Chapter 2

Dreaming with Open Eyes

Part I

Littlefoot yawned before submerging his muzzle in the waterhole, drinking. The cool of its touch nearly lulled him to sleep. He was saved from dozing by the sound of a certain threehorn repeatedly ramming a tree.

Cera glowered up at the fruit waggling under the force of her impacts, as though taunting her from the comfort of their unreachable positions. This type of fruit was known for its stubbornness, especially when clinging to such a huge, healthy tree.

An anurognathus darted among fruit, chasing a large dragonfly. The insect's agility was nearly unparalleled among the creatures of the air. Apparently, the anurognathus didn't care. The chase ended in a sprinkle of seconds. Perched on a branch, the puny predator consumed its prey with quick, tiny bites, earning its kind the name of 'flying nibblers'. Such creatures may have been strictly insectivores in the valley, but she didn't envy the small flyers who had to share the sky with these creepy critters. They had never attacked anyone, big or small, but it was no wonder a young Petrie found them horrifying. Good thing he was so much bigger than they were these days. Their numbers had boomed over the years. Seldom could one look around without spotting at least a few nibblers. As far as she could tell, they had no language, being little more intelligent than the bugs they hunted. That didn't stop her from addressing the creature.

"Hey, could you help a girl out and pluck off one of those tree sweets for me?" Cera called up to it.

The flying nibbler flat out ignored her as it continued to feast.

"Hmph!" the threehorn huffed. "Like I was expecting anything from a mindless little cretin."

She walked away from the tree as though deeming it a lost cause, never noticing the nibbler flash her a glare. Littlefoot would be able to help her, but why ask anyone? She prided herself on being an independent young woman. Besides, it never hurt to coax a tree sweet into a false sense of security.

Without warning, Cera backtracked and charged into the tree with a battle cry. Her victims had no time to react before facing the might of The Amazing Threehorn Girl. The tree sweets held on for dear life as the entire tree violently shook from the epic impact. One big, fat fruit lost its grip, plummeting towards the open mouth below, but the tree sweet was tricky. Somehow, it had calculated its release so as to miss her mouth and …

*Bonk!*

Cera's eye twitched, but she refused to give it the satisfaction of an 'ouch!'. She'd felt far worse, not to mention the years she'd spent toughening her scales through rock bathing. Still, did this insolent little meal think it would get away with this offense? Evidently it did, bouncing down the slope to the water. The threehorn gave chase, but it was too late.

"Please float, please float, please float!" she begged.

*Ploop!*

The fruit descended to the bottom of its new, wet home. She could practically hear it laughing.

Cera frowned, growled, turned around and kicked back some dirt over the water providing asylum for the renegade fruit. Fine. Just for that, she'd go and chow down on its siblings, and there was nothing it could do to stop her literally sweet vengeance!

...

Moments later …

...

"No-no-no-nooo!" Cera exclaimed.

Heedless of her cries, the tree sweets bounced down the slope and joined their kin in the water. Swimmer or not, she wouldn't let them get away with this!

The threehorn crouched in preparation to dive.

Littlefoot raised a tail for her to hold on for a sec before inserting the appendage into the water and stirring.

Cera watched, eyebrow raised. What was he up to?

After a few quick stirs, the water had warped into a whirlpool. Her eyes widened. She had seen water swirl before. She'd even deliberately caused it a few times as a kid, but Littlefoot's swirl was so smooth, so big! He made it look easy. Was this some kind of longneck trick? She'd never seen a longneck do this.

In short order, the tree sweets popped to the surface, confused and frightened in the aftermath of the whirlpool's siren call. Littlefoot scooped the sweets out of the swirl's centre, keeping it going with the occasional, deft stir.

He smiled, setting down the last of the fruit before her.

A slack-jawed Cera glanced between Littlefoot and the tree sweets. "Huh … Did Doc teach you that?"

"Sort of. I came up with it. Doc helped me make it work."

"Why would Doc help you figure out how to make water do that?"

"He didn't, but water's kind of like air. Similar technique."

Cera's blinked in intrigue. "'Air'? What in the world have you been learning?"

