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Nightmare Moon noted the gigantic dinosaurs arrayed around us and the stone of cold fire. After a quick glance, she dismissed them and turned to me. "How long to the future should we go?"

"I don't know. At least sixty five million years, possibly as much as one hundred twenty."

She spat out, "That's no narrower a range than before! Wider, even!" As she spoke, she formed a bubble formed around us, blocking out the raised voices of the dinosaurs.

"Princess, our knowledge of this era was highly incomplete. I wouldn't have expected that this set of creatures lived within a million years of each other. I... were you aware of my dream yesterday morning?"

She narrowed her eyes. "If you have something to tell me from it, say it."

"There is a method we might be able to use to move forward in time millions of years, continuously rather than in jumps. If it works out, we could react to the rise of human civilization in time to catch a ride home. I do not know the details, though. In my dream, I had them, but either I forgot or I didn't really have them."

"What is this method?"

"To spin around really fast. Our subjective time would slow down..."

"Oh, that. Impressive that you knew of such a thing..." - she eyed me with new appreciation - "... but it is not viable. I will need to find a way to establish a stream of time, then ride it."

She turned to the stone. It was as large as a house - or, more in context, a grown brachiosaur.

I looked out of the bubble, tried to imagine the emotions. Why had they believed me so quickly? Simply that they were children? Had something terrible happened lately?

And then it struck me: they're wild animals, only lately granted the ability to grasp the desperation of their situation. They're the middle, not the top of the food chain. Death is so very ordinary.

I found myself drying tears as I saw Littlefoot approach despite being nudged away by his grandfather. He looked at me reproachfully, and said something I couldn't hear through the bubble.

I've got to save them. I can. We can take eggs, and perhaps the little ones. If they'll come. Nightmare Moon might be able to simply abduct them. But what then? A tiny population, where? Home? Equestria? And how to get her to actually do it?

Still concerned with the stone, Nightmare Moon shook her head. "Ah. I see. Ha! The power here is locked up, and the key... despair. Omar, prepare yourself." Her horn began to glow more brightly, and she grew ominous, her blackness spreading out for the first time since that first night.

"No!" I cried out, trying to sound resolute rather than fearful - and, I think, doing a decent job. "Not yet!"

"You will address me as 'princess' or 'your highness'. You have a serious concern?" The dark cloud shrank, but became more concentrated.

If kissing her ass would save the dinosaurs, I was willing to do it. "Yes, princess. These creatures are weak compared to you, but they are strong compared to most ponies, and could stand against the demons. If you save their lives from the doom I told them of, they may be willing to serve you. Simply taking them away from their marginal life in this dangerous land might earn their loyalty."

She looked them over intently for the first time. "Yes, an army of dragons would be an asset."

"These are..." I'd been about to say "aren't dragons" but realized that wouldn't help my case, so I stopped.

"Yes. This is an excellent idea. I can almost feel the rightness to it. With such starting beasts, with such ambient power, with this stone of cold fire to forge their temperament and the elements of harmony to render the chimera fundamental... yes. This is enough. We can get started immediately."

The bubble fell, and Nightmare Moon announced to the crowd, "You live here in fear. Fear of the everyday, and fear of the end. These fears are well founded. We know of a time when all of you and all of your children and theirs, are dead. I have magic that will make you strong. You will live, and your descendants will be the greatest and most terrible of creatures: dragons."

The normally skeptical chief was silenced by her display of power, but grandfather longneck quietly said, "And if we do not wish to be terrible?"

Nightmare Moon hadn't considered this, but after a second supplied, "Dragons do not often use their terrible power."

The chief triceratops demanded, "And what in return?"

"Service - not of you, but of your descendants."

"What kind of life is that? To live for you? Think again."

I raised my hand before she could do anything rash. She calmed herself and turned to me. I nodded deeply and said, "Princess, you do not need very much service. Think how little dragons would actually help, day-to-day. Perhaps have them on call, for a day at a time, say, with a guarantee that they come and go in peace, and hold no grudge - and you can call no dragon more than once? Keep in mind that we can't make a deal that can't have been in force during your youth - the dragons cannot have already been serving you. And we need to drop them off to grow anyway."

