[Sear] Gold rush - Spring 2025

Sear - Gold Rush

839 Words

Sear trotted along a damp forested path.  Leaves and twigs snapped beneath his feet as he stepped through the mud as he moved ahead with purpose; he had somewhere to be. Sear didn’t typically spend much time in the woods as the highlands and open fields were much more his forte, but he had overheard a rumor while he was basking in the morning sun.  A bachelor group of Utahraptors had walked by Sear a little ways away, talking about the thaw and upcoming spring.  

“I heard that with all of this snow melting and rainfall, other dinosaurs are able to dig up some real cool things.”  One Utahraptor began, “One raptor I overheard even said he’d found a beautiful colorful stone after doing a small amount of digging by some basalt in the Ashlands.”  The other two Utahraptors seemed impressed, albeit, not entirely convinced their friend was telling the truth.  The one Utahraptor smiled and looked at one of the other raptors,
“I swear!  I bet those rocks would do nicely to attract some girls!”  He exclaimed as the raptors hopped up onto a tall rock and spread their feathers out to catch the warm sun rays.
Sear had listened to the whole conversation, and his interest was piqued.  The Ashlands were not too far off from where Sear was and he could make it there in less than a day, and with that he started off.

Sear continued through the forest, feeling he must be close now.  He could smell the slightly ashy smell that drenched the Ashlands, even through the musky and natural scent of the forest around him.  As he continued down the path, it began to open up to the darkened fields.  The ashy, hardened lava created a large swathe of open area at the foot of a grand volcano that spouted steady wisps of smoke.  Sear looked around himself, on the hunt for basalt.  He knew it’d be by the shore and he headed that way, following the salty scent of the ocean ahead of him.  As he approached, the basalt began to come into view, little hexagonal pillars jutted out from the ground by the shoreline, each staggered at a slightly different height than its neighbor.  Sear took caution walking on them as he found a spot where the basalt met the soft, moist earth.  If a pretty rock were to be found, it certainly would be hiding right?  He used his horn tips to gently scrape away at the mud around the edges of the volcanic rocks, being extremely gentle to stop and inspect any rock that came free.  

After much digging and chipping, a small orange fleck caught Sear’s eye.  He pulled back his head to inspect it more closely and through the mud he could see it - a small colorful stone.  Sear gently leaned over, picking up the glimmering stone gently with his mouth and dunking it in the seawater to reveal its full color.  Sear placed the rock down on the basalt to look at his find and immediately felt excitement swell up in his chest - this’d be a great addition to his nest.  He’s been trying to build something impressive to show female Carnotaurus’ that he’s perfect dad material…although he hasn’t had much luck.  If he could find a few of these, he could gather up a few into his mouth to bring back home and really jazz up the place.

Sear dug and dug for hours, the sun was beginning to set and he had a small collection of different colored stones.  Each one he’d carefully washed and taken care to clean gently before setting it in his little pile.  He scooped up the stones one by one into his mouth, extremely pleased with himself.  Sear carefully navigated over the basalt and over the ash fields back toward the forest and through to the highlands back to the spot he’d picked out.  

He walked up to his ‘nest’, a space in the center of three rocks that Sear had patted down.  He’d been sleeping here since spring had arrived and the highlands had warmed up from the deep freeze of winter.  In the center where he had patted down the grass laid a pile of tall dried grass that Sear had picked and placed there to create a comfortable place for nights.  Sear approached his nest, craning forwards and allowing the stones to tumble from his mouth and bounce gently in the grass.  One by one, he inspected them and placed them precariously on the three rocks that bordered his nest, hoping a colorful border would catch a lovely lady’s eye.  The sun had gone down hours ago at this point and Sear padded to the center of his nest, leaning back on his keels and then to his side, splaying his legs to one side slightly.  He closed his eyes, imagining how beautiful the stones would be in the morning with the sun shining through them as he drifted off to sleep.