~~~~
"So why did they all die?"
I asked my father as I observed the massive skeletons of the deceased monsters.
"They were too big," he
explained, "there just wasn't enough food."
"But if there wasn't enough
food how were they here in the first place?" I cocked my head curiously.
"Well," father scratched
his head, "this wasn't always a desert. Way back when, around the time I
was a boy this place was lush, green and full of life."
"Then where did all the green
go?" I posed a follow up question.
"Sometimes," he began,
"the weather can change. For some years you can expect it to rain every
other day, and then suddenly a few years go by with almost no rain. But here it
was real bad, one year they had less rain than usual, the next they had even
less, and so on. Eventually there was almost no rain, and no rain meant no
water, no water meant less green."
"Why did it stop raining?"
I inquired.
"That, I don't know," my
father admitted. "All the smart people I knew had long explanations, but I
didn't really understand any of it."
"Oh," I looked away.
"But if it was just the weather
going wrong, it might not have ended up like this," he continued.
"People were not happy about all the green going away, so they tried to
stop it, that didn't help much."
"If they tried to stop it, how
did it get worse?" I asked confused,
"Let me try to explain,"
father told me, "you know how when you get a cut, or pimple you're not
supposed to pick at it?"
"Yes," I confirmed.
"Well same idea," my
father explained. "People tried so hard to save the green, but they
weren't careful about how they tried to save it. They tried so many solutions,
but most of them weren't thought through very well. Eventually they destroyed
all the green that was left."
"Okay," I nodded, "so
then this place became a desert?"
"Yep," he replied.
"And then," I pointed to
the skeletons, "They started to die, because there was no green left,
right?"
"Correct," my father
smiled.
"What were they like?" I
looked up at him.
"Big, scaly, lots of
teeth," he explained. "Liked to growl at people like this.
Rawr!" He held up his hands and growled.
"Really," I laughed,
"so they were that mean?"
"Meanest things there ever
was," my father laughed as well. We shared a couple more laughs together
as we continued our long walk through the desert.
~~~~
This story was inspired by the artwork linked here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Yk4kYLet's see, landscape, giant monster skeletons that make people look like ants by comparison, yep I love this artwork.
I like summarized explanations of historical events, both in general and as a narrative device. It's probably why I majored in History. Regardless I based this story around conversations I had with my Mother back when I was younger, so the dialogue for this story came out really naturally for me.
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