The skeleton of a tree covered Fabian. All it was good for was its job as a parasol.
Joining his mother in the bull's shadow was no option for Fabian. The bull was too unstable, too unpredictable. He would snort and roar at anything that invaded his personal space. The paltry puddle of an oasis provided no comfort to his thirst. He stomped the ground, beat it up and scratched the dust away as if somewhere, somehow, there was a vein of water beneath.
Then he just continued his journey, accompanied by Aconia.
Fabian followed. There was no point in resisting, no point in hiding behind the tree. He needed his mother's protection at all costs.
The three were walking next to each other, Aconia between the two males with no-one explicitly ahead of the others. They were more like equals than like a leader and his followers. Not that anyone had a clue where to go anyway. The three gave in to the mountainside's magnetic draw.
It was the only of the four corners in the world filled with a goal. The corner to Fabian's left was obscured by the adults. Behind him, the skeleton of a tree divided the heavens from the Earth. To his right, the silhouette of a Liliensternus watched him from afar.
Fabian scrambled between his mother's legs and hid sandwiched between the bull and Aconia. From under his mother's legs, he saw a Liliensternus-free landscape. The predator escaped his mind seconds after it vanished from the horizon. Had he been smarter, this contradiction would have puzzled him. He might have concluded that the monster was either a product of the waterhole massacre's mental scars or just an innocent Plateosaurus.
Even without the inner conflict, the predator did not escape entirely. It left him glued to his stepfather's side, right next to his scarred arm. Fabian heard none of the dying Peteinosauruses' chirping and smelled none of the dry air. The bull's breath overshadowed everything else. It was that of a starved wolf and he fittingly held his head just barely above the ground.
The bull stopped.
Fabian wanted to leave him behind, but he couldn't, as his mother stopped, too. She knew that they were reliant on his support. Aconia bellowed to see his reaction, much like how a humans might talk to someone comatose. The bull did not respond. It was as if his mind had already died from thirst and starvation.
Only when Fabian bleated like a calf did he react. The bull titled his head in the young Plateosaurus' direction and opened his mouth. Fabian felt no leaves whatsoever beneath his tiny feet. The moment he ran away, the bull snatched his tail with his mouth. In dire times, even the Devil eats flies, indeed. Had Fabian only trusted his instincts over his fear of the Liliensternuses. Within seconds, the bull would haul him into the air and catch his fleshier parts with his jaws and then ram him to death.
Or he would have, had Aconia not rammed the bull first.
Fabian fell before he could rise higher than his own neck's length. Fortunately, his arms and torso absorbed most of the impact. The bull punched the blood out of Aconia's face with his thumb claw. She tried to retaliate by ramming him once more, but the bull easily caught her with his forearms.
The wrestling match bought Fabian time to rise to his feet. He did not even give his mother a second glance while he ran away, but he could clearly hear her screams. A sanddune provided him cover. It could not stop the bull, but it helped him psychologically. Bruised and exhausted, Fabian needed a resting place. He climbed its tip to see what had become of the fight, as he could still hear his mother, but he did not feel any steps in his direction.
As he reached the tip, he saw how his mother had been buried under the bull's forelimbs. His body mass quenched the life out of her lungs.
Fabian bleated again. His mother tried to reply, but lacked the air to respond.
Not caring for the murderer's presence, Fabian stared at the whole scenery for more than an hour. Over and over again, the bull would try to cut her skin open with his claw to lick more of her blood. His claw was not built for slicing and his iguana-like teeth had difficulties with her flesh and skin. He would wait for the carcass to decompose in the desperate hope to still both his thirst and hunger.
If such tragedies were possible is unclear. While no scientist disputes that Plateosaurus is a herbivore, it is debated whether it was an obligate or facultative one. An obligate herbivore eats exclusively plants while a facultative one will supplement its diet with meat. Plateosaurus' teeth most closely resemble that of the modern iguana which has been shown to exhibit growth disorders if meat is excluded from its diet which is why especially the fast-growing young tend to eat many insects. However, an ecological argument could be made that even adult Plateosauruses did not eschew meat entirely. Paleontologists such as Ben Pabst speculate that occasional predatory behavior by Plateosaurusesis the reason why almost no contemporary predators reached their size class, as they blocked the niche reserved for them. While their teeth were ill-equipped for predation, it is not unheard of an animal to do something evolution did not adapt it for. Horses, elephants and deer have all been reported eating meat.
