Fossil Fools

Chapter 12. Council of Elders

By the time I came to, the moon had shifted 20 degrees across the sky.

I felt different, but I would struggle to describe how. I felt sharper and more aware for sure, but it was more than that. My heart, more open, stronger and softer. Like I had received an upgrade to my operating system.

My thoughts turned towards my fishy fossil dinosaur friend. I felt a wave of love and appreciation for my Ichthyosaur. It seemed to be truly on my side and had asked for nothing in return. I lay down on it and stroked its bony flank. Ran my hand down its smooth cold ribs. Stroked its curvy, domed skull. The beast kind of shivered and raised its long beak up and down, like a horse. It seemed to like it.

This dinosaur needed a name. We had come a long way together. But what? Chester, Toffee, Rover? Doggy names sounded pathetic. Icky? No! This needs thinking about. Work in progress.

My focus shifted as a giant silver spiralled Nautilus sea shell circled the vast arena seven times, before hovering over the Great Tree. It looked like a monster French Horn crossed with a huge Tuber from a cosmic brass band.

I know it sounds mad, that a tree could talk, and that I should be able to understand what it said, but that is exactly what happened. I heard it clear as a bell. Deep and resonant, in English!!

"Friends, these are the darkest of times." It said, and my mind was officially blown. My jaw dropped, and my ears pricked up.

Behind me, the green kingdom; countless generations of plant, tree and vegetable right back to the first algae. From the lichen of the frozen North, to the grasslands of the Savanna, the great rain and kelp forests. We, the sun worshipers, sustain all life on earth. It is we who have harvested star light since life itself began as us.

But now disaster has befallen us. Our graveyards, the great black fossil coal beds are being desecrated. The great ancestors brutally exhumed and incinerated. The crazy Sapien savages have no understanding, no respect for us. They simply take and loot what they want. Our brothers and sisters who have lain in peace for hundreds of millions of earth orbits around the sun are being ripped out of the ground and incinerated. All this at the hands of a warped and twisted ape.