When the meteorite struck Earth, most of the dinosaurs and pterosaurs and other large reptiles died out. Only a few managed to escape, finding means - lucky accidents, really - to slip away from the dust-choked surface. Like the plesiosaur that descended into the deepest of lakes, becoming one with darkness and depth and cold, cold water until there was very little to distinguish beast from loch and certainly little enough to be concerned with minor details like breathing. And the pliosaur that went in the other direction.

There isn’t much to eat in the sky; no wonder the poor thing has gotten so thin. Still, she seems to like it up there. The cirrus are sly and slippery fish and when she can catch them she snaps them up in her dolphin-teeth. Only the dense, black cumulonimbus are large enough to present much of a threat - and having evaded them successfully for the last 65 million years, it seems likely she will continue.

She is, on the whole, unbothered by cryptozoologists or camera-wielding tourists.  Only the occasional aeroplane, buzzing past her head like a fat blowfly.

~

image and text: Hespa