Chapter 3

Dreaming with Open Eyes

Part II

"Hey, hey! Scuff, cut that out!" Littlefoot snapped.

Heedless of his chastisement, the long, flat crawler with far too many legs was big enough to push around Littlefoot before his Time of Great Growing. His size was nothing to the giant Littlefoot had become, but it was enough to shove away any of the smaller crawlers who came close to the green food Littlefoot had brought for all of them.

At the edge of the ruckus, a particularly small crawler avoided the shenanigans in favour of eating the scraps that remained when the others had had their fill. Littlefoot suspected that this runt's tendency to avoid conflict had led to his inferior size.

Littlefoot scooped up some of the green food with his tail and placed it in front of the small crawler.

"Here you go, Tiny," the longneck smiled.

Scuff froze as he caught sight of the deed. Generosity!? There would be none of that in this feeding! The big crawler rushed Tiny, flipped him onto his back and proceeded to devour his portion.

Littlefoot gently pushed Scuff away. "No ..."

Scuff crawled around his foot and continued to eat.

"No," Littlefoot repeated, moving the crawler more firmly.

The crawler flattened, making himself harder to shift as he resisted. Then he ceased the losing battle and stood still.

Littlefoot smiled. "Good."

Tiny rolled back onto his feet and approached the food, hesitating to touch it as though doubting his good fortune. Scuff surged to life, dashed around Littlefoot's foot and flipped Tiny once again.

"Okay, you've earned yourself a time out!" Littlefoot declared, lifting the crawler with his tail.

The giant crawler thrashed at the indignation of being denied his rightfully stolen meal, before somewhat accepting his fate and calming to the occasional wriggle.

Littlefoot chuckled at the crawler's pluck before his face fell. "... You know, if you didn't fight so much, you wouldn't have this many scuff marks ... if you didn't have scuff marks, or a bit more size than the others, I wouldn't realise it was you always getting into fights. I'd think you were all the same: simpleminded, temperamental little critters, but you're not. You're simpleminded critters with personalities!"

Littlefoot gazed at Scuff long and hard. "What does that make you? Little people? Maybe ... maybe not. You don't talk, you don't laugh or cry. You don't show kindness or any kind of affection, you're not smart. Then again, that's what we thought about sharpteeth, until Chomper showed up. Maybe it's all there. Maybe I just can't see you ..."

Scuff's blank, unblinking, beady eyes stared through Littlefoot as though he were nothing more than a part of the environment.

Littlefoot smirked dryly. "Maybe you can't see me either."

He looked at the feast commencing without Scuff, realising that it was almost over. After a few more nibbles, Tiny had apparently eaten his fill, moving off to settle a short distance away. Littlefoot set down Scuff, who immediately scurried off on a mission to pillage the nearest crawler.

He sighed heavily with a bitter snicker. "So, what am I supposed to do? I don't think you're people, but that's the convenient conclusion. Even so, you're alive! How is it okay for me to raise you just to be sharptooth food?"

The other crawlers had given up on the scraps, leaving Scuff to horde it all for himself.

Littlefoot gave him a tired look. "The Circle of Life says it's okay. The strong prey on the weak, like you Scuff. It's the way things have always been ... but why does it seem so wrong? Like something's off with the world? How can I feel that way if there's nothing to compare it to? Is there something better? Something we know in our hearts but not in our heads? Like the faded remains of a forgotten dream?" He shook his head. "I dunno. Maybe in time, I'll find The Answer. In the meantime, I'm gonna at least try to make things better ... bit by bit. It may be small, but hopefully it'll matter, if there's a world left for it to matter in."

Littlefoot looked at the crawlers, Scuff in particular. "Maybe someday you'll prove yourself to be a person. Until then, I'll have to assume you're not."

End of conversation.

