Category: Land Before Time
Rating: T
Couples: canon ones of the adults
Warnings: AU
Chapter: 12
Copyright: Characters & places © By Appropriate Copyright-holder, Plot & OC´s © by me
Author's Note: this is a sequel to Future before Time
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
She wandered over slowly, the venerable Longneck female flattening the ground-cover as she did so.
"Good evening." Threehorn greeted her, looking up from his dinner with Cera. Tria had taken Tricia for a bath after the youngest of the family had somehow burrowed into the ground to such an extent that she looked like a blob of dirt more than anything else.
"Good evening." Grandma Longneck answered. "Do you mind if I interrupt your dinner?"
He barely kept from pointing out that she already had - hard to miss an adult Longneck - and simply gestured to the open area beside them in an invitation to get comfortable. "What brings you here today?"
"Am I correct in assuming you and Tria have worked things out?" She settled down, long neck lowering until her head was close to the both of them.
"Is the gossip-vine dying in the valley?" He counter-asked with a faint smile. "Surely the confirmation of that has reached to all the walls and back?"
"Oh, it's alive and well... It just still tangles, so getting confirmation is a smart move." She rolled her eyes fondly. "It does make the reason I came over here simpler, but well... I felt I still should at least ask, even if I most likely know the answer. Ask both of you, for that matter." Here the old female looked down a touch more, to where Cera had been quietly looking up.
"Is this related to you leaving tomorrow?" There had been a new tenseness among the Longnecks as that day had rolled around, to the point that it had culminated in the two elder Longnecks being apart for the better part of the week.
"It is, tangentially." She looked over to the forms of her family.
"Please don't ask me to support your husband through it. It will not work."
Both females snorted at that statement, a playful smile wrinkling her face even more. "I would not dare."
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
"Please tell me this will not take long." The Sauropod greeted Cian upon her arrival at the gate. This time, she had arrived alone, the rest of her family staying inside the mountains.
"Should not." The scientist answered, inviting her through the active portal. "Of course, there is the thing you asked me about."
"Any luck with that?" She still felt as if her skin tried to crawl off of her whenever she did this. Considering what he had told her, it'd probably remain a feeling for the rest of her life.
"It is not nearly as easy as following an established line, especially at these distances." He walked ahead of her into the hangars that had been changed to accomodate Dinosaurs. "We might miss by a couple lifetimes... or just a few days."
"I am aware of the trouble of taking the right path." She rolled her eyes, getting comfortable. "Most stories of lost dinosaurs end with them having taken just one small detour or one wrong turn. I suspect the mechanics are similar."
"Quite, yes." He smirked up at her. "Luckily, we can file this under science, so I am very willing to try."
"I feel you lot are willing to try a lot for 'science'." Grandma Longneck pointed out. "But I suppose first it will be your science, and only then mine?"
He shrugged apologetically, a move she had seen often enough to interpret correctly. "Mine's on a schedule, so yes, by virtue of when you arrived, it has to happen first. After that, however, we can take as long as we like with yours."
"Not too long though, my husband will have opinions."
"Spouses do that, yes." He chuckled in amusement. "Should have seen my wife when I stay too long in the labs. She hunts me down, despite officially not being allowed in half the building."
"You must introduce us some time, she sounds delightful."
"Some other time. Mary has been gushing about you all every chance she got. She'd have moved into your Valley if she could have, from the sounds of it."
"It would not be the first time some youngster moves in." She laughed. "I would laugh if you suddenly find some human object that is... how many millions of years old?... because she moved in and did not clean up after herself."