Littlefoot almost answered. The words stopped at the tip of his tongue as he glimpsed the nibbler. It had stopped eating, stock still as it stared at the longneck with undivided attention. An unnerving sight, even for a creature hundreds of times its size such as he.

He mulled over his response, a smile tugging at his lips as a lighthearted yet aggravating reply came to mind. "That would be telling, wouldn't it? Ow!"

Littlefoot should have seen it coming the moment 'telling' left his mouth and irritation widened Cera's eyes. Granted, she was deceptively calm when she got into position before flying into him with a headbutt. A master of her trade, she could generate shocking amounts of force at point blank, pulling back just enough to avoid harm.

"Totally worth it!" declared a wincing Littlefoot.

Cera snorted.

The tree sweets snickered.

Her irate gaze snapped to them.

They gulped and began to beg. She was a reasonable threehorn, wasn't she? Surely they could discuss things like civilised-

"No!" Cera barked. "No talking! No mercy! No escape!"

She dug in without another word. The imaginary screams made it all the more satisfying.

Littlefoot's smile faded at the carnage. Splatters of tree sweet juices peppered his scales. He'd never imagined a leafeater could make a simple meal look so … gory!

After finishing the last fruit, Cera's grip on reality returned sufficiently enough for self-consciousness to set in. She looked up at Littlefoot. His surprise mellowed to understanding amusement.

"Advanced Imagination?" he queried.

"Advanced Imagination," she confirmed with a sheepish chuckle: "Like having sleep stories with your eyes open, right?"

"Yeah. I mean, it's useful for stuff like seeing detailed memories, predicting and outthinking sharpteeth, but do you ever wonder if those years training our minds like that left us a few seeds short of a full tree sweet?"

Cera thought for a moment. "That roar you made when I caught the 'hatchling'. Didn't it mean something like 'go away and never come back'?"

Littlefoot tilted his head with a smirk. "Did you just completely dodge my question?"

"Yes. Yes I did," she smiled.

He chuckled. "Alright, I'll bite. That's part of what I said: 'put the kid down and leave. Run. If you've so much as hurt him, I'll hunt you down and ...' let's just say my choice of threats made it a lot more persuasive, hopefully."

"'Hopefully'," she repeated. "You think it would be enough?"

"Hm," he grunted doubtfully. "It would have to be. I had nothing to throw at you, and the 'sharptooth' would have had enough time to bite down."

"And what if it did?" pressed Cera.

Littlefoot stared at her. She looked serious.

"What do you mean?"

She idly pawed at a pebble. "Well ... we threatened Screech and Thud. They came after us anyway. Then we spared Red Claw and tried to make friends with him. You know how that turned out. Now, he's out there, still doing what a sharptooth does best ... along with all the other sharpteeth we've allowed to pick themselves up after a beating. I mean, last month we ran into the same sharptooth we defeated a year before. I know that 'cause he had one arm and a mauvish colour that stood out. That means he'd gone a whole year sharptoothing after his defeat with no one to stop him!"

"Well, she is a sharptooth," Littlefoot smirked almost dryly. "It's not exactly her fault."

"'She'?" quoted Cera.

"You learn to tell from the voices."

"Yeah, anyway, she's still sharptoothing right now!" Cera huffed. "How many folks has she sharptoothed since our first battle? Is that our fault?"

Littlefoot's gaze seemed to pass through here, eyes unblinking, unshifting. She sensed a silent battle behind those eyes, fraught with pain, sympathy, anger ... no, not anger ... wrath.

He slowly exhaled. "Sharpteeth ... are people, just people on the other side of The Circle of Life. They have lives, loved ones, mothers, sons ... how could we take that away from them? How could we take them away from each other? Besides ..." his voice dropped to a mumble "... Chomper's a sharptooth ..."

Cera blinked back an unexpected wetness in her eyes. She told herself the feeling was irrational. Sure, Chomper had been gone for years. Sure, anything could have happened in that span of time, but he said he'd return so ... so ... oh boy, time to change the subject.

"Okay, they're people," she conceded. "I'd be really nice if they saw us the same way. What's the point of speaking sharptooth if they won't even talk back? Every time you try, it just seems to upset them."

