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I watched as Tycho crater formed before our eyes. When a cloud moved in, I was extremely disappointed to have missed the rest of this cosmic event. Still... "Oh, that is good. Very. Very. Very good."

Nightmare Moon frowned at me. "Explain."

"This is my world, a long time in the past. We call that crater you just made 'Tycho'."

She regained her intensity, and almost interrogated me - "How long in the past?"

"I don't recall off the top of my head. I'll do better looking at the plants and animals, since that's my real specialty - but a few dozen million years, I think."

She drew herself up and commanded, "Find out how long."

I bowed, and looked around in the dark. Pop quiz on paleontology! Find out when you are, based on these creatures. Let's see what we have. A lot of darkness. Hmm.

"Your majesty, I am extremely tired. I have not slept appreciably in well over a day. With your permission, I shall start in the morning."

She stared, and flame flickered in those eyes. I gulped.

She looked high, and declared, "We will need shelter, for the coming day."

She focused and assembled a two room wood frame and board wall, thatch-roofed house from nearby parts. I'm sure the process would have been very impressive if I could see what she was doing, but the black magic acting in the dark didn't make much of an impression.

When she was done, a gap in the clouds let me make out two doors - apparently our rooms did not adjoin. I went in through the right, narrower door into the smaller room. There was a fluffy pile of grass on a dried-clay floor. It made a pretty decent bed, and I lay down.

The various problems facing me ran through my head about once each, then I slept like a rock.

When I woke, I checked around the house. The other side was closed, and I did not think it wise to disturb her. First order of business is paleobotany. Subspecialty, breakfast. I balanced Macidexia's huge hat with the brim on my forehead, and set out.

I set about finding likely-looking plants. A few flowers, berries, and leaves. I rubbed each against a part of the inside edge of my arm, photographing it against its spot. That would eliminate contact poisons from the things I was considering eating. I also found a lovely flower that was a tiny bit like a daisy. Enough that I was reminded of Cheerilee. I picked it and tucked it in the weave of the hat.

While searching for more things to test, I found a termite mound. Those shouldn't be poisonous. Would be simpler. I searched for a stick to fish the termites out. After a minute, I found one, substantially heavier than needed, but it'd do - nice hook on one end.

"Ahem". I looked up sharply came face to face with a pterosaur. It had skin wings spanning three meters, and was nearly as tall as me.

I brandished the stick and jumped back. "Whoa!"

"You are certainly the largest furry I've ever seen."

I lowered the stick. We're a lot further back than I thought! Also, how are there sapient pterosaurs? We're before people showed up, providing the anthropomorphic effect that enables the talking elephants, monkeys, rhinoceroces, et cetera.

He continued, "Not quite as amazing as that mountain flying up into the sky, but quite queer nonetheless. You can talk, can't you?" He suddenly got nervous. "Not a sharptooth, are you?"

"Yes. Yes, I can talk. I won't try to eat you."

"Excellent. I am a bit of a student of strange and mysterious things and creatures and events. Events as strange as last night, and creatures as strange as you, and things as strange as that... thing over there..." - he gestured to the house - "... are quite rare indeed. I do not presume to accuse, but simply by being here and being strange, the question arises: did you do the other two things?"

"No, but I know who did."

"Ah. Is it going to happen again?"

"No. Well, I see no reason for it to. She's calmed down a bit."

He lowered his wings a touch.

"Now, if you don't mind, I'll go get breakfast."

I stepped around him and headed to the termite mound. 'Fear factor' time. After the roller-coaster I've been on for the past half day, this should be easy.

It wasn't. But I eventually succeeded.

"That's quite a production, just for breakfast."

"I've never done this before. The food I'm used to won't exist for millions of years."

He perked up his head, started running, and took off. "Little fast sharpteeth! Two of them!"

Little fast sharpteeth? ... velociraptors? I took off for the house as fast as I could. I was only ten paces from it to start with, and I didn't know how much of a lead I had. I slammed the door shut and the first raptor smashed into it at full tilt, not having expected such a thing was possible. Its head busted right through the top panel of the door. That's no velociraptor - they're little! Utahraptor, perhaps? Well, smaller than that.

I whacked it with my stick, jamming the hook into its eye. It thrashed free, then up and back, pulling the door off its wooden hinges. It flailed about trying to free itself of the door frame with its long rear claws, but it had very poor angle and leverage, and the splinters pressing on its neck kept it from pulling too hard.

The other raptor, though, was right behind, crouching to lunge. I crouched to dodge aside. The raptor lunged, crescent claws out front. As I sidestepped out of the doorway, I swung my stick like a baseball bat. It caught the rear claw of the raptor's nearer ankle, and there was a crunching sound. It landed awkwardly on its other foot, turned to me, and I swatted at its neck. It dodged back, tried to put weight on the ankle I'd hit, and fell to the ground. I chopped at its head, connected with its upper neck. I repeated, and got it on the forehead. It stopped moving.

I tentatively regarded it as finished, and turned back to the other one. It had ripped the bottom half of the door to shreds, and was working on ripping out the middle bar.

"Hey! Do you talk?"

He stopped struggling for a moment. "Fuck you! You just killed my bro, and put my fucking eye out, you shithead!"

"Only because you rammed your head through a door like a moron. Oh, and the trying to eat us part. Yeah, I can't imagine why I might fight back."

"You fucking rat, you're meat."

