Wow, what an anticlimatic wait...
Well, let's be fair, putting this chapter together was pure pain so... copy this, paste that, delete this and use that instead... That's pretty much how the chapter was designed...
But what am I doing, babbling before even posting anything! Enjoy the read and again, the reminder from the previous chapter still stands: all credit for this chapter goes to rhombus and Fyn16 (Horizon)
~~~~~
Part 2:For the first time that day, Cera was alone, with nothing but her own thoughts to keep her company. She hated it. Every time she closed her eyes, listening to the soft trickle of the stream as it flowed uncaringly on, she saw the hollow, dark eye sockets, imagined the clacking teeth and that terrifying, frozen grin.
It’s not just Longnecks, Cera. You can’t trust anyone. Not until you’ve earned their respect, at least. Not you know you can trust them with your life. Forget that even once, and you could end up like this poor fellow here. The world we live in does not care about you. No one you meet has your best interests in mind. Live for yourself, and no one else. Forget the Longneck, and one day you’ll be glad you did.
She wished she could. Right now, she wished she had never met the Longneck in the first place. He’d seemed so friendly, so inquisitive (in a goofy sort of way), but how much of that could she believe anymore? What if he was just waiting for the chance to finish her off, just like the dead Threehorn? Cera shivered in spite of the warm afternoon air. These weren’t the sort of things one should think about before bedtime.
*
"A longneck does not need to be afraid of everything, but he does need to be cautious; never greet a new situation until you learn more about it." His grandfather’s voice echoed in the longneck’s head as he sniffed around the dried bushes, looking for anything to do. He would have loved to play with that threehorn, but his elder’s wise words did more than even his mother’s to instill a sense of caution. But, as was common with the mind of a young child, mischief soon made itself known in the form of a question.
I can’t play with her, but maybe I can watch her? After all, Grandpa said that I should learn more about stuff before I see stuff.
The longneck’s face turned from one of speculation to one of determination. Yes… that was exactly what he was going to do.
Placing his head towards the ground in the best attempt at hiding his body that he could muster, he proceeded into the bushes, seeing if he could find the mysterious threehorn once more.
As he scurried through the bushes, or rather, what was left of their desiccated husks, he allowed his thoughts to turn to the threehorn once more. She certainly acted tough, but Littlefoot could sense that she was a kid like him. How threatening could she be?
But that was when a terrifying thought came to him: the snake in his Grandpa’s story appeared friendly as well. But that did not save his childhood friend…
Littlefoot did not realize that he had hunkered down even further until his neck nearly collided with a small rock. It was only then that he decided to stick his head out of the bushes in order to see if he could find a sign of the elusive threehorn. What greeted his eyes instead was something no less interesting.
Water!
He rose from his hiding spot and proceeded to run towards the small stream, before suddenly skidding to a halt, remembering his self-imposed mission. He could not find the threehorn if she found him first… and what could happen to him if that happened?
Against his will he forced himself back into the bushes, deciding to follow the stream. Perhaps the threehorn would have the same idea as him and drink without looking first? If so then he could do his watching, just like his Grandpa had said.
Littlefoot did not let the fact that his Grandfather had said nothing specifically about spying on threehorns dissuade him from his reasoning. How else was he supposed to learn about threehorns except by watching them?
He kept his body flush with the dessicated bushes until he heard something in the distance. Something that sounded like an agitated sigh.
He hunkered down. He had found her.
He peered over the dried remains of a bush as he took a good look at the yellow threehorn. This was not the prideful spitfire that he had seen on display earlier on this day, but rather a brooding collection of horns and angst. How could something change so profoundly.
Just like the snake...“It’s not fair!”
Littlefoot fought against every instinct as the threehorn called out in rage and kicked a pebble into the water, causing a minor splash before sinking out of sight. This was true anger. Littlefoot had never really seen this before, and as such it both excited and terrified him. Moving his neck to catch a better view, he finally decided to step out into the tall grass, using their mighty stalks as his hiding place. It was right then that the threehorn turned around.
