Digging for Treasure

The twins Fainel and Frasil were still small, but made up for it with sheer energy. And in a pack as small as theirs, entertainment was hard to come by. Vanim was doting but awkward, and not very “fun” by the definitions of hyperactive, curious hatchlings. Their older sibling-adjecent-relation was something of a troublemaker, too, which made him a much more attractive target for nagging and prodding.

On one warming spring day, Kyrien was picking around at the stamped-down grass that made up his favorite sleeping spot, and for the first time, Fainel and Frasil noticed the shiny pebbles strewn in, the same gold as the marks on Kyrien’s crest.

Frasil was first to strike. She jumped out of the grass and darted in, snatching up a pebble in her mouth before rushing back out.

“Hey!” Kyrien snapped, his jaws narrowly missing her tail. “Jaws off! Those are my coins, not yours.”

Fainel, fueled more by curiosity than wanting to cause trouble, stepped out from her hiding place. “Coins?”

The older cryo held his head high, relishing the chance to prove he was smarter than the twins. “Humans made them. And then because they were so shiny and beautiful, they made more and more of them and hoarded as many as they could.” He kicked out with his foot and tripped Frasil as she ran, and the coin went flying out of her mouth as she fell. He picked it up between his teeth and returned it to its usual resting spot.

“So… that’s what you’re doing?” Fainel asked.

“Why not?” Kyrien said. “They are very beautiful.”

Frasil, seeing that their game was already over, got to her feet and shook off the dust. “Is it very smart to do things that humans did?”

“Don’t bother,” Fainel whispered to her. “You know how stubborn he is.”

Kyrien was already ignoring them, giving his full attention to arranging the coins in his bed just so.

The pair left their packmate to his brooding. They walked for a while, thinking of asking their father for something to do.

“The coins were very pretty,” Fainel admitted.

“They were.”

“He didn’t say where he found them, did he?”

“No…” Frasil’s tail suddenly perked up, and she looked at her sister with a glint in her eye. “But, if I was old and abandoned human stuff, where would I be?”

Fainel thought for a moment. “Underground! Like the labs!”

“Exactly!”

And then they were running off to the riverbed, where the damp soil was perfect for digging.

#

“I don’t think digging is very fun, Frasil.”

“What? Yes it is!” Frasil was so full of mud and dirt that she was almost the same color as her sister’s feathers.

“My feathers are getting all dirty!” She tried to fan out her tail-feathers, but the mud was sticking them together. She whined. “It’s not fun! Not fun at all!” Fainel cried and ran into the river, where she started furiously splashing to get herself clean.

Frasil ignored her sister’s complaining. What did she know about digging in the dirt! Frasil was having plenty of fun, kicking up muck behind her and shuffling her nose around in the little burrows she made. True, she hadn’t found any coins yet, only a few dirty rocks, but she didn’t care. She would find them eventually, and rub it in Kyrien’s smug face!

Soon the river’s edge was peppered with baby-cryolophosaurus-sized holes—they would make excellent nests if cryos were the kind of parent to bury their eggs in the dirt, like alligators. But Frasil was only after whatever shiny trinkets she could find.

“Frasil!”

She heard her name being called, but she kept digging. Fainel was just going to whimper like a little baby some more.

“Frasil, I found coins!”

Her head snapped up from the hole she was digging.

“No way!” Frasil shouted as she ran to where her sister was standing, knee-deep in the sluggish river.

To her equal awe and horror, a clawful of shimmering golden coins sat at Fainel’s feet.

“How did you…”

“I was trying to clean myself off, so I starting digging my claws into the riverbed…” She scratched at the soggy ground to demonstrate. “Then I thought I saw something shiny, and bam! There they were.”

Frasil kept staring at the coins. She’d tried so hard to dig them up, made so many holes that she was running out of room to put them, and Fainel had been the one to actually find them! It was stupid!

Fainel bumped her on the shoulder, seeing the bitterness growing on her twin’s face. “Hey, you wanna take them? You can show them to Kyrien, and he’ll be so mad!”

“But you found them,” she said glumly.

“I know. But you’re the one who got the idea of where to look for them anyway.” She shrugged. “And you were much more excited about it than I was! You deserve it.”

“Right. You’re right, I do!”

She quickly maneuvered the coins into her mouth and ran as fast as she could back to Kyrien and Vanim, ready to decorate her own nest and put Kyrien’s to shame.