A Father's Hope

(60,000,033BC)

"Um, Dad, why can't we go back to the apartment?" Earl asked, rubbing his stomach as they walked to the edge of a forest that was slowly burning from a barely moving lava flow.

Dominic cringed. He cut Earl a sharp glance. "Hey – if I don't watch out, your mother is gonna have you singin' and dancin' and maybe even becoming a," he said, shuddering, "scholar."

"What's so wrong with that?" Earl continued, stopping to stare at a butterfly breaking out of its cocoon.

Dominic whipped around and grabbed Earl by the arm, nearly breaking it. "No son of mine is buyin' into that whole 'civilization' thing," he demanded. "It's just one o' those fad things that'll fizzle out in anudder year or two." He let go of Earl's thin frame. "Tradition is tradition, boy. The old ways were the right ways."

"But, dinosaurs have been getting civilized for almost a million years now," Earl protested in a whimper.

Dominic smirked and chuckled. "An' dinosaurs have been on this earth for hundreds of millions of years." His voice grew tender. "Don't you get it, Earl? Dinosaurs survived because they didn't just do whatever they wanted. They did things 'cause it was right, not because they just woke up one mornin' and decided on a new plan." He patted his son on the back, making the boy flinch. "If you gotta adapt to your environment, that just means you couldn't cut it naturally." He continued softly, "Your momma's spoilin' Pearl, so if I wanna have any chance at all of havin' a kid who'll survive, I gotta teach ya right."

"Now," Dominic told his son much later as they reached the smoldering black river of cooling lava, "if you're goin' huntin' the best thing to do is find a spot where they just die off on their own, like this lava flow here." He tossed a twig onto the black stripe running through the forest, watching as it poofed into smoke on contact.

Earl watched intently. "I thought it was better to kill than just to scavenge, Dad."

Dominic laughed and heartily slapped his son on the back. "You're getting' ahead of yourself, boy," he said. "You're just a thirteen year-old kid. You can barely keep your skull up on that thin neck o' yours. If you just rush into things, you'll be draggin' your intestines away from a fight."

Earl took a big whiff and shuddered. "Dad – the smoke," he said, gagging, "blocks the smell of nearby prey."

Dominic leaned back and inhaled deeply, smiling. "Yeah, I love the smell of burning lava in the evening." He nodded. "That's the challenge, kid. The rest is up to you." He sat down and leaned against a tree and started to snore.

Earl looked around. There were hardly any dead animals. Only an idiot would be this close to a lava flow, even if it was slow. The smell alone would have driven away most game. He looked back at his father as he started to wander away.

If only there was a Kave Mart nearby. He could just go "help himself" to a roast and act like he had killed it himself.

Earl wasn't exactly the best hunter on the super-continent. He was surely no match for his hero, Red Bakker, who was always on television, describing his daring hunts in amazing detail, with an exuberance that always left Earl giddy with delight and an awestruck sigh.

What made Red Bakker even more incredible was that it was one of the only shows he and his father could watch together and enjoy. His father was profoundly against television, claiming it brainwashed the masses into forgetting the old days – but Red Bakker flawlessly connected previous wild generations with current civilized ones. After all, you could put a dinosaur in clothes and under a roof, but you couldn't take the beast out of him.

Earl felt it before he could see or smell it: a giant of a dinosaur, maybe twenty feet tall or so, was bearing down on him through the forest. From the shape of the shadow, it was definitely a carnivore. He trembled a bit before hearing Bakker's voice in his head, describing his beachside hunt from last week. A light went off inside his head and he started wagging his tail and dancing around, seemingly oblivious to the approaching predator.

It burst from the trees and Earl dashed as close as he dared to the lava flow. The predator, a large therapod with rough plumage, rumbled out from the trees and stopped, snorting as it came to the stench of sulfur.

Earl's face fell. When he looked down, he noticed each foot had one large claw in comparison to the other ones. He grimaced. He had heard about that type of dinosaur. They were cold and calculating and way smarter than most. "Hey!" Earl shouted, jumping up and down, "don't ya wanna eat me?"

The large dromeosaur grimaced. "Ugh, it stinks to high heaven here." He nodded. "You get a free pass, kid."

"But, I need you to fall into the lava flow so my Dad'll think I killed you."

The predator laughed as he backed away from the stench. "You caught that episode of Bakker too, didn't you?" he said with a toothy grin. "I can't believe the predators chasing him actually fell for it." He cocked his head to one side. "Have you even joined the YMCA yet, kid?"

"No," Earl replied.

The giant dromeosaur shook his head. "Look, none of the stuff around here'll be fit to eat. Go join the YMCA. They'll teach you how to smack down smaller creatures in no time flat. I'd be ashamed of my father if I was you. I mean, how lazy do you have to be not to teach your own offspring how to hunt yourself?" He reached to the back of his curved neck and plucked out a feather, cringing as he did so. He let it drop. "You take that back to your pop with a story of how you avoided getting eaten by a Utahraptor. Then offer to join the Y. That should impress the bum."

When the Utahraptor left, Earl cautiously picked up the feather and ran back to his father, nearly hopping with joy.

It wasn't the ending he had hoped for his hunt, but it sure beat getting digested.

Author's Note: If you haven't read Robert Bakker's Raptor Red book, I suggest it. It's way awesome.