*
A leaf floated downstream, shriveled and dead just like most of the others, and she was reminded of why the grown-ups were making this migration in the first place. At the end of their trail lay the Great Valley. Up until today the prospect of a green paradise filled with all sorts of strange and wonderful dinosaurs had seemed too good to be true. Now it only filled her with dread. So many unfamiliar faces, just like the Longneck. Who could say which ones were sincere and which were not? She sighed, watching the leaf trail away until it disappeared, either beneath the surface of the water or behind some unseen bend. These were grown-up problems, not hers.
“It’s not fair!” she growled, kicking a pebble into the water. The projectile made an insignificant splash, creating barely a ripple before it, too, sunk out of sight. She turned away from the stream; even rock-kicking wasn’t enough to alleviate her fears.
And then she saw it- something unnatural, standing perfectly still among the gently blowing blades of tall grass. She didn’t know exactly what it was, but it definitely wasn’t something natural. Something glinted among the dull colors of the grass. Eyes? Someone was watching her; had to be. A chill ran down her spine, and she began to paw at the ground, snorting.
“Show yourself!” she called out, her gruff Threehorn voice unable to mask the wavering fear in her tone.
*
Littlefoot’s heart skipped a beat. Had she seen him?
He didn’t have to wait long for his answer as the threehorn reared back and began to paw at the ground, trying her best to look intimidating.
“Show yourself!”
Littlefoot hesitated, for a moment unsure of what to do. Should he run? Should he obey the threehorn’s command? It was only with reluctance that he stepped through the grass, his face an impassive mask.
*
Cera recognized the Longneck as soon as he left his hiding place in the grass. She’d remember his pale, reddish-brown colors, his dark eyes, and that quirky smile anywhere. But where once she’d seen only a potential friend, or at least a friendly rival, now she felt doubt.
He’s here to kill me. The thought, a little, irrational nugget of “what if” was the first thing to cross her mind. She didn’t want to so much as consider it- after all, this Longneck wasn’t any older than she was- but after what her father had said, she wasn’t so sure she could dismiss the possibility. He was a potential threat now; everyone was.
“You,” Cera whispered, grating her teeth together as she tensed, readying herself to fight or flee, “I thought I told you- Threehorns never play with Longnecks! Go back to your own kind before I… before I….” she sighed, pawing weakly at the ground. She wasn’t her father. Not yet, anyway, and the things he showed her had left her tired more than anything else. She didn’t have the strength to fight off the Longneck, so she tried one more time, muttering weakly, “just go away.”
*
For a moment Littlefoot wondered if he had made the wrong decision but this was not like the snake in Grandpa’s story. Behind this anger was something else… something the small longneck couldn’t quite place. As a result he stayed where he was, looking at her with concern.
“Are you alright?” His question seemed genuine, and Cera gave him a genuine answer.
“No! And I won’t be alright until you’re long gone! My daddy warned me about you. I know what you are. I know what you can do.” She lowered her head, presenting her single horn to the Longneck in an aggressive display, her fire returning as she thought of the skeleton.
That won’t be me, she thought to herself.
“But if you think you can hurt me, I’d like to see you try.”
Littlefoot looked at the threehorn with a befuddled expression, for a moment not thinking that he had heard her correctly. This only lasted a few seconds, however, before the reality of the words set in and he reacted the only way that he could.
He laughed.
As he laughed at the absurdity of the threehorn’s paranoia, he did not notice the hint of fear on her features. The uncertainty about how to proceed… about his intentions.
Cera froze in place, unsure whether to attack or stay put. Maybe that was his plan. Just like before, when he met her challenge with nothing but that annoying smile, maybe he was only trying to confuse her.
To catch her off guard.
“I know what you’re doing!” she said, her voice shaking, “and it’s not working! I won’t fall for your tricks.”
It was the shaking voice that alerted Littlefoot that something was off. There was real fear here. Though, the longneck deduced, the threehorn probably would never admit it.
