Pride Flag

“Hey! Oceania, are you ready to celebrate pride?!”

The massive tan Albertosaurus turned as Fern was sliding down the cliff to land in the sandy biome that Oceania lived on. She gave a tilt of her head, “Pride? What’s that?”

“You don’t know what pride is?!” Fern shook her head, “It’s when you celebrate…you! You celebrate being yourself and being proud of who you are! It’s a way for you to express yourself and show your true self!”

Oceania blinked for several moments, but eventually, she grew a big smile. “It sounds fun, let’s do it! I don’t completely understand this, but I would love to learn! Show me how we celebrate this pride!”

“Certainly! Now…my mother taught me that pride is all about rainbows. I’m not quite sure why if I’m being honest. But…” Fern pulled out from a bag a large flag with red, white, and blue stripes on it. “We can paint this flag to be a rainbow one! I found this in the town nearby! It’s got some holes, but I think it would do nicely!”

“Woah!” Oceania came forward, and her small paws admired the fabric of the flag. “I’ve never seen something like this… It’s pretty… How are we supposed to paint this though? I don’t have any paints…”

“I’ve got some, silly!” Fern also pulled out several cans of paint and placed it down on the sand. She used her horns to pry the top of the cans open, then she grinned at the colorful but stinky paint that lay inside. “Now we just need some water and we’ve got some paint!”

“Woah… You know a lot about this, Fern! You’re so lucky!”

Fern chuckled and shook her head, “It’s nothing, really. It’s just stuff I observed or was taught by my mother. I’m sure other dinos know about this too…”

“Well, I don’t! So that makes it awesome in my eyes!”

“That is true, that is true.”

Once they poured some water into the paint and mixed it around, they each sat down around the already colorful flag to begin. Though, they paused when they realized that they didn’t know how to do this. Fern mentioned that humans had something in their hand that was fuzzy, but these dinos clearly didn’t have such a device…

“Oh! Wait!”

Oceania beamed as she moved her large tail around and dipped it inside of the paint, then she plastered it onto the flag. She grinned at seeing the colorful paint being brushed on the flag by her tail.

“What a good idea! But… I can’t do that… My tail isn’t as long as yours… and it’s very thin, I don’t know if it could even hold much paint…”

“Oh, you are right…” Oceania trailed off as she ranked her brain for something else that Fern could use instead. Nothing else came to mind until her pale eyes glanced over to Fern and it hit her suddenly.

“What about your horn? You can’t use your paws since it’s too hard and may rip the flag. But if you use the side of your horn that could work! How about that?”

“Well, it’s worth a shot!”

Fern dipped her front long horn into the paint can, then she sat back down so she could tilt her head to the side. It was awkward, but she managed to lay down some paint by moving her head from side to side.

“Hey, it worked!”

“You may know about this pride stuff, but I’m smart in some ways too!”

“Hey, I never said you were dumb in any regard! I just remember a lot from my mother and observing humans is all. I’m sure if you experienced the same thing as me you would remember things too!”

“That does sound nice… To learn things from others… I know I learned a lot from you, and I appreciate it a lot but… I wish I could watch these…humans, as you call them. Or that my mother taught me more things before she passed on.” Oceania sighed, “It would’ve made things a lot easier, I suspect.”

“Oceania…”

Oceania shook her head, “But enough of that depressing talk! Let’s get started on this flag before it gets too dark!”

Fern frowned, but she said nothing else as they started working on the flag. She figured if she tried to say anything, Oceania probably wouldn’t listen anyway, so there was no point.

Hours passed by and they worked on this flag together, it took a lot longer than Fern thought it would take. She thought they would be done by the late afternoon but by the time they finished, she looked around and noticed that the sun had already gone down! It was nighttime! Where did the time go?

“We’re finally done!” Fern beamed as she stood up and stretched out her limbs.

“Now what?”

“Now, we gotta hang it up! We should probably wait for the paint to dry, but I think it’ll be fine. This paint seems sturdy enough that I doubt it’s going to fall off of the flag! So let’s hang it up!” Fern looked around, then she pointed to a palm tree growing over the cliff. “There! Let’s hang it there!”

“Alright! Let’s do it!”

“Okay! I’m almost done! Just gotta tie this end and we’ll be done!”

“Alright! Can you be quick though? I’m not very good at balancing and I don’t want you to fall and hurt yourself!”

“I’ll be fine! Gosh, for being much younger than me you are such a worry wart!”

“It’s not my fault! I don’t want you to get hurt-”

“Done!” Fern grinned as she held onto Oceania’s neck as the larger dino brought her back down to the ground. Once she was placed on the ground she beamed up at their work.

“We did a really good job! Look at those colors! That’s definitely a pride flag if I dare say so myself!”

“Mhm! It’s pretty!!”

She turned to Oceania and noticed her eyes staring in awe over the colorful rainbow flag flapping in the night air. She chuckled at seeing the mess that Oceania had on her body though. And she realized that they were both covered in paint, it wasn’t just the tan dino.

“Let’s go take a bath then let’s have dinner.”

“Sounds good!”