Finally finished this scene. Yay.

869: "Excellent," he said, opening the door for her, "Then I'll see you in court."

Picturing those sail-backed giants...

Dimetrodon. They've come up a few times recently.

There really is a strange kind of terrible beauty there.

Did baby dimetrodon chase dragonflies?
Maybe. That species was just beginning when dimetrodon was at its height. I wonder how individual their personalities were, what they were like.

Individual dimetrodon were born, lived their lives, hunted, ate, slept, mated, reproduced, and died. And they did this for a hundred million years, generation after generation after generation, without any people around to know about it. The last one died over two hundred million years before the first member of homo sapiens was born.

We learned to walk upright, harnessed fire, and basketry, and founded cities. Civilizations were built, grew, and died, and we spread across the planet. Entire religions were created, fought over, and died out. And during all this we had no idea their species had ever existed until we dug one up on Prince Edward Island about a hundred and fifty years ago. And for the first time ever, there was someone who could marvel at their existence. How can one be anything but terribly humbled and simultaneously uplifted and filled with optimism by the concept?

As he runs on...

870: He didn't dare change now, the wolf would be lost down here.