“How could I hurt you? You’re the one with a horn sticking out of your face,” Littlefoot struggled to bring his giggles under control, “I just have this long neck.”
As if to demonstrate he tilted his head at an odd angle, as if he were looking at her while facing the other direction, and then stuck out his tongue in a poor replication of her antics earlier when he had been carried away by his mother. Though any onlooker would agree that Littlefoot couldn’t scare a stingless buzzer.
Cera blinked in confusion. Apparently he found this funny, because he began to giggle softly. As he did so, he tilted his neck, craning it at an unusual angle that Cera would probably have found funny had the situation not been so tense. She tried moving her head to follow him, but it was impossible. When he tried sticking his tongue out, a clear attempt at returning her own rude gesture from earlier, she actually found she had to hold back a giggle. It was actually quite surprising to her. The Longneck had had plenty of opportunities to attack by now, and taken none of them. Her father had called Longnecks dangerous, hadn’t he? What was so dangerous about having a long neck? And he was right- out of the two of them, she was clearly the more dangerous one. At this, she stood a little taller, instinctively.
“Well you’re right about that. I
am the one with the horn. Maybe you should be scared of me,” she puffed, “my daddy told me my horn is the sharpest out of all the kids in my herd, you know.”
Littlefoot actually felt relieved to see some of the prideful arrogance back in the threehorn. It was so different than the melancholy that was there before. But then again the words of his Grandpa echoed in his mind: beware of things that do not appear to be what they are. The threehorn had acted all scared, and now was acting confident and poised. Could it have been an act? Just like the snake?
He maintained his distance, merely giving her a smile. Cera returned the gesture with something that could only be described as a half-grimace.
The Longneck didn’t draw any closer, but it felt to Cera as if tensions had fallen, if only a little. She did not, however, let that catch her off guard. Being comfortable right now was an easy way to get her in a bad situation.
“Now tell me why you’re following me,” she said, trying to turn the conversation back on course, “don’t make me show you just how sharp my horn is.” There was less anger in her voice now, but the threat was still clear.
Littlefoot forced himself to stand tall, but he could not hide a slight tremble in his neck. Cera, on the other claw, breathed a little easier. Finally, a response she could understand. If he wasn’t fearless, then maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t to be feared, either.
“I-I was just watching,” Littlefoot stammered, “My Grandpa said I should look at things before meeting them.”
“Watching me, huh?” she pressed him, pushing him on. She wanted to see his true side, to see that he too was capable of being afraid. “Yeah, right. My daddy said that I shouldn’t trust anyone. Not even a little Longneck like you.”
And then something dawned on her. How long had he been watching? Had he seen her crying? Seeing him shake, finally feeling like she was in the position of power, she realized that this was her biggest concern now, that this stranger had seen her show weakness. It was just like something her dad would say.
The threehorn’s eyes went wide for a moment, as if she had come to some realization. “…And you shouldn’t have snuck up on me like that. It’s not nice.”
Littlefoot considered this for a few moments. The threehorn did have a point. What would he have done if he thought something was staring at him in the bushes?
“Well… um…” he began, trying to think of how to explain himself. He eventually decided to walk on over to the stream, “Well… I was just going to get a drink before I saw you along.”
He took a deep drink from the stream as if to punctuate his point. Not entirely convinced, Cera kept her distance, but as he didn’t bring anything up about her crying earlier, she decided to let it go. .
“Fine. So get your drink and move along. We’re not supposed to be talking to each other, remember?”
And then what? she thought,
do I just go back to sitting by myself at the waterside? She glanced over at the Longneck again, nervously, hoping he’d take the hint and just go. But he didn’t. Instead, he raised his tail in the air, as if to strike something.
Upon again hearing the threehorn’s bossy demeanor, he couldn’t help but feel challenged in some way. As if the threehorn and him were playing a game where getting the last word in would be a loss.
