The ritual was upon us. It was time for the Great Flying Race. The starting line was on the beach, just a few feet from the valley's edge. I could already see specks of my kind lining up on the near horizon. They all balanced themselves on the soft sand and waited for their cue.
"Where are we going, Becca?" Dan asked from my head.
Wait, did he just call me "Becca"?
"It's okay if I call you that, right?" he added. "Oh, please. Becca was my mother's name. I'd do anything to see her again."
It's fine, Dan. I never minded you giving me your mom's name. To show him it was okay, I nodded.
"Oh, thank you," Dan said, on the verge of tears. He wrapped his arms around my neck. By then, the creatures on the beach drew closer. We could see them better. "Oh, wow, look!" Dan cheered. He pointed at the long-necked beasts. "Alamosaurus!" Then he gestured at the three-horned ones. "Triceratops!" And finally, the ones with the spiky shields on their backs. "Ankylosaurus! I'm living my 3023, people."
3023? Was that the name of the valley he came from?
We landed next to a herd of... Alamosaurus, he called them? The long-necked creatures. "Stay close to me, Dan," I said, but he did not listen to me. He was too excited.
He limped under the long necks' legs and admired them from their flat undersides. I noticed he pressed the same button on his box.
"Alamosaurus," it said, "said to be one of the largest sauropods of the Mesozoic Era. They lived between seventy million years ago and went extinct during the K-T Mass Extinction, sixty-five million years ago."
"Dan!" I called. I pushed through the crowd, past my kind preparing for the race, and the spiky-shield creatures who batted their tails together.
"Attention, inhabitants of the Valley of Green!" announced the largest flier on the beach. He kicked up the sand to grab everyone's attention. "It's time for the annual Great Flying Race! Flyers will start here, make their way through the Clumped Woods, across the Glowbeak Meadow, and then fly the length of the valley."
"Oh, Dan, come on," I begged. "The race is about to start."
"Hey, Becca!" he called, pointing at the ocean. "Are there any Mosasaurus in the water?"
How was I supposed to know? I didn't know what that was. Oh, jeez. He was turning into quite the project. I wondered if he was that troublesome in his Valley of 3023.
His box flashed again. It was the same powerful flash when it warned him about me. "Extreme danger! Extreme danger!" it said. "An asteroid, ten kilometers across, is headed straight for Earth! Get out of there, Dan!"
"What?" Instantly, Dan's smile vanished. Sweat trickled down his temples. He punched his box a few times. "Oh, please, PPMC, stop with the jokes."
"I'm not joking, Daniel. You need to get out of there! Your father gave me strict orders to return you safely to 3023."
"PPMC, just shut up!" Dan made haste to turn off the box. "Wise starship."
A sickening feeling invaded my insides. I wondered why I shared the same fear as PPMC. My eyes rolled up to the clear, blue sky.
"Flyers, take your positions!" announced the large flier.
At the same time, my kind opened their enormous wings and bent their knees. They, too, examined the sky.
"Extreme danger! Extreme danger!" yelled Dan's box. "An asteroid, ten kilometers across, is headed straight for Earth!"
That was when Dan grew nervous. I could see it on his face. His big, brown eyes no longer showed curiosity and excitement, but fear that something big was about to happen. "PPMC, what have you done?" he mumbled. He scurried out from under the long-necked creatures and headed toward the race. "Stop! Stop!" he shouted. "It's too dangerous!"
I was sure that, because he was so small, his voice remained squeaky. Either that or the flyers did not hear him at all.
With my claws in the sand, I took the same path as him. "Stop! We can't do the race!"
It was too late. "And... fly!" cawed the large flier.
All the flyers screeched. Sand overtook the beach as they leaped into the sky, unaware of the lurking danger.
"Becca, we've got to stop them," Dan said. He shivered from head to toe.
Nodding, I dipped my wing to him. His claws were not sharp, like those of the sharp-toothed beast. They were smooth, and they gave me a sense of peace when they touched my membrane. Were "claws" even the right term? I wondered if it was me, but the sky suddenly felt warmer. It was as if the sun had split in two. Something appeared in the atmosphere. It looked like... What was it? Whatever it was, it was much bigger than anything I had seen fall from the clouds. It looked like a flaming rock, one in which smaller rocks broke off as it plummeted.
"We're too late! Get down!" Dan shouted. By then, I knew he had seen the rock, too.
Both of us tumbled onto our fronts in the sand and covered our heads with our claws. For a few seconds, there was silence, and then a seismic roar burned our eardrums.
Flaming rocks smashed into the racers' wings, tearing the membrane to the bone. Not only did the sky shake, but so did the world. The sky turned blood red, and a giant wave, a hundred feet tall, lifted out of the ocean.
The animals scattered. They bumped into each other as they tried to escape the fray. A three-horned beast, too scared to move, roared silently to himself. He remained at the edge of the water. The sky grew hotter and hotter, and the wave larger and larger.
Dan uncovered his head. "What is he doing?" he said. "Becca, we need to get him."
"There's no time, Dan." I tossed him back onto my head and hurried out of the tsunami's path.
The three-horned beast still did not move. He took his last breath, and then the tsunami swamped not just him, but also all the other non-flyers who failed to escape the danger. In just a few seconds, the whole beach was gone. The tsunami pulled the creatures into the ocean and chucked a few others into the valley. What was supposed to be a race day was now a fight for survival.