Chapter 22! I don't own ice age!
Tabitha awoke in a terrible mood. She hated crying and she hated everything having to do with crying. In that past month and a half she'd cried more than she had in the past two years, and she could never take back those tears. No, it was time to stop crying.
Peaches woke up next, and stared at the wall for some time, wrapped in her parents' trunks for warmth. Then she looked outside and started screaming and crying, which then caused everyone else to wake up in a crabby mood.
"I am never having kids," Tabitha grumbled to Eddie.
"Peaches, please be quiet!"
"What's wrong with Peaches?" snapped Crash.
"What did you do to her, Tabitha? Eddie, was it you?" Manny pointed an accusing trunk at people, trying to come up with an explanation for the six year old's strange behavior.
"Oh, yeah, just blame everything on me!" Tabitha threw her hands up in the air.
"Well, it's your fault we're in this mess!" shouted Manny.
"Really? Well maybe if you'd try teaching Peaches how to take care of herself instead of mollycoddling her she'd know better than to jump around on thin ice!"
"YOU COULD HAVE STOPPED HER!"
"HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THERE WAS A *&*()# LAND OF DINOSAURS THAT SHE WAS GOING TO FALL INTO?"
"STOP TALKING LIKE THAT?"
"WHO THE #$% IS GOING TO #$%^&* STOP ME? IT'S A FREE COUNTRY!"
"WILL BOTH OF YOU JUST SHUT UP?!" screamed Ellie. "You're just making things worse!"
"It's not my fault Tabitha-"
"It's not my fault Manny fights with-"
"Tabitha, please," begged Melody, who shot a look at Manny.
There was quiet for a moment.
"I wanna go hoooooooooooooooome,"wailed Peaches pitifully.
"We all do, sweetheart. We all do," Ellie stroked her daughter's hair.
"You have no idea," muttered Tabitha.
"You know, Tabitha, if you weren't Buck's daughter I'd-"
"Manny, finish that sentence and you're dead," reprimanded Ellie.
I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves...Everybody's nerves...
"Crash got that stuck in your head, didn't he?" murmured Dorothy as she, Diego, and Matthias trod through the forest at a quick pace, three hours later.
"No, I think it was Eddie," grumbled Diego.
Matthias grimaced. "It's stuck in my head, too."
Dorothy started whistling it to match Diego's humming, but soon the only sound was that of their breathing and their feet running on the forest floor. They all knew what they had to do. Get the antidote, and fast. They kept up the pace for a while, but at the sound of Matthias' labored breathing, Dorothy asked if they could stop. Her eyes met her brother's in a silent thank you/you're welcome. Without a word, they were off again, heading towards Lava Falls.
At the pace they were going, it took about a day and a half. They got there, all three of them sweating like pigs (no offense to pigs) and each of them wary of the river of fire beside them.
"Look," commanded Dorothy, and they looked for the flower. It took possibly two hours before Diego spotted the thing growing on a spire of dried lava near some small dinosaurs playing together. Without telling the others, he prowled towards it, determined to get to it before the dinos stepped on it. A baby T-Rex charged at its colorful petals and Diego roared, pouncing on the flower as delicately as he could so that this paws formed a sort of shield around it without squishing it. The baby dinosaur squealed and ran away as Diego cursed- the mother would come. Dorothy ran to his aid and pulled it out of the ground. The three took off at a sprint, the flower held awkwardly in Diego's mouth as they ran through the jungle. An angry roar shook the trees and they went faster, hoping the mother dinosaur wouldn't come after them.
Eventually they stopped beneath a magnolia tree, whooping tiredly and congratulating each other.
"We did it," sighed Matthias with a grin.
Diego held up a paw for a high-five and Dorothy returned it.
"We're gonna make it," she said.