He walked away, careful not to step on the scurrying crawlers lingering around piles of green food. According to his grandparents, such massive crawlers were unheard of in the recent past. Now, unwelcome pests of their size had become the norm, with a population that on-and-off increased since his arrival in the valley, not that he was complaining. He'd become an expert on promoting localised population growth, emphasis on 'localised'. So long as Littlefoot restricted them to the areas other dinosaurs didn't favour, his fellow leafeaters only expressed mild disapproval of his crawler cultivation. His first attempts to increase their numbers had both succeeded and failed miserably. He assumed that over-feeding them would trigger population booms, and it did. Then such booms began to overflow into leafeater-inhabited areas. The threehorns and clubtails had threatened to march in and quite literally squish his little project before the crawlers' numbers dwindled on their own. Fortunately (depends on the perspective) by some bizarre phenomenon, it seemed over-feeding the crawlers led to aggressive, self-destructive behaviour and a drop in reproduction, as if his actions had turned them into spoilt, lazy brats with far too much time for mischief.

It took him time to achieve some form of stability, figuring out how much to feed them, what they liked best; how to train them to expect food in specific areas. Then he discovered that they preferred certain bushes under which to make their homes. Transplanting some to the crawlers had seemed simple in theory. He soon realised that there was more to moving plants than the simple act of moving them. After figuring out the nitty gritties, most of his transplants started to survive. Around the crawlers' habitat, he placed rock and tree trunk barriers as well as plants they disliked so that they found it inconvenient to leave. For the most part, it worked. It took at least five years before Littlefoot felt as though he was getting the hang of it. Even at present, there was always something to learn, or a new mistake to be made.

Littlefoot almost jumped as a high-pitched chirp met his ears. His eyes snapped to the culprit: a massive crawler like a cross between a beetle and a mantis, rubbing its forelegs together in loud stridulation. Those things were even more new to the valley than the hundred-legged crawlers, and all the more mysterious. He'd seen them all around, though they seemed to prefer remote areas such as this. His best theory was that they lived underground somewhere, not that he'd ever seen their nests, or their eggs and young. Aside from a slightly testy disposition, they seemed harmless enough, and required no maintenance whatsoever. Good. All the more variety for a hungry sharptooth.

Speaking of variety, Littlefoot set off to visit the second feeding area.

The air was abuzz with large, four-winged flitters, thanks to the rotting fruit Littlefoot set out to attract the smaller buzzers they preyed upon. Technically, most buzzers had four wings, but it was particularly obvious in the case of these slender hunters of the air. It was surprising how much like sharpteeth they were: apex predators in the realm of buzzers and crawler. If young sharpteeth were anything like Chomper, he knew they would enjoy honing their reflexes in order to catch these frenetically fast, flying snacks.

A short walk and Littlefoot arrived at the waterhole where the four-winged flitters bred. Therein, all kinds of aquatic and semi-aquatic meals lived. The water was shallow enough in most areas for one to spot and catch their pick of food ... well, depending on the swiftness of the target. The water was clean, with no sign of niche catastrophe among its inhabitants. It didn't seem he needed to do much that day, except feed them.

He picked up his customary long, thin tree trunk and headed for a gigantic nest of tunnelling crawlers nearby.

"This is wrong! *Munch munch!* ... We shouldn't be in that longneck's ... *Gulp!* ... tree sweet stash!" stated a teenaged slenderthroat fast runner.

"You're the one who suggested we come here, Gallim!" a female snapped before taking a bite.

"You were supposed to stop me, Mimi! I'm weak!" he lamented before digging in and melting at the taste. "Mmmph! So good! I need serious help!"

"Thanks to you, so do I, since you keep bringing me here!" Mimi hissed.

"Well, they say misery likes company, so ..."

She raised her paw to slap him.

He quickly wagged a digit to stop her. "Ah ah ah, you can't do that!"

"And why not?" she fumed.

"First off, I'd never do that to you," he stated, putting a paw on her shoulder. "Second, as a guy, what if I did? I'd be a monster!"

"Yeeeah ...?" she slowly answered.

"Does being a girl make it any different?" he pressed.

Her paw wavered as she twitched in psychological malfunction. "I ... I ..."

He stared her intently in the eyes before raising a tree sweet. "Don't be a monster. Here's a peace offering."

"GRRAARR!" She snarled, snatching the fruit before chomping it with more force than strictly necessary. "How can you be so smart, yet such a bad influence?"

"I'm selectively wise, unfortunately," he grinned. "It's one of my adorable character flaws."

"Emphasis on 'unfortunately' ..." she agreed with a reluctant smirk and an eye roll.

