Flight of the Quetzalcoatlus

    "Stupid, stupid starship." Dan sounded much angrier than the day before.

    At first, I let his anger slide. I opened my beak and sucked in a fresh wave of the morning sun's rays. Unfortunately, it was not enough to satisfy the rumble in my tummy. I tried to go back to sleep, but then I heard something smack the cave's wall. That snapped me back to full consciousness.

    There was Dan, outside the nest, chucking rocks and stones at the wall.

    Mom, irritated by the clamor, buried her head in a pile of dirt we sometimes used to trap heat.

    Dan put almost no weight on his left leg, but he stamped his right. I believed he was having a tantrum. "We go to the Precambrian Time, and I almost get incinerated," he told himself, the little chump.

    Something blinked in the center of the box he wore. "Hey, that was your fault. I told you not to travel far on Rodinia, but no, no, no. You didn't listen to me." It was like magic. Was PPMC, Dan's strange-looking friend, somewhere in the cave, too? It sure didn't look like it. Unless she somehow fit in that tiny box?

    Dan banged his wrist a few times. He didn't even flinch with the pain. "Can you at least send me my hoverscooter so I can get the heck of here?"

    "I'm trying, Dan the Man, but I need to fix a few things. I don't know why we ended up in the Cretaceous Period and not the Jurassic."

    "Well, fix faster! The Quetzalcoatlus are going to eat me."

    "You don't know that."

    "I Sam heck do! Those tetrapods and Arthropleura were eager to turn me into the blue-plate special."

    "Blue-plate special," PPMC chortled. "All right, Dan, just hold tight. Hoverscooter 23 is coming."

    "It's about time. I'm getting out of here." Dan pressed his box's blinking object. No longer did I hear PPMC.

    Knees bent, I climbed out of the nest and clutched the cave's floor. My long neck stretched like a growing tree trunk. I stopped Dan in his tracks and sniffed him up and down. The fur on his head stuck up for a few seconds when I inhaled.

    "Oh, go away, you ridonculous pterosaur," he groaned, pushing my neck aside.

    "A what?" I screeched. Was I supposed to be offended?

    "Can you stop screeching in my ear?"

    Dan definitely did not understand me, but for some reason, I understood him. I did not let his naïve behavior steal my curiosity.

    "Do you want to do this the hard way?" he added. "Fine." He lowered the circular objects on his head. They hid his eyes behind the grayness. He balled his claws and threatened me with them. "Put up your dukes."

    "For the love of–!" Mom's head shot out of the pile of dirt. "Get rid of him, Messummer!"

    "Is she your mom?" Dan asked me. Good, I wasn't the only one who thought Mom was insane.

    I gave my new friend a quick nod. It was strange. The confession changed his whole emotional state.

    "Oh," he said, suddenly saddened. The round objects over his eyes fell to his neck. He lowered his claws to his sides and clutched his leg.

    Dan limped past me. He headed out to the ledge I had been standing on before and plopped down on his backside, pulling his knees close to his chest. For a good while, he admired the pink and orange sunrise.

    My eyes rolled over to Mom. She was just as confused as I was. "Was it something I said?" she asked.

    I inhaled deeply. All right, Messummer, you've got this. I knew what would lift Dan's spirits. What I felt was an instinct. I had never met this creature before. Yet, there was something familiar about him. I rose to my full height and stumbled out to him. That was what happened when you weren't used to walking.

    He and I shared glances. Roars of my kind overtook the wonderful, cloudless sky. Everybody was out on their morning hunt.

    "Look, I'm sorry," Dan finally told me. "I'm just stressed. The truth is, I love the Quetzalcoatlus. It was my mom's favorite prehistoric creature."

    Oh, I saw what he was getting at. It looked like we had something in common.

    "I told her I would find one and name her 'Becca', after her," Dan said with a small smile.

    Dude, my name was Messummer. I did not think you could change that. Lowering my head, I sniffed the caked blood on his leg.

    "Oh, this." Dan gently patted his leg. "I got it in the Paleozoic Era when PPMC and I crash-landed in a coal swamp." The second he said that, he slapped himself in the face. "Oh, what am I saying? It's a pterosaur, Dan. It doesn't understand you. It doesn't know what the Paleozoic Era is."

    While it was true I did not know the meaning behind all those strange terms he used, he was lying to himself when he said I didn't understand him. He and I sat in silence for a few minutes, and then I perked up. I grabbed the back of the covering over his upper body and scooped him up from the ground.

    "Hey! Hey!" he shouted, throwing his arms. "What are you doing?"

    "Yes, Messummer, what are you doing?" Mom, who had come out to see what was going on, gave me a funny look.

    "I'm doing what I told you last night," I argued. "I'm taking him for a walk." And just like that, I dropped Dan off the ledge. He fell toward the valley's meandering stream. It blended in well with the valley's greenness.

    I dropped down after Dan, but I waited until he almost hit the stream before I made the announcement: "Time for us to have some fun!" I caught him and tossed him onto my head. We zoomed past herds of long-necked creatures, three-horned ones, and then ones that had hard, spiky shells–all who wanted a drink from the watering hole. A few, long-necked beasts ate leaves off the tallest branches of the highest trees. Spit covered their lips while they chewed.

    I flapped my wings as hard as I could. Wind gushed off them.

    Screaming, Dan grabbed my crest. I did not want to scare him; I wanted him to see the wonders of my world.

    I flew in a straight pattern, climbing higher and higher into the sky. I then made a sharp turn and headed toward the edge of the valley where the large body of water–the bright, blue ocean–was. Waves crashed into one another and threw foam, like when a sharp-toothed monster threw away the bones of its prey. Avoiding them, I joined a few more creatures of my kind. I made sure to jump into the center of the herd. We synchronized our flight patterns. We beat our wings at the same time, and then we dove down to the ocean's surface. Water spewed up behind us, like lava from an erupting volcano. We avoided herds of long-necked water beasts by flying under their chins. My eyes rolled up to Dan.

    A huge smile covered his weary face. I knew he enjoyed creatures like me. "Whoo-hoo!" he cheered. "Look at this Quetzalcoatlus go, go, go!"

    The other flyers were confused by his presence. "He's a friend," I told them. I broke off from the herd so Dan and I could have some time alone. My wings beat slower, so now instead of soaring, we merely glided across the ocean. The sun's warmth massaged our backs, telling us how blessed we were to be alive.