around, she discovered her sister had gone a bit down the hill. She was investigating a hard, bulging, dark-purple fruit, prodding it with her horn and giggling when something rattled inside.
“What is that?” Cera wondered, trotting over.
Mr. Threehorn craned his neck to see what was going on, and then he broke into an uncharacteristically-delighted grin. “Oh,” he chuckled as he sat up, “you two have to see this!”
“Huh?” Cera asked with a frown, thrown off by her dad’s abnormally-gleeful reaction.
“It’s a rattle-pod!” Mr. Threehorn explained. “They’re full of seeds on the inside, so if you shake them –” He quickly kicked the rattle-pod back and forth between his front feet, laughing when it produced a loud, vibrating rattle.
“Great,” muttered Cera uncertainly, “a weird noise. What’s so special about that?”
“Well…” Mr. Threehorn replied, a hint of mischief in his voice, “it sounds an awful lot like a rattle-winder, doesn’t it?”
“I guess it kind of does,” admitted Cera.
Rattle-winders were long, skinny, legless creatures that wound their way through the grass. They could make a rattling sound by shaking their tails, and since they tended to bite dinosaurs that entered their territory, Cera had been taught at a very young age to run away if she heard that sound. Even a mighty threehorn wasn’t immune to a rattle-winder’s venomous fangs.
“But what’s that good for?” Cera inquired.
“I’ll show you – come on,” Mr. Threehorn urged his daughters, picking up the rattle-pod in his mouth and leading the kids away from their sleeping place. “Wait ’til you see what I always did with these things!”
As they approached a sleeping hollowhorn, whose snoring was producing soft whistling sounds from his tube-shaped crest, Mr. Threehorn mouthed at his children to be quiet. Tiptoeing behind a large slab of rock that stuck out of the ground nearby, he violently whipped his head from side to side, stirring up a resounding rattle from the pod in his mouth.
The horrible racket woke the hollowhorn with a start. As he bolted upright with a terrified gasp, his crest produced a strangled sound that was somewhere between a honk and a scream, causing him to break into a coughing fit.
Behind the rock, Cera grinned. Now she could see what was so great about a rattle-pod! She and her father buried their faces in the grass to help stifle their laughter, while a giggling Tricia stumbled onto her rear and clumsily clapped her front paws.
“There’s –!” the hollowhorn gasped between coughs, fleeing from his nest in a panic, “There’s a RATTLE-WINDER in my nest!”
“That was the best!” giggled Cera, finally free to burst into laughter.
“What did I tell you?” asked Mr. Threehown with a deep chuckle. “I came up with that one back when I was a youngster! Threehorns are the best at everything; pranks are no exception! Now, what are we waiting on? Let’s go ‘visit’ some more folks!”
“I want to rattle the pod this time!” Cera exclaimed, rushing after her dad as he plodded down the hill.
Their next victims were a pair of sleeping domeheads.
“AUUGH!” the couple yelled, jumping to their feet. They tried to run, but they ended up plowing right at each other in their hurry, clonking heads and falling backwards. “Run…! Noise…rattle-winder!” they muttered woozily as they sat back up, teetering from one side to another as they took off the fastest they could manage.
From the woods nearby, the threehorns snorted with laughter.
“Let’s get somebody else!” shouted Cera.
They snuck up behind Mr. Clubtail, who was in the middle of a tree-star meal, and hid in the bushes. This time, it was Tricia’s turn with the rattle, and she rolled onto her back and grabbed it with her legs, squirming enthusiastically to get a loud sound.
Mr. Clubtail gasped and froze, letting half a tree-star fall from his mouthful of greens. “A rattle-winder!”
The threehorns grinned in amusement at the look on his face, but then Mr. Clubtail did the last thing they expected – turning around, he glared at the bush they were hidden in.
“I hear you in there, you little varmint!” he shouted. “Let’s see what you have to say to my bopper!” Holding his tail up threateningly, he began thundering towards the bushes.
“Time to go,” Mr. Threehorn gasped, ushering his children out of the bush and following close behind as they rushed away.
When he saw the threehorns taking off, Mr. Clubtail figured things out. “Hey!” he hollered at the trio of tricksters. “I see you. Think you’re real funny, huh?”
“An important lesson about pranks,” Mr. Threehorn informed his children as they frantically scrambled away from the scene: “The hardest part about pranking clubtails is all the running involved.”
Fortunately, they had soon gotten out of Mr. Clubtail’s sight.
Better yet, they stumbled upon an elderly fast-runner drinking from the watering hole.
“AIIIEEEE!” she shrieked when she heard the rattle-pod, taking off so quickly that she tripped over a root and fell on her face, skidding right into an enormous mud puddle on the edge of the water. She was covered in gunk by the time she trudged out of its depths.
“This just keeps getting better!” Cera snickered, pounding her front feet on the ground in hysterics.
By the time the bright circle had fully risen over the ridge, the group had pranked two more hollowhorns, a family of fliers, a rainbow face, three swimmers, and a whole herd of longnecks.
“Dad, I’m getting kind of hungry,” Cera admitted after she had recovered from another laughing fit.
“We’d better head back to the nest,” agreed Mr. Threehorn. “Tria said she was getting a special treat – sweet bubbles!”
“Mmm!” exclaimed Cera as the trio began heading home.
But when they got there, they were in for an unpleasant surprise.
There, crowded around the nest, what had to be half the dinosaurs in the Great Valley were chowing down on sweet bubbles and tree stars. Longnecks lounged in the threehorns’ sleeping spot. Fliers perched on Tria’s tower of shiny stones. Two little domeheads shoved Cera’s favorite round rock back and forth.
“What’s this all about??!” growled Mr. Threehorn.
“Well, you wouldn’t believe it,” Tria gasped, “but it seems that all these dinosaurs’ nests have been infested by rattle-winders! I didn’t even know there were any of those in the valley…”
“Oh – w-why, nonsense,” Mr. Threehorn grumped sheepishly, “of course there aren’t any in the valley!”
“It’s certainly unusual,” Tria agreed, “but it’s true. Mr. Clubtail came down here and told me the whole story, so I decided we should share our breakfast with all these poor folks who have been forced out of their nests.”
From nearby, Mr. Clubtail slyly smiled at Mr. Threehorn, enjoying a mouthful of what should have been the old prankster’s own sweet bubbles. “Ah, it’s such a lovely morning! You folks are so kind…”
Maybe threehorns could be a little
too good at pranks.
Author's Note: I wrote this short fic a while back based on an old forum prompt I thought sounded fun, but I forgot to post it--until now, that is. 
