She went at it until she was exhausted. At least she had faith in me, I guess. To be honest, from her perspective, it was probably something like “Giant lizard forces me to slap roach. Why?” And yet she kept on doing it.

Frieda you silly furball, he’s not a roach! He’s our good friend, Mr. Beetle.

I shook my head. I really need to stop personifying people and things, especially if it leads to me having conversations with myself...

Carefully, I hauled the beetle out, avoiding his hooked claws, then gestured, and she went back through the hole with me following. The beetle plugged up the hole again and I once more had a slight pang of “feelsbadman” for him.

Eh. He’d get over it or he’d die. One of them was gonna happen first.

I followed Frieda back to the front of the cave, raring with energy since I hadn’t done much while watching her fight. The beetle corpses had dried out, so there was no new blood to drink, which unfortunately, put a damper on my plan to gourmandize.

Furball and I got to the front room, and she looked at me curiously, maybe wondering what I would be up to for the rest of the night. I remembered the meat, and pointed to it.

She looked to me, and then back at the meat, then back to me, then back at the meat.

...

Man there had to be a deoderant joke in there somewhere…

Anyway, I tried communicating my thoughts to her, but all I could really do was point at the meat in frustration.

I want more!

I picked it up, acting like I was going to eat it, and pointed at it while it was near my mouth.

She might’ve understood, and began to shuffle out of the cave.

I dropped the meat onto the leaf with a gross splish, and followed her. Her nightly routine did intrigue me, after all.

It was completely dark outside, the only light from the moon overhead, washing down between the leaves. When Frieda noticed me following, she scampered back towards me, walking next to me with happy eyes.

Oh so you like it when the big dumb lizard goes out into the jungle with you, huh?

I idly wondered what a paleontologist might name a new species of dinosaur if they wanted the translation to be “big dumb lizard”. Brontosaurus meant “Thunder Lizard” or something.

Idiosaurus? Gigantomoronosaurus? Djaka, Jungle G-- Okay I’ll stop myself there before that thought gets sent into the world and he realizes what I was thinking.

Could be dangerous to taunt something like that.

At least I’m safe inside my mind.

I glanced at the fuzzball next to me as she scampered towards a tall tree. In the light of the moon I could see that it had scratches up and down the trunk, like deer during mating season, but covering far more surface area.

Frieda approached the tree and, without a moment of hesitation, leap upwards, digging her claws into the wood, and using her feet to kick herself further up the tree, until she was at the top.

Wow. It’s like a reverse spur climb.

She disappeared into the giant leaves atop the tree, and her natural anti-light build concealed her from me even more. Now I could see why her species was so good at scavenging at night.

Thunk!

A heavy, round fruit landed on the ground in front of me. It was grooved, like if you were to remove the peel from an orange and examine the slices. But it was hard, like a nut.

I tilted my head at the object.

Proto-coconut?

Macamme

A hard nut also called Saravani’s Gift, the shell can be cracked open by certain creatures to reveal the delectable fruit within.

Another few thunks accompanied the arrival of several more nuts, and then a scratching noise announced Frieda’s descent. She looked at me, clear pride in her eyes as she rolled the nuts into a pile.

Yes, I thought. Very good, intelligent, even. But how are you going to get them back to the cave?

She just stared at me, standing in front of her little pile of big nuts. I didn’t react. With a frown, she picked up one of the nuts, and held it towards me, pointing with her other hand towards the pile.

Oh.

I reached forward, scooping up the pile of nuts into my mouth, barely holding most of them. Frieda picked up the rest.

Then she started her shuffle back towards the cave. The little devil. She was using me as a packmule! I supposed it was only fair, though, after what I’d put her through.

We arrived back at the cave maybe fifteen minutes later. It certainly was harder to tell time now, with no digital clocks donning my walls, monitors, phone and television.

Wow. I never realized how much disrespect I had for clocks. Back then, I never cared about the time, because I could stay inside as long as I wanted to, sleep when I wanted to, and eat when I wanted to.

Now, life was definitely harder. And gauging time wasn’t easy. It was pretty much “stay out until you’re full or the sun goes down.”

It was a barbaric way to live. And yet, I found there was something enticing about it.

I don’t know. Maybe it was the game-y part of the world that made it so much fun to experience. Or maybe it was just that everything was new.

There was a saying, back where in the life I came from: “Born too late to explore the world. Born too early to explore space. Born just in time to explore dank memes.”

And as much fun as it was to explore those memes, the world was littered with depression, anxiety, suffering and all-around boredom.

This life? I had to fight to survive. The rewards felt so much more… rewarding.

Well, you let me know how it is for you if you ever wake up as a dinosaur. Truth be told, I’d be very interested in comparing experiences. You know where to find me, if you ever want to talk. Just fire a signal into the sky with my symbol, and I’ll come running.

Actually, that’s not a bad idea. I should make a “Dino Signal” for when I inevitably have people that need to call upon my super heroic awesomeness.

We entered the cave as I pondered the idea, primitive designs crowding my head.