Something's Changed...
"So let me get this straight," Connor said finally. He stared at the one he had known as the Professor - the one who had come back from the distant past with a story no one could swallow, and physical, bodily evidence that no one would be able to ignore - with huge round dark eyes, and he looked way more serious than anyone had a right to when listening to... it. "You're saying that something's changed because of what happened in the Permian anomaly, like evolution as just wha', altered course."
"I'm glad somebody was listening," Cutter murmured. "Do you believe me?"
Connor thought about it for a minute. "All right, I'll buy it. It explains... well, you. If you know what I mean."
The man's face lightened at once. "I could kiss you, Connor."
"That's really sweet..." Connor's gentle face twisted in thought, his forked tongue flickered out, and he scratched at the barely perceptible scales on his chin with one taloned hand. "But what's a kiss?"
Cutter sighed. Explaining what mammals actually were - let alone their mating customs - to this endearingly unthreatening descendant of Permian pre-dinosaurian reptiles that had apparently not taken the evolutionary extinction route after all, was not going to be easy, or possibly not even possible. He wished he knew what they'd done in the past to bring about this future (it really couldn't have been Corporal Whatever-His-name-Was's cold germs, could it? Noooo.....)
Still, as scientifically ridiculous as a reptiloid Connor and Abbey, and oh god Lester! were, he guessed it made more sense when you thought (though not too hard) about it than everything - or nearly everything - remaining the same...