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ArtistKeep as is
Ernstfuchsasaurus lived in a blue cathedral at the edge of the Cretaceous Period.
He wore embroidered robes and a crown heavy with moons, pomegranates, and little gold birds that whispered in Hebrew.
For sixty-five million years he had dated only other dinosaurs.
They were beautiful, but their conversations always drifted toward extinction.
One spring, while standing in a moonlit forest and contemplating a pomegranate, he met a small mammal the size of a teacup.
She was warm-blooded and smelled faintly of cedar chips and rain.
Her name was Eloise.
She had soft fur, bright eyes, and an astonishing ability to remain alive while everything larger than herself was collapsing into history.
Ernstfuchsasaurus was immediately enchanted.
He had never dated anyone who could fit into one of the jeweled folds of his sleeve.
They began meeting on Friday evenings.
He would bring symbolic fruit and fragments of illuminated manuscripts.
She would bring acorns.
Sometimes they sat together without speaking, which is one of the oldest forms of courtship.
“Your heart beats very fast,” Ernstfuchsasaurus said.
“That is how mammals say grace,” Eloise replied.
He found this unbearably charming.
The other dinosaurs were skeptical.
“She is too small,” said a tyrannosaur with a monocle.
“She will inherit the earth,” Ernstfuchsasaurus answered, adjusting his crown.
As the age of reptiles flickered like a candle in a stained-glass window, Ernstfuchsasaurus and Eloise continued their impossible romance.
They walked beneath fern trees and meteor showers.
They shared pomegranate seeds.
They listened to the moon.
When the great asteroid arrived, it was like a cosmic eviction notice nailed to the sky.
The dinosaurs vanished into museums, dreams, and the footnotes of geology.
But before he disappeared, Ernstfuchsasaurus bent his jeweled head and kissed Eloise gently between her ears.
“Take care of the flowers,” he whispered.
Millions of years later, mammals still carry a faint memory of that kiss.
It appears unexpectedly in art museums, in love letters, and in the strange feeling that somewhere beneath our fur and anxiety, we were once adored by something enormous, blue, and impossibly ornate.