"Rat? Are you fucking blind in your remaining eye? No, it's you who are meat. You know what we call you where I come from? Chicken. The cheapest meat." For all my trash talk, I couldn't quite see a clear approach to finish him off. He was too mobile for it to be a truly safe prospect. Maybe if I could come from his blind side...

Fortunately, I'd pissed him off enough that he charged before he was ready. He was fully capable of moving in the open, but the door frame draped around his neck caught on the house's frame, and he was brought up just short. I allowed one foot to get within his range for a moment, and he snapped at it. Stupid - I punished that with a clonk on the head. He was stunned, leaving him open to a solid execution stroke. Lucky. Very very lucky.

I checked that he was dead, and that the other one really was dead - yes, quite - and stepped out of the house. Nightmare Moon was standing in her doorway, staring at me.

Inside, I was lurching and swaying from just having nearly been killed and eaten, and also from just having killed. My advisor-to-Nightmare-Moon persona wouldn't be rocked by this. I leaned on the stick and said, "Based on these raptors, we're ninety million years back, with an expected error of, oh, fifteen million years - except that I'm absolutely sure it's not less than sixty-five point three million years. These years are three hundred sixty-five and a quarter days long." As I came down from my adrenaline, I felt faint. My leaning on the stick ceased to be casual.

Nightmare Moon hardly spared a glance at the rear end of the raptor sticking out of my doorway, but murmured, "With the enormous amounts of untapped energy here, we may make it. I must rest." She shut the door.

I sat down hard and rested for a minute. Once I didn't feel any tingling, I dragged the raptors out of my room - they were quite heavy, but I could just drag them - and wondered what to do with them. Burial seemed like a lot of work for animals that wouldn't expect it. Cooking... would cover the food situation, but I didn't want to stoop to eating former sapients. After a minute, the pterosaur landed nearby. "Did I see you right? You spoke with it? And understood it?" I nodded. "I'd heard rumors, but... what did he say? And who was that in there? What was it?"

"Let's get away from the door." I retrieved Macidexia's hat from where it had fallen in my sudden flight, then the magnifying glass from the table. I started a fire as we talked. Pterano, as he was called (seriously? I might as well be 'Uman'), was very talkative, curious, and full of himself. Once I had it going, he wanted to try making a fire, too.

Now that there was a fire, I had a more fearsome weapon against any predators that came by, unless they were tyrannosaurs or gorgosaurs, who might very well not notice such a small detail. I suppose if we see one of those I'll be able to pin down the era a bit better. Not looking forward to that.

With that in mind, I went hunting for rocks I could make a hammer or axe from. Pterano kept an eye out as he asked me questions. In particular, after hearing my muttering about the big guys, "What good are rocks going to do against a big sharptooth?"

"More wood. Bigger fire." If he's typical of these dinosaurs, though, this might be a highly ineffective defense.

Pterano nodded, staring at the flame. "To hold the fire in your hand without being burned? The very idea takes me back..."

"Back to when?"

"Nothing."

"Whatever you say." I found a cluster of promising rocks - sharp broken obsidian. I used one to cut a thin vine, then ground down two ends so it wouldn't cut through its bindings... tied it to my stick... and I had a long-handled axe. A rickety, small-bladed, loose axe.

Through that, Pterano had been ignoring me. "It was my greatest mistake. And the path to my redemption."

"Awesome. Can you keep an eye out for more... sharpteeth?" I picked some more pieces of obsidian, wrapped them in dry leaves, and pocketed them.

"I've wondered, from time to time, if there was something hidden in it after all, some power that I simply didn't have the time to draw out."

That got my attention. "What, where?"

"Nothing."

"What. Is. It."

"A stone of co-o-old fire."

Cold fire? Could be impregnated with alcohol, or something. "Does it burn blue?"

"I didn't see it fall, but perhaps." Oh, it fell. There goes the alcohol hypothesis. Probably just a run-of-the-mill meteorite.

"When I found it days later, it merely stood there at the end of its track, taunting me."

"Waait. It fell and left a track?"

"... yes."

"Normal rocks falling from the sky are fast enough that the ground just splashes. They don't leave tracks.. Yours... Well, let's take a look."

"Alas, it is buried now."

"How deep?"

Pterano shrunk back suddenly. More sharpteeth? I spun with my axe, and found Nightmare Moon. Near her, everything was dimmer. The sun, just above her, seemed to be eclipsed by her presence - literally.

I bowed, "Apologies if we kept you awake, your majesty."

She ignored me, focusing on Pterano. "Return to this stone. We will follow."

After a few moments of gibbering, Pterano swallowed his main objections and fell back on, "Shouldn't I guide you?"

"We will catch up with you tonight."

Pterano eyed the missing far end of the lake, and gulped. "It'll take more than a day to get there, even flying. Should I..."

"Go!"

He pulled himself up and replied with reasonable dignity, "All right. Threehorn Peak is where we're going. On the way, we will stop at the green ridge peak and the orange cliffs. I will see you tonight." He started running, then swooped up with a powerful stroke of his wings.

Nightmare Moon turned on me, and I suddenly realized I had never really seen her mad at me before. I supplicated, and waited.

"You fool! You nearly got yourself killed!" An odd time to mention this now, instead of earlier. "That was no chicken! Not even a giant chicken! If you meet some creature here that could kill you, tell me."

"Yes, your majesty."

"Now, get inside. We'll be active all night, and I can't have you falling asleep like a sun-lover. Or getting eaten."

The door to her half of the house swung open.