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The creature stalked the forest searching for more of the funny, puny two-legged critters that tasted so good. Though the critters did make an awful racket when it caught them. Its belly was full, but it was an eating machine. It’d eat until there was nothing else to eat. Then it would root out more. It was smart enough to know that its supply of food had been dwindling. First the tasty swimming things in the lake and now the critters…they were getting harder and harder to find. It had to search further out. Even in the daylight. If it was to stay alive, it must eat.
It was bored, too.
Lonely. Deep in its brain it knew there should be others like it. A herd of others like it. Running and playing, feeding, together. Swimming the caves under the lake. Who would be its mate when the time came? Who would help it raise the little ones coming? It’d never seen another one like itself, but in its genetic memories it sensed they must exist. Somewhere. It was looking. Forever looking.
It looked up at the dark sky, growled at the tiny sparkling pieces of fire embedded in the black velvet. The call of the peaceful, warm water; the safety of the caves, its home, was too strong to resist and it returned to the lake. Dived deep and swam hard. It was a powerful swimmer. But it would become stronger as it grew.
It was young. Still growing and learning. It needed more food.
Entering the large underwater cave that was its home, it remembered when those peculiar floating things that chirped and flashed with pretty lights, putted across the lake’s surface like big bugs. It had loved to play with them. Chase them. They had been creatures nearer to its size. Strange companions, but still companions. Now they were gone, they’d all died, it seemed, and now were empty shells beached along the shore which no longer had the spark of life.
It missed them. It’d pretended they were its own kind. But they were never strong. It always beat them. They fell apart, when it nudged them. It hadn’t been able to eat them, either. They hadn’t tasted good. Hadn’t filled its belly. Whereas the small critters, at least, did that.
It entered the subterranean cavern and swam back into its world. A world of stone, water, and molten lava, of darkness and bones. Of long past whispers. A world of dead skeletons that stared out of the rocks at it, but never stirred. Just bones. Lifeless.
But it was a world where there weren’t any of those queer tiny beings shouting and running, throwing things that sometimes stung. They made it angry hurting it as they had. It had come to enjoy hurting them back and smashing their frail hiding places made of wood and stone.
It scooted into its cave, its world of warmth and safety.
Its home and once the home of all its family. Brethren now long gone but for whom it was forever searching. Someday it’d find them. Someday there’d be more like it. It sensed that.
Dinosaur Lake Page 33