Prompt: The sky is falling!
Daniel says: This was a fun one to write. I might revisit the idea later to flesh out and give a proper ending.
Ted the Tyrannosaur looked up. There was something strange going on up there, he thought.
‘There’s something strange going on up there,’ he said out loud.
‘What’s that?’ asked Arnold the Ankylosaur.
‘I said,’ Ted repeated, ‘there’s something strange going on up there. Look, the sky’s going all funny.’
‘Looks normal enough to me,’ said Arnold, who was unable to raise his head more than about twenty degrees and therefore had a rather limited experience with the sky that mostly amounted to brief glimpses on flatter horizons.
‘Nah,’ said Ted, ‘it’s all going red.’
‘Must be sunset,’ replied Arnold. ‘This day went by quicker than usual. We’d better be getting back.’
‘Funny thing,’ said Ted. ‘That’d be a lot quicker than usual. It was early afternoon just a couple minutes ago.’
‘Well, they say time flies like a pterosaur,’ Arnold said practically.
Ted thought about this for a minute.
‘Who says that?’ he asked.
‘Oh, you know,’ Arnold said vaguely. ‘They.’
Ted thought some more.
‘Pterosaurs?’ he ventured.
‘Sounds right,’ Arnold agreed, eyeing a nearby shrub speculatively.
‘I don’t think it’s evening, anyway,’ Ted said. ‘Only the top of the sky’s red, the rest is all normal blue.’
‘Are you sure it doesn’t normally look like that?’ asked Arnold.
‘Pretty sure,’ Ted said. ‘I mean, I don’t spend all day watching the sky, mind you, but I do look up enough to get an idea of what it’s normally supposed to look like.’
‘Well, that’s strange enough, then,’ Arnold said around a mouth note full of leafy twigs.
‘Exactly what I said,’ Ted said. ‘Listen, do you hear that?’
‘Hear what,’ Arnold asked, over his loud crunching.
‘Short of a dull rumbling sound,’ Ted replied.
Arnold paused chewing, then picked up again.
‘I don’t hear anything,’ he said.
‘It sounds like… you remember, last year, when that mountain fell over?’
‘Yeah,’ said Arnold. ‘That was a shame. Lost a lot of good grazing ground. Some family too,’ he added as an afterthought.
‘Well, it’s kind of like that, but lower, but also more sort of… all over,’ Ted said, doing his best to describe a situation previously unencountered with a vocabulary usually used for asking where the local herbivores might be hanging out and how well-protected they were.
Arnold, an herbivore who hadn’t worried about predators since his adult spikes had grown in, gave this due consideration.
‘I still don’t hear it,’ he concluded.
‘Now there’s something else going on,’ said Ted, starting fixedly upward.
‘What’s that?’ asked Arnold.
‘Sort of… boulder looking thing,’ said Ted.
‘What, in the sky?’’ asked Arnold.
‘I think it’s on fire,’ Ted added.
Arnold scoffed. ‘Now I think you’re just having me on,’ he said.
‘No,’ Ted said, peering upward. ‘Big red boulder on fire, up in the sky. Looks like it’s getting bigger, too.’
‘Huh,’ said Arnold. ‘Not something you see every day.’
‘Not something you see ever,’ Ted said.
‘Fair enough,’ Arnold conceded. ‘Wonder what’s going on?’
‘Who knows?’ Ted replied.
By now, even Arnold could hear the rumbling, and the surroundings had taken on a distinct crimson hue.
‘You know,’ Ted said conversationally, ‘if I didn’t know any better, I might think that the sky is falling.’
‘What might make you think that?’ asked Arnold.
‘Well,’ Ted replied, ‘It’s sort of the way that now there’s a bunch of smaller boulders up there with the big boulder, and I’m pretty sure they’re all falling.’
Arnold thought about this.
‘Does that mean the sky is made of boulders?’ he finally asked.
‘Must be,’ Ted agreed, ‘and now something happened and they’re all falling down here.’
‘I can’t think that would be good,’ Arnold said.
‘It looks like we’re going to find out soon enough,’ said Ted.
Later, after the asteroid hit, they both died.
THE END
Epilogue:
‘Ha-ha, fuck you!’ said Barry the Bird, giving their fried corpses a double middle-winger.
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