First of all, let me say that I feel you on the pain of reformatting things before they can be posted to the forum. For my longer story (Mender's Tale) I merely post a hyperlink though responses to the prompt challenge are always also posted to the forum.
You can simply hyperlink?
But I agree that prompts should probably be forum posts.
Something that we might want to consider in the future (especially with longer stories) might be to allow authors to simply post the stories as pdf files directly to the forum by using the attach file command. Because the process as it currently stands can be a real pain.
That would require a text to pdf converter right? It's still probably less hassle than manually inputting all the formatting though...
As for room for improvement, my only real recommendations would be to watch out for a few odd vocabulary choices
Ahhh... vocabulary and grammar will be the death of me!
I'll try to proofread better next time.
Now on to the story itself, and what a story it was. We get to see a side of the hadrosaur that we do not typically see in the fandom: a skeptical, questioning side. As is common with people in general, when one puts on an appearance of joyfulness and optimism it can be easy to overlook the possible insecurities that lie underneath. That being said, it is very telling in the story that Spike reads her perfectly and makes some very good points (in his usual non-verbal way) that lead her emotional journey into the right direction. The fact that the silent member of the gang helps Ducky see the truth of some of the gang's own motivations is a very telling sign that, like Ducky, there is more to Spike than might initially meet the eye. All in all your presentation of both characters made this story a pleasure to read.
In terms of the actual mechanics of the writing itself, let me begin by saying that overall this story was excellent. So excellent in fact that it made it to my favorites list on fanfiction.net. But it is not without a few flaws. Beginning with what works well, the dialogue between the characters is absolutely spot on. The unique mannerism of Ducky's speech is clearly present and Spike's non-verbal communication is presented in a very in-character manner. Likewise the level of vocabulary in the story meets the right balance in being high enough to effectively portray the emotions of the characters and present an effective presentation of the setting, all without going into verbage that would not fit in a LBT tale. I must applaud you on that as that can be a very real challenge when writing in this fandom.
But other than these minor vocabulary and grammar issues, I quite enjoyed this story. It presents us with a side of these two characters that we seldom see in a story that is well-written and engaging. Especially as a first Land Before Time work from an author, this is an impressive story. I eagerly await your future writings.
And lastly, thank you for the detailed review!
I'll admit that this story went through multiple rewrites as I had fallen for a couple of common fandom pitfalls in earlier revisions (the modern-age vs LBT contemporary word usage was one error I recall making), but I managed to correct a good portion of them before it finally got published, so I'm glad you enjoyed it.
I just hope I didn't set the bar too high for myself to clear haha!