The princess thought it over for mere seconds. "That will suffice." To the crowd, "Do you hear that? No dragon shall have to serve me more than one day. One day in a long life - far longer than your own - in return for the whole future of your people."

The triceratops growled, "What would we give up? Our home? Our children? Our eggs?"

Nightmare Moon smirked. "None of that. Nothing painful, even. Quite the opposite. I need five volunteers - all good friends, one from each of your kinds - to concentrate for some time. The rest of you, I need only an afternoon and evening of your time. You can return to your lives, knowing that you've secured your legacy."

The chief looked around. "We... we'll have to think about it."

Nightmare Moon flared her nostrils in impatience; I came up close and whispered, "Princess, is there a reason to rush?"

She controlled herself. "If they don't decide soon, they won't agree. And for it to be binding, I can't befuddle them."

"Then try smiling and relaxing... and drop the black cloud."

She looked about herself as if first seeing the black cloud. It receded. She sat on her haunches and tried to relax and smile. It didn't look particularly sincere, but it was better than before.

Satisfied for the time being, I remembered Littlefoot had tried to say something to me, so I went to him. He was lying with his head on the ground. "Hi. You were trying to tell me something?"

"Why did you tell us? It just made us unhappy."

"I'm sorry. I didn't think it through. But... now you have a chance for your families to continue on in the future. It may be bad news, but it's a good thing."

"Our families... are dragons really so much like us?"

"I'm not sure... Well, I know Spike. Okay. He's a bit like your Spike, but walks upright and is smart and sociable. If he has terrible powers, he hasn't used them. But he looks tough. I wouldn't want to tangle with him. And there are a great many other kinds of dragon." I remembered a tapestry in Canterlot. "Some have horns and crests. Some have long necks and tails, and grow as large as your kind, but they can fly."

Littlefoot picked his head up. "Longnecks that can fly?"

I nodded, and could see the gears turning. His huge eyes blinked as he looked at nothing. "That's something. But there are no regular longnecks?"

"Not when I left, no."

Papa Longneck's head suddenly swung in next to us. One of his huge eyes looked right at me. "We'd like to hear your story of what will happen to us. How will all of our children die?"

I followed him back, standing in the circle. The chief glared at me uncomfortably, then reiterated, "Tell us what you say is going to happen."

"I'll start long ago. The only animals were tiny. Hundreds of them could fit under my fingernails. They all lived in the ocean, floating about with hardly any control. Over time, some changed, and grew larger. They started growing shells and skeletons. Some became the fish, and all the creatures that only live in the sea, and the bugs. Later, some of the fish changed to be able to go on land, and then got better at it, with legs instead of fins. Over time, these grew and changed, and became a wide variety of creatures that lived on the land. From time to time, something terrible would happen - a huge volcano, or very large rocks falling from the sky, or just things getting cold, or dry, or some other animals moving in and competing - and life would get very difficult. Many of the creatures would die off, but those that lived would grow back, and change in new ways. After a few cycles like this, we come to where we are now. You are some of the greatest creatures that ever lived, dominating the Earth for dozens of millions of years!

"But in some dozens more millions of years, a big rock will fall from the sky - the biggest in a long time indeed. Dust will fill the air, and things will get very cold. Most plants die. Most animals die. Some live, but you large dinosaurs are not among them. Life recovers, and after a long time, the furries you know grew up and changed to include creatures like me, and like her. We learned to use tools, to build. We're moving to prevent things like that from ever happening again. And if we can cooperate now, we'll save you too, so that the Earth's greatest creatures will last long into the future."

The chief grunted. "That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."

Others repeated, "Ridiculous" - "Impossible" - "Terrible".

Grandma longneck was whispering to grandpa longneck, and he back - then she objected, "The longnecks warded off stones from the sky before. We can again."

I was so confused I didn't even have a response for a moment - Cera face-footed, resoundingly muttering, "Oh brother. There they go."

Rather than confront her head on, I said, "I didn't say ordinary rocks. I said a big rock. It left a hole in the ground much larger than the Great Valley. Much much larger."

