Recipe for Romance: Nutmeg Carrots

Maya kicked her feet up on the railing and listened to the birds chirping with their territorial songs. She still spoke their languages, a modified version of the same sounds she remembered from her teenage years when she’d migrated with her family across much of what was now northern Montana. Of course, back then, the language had been spoken by what humans named velociraptors, Compsognathus, and other small predators. Sue the Tyrannosaur had used that language, too, but she’d been a mean, crotchety old bitch, and Maya hadn’t been sad to hear of her passing.

Over the millennia, the evolutionary tract the birds had taken kept some of the language alive and Maya enjoyed listening to them gossip and squabble in the mornings with her tea. When she was in her true dinosaur form, she sometimes answered them, or scared them witless and quiet.

More often the latter than the former.

Maya had evolved, too. It had been strange to wake up in a smaller body, one with delicate skin that burned in the sun. She’d panicked at first, desperate to find her original form. It had taken her days to calm down enough to access the part of herself that would always be a large and in charge Maiasaur with olive green, leathery skin striped in cream.

Thank the ManyGods for that.

She’d been in her human guise for roughly five hundred years and she’d seen a lot of shit come her way. Which was why she’d settled in Deadman when she’d had the chance and staked her claim on her land.

And the town came by its name honestly.
 
The first white man who’d shown up on her land had tried to use her for his sexual needs without her consent ended up crushed, broken in more places than he had bones, and draped over a boulder as a warning to others.