Littlefoot rolled his eyes as frustrating flashbacks passed through his mind. "I suppose it makes sense. Treating your food like a person would make it harder to eat it ... them ... But it almost feels like some kind of nonnegotiable rule. I wish I could ask Chomper about it."

"Red Claw spoke to us," Cera reminded. "Not that it helped."

"Red Claw's a rogue. Probably a law unto himself."

"And yet he said he's gonna 'sToRm ThE vAllEy WiTh A gIaNt PaCk Of ShArPtEeTh' or something," Cera mocked. "Seriously, it's been almost ten cold times, and I don't see any storming."

A chill ran down Littlefoot's spine as he recalled Red Claw's promise ... the part he kept to himself for fear of Cera dismissing the tyrant's threat as the prattling of a deluded tyrant who'd had too much head trauma for one day. Still, it was the stuff of nightmares and, quite recently, his nightmares. It was an unrelenting, ever increasing weight on his mind. Perhaps it was time to tell her.

She yawned. His words were cut short when his own yawn hurried to join hers.

"Oh great, it's contagious," Littlefoot jested.

"To be fair, it looks like you haven't had much sleep either," she stated.

"'Either'?" Littlefoot inquired.

"Yeah," she nodded. "I kept having this sleep story about falling stars. Not rocks, actual stars. They didn't hit the ground, they just stopped above the valley and started hurling bolts of light at each other like sky fire. The sky behind them was dark, but the night looked ... weird ... and the edges of the sky weren't dark at all. Then this giant thing, wrapped in bluish white light fell from the sky and landed far beyond the valley. It was like a flying rock, except the shape was all wrong: too smooth, too symmetrical. Time passed, I dunno how much: coulda been heartbeats, days, even weeks. Then the Great Wall crumbled and hundreds, maybe thousands of sharpteeth poured into the valley. The sleep story repeated itself over and over, but the details kept changing, like it couldn't pick a story and stick with it. Sometimes, the sharpteeth came before the wall fell. Sometimes, the stars attacked us as well as each other. One time, the not-flying rock hit the ground and there was this blinding blue-white light and everything got cold, worse than The Cold Times. Then I saw outside the valley, and there was ..."

Cera realised she was shaking. The simple act of talking about it resurrected the icy horror of the nightmare. She frowned, mentally headbutting herself as she willed her muscles to relax. Threehorns did not get worked up over scary sleep stories, and they definitely did not stay awake the rest of the night just to avoid those sleep stories.

"So anyway, I slept like a hatchling after that," she concluded a little too quickly before noticing Littlefoot's expression for the first time. "W ... why are you staring at me like that? Look, I'm aware that I'm a mind-bendingly awesome storyteller, but it's just a sleep story! Oh ... I know that look. Goes with Cornerstones and flying nibblers."

Littlefoot swallowed hard and blinked out of his shock. "Cera ... those were my sleep stories."

She blinked back. Her gaze froze. Her everything froze. It wasn't the stiff, hard water kind of 'frozen' so much as she simply paused in every conceivable way. Thankfully, her inanimate disposition didn't last too long.

"Weird coincidence ..." she muttered.

"Coincidence?" he blurted.

"What else could it be?" she blurted back.

"I don't want to think about it ..."

"Then don't."

"... But how can we not?"

"Easy. It's just a stupid sleep story! Since when do we think too hard about sleep stories?"

"The Great Longneck Migration."

Cera sputtered. "And how many times has that happened, exactly?"

"Once is enough to prove that it can happen," Littlefoot reasoned.

She took a deep breath and exhaled heavily. "Okay, but if this is such a big thing, don't you think that maybe we'd at least see signs that we're not the only ones who ...?"

*bump*

...

*Bump!*

She trailed off, staring past him. He followed her gaze and spotted a spike thumb nearby, repeatedly attempting to walk through a tree.

*Bump!*

His drowsy eyes blinked up at the tree as he apparently noticed it for the first time ... before forgetting its existence just as quickly.

*Bump!*

Either that, or he failed to identify it as a solid object. The spike thumb reached out to touch the trunk, confirming that it was indeed solid. That was all he could do before dropping, snoring loudly.

