Category: Land before Time
Rating: T
Couples: none
Warnings: Blood, Character Death
Chapter: 2
Copyright: © characters and places by United Pictures; © Plot and OC by me
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The fire spread at an alarming rate. Their green food, dried up by the long heat, went up in flames. Many did not leave their once lush forests alive, trapped among the burning plants.
Those that did huddled together away from the flames, forming a mixed herd of just a few dozen members. Many of the bigger dinosaur-species like the Longnecks were completely absent, being too slow to escape the fiery death that awaited the stragglers. Their size, such protection against the many carnivores, now proved their undoing as they couldn't maneuver well enough among the massive trees to escape the fire in time.
The children were crying, all of them. Many of the grown-ups were crying too, having lost loved ones or even entire families in the inferno. Some only stared into the mesmerizing colors of that which took their home. No one was sure how it started. Had the sky not been a perfect blue up until the smoke defiled it?
Soon a rumor started circulating among the survivors. It had been the children, it said. No! Impossible!
Yet it was the children themselves who told the story: they had been playing Toss the Seed, but instead of a seed or tree-sweet they had used stones. Stones that had smacked into one another, causing sparks. And the sparks erupted into the massive fire that had cost them all so dearly.
Their parents – those that lived, anyway – were too tired, both physically and mentally, to reprimand them for not warning anyone about that mishap until it was too late.
No Sky Water came to extinguish the flames and they raged unchecked until late the next day.
It was in the evening of that day that the first Fast Biters came, seeking an easy meal among the wounded and weakened Leaf-eaters. By the next day, the survivors of the fire had been reduced to a mere half of their already small number. Most of their losses had been among the families: the little ones had always been easy prey and the grown-ups defended their young with their lives instead of fleeing. Normally that would have been enough to discourage the Meat-eaters, but with all of them being weakened it only proved to be an even bigger feast for them.
By now the small herd consisted mostly of Flyers and Swimmers, who were among the fastest dinosaurs and therefore the ones who had the easiest escape from their forest-home when the fire spread. There were some Threehorns and close relatives, but no member of the Longneck-herd that had resided here had survived. Of the Clubtails and Spiketails there was only one family: two grown-up Clubtails and their three children, who had been lucky enough to be near the safety of the forest-exit when news of the fire spread. Everyone else was dead, either by the fire or by the jaws of the prowling Sharpteeth who were just waiting for a chance to attack again.
Everyone knew that that night would be their last, since no one had any strength left to defend themselves or to flee.
The Fast Biters prowled at a safe distance, creeping closer only to retreat whenever one of them stirred. They had time. Many were wounded, and their only source of food had disappeared. Sooner or later everyone of the small herd would be dead. And then they could feast.
The surviving children staid huddled close to their parents. Once in a while a cry would go up when a mother or father no longer answered to their voices. The other grown-ups would harshly hush them. Whenever it happened the Fast Biters grew bold, creeping into the herd to look for the recently deceased. Sometimes they were hunted off, but most of the time they could get to the corpse undisturbed.
It was late during that day that for the first time there was terrified commotion both in prey and predator: at the horizon was the looming form of one of the big Sharpteeth, slowly moving towards the herd.
They retreated as best as they could, abandoning their dead to his hungry jaws. The Fast Biters dispersed, fearing the newcomer for his sheer size. They would be no match for him in a battle over the meat. But again, they had time. He could not eat all the meat after all and what he left would be theirs.
He was slow to approach, taking his time to cross the distance to them. His red eyes spoke of hunger, soft snarling sounds echoing across the open expanse as he declared his dominance over the food available.
They were doomed…