the beginning.

i'm playing with several different stories right now, each pretty different from the next. they're all only finished up through their introductions and i'm having a hell of a time getting past that point. i just arrive there and...nothing else after that. hopefully i'll get the energy to actually make a concerted effort at some of this stuff.

There was a smashing and crashing. Loud crunches erupted from the treeline and birds long extinct were rudely excavated from their still nests. Unborn chicks in unhatched eggs lay exposed, swaddled in sprigs and shoots. Bugs on the ground, now fossils, burrowed to avoid the shaking and snapping of twigs. Something looking not entirely unlike an aardvark slothed away, rolling its big eyes in its big head that had nothing much else in it (save the big eyes, of course). Monkey-type critters howled and leaped from trunk to trunk, avoiding the daily routine of not getting killed by something big. Green leaves were turned to paste and branches crumpled under forces rivaling most modern day hydraulics. Brontosaurus lifted his head above the canopy, chewing a mouthful of leaves, each larger than it ought to be. How come nobody ever wants to stay for dinner? He picked up his tail and plodded to another tree some distance away. What else was there to do but be selective about your eating? His feet made imprints that would last longer than him. They would last another several thousand years. Until the comet came, even. Until no piece of dust or dirt or bone or plant or shell was left unmoved or unburned. His feet sank heavy into the soil, pressing his presence into the world as a great author does with their opus. Maybe nobody will read it in years to come but that’s not the point. His close footprints reveal a creature not in a rush, a relaxed being content with finding just the best leaf. But nobody would be around to see his footprints and know the importance of them: know that a living thing made them, an animal with warm blood and bones. They would all get burned away, but not until he was gone. But Brontosaurus didn’t think about this. In fact it didn’t even occur to him that his footprints meant anything. Well, to be totally fair, he didn’t know he made footprints. He just was.

-e