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The morning continues like any other. The light trembling of the leaves that catch wind. A mist slowly crawling from the bushes and curling around mossy tree trunks, water glittering as the sun shone down on it. The family gathers near a riverbank, shuffling towards the stream. The water burbles softly as it draws around the underwater roots and sunken stones.
Azalea stands knee-deep in the water, her long, battle-worn horns snag the light. She drinks slowly, only raising her head to turn behind her — to watch Orchidus and her children. They dart around their father, who is laying in the soft grass as he lets out a deep rumble from the back of his throat — content.
Agapanthus darts around his brother with high snorts and chirps as he doesn't reciprocate. Gladiolus was not much of a fighter, more of a lover. Carnation is laying by her father's side as she watches her two brothers warble on in a brawl.
They were together, as a family. Playing in the soft sun of the late Cretaceous as the wind flies past their frills, the soft rustle of leaves — the mesmerising way they fell from the trees like a bird trying out its wings for the first time.
Though, that morning, the birds did not fly, nor sing. There was no call of an active carnivore hunt, or a moving herd. The forest is wrapped in silence, it's deserted.
Carnation, ever watchful, was the first to notice the sky. The strange blush on the horizon, too orange, too unusual. A second sun was in the sky, it burns too bright. She tilts her head and squints her eyes.
The sound follows, low at first, like a drumroll underwater. Then it turns loud. A growing hum from the sky, thick and angry. Until it becomes a roar that split the sky — the water leapt from the river's edge, the trees shook with reckless abandon.
Agapanthus stops messing around with Gladiolus as he faces east, his eyes reflect the bright line of fire that stretches across the clouds. The birds — spooked — took to the sky, beating their wings hard and fast.
Everything went silent.
And then the wind rushes in.
No, not wind. Not the usual, calming flow of air. Force. The world heaves, the trees bent as if kneeling to an invisible God. Dust shoots up from the ground, the air ignites. With pressure, heat. Rage.
Azalea bellows, her voice raw and commanding. Orchidus answers. The family turns together, running towards their cave— their home. One where their young had hatched, one where they slept in peace. One where they could feel safe.
Debris began to fall, hot, molten. They didn't have time to make it into the cave, so they ran into a hollow–a depression in the forest floor where a landslide had long ago carved out a bowl. Orchidus leads them in, Azalea presses against her young. Orchidus mirrors the movement, as a shield.
Their breaths mingle, laboured.
The light came with a horrible flash. It was not lightning — it would be kinder. It was like the sky itself had torn open, had gotten angry with the mass below and shot rays of death down below. It was everything and nothing.
The flames swallowed the sky whole, engulfing it in an ugly red that replaced the warm blue of the world above.
And then, silence.
Not peace, not the solace of sleep. Silence.
—
Time rolled forward, careless and tireless. Rivers rose and fell, mountains carved into the land. The lush green had returned, but not the same, no. Never the same. New creatures walked where they once had, unaware that beneath their feet, bones dreamed of warmth and leaves and horns pressed close in a tangle of a family.
Then, another light came. But not fire — not the soft morning sun to greet them. Torchlight, electric. Artificial.
Five-fingered hands uncovered them with their brushes and chisels, soft whispers and awed flooded the scene. The giants emerged from their tomb of silence, stone and ash. Curled into one another, horn-to-horn. Flank-to-flank in a circle of protection, unmoved by the chaos of time.
They were taken from their resting place, near their home to be forever immortalised in the cold cream walls with polished checkered floors, where animals walked on two legs and spoke in tongues. Children stared wide-eyed at the beasts forever sculpted in stone. Scientists would debate genus and age. Artists would sketch and poets would write.
The golden plaque beneath them read:
A Triceratops (H.) Family Group – Late Cretaceous. 66 M.Y.A.
Preserved by ashfall during the Chicxulub Impact Event. Sought shelter as a unit, remarkable preservation suggests a family in their last moments with their young.
Orchidus leaned towards Azalea, even in death. Gladiolus would forever stand watching the world with curious eyes. Carnation and Agapanthus would forever stand shoulder-to-shoulder despite their rivalry. The siblings remained as they had once lived, the parents as they had once loved.
The stories of their scars would remain untold, their children would forever stay children, never seeing the full world, never finding mates nor leading a herd. Their world had stopped in an instant. Their eyes had flashed with their final moments.
But they flashed with images of eachother, of faces forever frozen in the harsh hand of time.
They had lived, loved. They snapped at bugs with playfulness, chased eachother through the underbrush. They had clashed in playful duels for berries. They had lived, they had slept. They had fought and ate and ran.
And now in the artificial yellow shine of the museum lights, they greeted each sunrise in stone.
The unbreakable sketch of a family
— etched forever
into the bones of the world.