Littlefoot couldn’t help himself. Upon hearing the arrogant response of the threehorn, he raised his tail into the air and hit a pebble with all of his might, sending it skipping twice before it sank into the water.
His only reply to her words was to give her a cheeky smile. That is how you skip a stone, threehorn!
Cera didn’t know what to expect, so she did the only thing that came to mind. She lowered herself, baring her horn just as her father did when threatened. But to her surprise, she wasn’t the target at all. Instead, he hit a small, smooth pebble which flew out over the stream, skipping on the way. She’d never seen anything like it before; she certainly had no clue how he’d done it. He turned to her, that same annoying grin from before on his face.
Nothing at that point in time could have made Cera more infuriated.
“How did you do that?” she asked finally, struggling to keep her temper in check.
Resisting the urge to laugh as the threehorn looked at him in shock, Littlefoot shrugged, a playful glint in his eyes, “I thought we weren’t supposed to talk to one another, remember?”
“Hmph.” Cera turned her snout up at him. This Longneck was a good talker, and despite the obvious danger a word-twister like him presented, she was more annoyed than scared now. He’d backed her into a corner, and she needed a way out to avoid making a fool of herself.
Again, she thought, reminded of the incident with the squirting buzzer.
“I’m not talking to you. I’m…” she paused, searching for the right word, the right phrase to counter the Longneck’s wit, “I’m talking beside you… to... the stream. You know. Just wondering aloud.”
Littlefoot laughed at the threehorn’s obvious attempt to go around her father’s rules. It was so transparent as if to invite mockery. In response he pretended to talk to his own reflection in the stream.
“What do you think, Reflection? Should we tell her how we beat her at skipping the rock?”
Beat me?! Cera’s eye twitched. It was personal now. The Longneck had decided to make it a competition, and ignoring her to talk to his own reflection? That only added dirt to the wound. Her outburst was immediate, and came without a moment of thought beforehand.
“What kind of a dummy talks to his own reflection? Just tell me how you skipped the rock!”
And then she stopped, shutting her mouth immediately as she realized what she’d done.
She made eye contact with him. More importantly, she’d spoken to him. Just like her father had warned her not to.
Uh oh…Apparently oblivious to Cera’s own internal struggles, the Longneck found another rock and raised his tail again. Despite every urge to tackle the smug Longneck and knock him senseless, Cera’s curiosity got the better of her, and she found herself transfixed as she watched and learned.
“You have to hit it with the tip,” he then whipped his tail as he had done before, sending the stone skipping clear across to the other end of the stream. Upon seeing his feat, he gave Cera an encouraging smile.
Your turn.
Littlefoot could only watch with amusement as the threehorn tried to find a suitable rock while at the same time not taking her eyes off of the longneck. It was as if she were searching for food but had to also keep an eye on some sharptooth in the distance. It would not be for many seasons that he would truly understand why that felt so very wrong.
Just turn around and go back to the herd. He’s trying to trick you.
She wanted to listen to the voice, to the sane part of her telling her to listen to her father and just go home, but there was a smooth rock within reach. She regarded it longingly, then made up her mind. Cera raised her tail.
Daddy never has to know. She kept her eyes on him the whole time as she set up for her strike, making sure he wasn’t using the opportunity to set up an attack. She could ignore her father’s advice, but it would be stupid to forget it altogether. She had to be ready to react in an instant if things went wrong. When her tail reached its highest point, she brought her eyes down to the rock for just a moment-
Don’t make me regret this.Before striking it as hard as she could. Immediately she snapped her eyes back up to the Longneck. He hadn’t moved. In fact, he seemed to be watching something. Against her better judgement, Cera followed his gaze just in time to see her stone skip before plunging into the stream.
“Nice!” the Longneck said, gathering up another pebble. It actually sounded like genuine praise to Cera. Maybe there wasn’t anything sinister about him after all. She grinned back at the Longneck. Now it was a competition, and she lived for competition.
