"DUCKY!"
The little swimmer didn't seem to notice the others calling for her. Her curiosity was more on the clump of tall grass. "Hello?" She smiled as she peeked through the reeds.
In the center of what appeared to be a nest was a large egg. The cracking noise was definitely coming from this object, but now Ducky could hear snoring noises too.
The little swimmer jumped through the grass and examined the egg which was abnormally large. The snoring was definitely coming from inside. "Hello?"
She walked clockwise around the egg, running her hand over it as she did. Suddenly, the egg jolted and the top cracked. As Ducky continued to creep around it, a pair of paws lifted up the broken piece of shell slightly and then a pair of eyes watched her. When she looked up at them, they quickly ducked back inside the egg.
"You should come out," Ducky happily urged as she climbed on top of the egg. "You should. You are late, yes you are. Yep, yep, yep!"
Instead, the hatchling inside the egg snorted and grunted, as if perfectly content to stay inside the shell.
"Come out!" Ducky encouraged. She lifted the top off, threw it away, and looked inside the egg. "You are all alone, are you not scared, huh?"
A face of a newborn dinosaur came out of the shell. The hatchling had green-colored skin, a relatively long snout, and purple eyes that appeared to be droopy. When he saw Ducky, he smiled for a brief moment. He then yawned and fell onto his back.
"We're going to the Great Valley," Ducky explained as she began peeling apart the rest of the egg. "You can come with us, yes you can."
When the bigmouth broke apart the rest of the shell, the hatchling's tail flipped over. Ducky managed to catch a glimpse of four dark green bumps that were at the end of it.
"You are a spike-tail," she observed. "So we'll call you Spike."
Once broken free of his confinements, Spike flipped back onto his front and immediately began eating the grass. Ducky stepped back and watched as the newly hatched spike-tail ate the entire grass shelter in just five large bites. He didn't seem to care that the grass was dried out and almost withered; all he cared about was the fact that it was edible.
Then, as if satisfied by his meal, Spike just laid back down and fell asleep.
Meanwhile, the rest of the group was fighting through fallen branches and overgrown vines. Candice managed to find a large stick and used it to hack her way through the tangled vegetation.
"DUCKY!" Littlefoot called out.
"DUCKY!" Petrie's voice came immediately after. "WHERE ARE YOU?!"
At last, with one more hack of Candice's stick, they emerged from the trees. "It's about time!" Cera snorted.
"Well, I didn't see you trying to help!" Candice snarled, irritated.
"How could I when you wouldn't get out of my way?" Cera retorted. "Seriously, you're bigger than I remembered!"
"Are you calling me fat?" the human girl snapped.
"Of course not!" Cera grinned maliciously. "For a spike-tail!" the three-horn laughed at her joke while the others glared at her.
While the comeback was weak, the insult itself made Candice clutch her fists. NO ONE tells a girl that she's fat, especially when she's in her teens! That's one of the worst things you can say to a girl!
Fortunately, Candice couldn't take that insult seriously for one reason.
"Really?" she scowled. "Because I wouldn't be talking if I were you! I'm a twig compared to you!"
"Cut it out, you guys," Littlefoot groaned.
For the past few minutes, during the whole time they were looking for Ducky, the two just argued nonstop. In all honesty for Littlefoot and Petrie, it was getting tiresome.
"I just hope they don't start another fight I'll have to break up," Littlefoot hopefully thought to himself.
Just then, Cera stuck her horn up in the air. As she did, she walked smack-dab into a tree with a big CRASH! Candice snickered as she felt a grim satisfaction toward the karma. Even Littlefoot and Petrie were struggling to hold back their laugh.
"I meant to do that!" Cera grumbled angrily, feeling a huge dent in her pride.
Candice sarcastically chuckled. "Serves you right!"
However, karma had to go both ways.
While Candice was too busy laughing at the Triceratops, she failed to see a large object at her feet. So when she didn't lift her foot high enough, she had a nasty jolt as tripped over the thing and fell down, nearly falling on her face.
Shots of pain rushed through her arms and chest as the gravel made hard contact with her body. Tears welled up in her eyes though not enough to escape. "OW!" she exclaimed.
From behind, Cera burst out laughing as she saw that the score had become even. Candice quickly lifted herself back up and glared at the Triceratops, wiping the dirt and pebbles off her skin.
"Are you okay, Candice?" Littlefoot asked as he rushed at her.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Candice replied as she wiped the dirt off her mouth.
She immediately checked to see if her bow had broken. To her relief, it remained intact, but her arrows had fallen out of her quivers and sprawled across the ground. She grumbled angrily to herself as she picked them up and assertively shoved them back into her quiver.
"Candice," Ducky moaned as she walked up to the human girl. "You just tripped over Spike! Yes, you did!"
