4.14: Another encounter with angry stones

Heading what obviously isn’t north but more like west or perhaps north-west, Lottie and pTravis enter mountain country. By now Lottie has ‘unwrapped’ Pebble though is a little unsure what to try to feed it. They avoid towns because in all of them people are acting strangely, smashing machinery, suspicious of strangers. It is as though civilisation is rapidly regressing to a simpler, more primitive age.

Cautiously, they try to stay in the valleys rather than traverse the exposed fellsides as it is still winter. But reaching a quiet valley-head, they are surrounded by awakened stones. 

pTravis, bitten on foot and wing, seems unable to subdue what are, after all, stones with snapping teeth. 

Suddenly Lottie realises that, however the stones do move, they don’t have legs. Surely she and pTravis can simply run away: “Fly you fool!” she cries, picking up Pebble and haring off.

pTravis looks a strange mixture of surprised and hurt but hurries after her and away from the stones. 

Later, Lottie mulls over the fact that a full grown young adult pterodactyl with wings and claws was, in fact, less helpful in extricating them from a scrape with the angry stones than a small limbless ‘pea’ had been. Curious.