When dinosaurs ruled the earth.

RULES BENEATH THE CUT.

a soft cry fills the thunderous night. a storm of great proportions covers the land in a blanket of rain. it will nourish the plants, the trees and refill the water holes. lighting flashes across the sky, casting brief glimpses into a soaked land.

a young pachyrhinosaurus has lost his mother. swept away by an overflowing river when he leaned down to drink and washed up in unfamiliar territory.

he cries out again, a high pitched honking noise, then pauses to see if his mother will respond. when the only thing that answers is the roiling thunder once again, he releases a disappointed snort, defeated. he creeps over to the tree that has the most shade to shelter his body from the rain.

his hide is unique. a chalky grey with splotches of rusty red outlined with a pale brown. his eyes are emerald, usually bright and alert. but now they are heavy and tired. a great sorrow claws its way within the youngling. he still has much to learn- how to find food on his own, to defend against predators, to migrate to fertile lands.

bright feather is smart. smarter than the others. it is why she leads, why she controls all the actions of the pack. why she is the matriarch of this small pack of utahraptors. her eyes glint like twin embers in the shadow of a massive tree, its roots prominent in the earth, spanning for miles.

this tree has been where she has laid her eggs for the past decade. a nesting site that has been in her family for generations. but lately, it has been under threat.

stone tooth squawks, flaring out the pale blue feathers along his arms as the behemoth barrels into the nest site. with a bellow, a massive adult male gorgosaurus breaks through into the clearing, swerving effortlessly around the trunk of the tree despite his bulk.

bright feather calls the intruder one eye, given that the tyrannosaurid's right eye is covered in a milky film. he snaps at stone tooth, then at one of this years hatchlings. bright feather shrieks, jumps on the snout of the one eyed predator, claws at his scaled hide. for the past two weeks, the gorgosaurus has come here and terrorized them; destroying their nests and eating their eggs and newborns. there are four adults in this pack and two juveniles- hardly enough to put up a proper defense against a larger apex predator with more experience and power.

one eye shakes his head violently back and forth, flinging bright feather into the trunk of the tree. something cracks in her leg. a femur, most likely. she voices her pain, physical and emotional, as one eye feasts upon her most recent clutch and then disappears into the undergrowth.

her pack gathers around her, chittering and crooning. sharp eyes nuzzles her injured leg, causing her to flinch.

there is a dinosaur on the hail mary.

she regards the man with large eyes, head cocking quickly to and fro. bird-like. she is a mononykus. a small, feathered theropod from the late cretaceous. and she barely comes up to his ankle.

how she got here is a total mystery. an eridian and a human stirred from slumber to be greeted by the fluffy sight of an owlish snout digging through old shirts and notebooks. she chitters softly, disappointed at the lack of insects to consume. she runs circles around their ankles, avoiding all attempts at capture and restraint.

he is not alone.

a male, sub-adult diabloceratops limps through the brush. one of his distinctive frill horns has been broken off. he is wounded, one of his legs bleeding from a puncture wound. he hatched the runt of his clutch, but perhaps in some desperation to prove himself, challenged the alpha male for control of the herd well before he was ready.

he was mauled. shamed. and perhaps worst of all, outcast.

he can hear hunters around him. the rustle of their feathered hides. the click of their teeth. the shine of their eyes in the moonlight. he is surrounded by a hungry pack, waiting for him to keel over and accept his fate.