Chapter 28: Cera Cera had recovered from her sleepstory quickly, it didn't need her long until she was snoring peacefully again. She didn't hear the cries of the others; sounds seemingly didn't really move around corners. Cera awoke early in the morning the next day. Though it was absolutely dark in her area. During the process of getting up, she was suddenly conscious of a penetrating pain in her back. "Ouch!" she complained. The pain decreased but only slowly. While Cera just stood there, unable to walk, the funny sleepstory haunted her again. On top of that, the pain reminded her of the incidents of the other day. The Threehorn realised that the voices she had heard in the sleepstory belonged to her companions in search of food, water and their folks of course. Although Cera was mad at them - particularly at this Spiketail, what was his name again? - she didn't want the sleepstory to come true, didn't want something nasty happening to Littlefoot, Ducky and Petrie - the Spiketail was her least concern - because of her having abandoned them, failing to protect them and disappointing them. Nobody would doubt Cera was the strongest member of their group, provided she wasn't wounded, hence she felt like the protector of the group, for some odd reason. Littlefoot however seemed to claim this role as well. She would show the stupid Longneck some day. Why of all possible parts of her body had the Spiketail to hit her injury? Cera attempted to tame her thinking, with moderate success. If she returned to her companions, she would have to accept the Spiketail as a member of their group since Ducky was already connected to the Spiketail too closely for Cera to chase him away with violence. She guessed she would have to get used to him. After all, maybe he really could be of help... At least he wasn't capable of talking hence Cera wouldn't need any excuses for not talking to him; the others could do that after all. Her thoughts returned to the Longneck. What had he said about dinosaurs of her kind? About her daddy? Threehorns being pugnaciously and mean? Well, he wasn't that wrong admittedly, but he didn't know that pride was the highest of all values being a Threehorn followed by strenght and courage closely. Just because Longnecks prefered to do things the smooth way still didn't give him any permission to accuse Threehorns as creatures with a bad attitude. 'Now I know why daddy's blowing in never to play with Longnecks!' Cera thought. Despite the pain, she couldn't help smirking. Carefully, Cera attempted to make a step forward. The pain made her wince. What did her father keep saying? 'You gotta be tough!' Cera considered herself tough therefore she made another step wincing again but this time she didn't allow the pain to stop her, she ignored it so to speak. Slowly but continuously, the pain when walking got less, or was Cera just thinking this? As she arrived at the small cave Littlefoot, Ducky, Petrie and... HE had chosen for settling down and as she was finally able of distinguishing more than just rough outlines with her eyes eventually, the Threehorn girl took her first look at her injury. Just at this moment she realised the actual seriousness of it. A fairly big area of her back was swollen in an ugly way and (now that Cera considered it) something pulsated to the rhythm of her heart. What was even uglier, was the fact that the injury wasn't covered by scab as could be expected but by a weird yellow-ish-green crust. Cera prefered not to be aware of what the yellow-ish stuff was because it, without any doubt, wasn't doing her any good. She turned to the four sleeping dinosaurs she wanted to find the grown-ups with. She sighed calling. "Get up, will ya!"