Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

“Dinosaurs are never useful.”
    “She certainly is a rude one, isn’t she?” asked the Triceratops.
    “Tell me about it,” I replied, ignoring the dark look Bastille shot me. “Why are you dinosaurs here anyway?”
    “Oh, we’re to be executed, I’m afraid,” Charles said.
    The other dinosaurs nodded.
    “What did you do?” I asked. “Eat somebody important?”
    Charles gasped. “No, no. That’s a Librarian myth, good sir. We don’t eat people. Not only would that be barbaric of us, but I’m sure you would taste terrible! Why all we did was come to your continent for a visit!”
    “Stupid creatures,” Bastille said, leaning against the door. “Why would you visit the Hushlands? You know that the Librarians have built you up as mythological monsters.”
    “Actually,” Sing noted, “I believe the Librarians claim that dinosaurs are extinct.”
    “Yes, yes,” Charles said. “Quite true. That’s why they’re going to execute us! Something about enlarging our bones, then putting them inside of rock formations, so that they can be dug out by human archaeologists.”
    “Terribly undignified!” the T. Rex said.
    “Why did you even come here?” Sing asked. “The Hushlands aren’t the type of place one comes on vacation.”
    The dinosaurs exchanged ashamed glances.
    “We… wanted to write a paper,” Charles admitted. “About life in the Hushlands.”
    “Oh, for the love of…” I said. “Is everybody from your continent a professor?”
    “We’re not professors,” the T. Rex huffed.
    “We’re field researchers,” Charles said. “Completely different.”
    “We wanted to study primitives in their own environment,” the Triceratops said. Then he squinted, looking up at Sing. “I say, don’t I recognize you?”
    Sing smiled modestly. “Sing Smedry.”
    “Why, it is you!” the Triceratops said. “I absolutely loved your paper on Hushlander bartering techniques. Do they really trade little books in exchange for goods?”
    “They call the books ‘dollar bills,’” Sing said. They’re each only one page long – and yes, they do use them as currency. What else would you expect from a society constructed by Librarians?”
    “Can we go?” Bastille asked, looking tersely at me.
    “What about freeing us?” the Triceratops asked. “It would be terribly kind of you. We’ll be quiet. We know how to sneak.”
    “We’re quite good at blending in,” Charles agreed.
    “Oh?” Bastille asked, raising an eyebrow. “And how long did you last on this continent before being captured?”
    “Uh…” Charles began.
    “Well,” the T. Rex said. “We did get spotted rather quickly.”
    “Shouldn’t have landed on such a popular beach,” the Triceratops agreed.
    “We pretended to be dead fish that washed up with the tide,” Charles said. “That didn’t work very well.”
    “I kept sneezing,” said the T. Rex. “Blasted seaweed always makes me sneeze.”
    I glanced at Bastille, then back at the dinosaurs. “We’ll come back for you,” I told them. “She’s right – we can’t risk exposing ourselves right now.”
    “Ah, very well, then,” said Charles the Pterradactyl. “We’ll just sit here.”
    “In our cages,” said the T. Rex.
    “Contemplating our impending doom,” said the Triceratops.
    The reader may wonder why one of the dinosaurs was consistently referred to by his first name, while the others were not. There is a very simple and understandable reason for this.
    Have you ever tried to spell Pterodactyl?
    We slipped out of the dinosaur room. “Talking dinosaurs,” I mumbled.
    Bastille nodded. “I can only think of one group more annoying.”
    “Talking rocks,” she said. “Where do we go next?”
    “Next door.” I pointed down the hallway.
    “Any auras?” Bastille asked.
    “No,” I replied.
    “That doesn’t necessarily mean the sands won’t be in there,” Bastille said. “It would take some time for the sands to charge the area with a glow. I think we should check them.”
    I nodded. “Sounds good.”
    “Let me open this one,” Bastille said. “If there is something dangerous in there, it would be better if you didn’t just stumble in and stare at it with a dumb look.”
    I flushed as Bastille waved Sing and me back. Then she crept up to the door, placing her ear against the wood.
    I turned to Sing. “So… do you really have talking rocks in your world?”
    “Oh, yes,” he said with a nod.
    “That must be odd,” I said