The underworld.

Chapter 7 – leaving again.

The roar of the dinosaur echoed through the entire Underworld. Dinosaurs stopped with whatever they were doing and listened.

The Pterosaurs all landed on the rocks to listen to it. A huge Tyrannosaurus Rex let her prey go for a moment and sniffed the air. Brachiosaurs stopped grazing for a moment.

For a brief moment, the entire dino-world was listening.

In the desert in the east, the old Spinosaurus-leader listened, and then slowly shook his head.

"He's awake." He muttered to himself.

In the open valley where the weasel family and Buck had traveled through not so long ago, a compsognathus stopped chasing the red squirrel that he was trying to catch, and also listened to the roar. As soon a he recognized it, he began shaking in fear. He looked around. First he tried to hide in a bush, but then he seemed to realize something. He jumped out of the bush again, and ran off in the direction of the jungle.

"I don't understand," Anna said. "what's happening?"

"Buck said we're all in great danger." Diana said.

They were following Buck through the jungle again. Buck was walking very fast, muttering things to himself. The rest had difficulties with keeping up with him. Especially Elco, who could hardly walk. He had found a stick to use as a crutch, so that he could at least move, but he still was the slowest of them all.

Buck refused to slow down, and the weasel family could see that he was more annoyed than actually worried. He was talking to himself about 'stupid tourists', and saying words that better cannot be repeated here.

"Say, Buck…" Liza said carefully. "what exactly do you mean with 'he's awake'?"

Buck growled.

"listen, lass," he said. "the more we talk, the slower we will walk, and the sooner you folks will get eaten, so shut your mouth and just walk. I'll explain when we're in a safe place."

"but…" Liza said.

Buck stopped walking and looked at her. "Listen, the last tourist who came here got eaten," he said. "I'm not going to take that risk again. Rudy is getting stronger and more brutal, he's not such a wiener anymore."

And he continued walking.

"Rudy?" Elco said. "You're kidding, right?"

"Shut up!" Buck said.

Highly insulted, Elco shut his mouth. He didn't succeed in keeping it shut for long, however, because not much later he began talking to Liza and Diana.

"That weasel wants us to get killed, that's it," he said. "If it goes on like this, I won't be able to ever walk again."

"Now who's a wiener?" Liza said.

"I'm sure nothing can happen to us," Diana said dreamily. "Buck will protect us."

"Are you alright, Diana?" Elco said. "you sound strange."

Diana didn't answer. She just looked at Buck, who was using his knife to cut a path through the jungle, and she had a dreamy look in her huge brown eyes.

Liza laughed, but Elco couldn't see anything funny in this. It only made him hate Buck more. What exactly did that one-eyed lunatic have that he did not have? He wasn't smart and handsome, was he? Sure, he was strong, but weren't brains more important than muscles? Was it the eye patch that made him so better than Elco? That would make no sense.

If you think of it that way, Elco thought, there isn't anything special about this Buck. Maybe Diana just sounded so strange because she couldn't handle the temperature in the Underworld. It could make animals feel very easily confused, this heat.

He hoped that was the matter, and not that what he was fearing all along.

The longer they walked, the more Buck began to cool down, and late in the afternoon he was almost his old self again.

And just at the moment that Buck was telling a joke about two dinosaurs who invited each other to tea, something green and red fell from the sky and landed right before Buck's paws.

There was a silence, in which the weasel family slowly came closer.

The green and red thing was a small dinosaur. A compsognthaus, to be exact.

He was mostly green, with three red stripes on his back. He seemed quite young, about Elco's age perhaps. He had a very long tail, and, for a compsognathus, quite a chubby face. His eyes were close together in the front side of his face, and red like rubies.

Despite of the sharp teeth in his mouth, he didn't seem very dangerous. But of course, you couldn't be careful enough in the Underworld, so the weasel family took a step back again.

Buck suddenly offered his hand to the compsognathus, and helped him on his feet.

"Careful there, mate," the weasel said. "you'll break your neck someday, and that's something I can't cure."

The compsognathus brushed some dirt from his scales. And then he did something that was the least the weasel family would have expected him to do.

"Buck, did you hear it?" the compsognathus said in perfect Mammal-language. "Rudy woke up just a few hours ago!"