"Anyway, we're in The Great Valley!" he reminded, majestically sweeping his paw across the scenery. "After months of trekking here, don't we deserve to enjoy this paradise?"

"... I guess so ..." she agreed, rubbing her arm.

He shook his head. "No."

She tilted hers. "No?"

"See, this is supposed to be the part where you talk some sense into me," he argued.

In a fit of frustration, she shoved a tree sweet into his mouth.

He chewed and gave a thumbs up. "I liketh thith be'er!"

The two fast runners burst into laughter.

"Anyway," Mimi began, wiping the laughter-induced tears from her eyes. "I bet that longneck is just hording 'em all for himself. Who wouldn't like a privately owned stash of tree sweets?"

"Sharpteeth wouldn't," a new voice answered.

Mimi froze before turning to the aforementioned longneck whose mere presence screamed 'alpha'. A giant among the trees, she couldn't understand how it was possible to miss him. Perhaps that was the trick: The preconception that something that big shouldn't, couldn't, be so silent and inconspicuous, so her mind had dismissed his slow, unassuming movements as part of the background. His warrior's physique precluded the possibility of a slacker who gorged himself on tree sweets. She wouldn't be surprised if he'd never had a tree sweet in his life. With unflappable, calm confidence uncharacteristic of a leafeater, she wouldn't be surprised if he could stalk a sharptooth and crush them before they so much as shrieked. However, his vaguely amused, gentle but intense eyes belied the image of a one-note warrior. She found herself wishing Gallim were a bit more like this, albeit in fast runner form.

"Um ... ho ... how long have you been here?" she stuttered.

He smiled. "Long enough. I'm very quiet when I want to be. You should see Spike, though. I never figured out how he manages his stealth."

"... Oh ..." was all she could say.

"You and Gallim just arrived, right?" he asked, although it wasn't much of a question. "Welcome to the valley! I hope you'll be happy here. How easy was it to find your way inside?"

"Uh, very ...?" she answered.

"How easy do you think it would be for sharpteeth to come here too?" Littlefoot went on.

~What is he getting at?~ she thought. "Aren't sharpteeth kind of stupid?"

He slowly, grimly, shook his head. "In some ways, they're smarter than most of us."

For the first time, it clicked as she revised her memories. They didn't talk, but the way they hunted, the way they coordinated ... sharpteeth had to be intelligent. How could they not be?

"Sharpteeth avoid the valley for some reason," Littlefoot stated. "However, they could come here if they really wanted. That's why I grew these tree sweets. Sharpteeth hate the smell. As kids, my friends and I made the mistake of eating the ones that dissuaded sharpteeth from entering through a hidden canyon. Since it wasn't the only way in, I don't know why that made much of a difference, but it did. I would have wanted to grow the tree sweets all around the edge of the valley border, but the seeds seem to have a hard time springing up in most places. Hopefully, the groves I've managed to grow would be helpful in repelling sharpteeth if necessary, but I'm not sure if sharpteeth are our biggest problem right now."

A chill ran down her spine as she recalled the previous night with a shudder. It wasn't lost on him.

"Have you been having any strange dreams lately?" Littlefoot asked.

Her eyes popped. "Yes ... so has Gallim. How'd you know? We haven't mentioned it to anyone, right, Gallim?" she looked around, unable to spot the other runner. "... Gallim?"

"He took off the moment I revealed myself," Littlefoot smirked.

"Gallim, you JERK!" she roared.

"I thought you were behind me!" called a distant voice.

"But you didn't even come back!" she yelled, dashing after him.

Littlefoot chuckled as he lowered himself to the ground, resting his legs after the semi-sleepless night and active morning. So young, and they already sounded like an old couple. From their similar species to their bickering, those two reminded him of the Rainbow Faces.

The longneck sank into pensive silence. The Rainbow Faces ... strange visitors from Beyond the Mysterious Beyond, or so all implications seemed to suggest. Would they ever return? What would they make of his dreams? Would they have told him anything, or even been willing to help? Why should he assume their vast knowledge applied to such things?

