Bones Lonely of the Triassic

Originally published in Prehistoric Magazine

North, north-west. Hard going, dry and lonely,
bones on the eastern sun, count every one,
forgotten fish-faces where the insects run
north, north-west. And which way goes Old Lonely?

Mr. Deadmouth, basking on the front porch of his cave, looks at me keen-eyed when I ask this question. His neck-folds crinkle under his crocodile smile and he says, Oh, yeah. Bones Lonely rode skeletonback after them longfingers, just the other day, said they was gonna find the Floodwaters. Me, I think he's been too long in the sun. Head ain't straight no more.

I ask him what direction was that, and does he got any lungfish for sale.

Nah, no lungfish, he says, been no mud-springs since September. But if it's Old Lonely you're after, he's westerly riding.

Later, then, I say, and start across the wasteland.

The sun rolls down, and all the way the only people that come by are conifers. I say hello; they respond with a wave. They don't know Old Tongue any more than me, and the desert pidgin is beyond them. There was days, Old Lonely said once, when plants and animals talked like brothers, and even Lady Wind had words to spare. But it ain't like that no more. We eat and sleep, wander one way or another just cause we ain't got nothing better to do. Nobody remembers much of anything; sometimes I forget the months, even.

Old Lonely's different. He thinks. He stays for years in one spot, never moving an inch, then dashes off in some direction, taking the straightest course for wherever-he-goes. And he remembers: all the way back to the Old Days, before the Catastrophe, before the heat came and choked everything bone-dry. Some people, now, they don't believe the Old Days ever was. But you ask Old Lonely, and he'll tell you. The fish, he'll say. Every kind you could ever think of. And miles and miles of water, half-salt, half-fresh, and ten thousand green things growing up out of the mud; trees higher than mountains, all haired in olive tones, and things called mosses that grew straight to the sky. Says the bugs was big as he was, and everybody ate as much as they wanted, and the air always smelled like water. And always things flying, and swimming, and squirming, and crawling, everywhere you look, hello, hello. And then he'll sigh. That's why they call me Lonely. I ain't used to all this quiet.

The sun's disappeared now; the desert's dark. Somewhere along the way, I'll catch up to Bones Lonely. And I'll say, which way you headed? And he'll say, you know, north, north-west. Like always. North, north-west, to find the Floodwaters.

Then we'll take our seats round his campfire, and he'll light a stick of fern and say, don't you ever forget the Old Days, kid, you got to promise me. Cause them fishes and frogs and things from way back got nobody but me to think of them, these days. You gotta visit all my old pals when I'm dead and ain't got the time -- Master Trilobite, and Horace Wheeler the Amphibious, and that dragonfly who lost his wings. You gotta remember for me, cause it was a good time, the best time there ever was on this earth. And someday, maybe, we'll all see it together again; we'll all talk Old Tongue like it's nothing and the trees will come growing out of dry ground. But for now: will you remember?

Yeah, Lonely, I'll remember. Count on me.

North, north-west, long going, dark and lonely
moon like a pie slice, dry heat to endless ice
to warmth again, and summers twice,
but always I remember: long-riding Old Lonely.

North, north-west, rain or desert, spring or winter,
time and time again, all the times that ever been;
westerly riding on the dreams of beast and men
north, north-west -- there he's going, Old Lonely.

Story Notes:

Can memory persist through Deep Time, through geologic time? What sort of creature could wander through the Triassic and still remember Carboniferous days? I don't know precisely what Bones Lonely is. But the narrator is a herrerasaurus, Mr. Deadmouth is a dimetrodon, and the Longfingers are a herd of coelophyses.