Bastille shook her head. “Dinosaurs are never useful.”
“She certainly is a rude one, isn’t she?” asked the Triceratops.
“Tell me about it,” I replied, ignoring the dark look Bastille shot me. “Why are you dinosaurs here anyway?”
“Oh, we’re to be executed, I’m afraid,” Charles said.
The other dinosaurs nodded.
“What did you do?” I asked. “Eat somebody important?”
Charles gasped. “No, no. That’s a Librarian myth, good sir. We don’t eat people. Not only would that be barbaric of us, but I’m sure you would taste terrible! Why all we did was come to your continent for a visit!”
“Stupid creatures,” Bastille said, leaning against the door. “Why would you visit the Hushlands? You know that the Librarians have built you up as mythological monsters.”
“Actually,” Sing noted, “I believe the Librarians claim that dinosaurs are extinct.”
“Yes, yes,” Charles said. “Quite true. That’s why they’re going to execute us! Something about enlarging our bones, then putting them inside of rock formations, so that they can be dug out by human archaeologists.”
“Terribly undignified!” the T. Rex said.
“Why did you even come here?” Sing asked. “The Hushlands aren’t the type of place one comes on vacation.”
The dinosaurs exchanged ashamed glances.
“We… wanted to write a paper,” Charles admitted. “About life in the Hushlands.”
“Oh, for the love of…” I said. “Is everybody from your continent a professor?”
“We’re not professors,” the T. Rex huffed.
“We’re field researchers,” Charles said. “Completely different.”
“We wanted to study primitives in their own environment,” the Triceratops said. Then he squinted, looking up at Sing. “I say, don’t I recognize you?”
Sing smiled modestly. “Sing Smedry.”
“Why, it is you!” the Triceratops said. “I absolutely loved your paper on Hushlander bartering techniques. Do they really trade little books in exchange for goods?”
“They call the books ‘dollar bills,’” Sing said. They’re each only one page long – and yes, they do use them as currency. What else would you expect from a society constructed by Librarians?”
“Can we go?” Bastille asked, looking tersely at me.
“What about freeing us?” the Triceratops asked. “It would be terribly kind of you. We’ll be quiet. We know how to sneak.”
“We’re quite good at blending in,” Charles agreed.
“Oh?” Bastille asked, raising an eyebrow. “And how long did you last on this continent before being captured?”
“Uh…” Charles began.
“Well,” the T. Rex said. “We did get spotted rather quickly.”
“Shouldn’t have landed on such a popular beach,” the Triceratops agreed.
“We pretended to be dead fish that washed up with the tide,” Charles said. “That didn’t work very well.”
“I kept sneezing,” said the T. Rex. “Blasted seaweed always makes me sneeze.”