"We can and we did." She was somewhat disappointed by the reception of her claim among the others, but I still wasn't near having their general acceptance.

I looked around among them, and found two who were silent. I couldn't place just what they were. A sort of dromoceiomid? Knowing only skeletons, I could get no guidance from the wild colors all over, or the rainbow coloring on their faces.

My heart leapt. They were rainbow faces - what Pinkie Pie had advised me of! I addressed them directly: "What do you think?"

The nearer one looked around a little, and walked forward tentatively. She said, "We think you are a long way from home, child."

"And my two minute tale of the origin of species?"

The rainbow-face looked around to the others, more confidently. "You told them the truth."

The chief snarled, "Where did you come from? You weren't invited here."

She replied, "It seemed like something big was happening, so we dropped by."

The male approached alongside her, adding, "We have traveled further than you, seen more. And we say, he's telling the truth about what has been. That is - more or less - how life developed here."

They're aliens. Or time-travelers like us? I certainly haven't seen signs of a technological civilization here.

The chief humphed. "And the rest? This big rock that kills us all?"

The female said, "Quite possible, and there is not the slightest thing the longnecks could do to help. You have at least a million years before it strikes. Beyond that, we cannot say. I am inclined to believe him."

Aliens, then.

The chief looked around. "I don't trust you much more than I trust them. Last time I saw you, you lured Cera out of the great valley."

Cera, listening from the back, protested, "And we saved Ducky! They helped us save her!"

The male rainbow-face stepped forward until he was well into the chief's personal space. "I can see the signs. Take their deal, or go extinct. Accept it, and live as a species. It's that simple."

The triceratops shoved the rainbow-face and fell right through him. A hologram?

The other dinosaurs - and even Nightmare Moon - gasped. Murmurs rolled through the crowd. I hadn't expecting it, but I was far from shocked.

The female rainbow-face added, "We can't help you. We'd happily push that rock aside, but as you can see, pushing on things isn't something we can do, here." From a shift in tone, I got the feeling that she was lying about pushing things - but not about her inability to help.

Ducky's mother came forward. "I accept." she said. "So many wonders. And the world is so terrible, who knows what can happen?"

One by one, then in large groups, they agreed to the deal. Last were the two elder longnecks and the chief. Looking to each other for support, they too finally assented.

Nightmare Moon looked to me, pleased, though she spared a concerned glance to the rainbow faces - they backed well off, and watched.

When Nightmare Moon demanded five friends, one from each kind, the volunteers were obvious - the children I'd spoken with.

Nightmare Moon set them about the elements of harmony and gave each of them brief instructions. They closed their eyes and faced in. She flew up onto the stone of cold fire.

"Omar, join me here."

I climbed up after her. Once I was halfway up, her horn began glowing. A large translucent egg appeared in front of her, tumbling and spinning.

Then she intoned, loudly: "Make them promise!"

The dinosaurs, not counting the rainbow faces, repeated surprisingly precisely and synchronously, as if reading off a chant, "Our unlaid - unhatched - our children - our dragons. One day is not too much to give for your lives. Answer the call of Nightmare Moon. Serve the one responsible for your birth, for our survival."

She focused a few more seconds, then reorganized and strained. "Whatever you do, stay on the rock. At least, touch it."

"Why?" But no answer came. Soon, the adults were milling about, breaking their species divisions... and then nuzzling... and then mating.

Of course, given their purpose, to mix and make dragons, it wasn't too surprising that not a single one of them was mating with one of their own species, but it was still odd-looking: a stegosaur male mounting a triceratops was the least odd. A parasaurolophus jammed himself up against grandma longneck's enormous under-tail, presumably achieving some sort of penetration. None of them seemed to have the slightest self-consciousness or were giving any indication that this was in any way out of the ordinary. All of the sounds, though, were muffled.

I glanced down - the five friends were perfectly focused on the elements, which seemed to be completely absorbing them.

Nightmare Moon had her horn to the stone. I recalled what she'd said about temperament - that the stone would set that. Was she drawing out all of the coldness, all the fire, and giving it to dragons? I heard her murmuring clearly, her words guiding the development. And they didn't sound like good guidance - was that 'deceit' in there? And 'selfishness'?