And in this case, the situation was extreme enough to warrant such a freak incident.
Aconia's forlorn and orphaned son had no choice but to continue his quest on his own. Even animals feel grief, as evidenced by elephant's mourning their dead and losing one's mother is difficult for any animal still dependent on her. At this point, any dinosaur beyond the most juvenile stages was a threat to him.
He drifted through the desert aimlessly with no goal in sight, but death. In his state of health, he could barely even discern the heavens from the Earth or tell if he was still moving in the same direction as he had used to. The smell of maggots and blood was the only thing he has left to guide him. It was the smell of death. The smell that became stronger and stronger. The smell that would befall his entire body before he got reunited with his mother.
When it was at its highest, he could finally feel its source. A corpse, as expected, but from a bipedal, more than five meter long dinosaur. Bite-sized chunks of meat were torn from all parts of its torso, leaving only half of the animal left to tell the tale. It was rotten to the core, but the maggots provided a source of vitamins while the half-dried blood helped drench Fabian's throat. Once his basic needs were met, he could rest. His condition had improved, he was further away from turning into a dead body than before, but he still needed sleep. Another dead tree provided him a quiet place. He leaned up against it as if it was his mother's leg. With the smell of an unidentifiable Plateosaurus, it might as well have been.
Once he awoke under the return of the morning sun, he finally regained his senses. He could recognize the corpse's purple crests and its vegetation-colored skin. Unmistakably, this was the corpse of a Liliensternus he had just eaten from. Surely, no conspecific nor any Plateosaurus did this to the poor animal.
Fabian could not speculate, but with his sanity regained, he could discern the details hidden in the horizon. An azure stripe separated the sandy ground from the blue sky. Green trees marked its borders.
An oasis.
Should he reach it, we would have enough food or water for a lifetime or at least the remainder of the dry season. He would be vulnerable to predation. However, another herd might find him there.
Fabian could grow up to be an old and happy Plateosaurus, so that his mother's sacrifice would not have been in vain.
He mastered every obstacle. The Sun, the pain, the thirst, it was as if these were not even there. The oasis just grew bigger and bigger. More and more different types of ferns and even the horsetails he loved so much were visible to the naked eye. Most importantly, there were no signs of the wicked mire. The oasis already filled his entire field of vision. Now, he had to look left and right to see where it ended and where it began. He had to move slowly, often fainting. It was the final bit of effort he had to exert before a well-deserved reward, but it was no use to collapse right now. He was in no hurry.
Until he felt steps.
It were no heavy and clumsy steps like those of the bull or even his mother. No, it was someone as big as him, but with more splayed feet. He only had to turn around to see who was back.
Lila was chasing him!
Fabian plunged towards the waterhole. It was instinctual, with no plan what to do once he would inevitably reach the bank. Lila was mere meters away. The exact number closed with every passing moment. Fabian's leg was already within a bite's reach when he decided he had enough of fleeing.
The Plateosaurus took a sharp turn, forcing both combatants to slow down. Lila was caught off guard when Fabian turned 180 degrees and rammed her leg. She expected him to flight rather than fight.
But she could adjust and bit his forearm. Fabian had no tricks against that. Biting her hide with his iguana-like teeth tickled her at best and punching around with his free arm did not help. His thumb claw was too underdeveloped. The last time they fought, Fabian only won due to dumb luck and Aconia. He would have neither of these here.
While they were fighting, no-one paid attention to the threat from underwater. It was no crocodile, despite having a superficial resemblance. It was a yellow devil with four limbs under its crocodile-like torso and a theropod-like head. It was the four-legged beast that Fabian felt from the distance in the sandstorm and that claimed the life of Lila's mother.
It was a Teratosaurus. Its lineage had already become rare and forgotten by most prey animals, passing the apex predator torch to Liliensternus. However, this provided no comfort to the few animals that did have the misfortunate to meet such a monster.
Lila was the first one to spot the Teratosaurus. Fabian's arm lost all taste it used to have for her and she ran away.
From the corner of his eye, Fabian saw the reason to follow her.
The monster bounded out of the water and galloped after the two dinosaurs. Despite their sluggish appearances, even modern day crocodiles can gallop. With its erect gait, however, their ancient relative Teratosaurus took it to a new level, closing a 10-m-gap to the juveniles in mere seconds. It was only due to their smaller bodies that both could save their lives in a sharp turn.
