Funny Old Lady

by Azonthus

Authors note: Journal Prompt: "She was a funny old lady..." Hehe, Was in a Dinotopian mood (Gee, what's unusual about that?) when I wrote this one. Perhaps I'll turn it into a story some day.

She was a funny old lady, but I knew she had come carrying great tidings. The feathers on her hat swayed to and fro with the gait of the Gallimimus she rode. Her long skirts billowed in the wind created by her swift steed. The Matriarch always had a special air about her. Nobody knew where she had come from, only that she had been around as long as the oldest saurian could remember. The Matriarch had no name other than her title.

I had always wanted to be a message runner since I was a child. Watching the gallimimi and struthi’s run through our little town of Chipcherool had always inspired me to follow in their footsteps, and I mean that quite literally. I would chase after them as long as I could, but the saurians had inevitably out run me.

I sat in the cool grass of the hill that overlooked the Flatfoot road. The Matriarch and Teway would get here in their own time. It was well known that they took life at their own pace. And the Matriarch was over two hundred. While still fit, she certainly didn’t enjoy a galimimus’ clipped gate at a run.

As I watched them slowly jogging up the path, I thought of Teta, my Utahraptor friend. Teta and I had been friends for as long as I could remember. In fact, we had grown up together. Out parents worked on the same farm and both of us had always helped. Together, we would carry messages from the main house down to the orchards or hay fields. Teta grew much faster than I did, but that was only because she was an Utahraptor and all dromeasaurs reached adulthood by six summers. She may have been considered an adult, but she certainly acted like a hatchling! She would carry me down to the fields; I would have the message memorized or the scroll in my hand. Our little private message service came to be known throughout Chipcherool and soon we ran messages for the whole village. Now that I was 18, I was ready to become a professional, and Teta would come with me.

Finally, the Matriarch passed the gate to my farm. From there she would go to the main house, talk to my parents, and, hopefully, take Teta and me with her to Chandara where we would learn all about being message runners.

Soon, my future would begin.

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