Roar!
Shoving his furs away, Oh-see-rah sat up and checked the cave’s mouth. Nothing had snuck in, but the campfire still glowed red-hot.
Ee-shee-na, his woman, got in his face. “Do something.”
“It’s the middle of the day. Just sleep it off.”
ROAR!
Now Oh-see-rah recognized the sound, so he reached for his loin cloth. “Let me stir the fire. Maybe flames will drive the T-Rex off.”
She burrowed into the furs. “I need sleep.”
He crawled to the fire and stirred the glowing embers with a stick until red and yellow tongues of flame shot toward the smoked ceiling. “That’ll scare it off.”
He squatted behind the flames and peered out.
ROOOOAAAAR!
His ears stinging, he cupped them with his palms. A reddish-brown tongue as long as his leg reached into the cave. “Take the children behind the Striped Stone.” The boulder had sunset reds and dawn yellow stripes and was their last line of refuge.
“I know. I know.” Ee-shee-na herded their four offspring toward the boulder.
Oh-see-rah reached for a wood-tipped throwing spear and held one end in the campfire until it burst into flames.
“Hurry!” screamed Ee-shee-na.
He dropped it in the spear-thrower and flung it at the T-Rex’s cave-like maw.
AAAAHHHNNN bellowed T-Rex as it pushed its jaws of dagger teeth into the cave. Oh-see-rah had driven paling stakes the size of small trees in the cave’s mouth, but it might be too little to hold off an enraged T-Rex.
He reached for his best throwing spear, its gleaming obsidian tip sharp enough to slice anything. Quickly wrapping the tip with dried moss, he rammed it into the flames and out again.
The T-Rex’s tongue snaked toward him. He slapped the spear in his spear-thrower and hurled it at the weaving, probing tongue.
LLLOOOAAANNN!
Something rammed into Oh-see-rah. Like a winged fowl, he flew through the air.
TO BE CONTINUED
Copyright 2021 Charles Suddeth
C. T. Suddeth 
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