They did so again and again, leaving the waterhole further and further with each turn. Fabian was inches behind Lila's tail, he followed her out of a lack of a better guidance. The two were allies for the time being.
Agility is the tactic a gazelle uses to flee from the faster cheetah, but it only works because the gazelle has a better stamina than the cheetah. The Teratosaurus, however, was well-fed and spent the whole day resting in the cool waterhole.
Fabian, on the other hand, was at the brink of exhaustion. Too much time had he spent traveling and fighting Lila. It was only his sheer drive to survive that burned the last fat reserves in his scraggy body for one more run. He panted like a hackling dog, smelling the monster's full rancid breath around him. There was no way to outrun it, no way to outmaneuver it, no way to exhaust it, no way to outsmart it, no place to hide, no adult to save him and no pond to spawn a bigger fish.
There was only one way.
Lila was normally faster than Fabian, but she could barely keep herself ahead because of the pain Fabian's ram had caused her leg.
This was his chance.
Fabian lunged forward and smacked Lila into the dirt in one last ram before burning his last reserves to jump out of the way. The Teratosaurus sank its teeth into the helpless Liliensternus and broke her spine in one bite. Then he shook her to break her corpse automatically.
Fabian limped away from the site, wasting his nemesis no last glance as she got torn apart by the Teratosaurus' jaws and claws.
The waterhole had shrunk again from his vantage point. He had to repeat the same painful quest from before, just with even greater body heat.
The Teratosaurus did not follow him. The fish already fed him well the last days and Lila provided for this day. With the fear of predation, maybe getting closer to the waterhole would have been easier. But instead, it felt like the oasis just did not become larger, no matter how many steps he took. Or maybe it did and he just could not remember how it looked when it was smaller.
Suddenly, it filled his entire field of vision, no matter where he looked. When he sank his snout into the water, he realized it was just dry mud. The real water was still dozens of meters away from him while he was trapped in a dried-out mudhole.
Its diameter was less than three meters, but every step he took was pure torture for him. While his mind wanted the water, his body decided that death would be more comfortable than walking.
Fabian dropped to the ground snout first. He lay prone in a crouching position and knew that he would not get up again if he took a nap now. Thus, he heaved his body up one last time, only to fall down once and for all.
Each and every thought Fabian ever had poured out of his mind. It is not known if animals have near-death experiences, but whatever light he did saw, he could barely distinguish it from the Sun that tortured him for so many months. He was glad when it left him.
After all this exhaustion, Fabian was glad to find his eternal peace.
Just a few days later, the first rain fell. The mudhole became wet and Plateosauruses from another herd found the waterhole. With this new food source, the Teratosaurus had no reason to eat the paltry Fabian. The site of Fabian's demise became another deathtrap and caught two older Plateosauruses who should join him in his grave. All the chaos disarticulated Fabian's skeleton, but the mire ensured that he would become preserved.
208 million years later, the site of his death should be known as the Gruhalde Quarry in Frick, Switzerland. He would be recovered in the summer of 2015 under the name of MSF 15.8 and sent to the Sauriermuseum Frick.
From then on, Fabian should become a subject of study to scientists, bachelor students and hack writers who confuse an obscure online platform for an actual audience.
Of these, no-one knows the exact cause of his death. It could have been miring in a mudhole which had been softened by the two older Plateosauruses before. It could have been drought as depicted here.
Whatever it was, Fabian represents the first and so far only juvenile skeleton of a Plateosaurus known to man. It was only through his death that he became immortal.
Many thanks to everyone who has struck around. This story is based on an actual Plateosaurus specimen whose formal name is "MSF 15.8" (dinosaur individuals tend to have such weird names), although "Fabian" is a nickname given to it by its discoverers. MSF 15.8 was formally described in this paper:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264389461_The_first_juvenile_specimens_of_Plateosaurus_engelhardti_from_Frick_Switzerland_Isolated_neural_arches_and_their_implications_for_developmental_plasticity_in_a_basal_sauropodomorph
I learned about this specimen through the bachelor thesis of a friend of mine. When I wanted to write a story about dinosaurs, I used this specimen as a starting point.
My next story will be less niche and more for a general audience (you know, a story about humans). If you like my general style, you'll hopefully also like the sci-fi story I'm still working on.
Many thanks for reading, don't forget to vote and share if you liked it.