"What are you doing to them?"

Her horn dimmed for a moment. "I know how dragons ended up. If I try to make them some other way, something will come up that change them back - and that'd ruin that promise."

It seemed unassailable, but there was something wrong about putting, say, 'hypocritical defensiveness' into someone's personality without their knowledge. I tried to think of a way to stop her, but was mesmerized by the now huge orgy in front of us. As I watched, a longneck came in a small geyser that drenched a parasaurolophus, obviously too small to accommodate him directly. Things were getting rowdier and rowdier.

The rock swayed as the ground shook. When I regained my footing, Nightmare Moon interrupted her murmurs to say, "I meant it - stay up here. I don't want any human in the mix." She said it almost mischievously, then returned to her work.

The orgy went on for what seemed like hours, all participants seemingly insatiable and impatient. Newcomers filtered in from outside the great valley - a male pachycephalosaur, a female ankylosaur - and, after a bit longer, a tyrannosaur arrived on the scene. She lay back, letting the comparatively diminutive pteranodons mush themselves up against her slit. When they were finished, one of the longnecks brushed them aside and gave her a proper mounting.

The earth around those two shook under a degree of pounding that couldn't have been normal for either of their species (could it?). The stone shook more than ever, even as the rest of the orgy seemed to be subsiding.

Nightmare Moon snarled, "Where is this coming from? Laziness? I suppose it fits, but I hadn't gotten there yet. Gluttony? That hardly fits at all!"

"Princess... don't forget that some dragons aren't all bad. You might want to recall their virtues. Haven't you known any?"

Nightmare Moon turned to me, angry - but before she could say berate me, she paused. Then, softer, she said, "Artie."

She stopped putting anything into the stone. "Oh, Artie. Now I understand." She looked out over the field of dinosaurs, then to the giant floating egg. "When you left, only then were you doing what I made you to do. All of our time together was just... my fighting your destiny. One I myself have just set over you."

Awesome! Personal breakthrough time! Goodbye, Nightmare Moon!

But no - she re-hardened, and gained resolve. "Now that I understand, I can work freely. But where... loyalty? Generosity? Where is this coming from? Did I? ... " She peered over the edge - I followed. A tail was leaning against the stone. A spiked tail, connected to Spike, the stegosaur, still focused on the elements.

Nightmare Moon's horn glowed. She was about to lift his tail aside. She was very precariously balanced on the side of the stone. And I was right next to her. And she'd just rejected her opportunity to make things better. This seemed like the only chance left to do anything.

"Look out!" I shouted, and shoved her to the side, as if out of the way of something. Not directly off the side of the stone, but enough that she'd fall.

She spread out her wings to stabilize, and I cursed - if she didn't fall, I was cooked. But she looked back past me, and to my surprise didn't look confused, but alarmed. I glanced back myself and found a longneck's tail headed straight at us.

This time when I leapt into her it was purely reflexive. Her wings spread, and I dragged against the stone, but she floated free.

I held one hand against the stone, following her advice, and watched as she landed and looked around in a daze. Will she remember all this? If not, that frees my hand a bit. But I can't count on that.

The sounds grew, their muffling stripped away as Nightmare Moon's magic subsided.

"Cera?" It sounded like Littlefoot.

I turned to the little ones. Apparently, the noise had disturbed them. Cera was looking out at the adults. "What... whoa. That's..."

"Hot." Littlefoot completed.

She blinked, and slunk over to him.

Slightly alarmed, he called, "Cera? Cera!"

Petri said, "I not hear what she tell you, but I think you supposed to stare at the stone... oh..."

Cera had nipped Littlefoot on the neck, and they were walking in circles sniffing each other.

Petri went on, "Cera not old enough to lay eggs! Stay here and watch the stone!"

Ducky added, "If you really want to, you can do that later. Right now, please stay with what you were asked to do?" But they didn't slow down or even notice, continuing their hasty romancing, and closing in on foreplay.

Holding one foot against the stone, I reached out and grabbed Littlefoot by the tail and pulled him hard enough that he backed up to relieve the tension. As his tail touched the stone, he shook his head and looked about.

