A Warmer Spring

100 MPE (Early Thermocene)

Grasslands (Striata)

On a sunny morning in a springtime that has come earlier this year than any before it, a female bumblet takes her two newborn chicks out of the burrow and into the meadow for the very first time. They are precocial, something in common with almost all vivas of her era, and can run about and feed themselves on seeds, worms, and insects within a day of their birth. Their mother incubated their eggs internally for four weeks prior to this day, and in doing so protected from late frosts until the weather was just right for them to be born, though this year the winter was brief. The eggs were laid only a few hours before the chicks emerged; quiet chirping from within their shells alerted the female that the time to drop the eggs was imminent. Though these bumblets are still bipeds like all birds, their wings are highly modified into clawed shovels used to dig their dens. The wrist and finger bones are adapted into a comparatively large spade-like structure with two claw-like keratin spurs, while the radius and ulna of the arm are shortened and highly reduced into a fused structure of very little mobility. Almost all arm movement is now limited to the wrist, and by re-adjusting how the arm bones absorb force to here instead of the shoulder blade, the animal can now crawl on four limbs while moving through narrow underground tunnels.

As the little family passes through the meadow to a patch of brushy cover, they pass by a pair of large ornitheres, distant cousins on another branch of the viva family tree, which sport antler-like branching horns on their snouts and fleshy, flexible soft tissue around their beaks which help them to hold their food as they chew. Here and there in the tall grass, stranger still creatures emerge into the light: tribbets. The colorful males of these fully terrestrial guppies, descendants of mudwicket fishes, now crawl out of the burrows they spent the winters dormant within. They spread their operculums, one covers to now absent gills, which are now angled like ears to pick up noises and direct them through channels into the jaw bones. Able to hear in this way, they puff up their stomachs with air, and release it like a deflating balloon, calling out to potential mates with high-pitched whistles that collectively form a din across the grasslands. To the little bumblets, they are too big to eat, and present only a curiosity. The ornitheres, focused on courting and beginning their own families, scarcely notice any of the smaller creatures at all. Weird little animals, they might think, if they had the capacity:

"Small and weak, not like us. None likely to last very long."

But the far future is still unknown for now, and no creature is concerned with what can't be known.

And all that matters is today.

And it is a beautiful day to be alive.