Chapter Two

Running was much easier for Aimes than it was for Pawson, but the stubby little bear did his best to catch up as a wave of leathery wings flapped above their heads. The downdraft knocked Pawson onto his tummy. When Aimes noticed, she doubled back, grabbed him by the paw, and kept running with him at her side.

The bats were much larger than any bats Aimes had ever seen before, although her experience with different breeds of bats was more limited than breeds of cats. She could name at least four types of big cats without any trouble at all, but she only knew two types of bats. Soon, the screeching and flapping subsided as the bats dispersed into the bright blue sky and Aimes and Pawson stopped running to catch their breath.

"I wonder what spooked them so much?" Aimes wondered out loud. Pawson shrugged his fuzzy little shoulders.

"Maybe bats have good noses?" he answered, not entirely serious.

"I think they have good ears."

"It could be both, like with dogs?" Pawson liked to talk to Aimes about hypotheticals. She was a very bright girl, but sometimes it reminded Pawson how much she still needed him.

"Does that mean bats are colorblind?" Aimes asked.

"I think they are actually blind." Pawson said. "Or close to it."

"Got it." Aimes nodded. "So that's why there are no seeing-eye-bats."

"Yup. That's the reason." Pawson sighed, taking stock of the jungle around them, but Aimes had already started looking at something else on the ground. Egg shells. Big ones. Aimes squatted down, leaning forward to get a closer look.

"Maybe we shouldn't touch those," Pawson cautioned.

"They must be from an ostrich," Aimes said, poking the shell with a single finger to turn it over. "They lay the biggest eggs in the world, you know. And these are much bigger than any egg I've seen."

Aimes sat herself down on the ground once again, pulling off her backpack to fetch one of her picture books. Fish. Berries. Birds. Eggs! She grabbed it by the spine and opened the cover.

"Should we really be doing this right now?" Pawson asked, looking back toward the cave. It was just out of sight.

"Bats don't attack people, Pawson," Aimes said. "We just startled them, and they startled us."

"Startled isn't the word I would use," Pawson muttered, taking a few steps around the bend to get a better look at the surroundings. Meanwhile, Aimes skimmed through her picture book, looking for an egg that matched the pattern of the shell she found. It wasn't an ostrich egg, that much was clear.

"Uh... Aimes..." Pawson's called, but Aimes was still searching for a match. Her picture books were very thorough, going so far as to include things that couldn't actually be found. That very reason was how Aimes identified the egg.

"Aimes?" Pawson said again, a little more urgently.

A tyrannosaurus rex? Aimes thought. But that was a kind of dinosaur, and those had been extinct for millions of years. Aimes continued comparing the egg to the picture in the book when Pawson finally got her attention.

"Amelia!"

"Oh my gosh, what?" Aimes turned around to see Pawson looking up at something. Curiously, she got to her feet and walked around the bend to see what was so important.

In front of them, the jungle opened up into a vast plain of tall grass and bushes. In the distance, Aimes and Pawson saw a herd of dinosaurs - the kind with the long necks - eating from the tallest trees. For a moment, both Aimes and Pawson were awash with wonder, until their natures caught up with them.

Both of them spoke the exact same words at the exact same time:

"We have to go!"

The two of them looked at one another. When Pawson said ‘go’, he meant go away, away from a dinosaurs, away from wherever they were. But when Aimes said ‘go’, she meant go closer, toward the dinosaurs, toward adventure. And Pawson knew, when the two of them were at odds, who would usually get their way. His attempt to stand his ground was feeble, because Aimes had already slung her pack over her shoulder and started toward the dinosaurs.

"What if they eat us?" Pawson asked as they walked through the brush, checking behind him every so often.

"They're veggie-sauruses, Pawson. They’re like big cows, and cows never hurt anybody."

"That's not true," Pawson said nervously. "Bulls have big horns!"

"Yuhhuh, to protect the cows."

There was really no convincing Aimes otherwise, and no amount of Pawson’s concerns or thick shrubbery they had to push through could make a dent in her adventurous spirit. As the two of them got closer, the ground trembled and shook, but not from earthquakes. The creatures were the size of houses and ships, and they would walk from one place to the next without much grace. Even when they moved softly and slowly, the ground would rumble.

"See, Pawson? They're calm and happy! If there were any meat-asauruses around, these ones would all be in a tizzy. You worry too much!"

"You don't worry enough," Pawson countered. This was a bigger deal than just getting trampled on or eaten by dinosaurs; the whole space-time continuum could be at stake. "If we really travelled back to prehistoric times, then any action we take could affect the future." Then, in a moment of clarity, Pawson asked: "We can get back to the present, right?"

"Of course," Aimes said with confidence. "If we walk backwards through the bubble, it should take us back to where we started. But we need water, remember?"

Pawson sighed. Aimes was so much easier to manage when she and Pawson were the same size, but humans grew quite large and teddy bears didn't. The only way to get his way these days was to compromise.

"We can go see the dinosaurs," Pawson conceded, "then we find some water and return to our time. In the meantime, don't touch anything.”

"Sooo... when you say not to touch anything," Aimes pondered, trekking onward toward the dinosaurs, "what does that mean exactly?"

"It means don't touch anything, Aimes."

"So like... we're walking. Isn’t that touching the ground? And the plants?"

"And I don't like it," Pawson said. "But if it's the only way we can get back to the present then that's all we can do."

"So walking is okay. What about disturbing all those bats?”

"I’d rather not think about it," Pawson sighed. That was quite the interference, and it could mess with an entire ecosystem.

"What if I had a part of that T-rex egg in my shirt pocket?" Aimes asked, "That’s okay, right? They're all about the same, in terms of time travel problems?"

"Aimes."

"Pawson."

"Why do you have part of a dinosaur egg in your pocket?" Pawson knew that his friend wouldn’t have asked if she hadn’t already done it.

"You distracted me!" Aimes said. "I had to put it somewhere."

Before Pawson could say anything else, Aimes pushed her way out of the brush and onto the flattened grass. A huge long-necked dinosaur stood towering above her, dozens of feet high. As it took a gentle step, a tremor shook the ground and Aimes vibrated along with it.

"This is so cool," Aimes said excitedly, hurrying toward the huge dinosaur. When she got up close, she put her hand on its foot, ignoring all of Pawson's advice.

"Aimes!" Pawson called after her. "No touching! We don't want to change the future!"

"Oh, right." Aimes took her hand off the dinosaur just as it lifted its foot to step away. She looked up at the giant creature before tilting her head in thought. Pawson finally caught up to Aimes, just in time to notice that thoughtful look on her face. He would recognize that look anywhere: Aimes had an idea.