The Land Before Time: Corruption

Chapter I: Littlefoot the Harbinger

Everything in this world comes and goes.

It writhes and stills. Comes and goes. Starts and stops. This is the beauty of our Earth - even though most things are not forever, life goes on. Even the things that are good eventually meet an end, but what is bad too is not eternal. Everything is given a time to exist and a time to die. All somethings as small as a flower dies, but the flower returns in the form of its children. All life is not never ending, but what is, is life itself.

Dinosaurs were Earth's mightiest creatures. Some big. Some small. Some strong. Some weak. Others, somewhere in the middle. They inhabited the oceans and forests and deserts and valleys; yet somehow they disappeared, life came to a halt, and began again.

Littlefoot, now grown into his adolescent years, had become all too familiar with the start and stop of life. Tonight, he dreamed of his first and last encounter with death. His mother, lying there in the cold rain, dying from a horrific gash in her neck given by a ferocious sharptooth. His grandfather, becoming very old and ill... and Littlefoot could do nothing more to save him. Nothing else he could have done. Because of this, age took away his grandpa, never to be brought back.

He jolted awake. Littlefoot had gone many nights without sleep. He had always had these sleepstories, mostly scary ones, but they were getting worse and worse with every passing night. One night, he dreamt of his grandma being crushed in an avalanche. Another, Cera was torn limb from limb by a sharptooth. Some other night, Ducky went underwater and never came back up... Catching himself from these images of his friends and family meeting their individual ends, Littlefoot laid there next to his old grandmother, not daring to attempt again to sleep.

His grandmother moaned and coughed. "Littlefoot, dear. Are you okay?"

He raised his neck and looked at his grandparent. "Yes, grandma. I just had another... Well..."

"Another one of those sleepstories?" she asked.

Littlefoot woefully sighed and nodded. "You don't think they mean anything, do you?" His voice cracked.

For a moment, the old dinosaur was quiet. "Perhaps they do, but not in the way we see them at first. Sometimes, we just have to wait and find out what's to happen. If we can't do anything about it, we must learn to accept it."

His eyes became droopy as Littlefoot yawned and nodded. "I understand."

She huffed and went back to sleep. "Try to rest, my love."

"I will."

Littlefoot would lay down once again, but he would not sleep anymore that night. He was far too afraid to dream again. He had seen Petrie's corpse, bloody and ravaged. Guido's feathers completely plucked from his body. Ruby's mouth covered in slimey, reddish goo and her eyes bloodshot. He could only imagine what else his sleepstories had in store... And he was not at all willing to find out.