"Spike?" Candice questioned, lifting an eyebrow.
"The spike-tail," Ducky pointed.
Candice turned to look back at what she tripped over and saw a Stegosaurus hatchling. Due to Candice's clumsiness, he awoke from his slumber and was now looking at her.
Everyone looked at the little Stegosaurus who was looking happily back at them. At least they assumed he was happy. His expression was rather...dreamy. As if he was off in his own little world.
"Where'd he come from?" Cera wrinkled her face.
"He just hatched. He did, he did!" Ducky explained. "I told him he could come to the Great Valley with us!"
"Oh, no!" the Triceratops immediately objected.
"Why not?" Petrie asked.
Cera turned away rebelliously. "It's already bad enough that I'm stuck with a long-neck, a swimmer, a flyer, AND a human. There is no way I'm traveling with a spike-tail as well! Besides, he just hatched and will only slow us down! Not to mention it's one more mouth to feed and who knows when we're going to find food again!"
"Cera, that's not fair!" Littlefoot protested.
"I just find it to be unnatural!" Cera rebuked. "My father told me that three-horns never do anything with other herds!"
"He's coming with us!" Candice said firmly.
Cera turned around again and glared at the human. "And I'm personally getting sick of your attitude!" she snapped. "You think you're so smart and you know everything! Well, guess what, you don't!"
Candice clenched her fists for a moment...but then relaxed.
"You're right," she responded with a calm voice. "I don't know everything. But this much I do know: we're a herd now whether you like it or not. And no one in our herd gets left behind."
For a few seconds, the two just glared at each other as if they were having an intense glaring contest.
Finally, Cera huffed, grumbled something under her breath, and turned away rather sourly.
Littlefoot looked at Spike and began trying to figure out how to get the spike-tail to follow them. By the looks of it, he didn't seem interested in walking anywhere. He was also rather big for a hatchling. He was almost as big as Littlefoot himself.
There was no way any of them would be able to carry him. Suddenly, a small memory came back to him. He remembered one time when his family stopped to a nest, he saw a family of little flyers fighting over a sweet-bubble.
Whenever one would get it, the others immediately went after the one who claimed possession of it. It ended with a scalely-landcrawler grabbing the sweet-bubble with his tongue and eating it. Shortly afterward, the little flyers' mother came and gave them each a sweet-bubble she had gathered beforehand.
As Littlefoot thought of this, he realized that they only followed the one with the sweet-bubble because it was the thing they wanted the most. Maybe that trick would work here too. and much to his luck, a patch of a few sweet-bubbles was growing just nearby.
"Guys, I have an idea," he said.
Littlefoot ran over to the patch and pick some sweet-bubbles off. Wanting to be sure that Spike would even like the sweet-bubbles, he dangled them in front of the spike-tail's nose. Spike looked at the sweet-bubbles, smiled happily at the sight of food and immediately ate them off the branch.
Littlefoot, excited by the positive result, ran back to the bush and snapped off another branch. This time, he handed it to Ducky.
"Huh?" Ducky wondered what the long-neck was doing.
"Ducky, you ride on me and use these to lure Spike along," Littlefoot explained. "He likes the sweet-bubbles, so we can use them to get him to follow us."
"Sweet-bubbles?" Candice then caught what they were saying. "Oh, you mean berries."
"Yeah, what you said," Littlefoot acknowledged her word choice. By now, he was getting used to Candice using different words to say the same things.
"That great idea!" Petrie happily exclaimed.
"That great idea!" Cera mockingly repeated in a whisper. "Please."
Ducky immediately got on the end of Littlefoot's tail and dangled the berries in front of Spike's nose again. As Spike reached out to eat them, Littlefoot started walking. Just as he had hoped, Spike got up from his spot and began following the bouncing berries.
"Ver clever, Littlefoot," Candice smiled and patted his head.
"It was nothing," the long-neck grinned.
Candice laughed a little. With the problem solved, the group set out again to the west. The sun, while still high in the sky, was reaching toward the horizon. Soon, it would set.
Sharptooth growled in frustration. the path that the little runts took was overgrown for him to maneuver through. It was fine for them: they were small enough. But for something as big as him, he would get tangled up before he even got four yards in the forest.
This meant that he would have to go all the way around the grove. That, in turn, meant he would have to walk all night to catch the runts. On top of that, the T-Rex was getting weak with hunger.
The human and long-neck would have to wait; for now anyway. After coming to his plan of action, Sharptooth crouched low in the shadows of the trees, readying himself to ambush the passing Dimetrodon...
The scene where Littlefoot remembers an event with little flyers and sweet-bubbles is taken from the exact same scene taking palce after his mother died and one of them kindly offered him a fruit. I forgot to add it in my story, so I thought I could use it in this chapter.