He gazed up at the beautiful blue expanse between dancing leaves interspersed with tree sweets. Dread ebbed away with the wind whispering amid the trees. It was hard to feel the weight of such dreams amid this tranquil world. Intense as they were, they had a rushed, fleeting quality. Already he had forgotten some of the detai-

Wailing wind tore at the trees, yanking their greenery to the ravenous void in the sky, peppered with stars that didn't twinkle, but it wasn't those distant pinpricks of light that worried him. It was the stars racing earthward that-

Littlefoot shot to his feet with a sharp gasp.

He looked around. Everything had returned to normal. What in the world was that? He hadn't dozed off ... had he? Yet he'd seen it, heard it, felt it, more vividly than ever, mirroring the horrors of his nightmare.

...

Having climbed to the top of a small hill, Littlefoot gazed across the landscape. Herds grazed as though it were any other day. Had no one else seen it? Was he losing his mind?

He turned his eyes to the dubiously innocuous sky ... and focused.

-concerned him most.

The heart-wrenching screams of a valley in terror were all but devoured by the raging wind as easily as the black maw consumed the clouds that once traversed the heavens without fear. The night sky bent around itself like ripples on a waterhole, rimmed with a thin horizon not unlike the blue of day. At the side of his eye, he noticed a glow emanating from the edges of the valley.

Then the stars arrived, blazing fast.

The wind subsided.

Braced for the worst, Littlefoot reopened his eyes to see the stars hovering above the valley. They drew no closer, and he strongly suspected it was not by their own volition. Something had leapt to meet them, something like sky fire, except it rose from the ground and fanned into a thin sheet of dancing light that encompassed the valley entirely. He traced the source of the lightning to luminous points at the corners of The Great Wall.

Were those ... the Cornerstones?

The stars seemed to vibrate. He felt their confusion. Their frustration.

Their fury.

The sky lit up. Temperature plummeted. The stars unleashed bolts of cold fire that splashed against the barrier, bathing the clouds in lurid luminescence brighter than any lightning storm.

Littlefoot's mind raced as his panicked breaths turned to mist amidst the icy air. He felt abjectly small, absolutely helpless in the face of the inconceivable. What should he do? What could he do?

A toneless, genderless voice answered his thoughts from everywhere and nowhere.

(~STAY IN THE VALLEY.~)

"Littlefoot! You'll never guess what happened!"

The crisis vanished and Littlefoot turned to see Cera effervescing with excitement. Her delight was quickly succeeded by a concerned sidelong look.

"Um ... you look a little shaken. Something bothering you?" Cera asked.

Littlefoot hesitated. She hadn't taken their last conversation well, and frankly he himself wasn't centred enough to deal with the subject in a level-headed manner. Finding the right words and calming his nerves would come before rehashing the experience.

He forced a smile. "I'm gonna dodge that question for now. What's up?"

Her quizzical gaze persisted for a second before she shrugged it away, beaming once again as she actually began to bounce. Seeing her this bubbly was a refreshing change, even if it was uncomfortably abnormal.

"You know that flyer who just got here and is going around asking for us?" Cera gushed.

"... No ...?" Littlefoot slowly replied.

She gave a joyous squeak.

Littlefoot raised an eyebrow. Now he was concerned.

"Did you just 'squee'?" he asked.

"No! Of course not!" Cera snapped, before stifling a giddy giggle.

Both of the longneck's eyebrows went up. This was getting really scary, really fast.

"We have a mission!" Cera blurted.

"Oh! That's all? What a relief!" Littlefoot sighed. "I was afraid I'd have to pin you down again for everyone's safety like the time you ate aged tree sweets by mistake!"

Cera glared and shook away a blush. "I thought we agreed never to talk about that!"

"No," Littlefoot refuted airily as he glanced off with a wry smirk. "You told me not to and I just sort of grunted."

Cera's jaw slackened before she drawled a laugh, pawing at the ground. "Ohh hohohhhh, spunky boy! I taught you too well, didn't I? Okay. Stay right there. I'm gonna give you a niiice, sweet little headbutt."

"Hold still! I'm coming in hot!" came a female voice.