Cera followed, still interested. Littlefoot dodged, admonishing her; and when I tried to pull her, she swung her horns at me - slowly, fortunately, so I didn't lose my arm. But the grazing contact with me seemed to weaken the aphrodisiac effect, and when she finally caught Littlefoot, and he was still touching the stone, she slowly recovered.

"Cera!"

"Umm. Right. Our stones."

They managed to hold concentration long enough to get back to their spots. That resolved, I looked around for Nightmare Moon. She was about twenty meters off, lined up for a turn at the pachycephalosaur, one of the few males still going. He filled the parasaurolophus he was mounting; a stegosaur stepped up, and he was erect again in mere seconds - and Nightmare Moon was next. If he can recover one more time, which seems likely, she's in for a rough time. And I think maybe the stone has had enough time without her.

"Hey! Over here!"

Nightmare Moon and the sperm-soaked ankylosaur after her shifted their attention my way. The ankylosaur began a galumphing run, so Nightmare Moon began flying. I climbed up the stone, and Nightmare Moon followed, then landed, and... "Ugh. I never cast that without falling prey to it." - she was back.

Then, realizing what she'd just said, she stopped; I pretended not to have heard. "I'm pleased to see you avoided... serious entanglements, princess."

She nodded. "It appears I did, and I presume I have you to thank." Ah! She didn't remember after all!

"No thanks needed, your majesty. It is only my duty."

In the excitement, she had forgotten about Spike's tail, so he continued pumping in whatever natural virtues and vices he had. After a few minutes, the egg was full. Nightmare moon sighed in satisfaction. "It appears we have succeeded. The chimera isn't quite perfect... but dragons aren't perfect chimeras."

Her voice was odd - softer, almost ordinary. Almost confiding. She really trusts me.

She gestured to the sack I had been carrying the elements in. "Prepare a nest for us to carry the eggs in."

"And the elements of harmony?"

She snarled. "Harmony resists change, no matter how needed. Those on the bottom take what they get rather than what is just. You can leave them."

As I gathered grass and warmed it against my body, I thought back to the great civil resistance movements and doubted her claim... but those cases won't help her: she doesn't have a mass movement behind her. Any movement at all. Any hope. There's just no way for her to get what she really wants - the love of the people just like her sister enjoys, applying to herself and the night - and she has to know it. She knew it all along, which is why she became Nightmare Moon in the first place. But surely there are enough night-owl ponies? She probably just needs to find some_. Or she could stop attaching herself so strongly to the night, just allowing herself to be appreciated as a pony._

Nightmare Moon brought several eggs, gathered from nooks and crannies where the reproductive energies had gathered - and not, surprisingly, from the vaginas of the females. As I prepared the second layer of the nest, Spike silently approached with another. I put it in.

Cera said, "Hey! That's from your mom's..." Littlefoot batted her in the face with his tail, saying, "Then get some of your mom's."

Ah. They're sending dinosaur eggs. Good for them.

Nightmare Moon brought a second batch, not noticing the additions. In the end, we had thirty dragon eggs of various sizes, and two brachiosaur eggs, and four of each of the other kinds. Most of the weight was from two of the dinosaur eggs and the brachiosaur eggs. Nightmare Moon levitated the sack to ease their weight on each other - if she hadn't, half of the eggs would have cracked. As for the elements of harmony, I simply held them in my hands, not hiding that I was taking them. Nightmare Moon did not object.

She said, "Now are you ready?"

I looked around, soaking in my last view of the cretaceous (or jurassic, possibly?).

The male rainbow face popped up suddenly. Nightmare Moon bristled, but did not interfere. He said, "We checked carefully - there are no rocks capable of mass extinction due to hit for at least the next twenty million years, possibly longer. I believe that helps?"

I answered, "Yes it does, actually. That means we can make our first jump eighty five and a half million years, and not have a chance of overshooting. Thank you very much."

Nightmare Moon begrudgingly nodded in acknowledgement of the significant help we had just received.

And then, she focused on the stone of cold fire. I gave one last wave to the kids before the despair struck.