Fiction River: Moonscapes Read Online Free

that to Monica? Now it was too late and the argument just circled uselessly around and around in his mind.
    After hours upon hours, lulled by the passage of the monotonous landscape and the thrum of the rover’s vibration growling in his flesh, he fell into a fitful sleep.
     
    ***
     
    The sun was a merciless circle of heat in a hard, blue sky, a little bigger than it should have been, a little yellower than it should have been, the difference minute—but real.
    It was a hot, sullen day. Elephant-gray Triceratops wallowed in the cool mud, caking on dirt, shielding their hides from the buzzing, biting flies. A royal blue Stegosaurus dipped its beaked head to get a drink, its iridescent, rainbow-colored plates flashing in the sun. Beyond the watering hole, the chest-high grass of the savannah stirred gently, the dried brown stalks whispering softly.
    There was no breeze.
    A little girl crouched on mud-streaked bare feet not five meters from the stegosaur, digging in the dirt with a stick. She wore a sundress the color of lime sherbet, ash-blond hair hanging across her face in strings, hiding her face as she stared intently at whatever had caught her attention.
    A little boy, a year or two older than the girl, stood watching her, his face scrunched up with resentment.
    “Go away, Kara,” he said.
    She didn’t look up, just kept digging with the stick.
    “This palace is mine .”
    Why was she always following him? Taking stuff that was his? Stupid sister.
    “I can be here if I want, Saxby ,” she shot back, still not looking at him.
    “Mamma says you have to go,” said Saxby.
    “No she doesn’t,” said Kara, her voice sullen. She was digging holes in the mud, watching them fill up with water. What a little baby.
    “It’s too scary for babies,” he said.
    She looked up at him then, those hazel eyes wide, her mouth a pink, little O, a smudge of dirt marking her left cheek.
    “Too scary,” Saxby repeated. “Mamma says.”
    “I’m not a baby,” said Kara fiercely.
    “What will you do if a monster gets you?” asked Saxby smugly.
    Kara turned, looking at the Stegosaurus , the Triceratops herd and... was there a flicker of something in the high grass?
    “They’ll scare you dead,” he said.
    “They can’t do that,” said Kara “There’s safeties.” But there was a note of concern in her voice.
    “They can if you’re a baby,” snapped Saxby.
    “No,” she said, but her lower lip was quivering like she was gonna cry.
    That was bad . If she went crying to Mama, Mama might take away Dinosaur Palace . All because of a stupid sister.
    He opened his mouth—
    A pack of creatures darted out of the grass, moving lightning quick.
    Saxby flashed on a nightmare the size of a man, black dagger-shaped stripes against a khaki hide, jaws crowded with needle-sharp teeth.
    And then the first one jumped.
    It caught an Ornitholestes drinking in the open. The little dinosaur whose name meant bird thief was a small scavenger that stood upright, actually a cousin to its attacker. Like the predator rapidly closing on it, Ornitholestes was painted with the same tawny brush of the savannah, but tip-to-tail it gave up a meter in length to its murderous cousin, a meter in length and almost fifty kilos.
    The outcome of the contest was never in doubt.
    The hunter jumped and its switchblade rear claws flicked out, thirteen centimeters of bone as sharp as a razor. It was those cruel talons that gave the creature its name. Deinonychus .
    Terrible Claw.
    Predator and prey crumpled to the ground, the Ornitholestes ’s face filled with wide-eyed terror, its screams disturbingly human.
    The coppery stink of blood suddenly everywhere.
    The herbivores reacted at once.
    The Triceratops trumpeted, their bugling danger calls filling the blazing hot air, adults turning toward the threat and lowering their massive, three-horned heads. The juvenile ’tops tried to work themselves back into the herd’s center, bleating in terror.
    The