For the second time that day, Cera felt the lightweight body of a flyer come smacking into her back, the guilty party panting profusely upon splaying there. Cera had half a mind to go full on bucking bronco. She couldn't see the flyer, but the voice was unfamiliar. The unacquainted weren't entitled to her back. In fact, even the acquainted weren't entitled to her back ... but based on the stranger's breathless state, this particular flyer had had a rough day. Cera didn't feel inclined to make it worse. The threehorn growled. Since when was she this unforgivably compassionate?

"You are ... very soft ... for such a tough-looking threehorn ..." the flyer commented between breaths.

Cera opened her mouth to object before begrudgingly closing it. Despite years of hardening her body for battle, if two flyers in a row came to the same conclusion, apparently it was true ... somehow.

"Which ... of you ... is alpha of The Valley Guard?" asked the flyer.

"I'm the closest thing we have to that," Littlefoot and Cera answered in unison.

Littlefoot quirked a dubious smile at Cera.

She flashed him a teasing grin.

The confused flyer glanced between the leafeaters before her attention decisively settled on Littlefoot.

~Well, that was disappointing,~ Cera thought with a frown.

"My herd ... is stranded in The Mysterious Beyond ..." the flyer panted. "We were coming here ... Sharptooth pack attacked! ... Biggest we've ever seen! ... We need help!"

Littlefoot almost gave an unthinking affirmative when that foreign command resounded in his mind with firm finality.

(~STAY. IN. THE VALLEY.~)

The answer froze at the tip of Littlefoot's tongue.

Cera tilted her head with a touch of trepidation. She was starting to suspect that something was seriously wrong with her friend.

Sensing worrisome levels of hesitation, the flyer clasped her wings. "Please ... help us."

Littlefoot's will hardened. "You don't have to ask again. We'll help."

The longneck proceeded to pound the ground, summoning The Valley Guard with Earth Whispers before briefly reiterating himself with thundercracks of the tail - a disruptive means of communication usually reserved for emergencies.

Cera did a happy dance. "Months of boredom broken in one fell swoop of luck!"

The flyer promptly pecked her.

"Hey!" Cera protested.

"Don't be happy about this!" chastised the flyer.

Cera growled before calming as she reached some form of closure. "Okay. Fine. We're leaving now. We'll save your herd. I pRoMiSe I'll be miserable doing it. We good? Good. Now climb down, get lost and get some rest, since you can barely breathe."

The flyer clung to her back. "Oh, no, no ... I've almost caught my breath, thank you very much, and since you're so pleased about this 'mIsSiOn', you'd be happy to carry me until I can lead the way."

That did it! Without another word, Cera dropped into a sideways roll that left a twitching flyer squished against the ground.

Cera snickered at her daydream.

"What are you laughing at?" asked the flyer.

Cera frowned as she set off after a departing Littlefoot. "Nothing, 'cause I'm a good person."

"Ehhhhh ..." the flyer disagreed, tilting her wing in an uncertain gesture.

"OFF!" Cera barked.

"Okay, okay!" the stranger conceded, fluttering to the ground.

For the first time, Cera got a good look at that flyer, who boasted a breathtaking blend of amber, orange and peach, as though the living embodiment of a sunrise.

The flyer felt Cera's gaze and turned to return it, eyebrow raised. "What?"

A sinister smile snaked across Cera's face. "On second thought, you should totally tag along, Little Miss ...?"

"Dawn," answered the now suspicious flyer. "And I'm not sure how I feel about this sudden change of attitude."

"Don't you wanna help us save the herd?" coaxed Cera. "Do you really trust us to do it without you showing the way? You have to come, don't you?"

"Well ... yes ..." Dawn relented.

"Besides, Petrie would love to meet you."

"'Petrie'? That's a flyer name ..." Dawn thought for a moment. "... Is he nice?"

A low, maniacal giggle briefly bubbled from the tar pit of Cera's humour, but she quickly regained control. "Only the nicest!"

Dawn seemed dubious, but she flitted back onto the threehorn nonetheless. It wasn't as if there was much of a choice. Cera couldn't be happier. The passenger was a small price to pay for something so priceless. Things were coming together beautifully!

Littlefoot cringed. Poor, poor Petrie. He sent another Earth Whisper: ( ( Ducky, bring some water. ) )

( ( And some salt seeds! ) ) Cera added with ground pounds of her own.