The End of Hunger
“Don’t do it.”
It wasn’t officially the cold time yet, but there was certainly a chill in the air as well as deep inside a caring heart. There was starvation taking place in the Great Valley but only in one individual. The large, purple sharptooth who rarely left the area after arriving as a child was suffering, and his anguish was great. Carnal needs and emotional ties can clash, and in Chomper, there was an all-out war. He would never eat any of his friends, of course, but they could not oppose any more strongly him devouring their kind. Unfortunately, it was either self control or death at this point.
Eating insects and fish at his adult size provided slightly below the minimum requirement of sustenance he needed to survive. Even Mr. Threehorn could not yell louder than Chomper’s belly these days. The pain and empty feeling of his stomach danced around in his head, mocking his restraint with shouts of craving, temptation, and fantasies of what could be. He had grown to be a humble sharptooth, but he could take the hurled ridicule of his own body no more. He knew he could not travel back and forth between two worlds, so he left the one he could have no longer and departed from the Great Valley, the closing words of Littlefoot, his brother, still echoing in the depths of his memory.
Chomper would never forget that longneck nor the validity of his words that he’d always followed up till now. He’d always hold him in the highest regard, but with this, Littlefoot just could not understand. Perhaps, if things had continued like that, he might have lived a great deal longer. However, life that is so weakened by lack of nourishment that one can scarcely move or think was not truly living in the sharptooth’s mind. Back when he had lived on the island with his parents, he’d hunted some small dinosaurs before, yet after reuniting with his friends there, his desire to kill leaf-eaters had dwindled until the point that it was no longer desirable in the slightest. His father, thoroughly displeased, had decided that he should live with their kind if he was going to act it. Soon, though, his father would have been proud.
He left the Great Valley without looking back, climbing over a ledge that led out that other sharpteeth didn’t know about. Dinosaurs are often driven by something, but Chomper’s fuel was, in a sense, nothing. He needed food. Oh, how he needed it! His hunger was a choir of inaudible voices singing ballads about the pleasure of meat. Despite no concrete way of knowing, he just knew he was soon to be sated. He wandered around in the Mysterious Beyond for a period of time he couldn’t begin to guess at. He was almost driven mad by his longing, his eyes darting about with no focus and mouth opening and closing slightly without him even realizing it. He thought he was moving in a straight line through the barren, unforgiving territory, but his feet knew nothing but circles as his mind was in a trance.
The clouds in the sky were not full enough to bring rain, but they certainly had enough water contained to block out a fair portion of the bright circle’s rays. The land around him was completely silent. No wind or scurrying creatures roamed about. His footsteps may have been making a little noise, but he was not of mind to notice anything that could not satisfy him. His vision finally caught on to something standing in the distance, unmoving. His tongue slid across his top front teeth then emerged, flicking about across his lips. The absence of self-awareness and presence of malnourishment caused him to drool, and storm clouds themselves would be jealous of his flow. Starting off with a stumble, he made his way to the figure with a burst of speed.
It didn’t stand a chance against his powerful, unrelenting teeth. They tore with passion into the flesh of- a tree. It took him longer than usual to notice the displeasur in his mouth, and even then, he was slow to spit anything out. Without care, he shoved the bits of wood out of his mouth with tiny gusts of breath, and the chips fumbled out only to stick to the drool on his chin. After standing there a while as if in a daze, he eventually looked down at his right arm, strong and thick, but he turned away almost immediately. He was not that hungry yet. Then, when his nose detected someone nearby, he could not help but wonder if it was in cahoots with his lying eyes. With no other options, however, he trusted his senses and looked around. This time, even with his mindset, there was no mistaking what he saw. It was food, but more specifically, a full-grown longneck.
If not for his temporary, mild insanity, he would have hesitated. He had just left his best friend in the whole world, a longneck, and now one was available to consume. Still, he could not show favoritism to a kind just because he knew one of them, so he dashed to attack at once. The large male looked at him but did not back down. Chomper didn’t care if he had to fight him all day. He was going to be his dinner; there was no doubt in his mind. He lowered his head and rammed into the longneck’s side, knocking him down. He slowly got up, but Chomper would not allow any time for him to counterattack. He bit down and clamped onto one of his front legs, and his razor-sharp teeth sliced through the muscles with a sudden splatter of blood as if he had stomped on a puddle of mud.
He quickly let go to lick the fluid off of his face as his prey cried out in pain. The flavor was far beyond his reckoning. Raising his right claw into the air, Chomper slashed down onto the longneck’s face with an awesome power. He tore so deeply into the cheek flesh that his claws hit teeth. When he pulled out, he repeated with his other claw only to hit the longneck’s eye. There was no sudden burst of red, but it did trickle down from the gaping hole in the eyeball he’d left, along with tiny ends of blood vessels hanging down. The longneck’s other eye filled with tear fluid; he’d never known greater torment. With a fast thrust of both claws, he grabbed his long neck and chomped into his neck. At this point, Chomper was far more interested in the meat than the ever-increasing compilation of blood on his own face.
His long release of adrenaline was finally wearing him out, so he let go and stepped back, but there was no longer a need to do anything further anyway. His windpipe having severed, oxygen was no longer traveling through his body, now being released through the large hole. He instinctively gasped even though they both knew it was a vain action. The longneck staggered back, finally losing enough strength to have any sort of balance, and he fell to his side. Not fully dead yet, he took one final look at Chomper with his working eye then breathed his last. The sharptooth plopped onto the ground and began eating at once.
He’d worked hard for his meal so deserved to enjoy it without delay. As his stomach filled, his sanity crept back in, but for his sake, he would have preferred being delusional for the rest of his life. He scooted back in nearly an instant while looking at his food. What was paradise in his mouth suddenly turned to waste, and he vomited many times before his body settled down. His mind, however, was screaming louder than ever before. He only knew one longneck his entire life. He’d met many: Littlefoot’s grandparents, Rhett, Ali, and others, but only one could he say he truly knew. Still, that had been enough to sate his entire craving for friendship. As of now, he no longer knew any longneck- that still lived. Until the day he too died, Chomper never felt full again.