The two friends exchanged uncomfortable glances before Littlefoot spotted a longneck across the river, snacking on a tree ... or so he would have been if he could just aim his bites and quit chomping air. The longneck gave the elusive green food a hard stare, lining up his aim. He launched his jaws. It looked like he'd finally get a mouthful. Then his trajectory took a nose dive as his neck bent earthwards and he lost consciousness, snoring but still standing.

A slumbering swimmer drifted into sight, blissfully unaware of the river taking her who knows-where.

"That's just three people ..." Cera argued weakly.

Guido fell from the sky and landed on top of her.

"Sorry! So sorry!" the glider apologised profusely. "Just napping and flapping, which is ... unusual for me, but thanks, Cera! You softened my fall, and lemme tell ya, you are surprisingly soft for such a tough, stone-scaled threehorn!"

Cera growled. "No. I'm not. You're welcome. Please get off."

He hastened into the air. "Oh, right! Apologies, later!"

Guido only managed a few flaps before conking out and splatting to the ground, fast asleep.

Littlefoot looked at her pointedly.

"Okay! I get it!" Cera snapped.

"We should bring up the sleep story at the next Valley Guard meeting," Littlefoot declared. "See how many people experienced the same thing."

"And then what?" Cera challenged.

Littlefoot's gaze mellowed as he seemed to stare right into her heart. "Cera ..."

"What?" she barked.

"... I understand."

The threehorn's stubborn glare persisted a moment before it lost its edge as she sighed. "Yeah. Thanks."

"Need a hug?" he half-teased.

"Nope," she answered with simple, playful finality, turning to leave. "I gotta go drill the Junior Valley Guard. Can't have them thinking I've gone soft."

Littlefoot's expression fell as the memory of the last 'drill' he'd witnessed came to haunt him.

"Penta passed out on the last lap!" Cera barked. "That means the rest of you will be doing another ten, and so will she when when she wakes up!"

The exhausted ceratopsians groaned before she lightly headbutted one of her students (her definition of 'lightly' was rather loose). That got the rest of them chipping.

"C'mon! Faster! Faster!" Cera commanded, running alongside her unfortunate students. "Fast biters ain't gonna let you slip away that easy!"

"How ... is she ... not even winded?" panted a chasmosaurus. "She just drilled five groups before us!"

"It's like ... she keeps up her strength ... by eating our misery!" an eotriceratops gasped.

"That's ... too bad ... she could lose a few pounds, haha!" a torosaurus quipped.

In precisely one fifth of a second, the torosaurus felt her horns scoop him up.

"Hey! Get your horns off meeeeEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHhhhhhhhhhh!"

His voice faded into the distance before a small splash emanated from a nearby waterhole.

Cera turned on her remaining, horrified students and snorted like a beast. "Does anyone else think they're FUNNY!?"

They ran, tripping over each other.

"Quit colliding in terror! Run FASTER!" she roared.

"I'm okay!" the torosaurus called from a distance. "And I'd do it again, too!"

Cera charged through the bushes concealing the repeat offender.

"Do your worst!" he challenged. "Wait ... wait, no! Anything but THAT! I'M SORRY! YOU'RE NOT FAT! I ACTUALLY ENVY YOU! PLEASE, I'M SORRY! FOR ALL THAT IS GOOD IN THIS WORLD!"

His scream, ragged and desperate, chilled the already-frantic youngsters into running faster. A nearby Littlefoot's imagination went wild as he watched those bushes with a slackened jaw.

"Woohoo! That's my girl!" Mr. Threehorn cheered behind him.

Littlefoot realised he was gaping, mirroring the expression plastered on his face that day.

Cera noticed. "Oh no. You're not gonna follow me again with that nonsense about how 'tHe'Re JuSt KiDs'."

"Unfortunately, no," Littlefoot replied. "I gotta feed the crawlers, buzzers and water breathers."

She gave one, pleased nod. "Good. You're overdoing though," she grew a touch more somber. "I know you wanna make sure Chomper has enough to eat when he gets back, but there's no way one sharptooth's gonna eat that much."

Littlefoot watched her leave before sighing to himself. "... I know ..."

What's on Littlefoot's mind? Why did he, Cera and who knows how many have the same dream? What happens when an unexpected visitor arrives to complicate things? Stay tuned, follow and find out! Thanks for reading!