Littlefoot noted happily that it was a lot more fun with someone else to compete with. Though as soon as he heard her response…
“Hey, that’s pretty neat! I bet that’s farther than anyone else has ever skipped a rock.”
…he did have to avoid rolling his eyes. After all, he had a better response than words for that. Slapping his tail against a particularly smooth stone, he sent it sailing across the water, going in front of the threehorn as it did so. Now it was Littlefoot’s turn to taunt her.
“Whatever,” Cera scoffed, “you’re just lucky.” She set up her first stone from the small pile she had gathered and smacked it. The rock wobbled before sinking, having not skipped even once. Cera frowned.
It seemed, however, that she was not the only one to be visited by the misfortune.
Luckily for her, however, the longneck was no longer watching her attempt as he attempted to up the ante and strike an even larger stone into the stream. Such a heavier weight would require more force, and as such he raised his tail and prepared himself to strike the stone with all of his might. With a final deep breath he prepared himself for the impact…
Only to feel himself collapse onto the ground, his hindquarters stinging fiercely. The longneck had missed his target and fallen over. He had taunted the threehorn and now gravity had taunted him.
The laughter of the threehorn was contagious, despite also being infuriating. The entire situation was so absurd that Littlefoot couldn’t help but to laugh, not matter whatever damage his sense of pride might have taken.
Cera couldn’t help it. She laughed. When the Longneck began to laugh with her, she began to laugh even harder, losing her balance and falling over, laughing away all the fear and insecurity she’d felt earlier. Everything melted away in that wild moment of expression; it was almost as if she and the Longneck had never been separated in the first place, and at that point, her father’s words were barely more than an echo in her mind.
As her laughter began to die down, Cera returned to her pile, still determined to beat the Longneck at his own game. “You know, you’re not what my daddy said you’d be like,” she said, taking aim and letting another rock fly. She managed a single skip. It wasn’t quite as spectacular as her first hit, but it was a start.
“What did your dad say I was like?” the Longneck asked, going back to his own pile.
Cera considered bringing up the dead threehorn and her father’s lesson about strangers, but thought better of it. Somehow it didn’t seem right; she didn’t want the Longneck to be as scared of her as she had been of him.
“He said Longnecks were stuck-up and untrustworthy. But you don’t seem like that. Not right now, anyway.”
The Longneck nodded skipping another pebble. “And you don’t seem like the belly slider in my Grandpa’s story.”
“Belly Slider?” The threehorn looked insulted by this insinuation. “Of course I’m not like a belly slider. What a dumb thing to say.”
The Longneck didn’t seem to mind the insult, however. “Well… his friends tried to play with it and… um… he got eaten.”
“Oh,” Cera said simply. She’d heard of Belly Sliders and their poisonous bites before. While she’d never heard of one eating a dinosaur before, that wasn’t entirely out of the question, either. In any case, it was a chilling prospect, one eerily familiar. She was beginning to see his point, and the realization came as a surprise to her. Had he been given the same talk as her after their first meeting today?
“So you thought… you thought I was someone that looked nice, but wasn’t nice inside,” she began to work through her thoughts aloud. “I think I get it. My daddy-” she stopped herself, not wanting to return that dry riverbed where the bones of the dead Threehorn sat, turning slowly to dust.
“My daddy actually said something like that to me, too.”
Littlefoot stopped looking for more stones as he focused all of his attention on the threehorn. She was acting strange, like she had when he had first began to watch her… but now he knew why she was acting this way.
That was why he didn’t mind that she was only a few body-lengths away. As she realized it, Cera tensed.
But would he be okay with her being any closer? His mother had told him that each kind kept to themselves. And mother had never been wrong before…
Without thinking about it Littlefoot expanded the distance between himself and the threehorn ever so slightly. Seeing this, the Threehorn relaxed again.
That was when a familiar booming voice made itself known.
