Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.
Stomper the Ankylosaurus had the heaviest tail in the whole valley, and it dragged behind her through the mud wherever she went, leaving a long wobbly line like a river drawn by a very wiggly stick. Tonight, that tail was dragging through something much worse than mud.
The cave paintings were ruined.
Every year, before the great night feast, every dinosaur in the herd pressed their hand to the cave wall. Big prints, small prints, bumpy-knuckled prints, all in a row. But tonight, the paint pots had been left uncovered, and a whole gang of beetles had walked straight through them — red, orange, white — and tracked tiny dotted footprints zigzagging all across the cave wall before disappearing into the dark.
"BEETLES," said Stomper. Not a roar. More like a very large, very disapproving thud of a word.
The feast couldn't start without the wall. The wall wasn't ready. So Stomper did what Stomper always did. She turned around, let her tail drag a deep wavy groove in the cave floor, and stomped off into the valley to fix it.
Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.
The night air smelled like river clay and crushed grass as she thumped downhill toward the mulberry bushes. She could hear the berries dripping — something had been at them already. That something was Bonk, a very round Pachycephalosaurus, who kept lowering his great domed head and headbutting the bush by mistake, sending purple-red juice spraying in all directions.
"Bonk," said Stomper. "Stop headbutting the berries and carry them instead."
Bonk blinked. He was absolutely soaked in berry juice, which meant he was also, accidentally, exactly the colour of red paint. He held out his arms. Stomper loaded them up. "Useful," she said. Bonk looked very pleased.
Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.
At the clay bank, the orange mud was cold and slippery under Stomper's feet, and that's where she found Tuck — a Microceratus no bigger than a paint pot herself — sitting very still in the dark with one tiny hand already raised in the air.
"Have you been waiting?" said Stomper.
"All evening," said Tuck. "I can fit my whole hand inside the pot. I thought someone might need that."
Stomper looked at Tuck's hand. She looked at the pot. "We need that," she said. Tuck climbed aboard.
Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.
They collected the chalky white from the crumbly cliff — it came away in dusty flakes that settled on Stomper's broad back like snow — and they hauled everything back up the hill, Bonk sloshing, Tuck perched high, Stomper's tail leaving its long winding trail all the way home.
Back in the cave, Stomper held a torch close to the wall and looked hard at the beetle tracks. Tiny dotted trails, looping and crossing, going absolutely everywhere. And then she saw it. The beetle tracks weren't the problem. They were the best part — little roads running between where the handprints would go, like the beetles had already drawn the map.
She pressed her tail slowly across the bottom of the wall. One long, wavy stripe, framing everything beneath.
Then the herd came. One by one, then all at once, they pressed their hands to the wall in a great rumbling line — orange, red, white, and every colour between. Bonk made a very round print. Tuck made the smallest print anyone had ever seen. Stomper pressed her tail again for good measure.
The torches flickered. The feast began. And Stomper sat down so heavily that she sank a little into the soft cave floor, her tail curled behind her, the wavy line still pressed into the mud — and she did not move again.
