Last Dance of the Dimetrodons

A mountain in Laurasia, in the time before grass

The high valley class was a long climb for two small hatchlings and Nesta was swaying with impatience as she fell further behind her sister, when suddenly she saw Grace clamber over the lip of a corrie and wave her dorsal sail in a happy dance of arrival - they were there! By the time Nesta caught up Grace was already exchanging gossip in intricate movements with her friends, before settling in the front row as Master Turner began to perform the lecture.

His every gesture was precise and elegant as he danced the story of the fossils found in these mountain rocks, and of course at the climax he came exactly to the flourish that revealed a fish skeleton, still embedded in the layered rock but clearly visible once he drew their attention to it. Grace knew from other classes that land and sea had changed places in the past, but she still wriggled a sedentary dance of delighted surprise to see the proof of an image in the stone.

Then, from the distance, came the cry of a sauropsid, unmistakable as the sound of a hunting predator. Master Turner did not pause in his narrative, but began to weave into it another thread, knowing that even these young hatchlings could follow many strands of simultaneous meaning. He mimed that it must be a captive beast in a nearby fighting class, where other hatchlings would be learning to distract and confuse the dangerous reptile with complex motions of their sails, and to strike and rake at the edge of balance. No single beast was a threat to them while accompanied by the adult dimetrodon, and no packs could pass the guards who protected the Valley of Learning.

Meanwhile, in his main thread Master Turner showed the details of the fish anatomy, explaining how it had changed over time as it evolved through stages into their own intelligent species. The rigid bones locking head to shoulders had been replaced by a flexible neck, so the head could move to convey exquisite shades of meaning. The cold body had become warmer and more active, able to sustain long complex choreography. The muscular but clumsy fins had become four fully articulated legs, able to position the whole body while making the most subtle independent gestures.

Everything was clear, the long slow progress from animal to sentience was driven by the need to communicate, to portray thought as movement of the body so it would pass into other brains - to dance. Producing and perceiving this rich mixture of movement as meaning had in turn driven the development of the brain, a runaway cycle of advancement to the apex of life.

More baying reached the class, but now it was closer, and what was much worse - it sounded like several different creatures. At this the Master did interrupt his story, and with a few quick moves dispatched two hatchlings to run down the valley and bring back more teachers. At the same time he began to calm the hatchlings, but they saw uncertainty in his dance of comforting, as he considered whether to move them or try to defend the rocky corrie.

Suddenly the baying was much closer and now clearly a large pack - the valley guards must have been overcome or bypassed - and Master Turner gave raw and ancient alarm signals. They cut through all the hatchlings' learned semantics to the original vital meanings their ancestors had first danced out and never forgot -

Predators! Adults Fight! Hatchlings Scatter!

Nesta ran at once, Grace hesitated for a moment as she saw Master Turner was going to face the reptile jaws while the others fled, but his sail was waving in angry threat and he now danced the ultimate alarms that her instincts could not ignore: she ran too.

Down the valley, now the lizards' baying was mixed with cries of their wounded pain, they had reached Master Turner and were paying heavily to bring him down. The hatchlings ran so quickly that only the sails on their backs were free to gesture their distress in panic ripples.

By the time the hatchlings met their other teachers and guards the hunters' cries had changed, they were feeding now. Grace found Nesta and comforted her behind a boulder while the adults battled the sauropsid pack in a dance to the death.

When Nesta calmed enough to make meaningful movements she signed that leaving their brood areas to study was too dangerous, and that she would never allow her own hatchlings to take such risks. But Grace danced around her in sharp contradiction, negating her caution signs with sweeping chops of denial. She was inspired rather than discouraged by Master Turner's sacrifice, she would forgo the life of egg laying and raising hatchlings and instead become a teacher and scholar herself. Her offspring would be the dance of ideas.

And so intelligence began to fade from the Earth, as it had before, as it would again, and again, and again.


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