“Cera? Cera! It’s time to come back.” Cera looked away from the Longneck and up to the sky. The Bright Circle was descending below the horizon, tinting everything above it with an orange-pink hue. She hadn’t meant to look afraid when the Longneck came closer; it was a sign of weakness, and she genuinely believed he meant her no harm. Yet her father’s words cast a shadow of doubt over her. There was always a chance.
The threehorn seemed torn for a moment, as if pulled between her duties and her wants. Littlefoot could see that it looked similar to the distress she was under when he first saw her, but now it had a different context. When she finally did speak her voice sounded resigned.
“I should go,” she said quietly, “that’s my daddy calling.”
Littlefoot felt a pang of disappointment at this, but also a sense of resolution. If what his mother and grandfather had said was true, then perhaps this was for the best? He forced a smile on his face as she gave her a nod, reminiscent of the respectful nod his mother and the threehorn had shared earlier in the day.
“So the name’s Cera?”
“Yeah. How about you?”
“Littlefoot,” he answered. His eyes never left her own. It was a symbol of trust, and to Cera, it was a moment of realization. He was not weak. Few could hold eye contact; it was a respectable trait.
“Littlefoot…” her voice trailed off as she nodded. “That’s a nice name. I-”
“Cera!” Littlefoot watched as the threehorn, Cera, looked out in the direction where her father’s voice had echoed. That voice brought everything she’d learned today back at once, a swirling mess of fear, insecurity, and awareness that, despite the steps she’d taken to build up a friendship with the Longneck, brought everything grinding to a halt. She couldn’t continue with this; if she did, then her father would have taught her nothing. Bearing this in mind, she made her choice in that moment.
“It was nice to meet you, Littlefoot, and I hope you and your herd finds what they’re looking for,” she paused for a moment. In an instant her somewhat passive demeanor changed into the assertive threehorn that he had seen before. The time for them to merely be children had again passed; now it was time to again be of different herds, different paths. “…but I think we should stay with our own kind. It’s what our parents would want,” she added, trying to sound helpful.
Littlefoot frowned at this but nodded nonetheless, trying to ignore the feeling of utter wrongness washing over him, “I hope that you find what you are looking for too. Goodbye, Cera.”
The longneck watched the threehorn disappear from view for several moments as her presence left his sight and hearing. In the end he was left alone with the grass and stones all around him, an endless area of play for one. The only child of his herd. As he prepared to turn back towards his herd once more, he shivered at the previously unknown feeling of loss.
He hoped that was a feeling that he would never have to feel again.
*
“Good riddance,” she muttered under her breath. The words had little meaning behind them, but they helped- if only a little- to remind her of her place. The Longneck was not her friend. If anything, he was someone to be respected as an equal now, but not trusted. She looked back in his direction. To her relief, he was long gone.
“Threehorns never play with Longnecks,” she said, echoing her father’s words from before.
“Cera, it’s time to come home for dinner!” She could see some of the other Threehorns up ahead. Her father was somewhere among them, waiting for her to arrive. They would go looking for food as a family tonight, Threehorns in the company of Threehorns, as it should be. She started forward eagerly, but stopped when something caught her eye.
A rock. Flat, circular, just within reach of her tail. She looked to the herd, then back to the rock, and without a moment’s thought, she lifted her tail and brought it back down, striking the rock and sending it spinning out over the water.
One skip, two skips, three skips. She grinned.
“Cera?” “I’m coming, Daddy!” she answered him, watching as the ripples marking her achievement faded. Three skips. The Longneck had only managed two.
Let’s see you beat that. Cera headed home.
~~~~~
Well, if you liked Perspectives back in the days, you'll probably have enjoyed this read just as much
From now on, I will have to provide with my own creativity and skill again. It's been too long and the Earthshake scene is approaching fast. I sincerely hope to be able to stick to some schedule with my writing for at least a few weeks (at some point school will overwhelm me with work again anyway). Currently, for this story a bi-weekly schedule is considered 8aand actually I meant to upload this last weekend which, due to my arm injury, kinda didn't work out
So, if I can manage to squeeze it in, I might have another chapter this weekend, we'll see...
