Rexik and Trika

Once upon a time, in Fern Valley, there lived a little tyrannosaurus named Rexik. He loved hunting for treasures: feathers, shells and pebbles. But he hadn’t found himself a friend yet.

One day Rexik was sitting by the river, looking at pebbles. All of a sudden, snap, crackle!, a lilac triceratops burst out of the ferns. Her frill was as yellow as the sun, and she had three little horns on her forehead.

“Hi! I’m Trika!” she shouted, so loudly that the frogs leaped into the water. “Let’s play hide-and-seek! You’re it!”

“Maybe we shouldn’t?” asked Rexik.

“I do first and think later!” Trika laughed, and off she dashed.

Trika ran fast. She stomped loudly. And she never, ever looked back, because what’s up ahead is always more interesting!

Rexik closed his eyes and counted to ten. He opened them. Nobody. Just something yellow peeking out from behind the ferns. A yellow frill with orange spots.

Rexik sniffed: sniff-sniff. It smelled of ferns and of Trika.

“Found you!”

“Oh!” Trika jumped out. “How did you guess?”

“With my nose,” said Rexik. He didn’t mention the frill.

The second time, Trika hid behind a big rock. And sticking up over the rock was a yellow frill.

Sniff-sniff.

“Found you!”

The third time, she squeezed into an old hollow log. And poking out of the log was a yellow frill.

Sniff-sniff.

“Found you!”

“But HOW?!” Trika stamped her foot.

“Tyrannosauruses have the best noses,” Rexik explained. “We can smell things from far, far away.”

And it’s true: a tyrannosaurus could smell even the things his eyes couldn’t see.

“Now I’m it!” Trika announced. She faced the rock and bellowed: “One! Two! Three!…”

Rexik spun around. Where could he hide? Behind the ferns, his tail would show. And he’d never fit inside the log.

“Maybe I shouldn’t hide at all?” he whispered.

So he tiptoed over and stood right behind Trika’s back. He crouched down in the shadow of her big frill.

“…Ten! Ready or not, here I come!”

Trika peeked under the ferns. Not there. Stomp-stomp, behind the rock. Not there. She poked her nose into the log. Not there!

And Rexik followed her, step for step. She stomped, and he stomped. She stopped, and he stopped.

By his feet, a little striped pebble glinted, ginger and white. Rexik bent down and quietly picked it up. Trika didn’t hear a thing. She was too busy calling:

“Rexi-i-ik! Where are yo-o-ou?”

She searched by the river. She searched in the bushes. She even looked up at the sky. What if he could fly? But she didn’t look back. Not even once.

“I give up!” Trika shouted at last, and she flopped down on the grass.

“I’m here,” said Rexik, right behind her.

“Aaaah!” Trika jumped higher than the ferns. She turned around. She blinked. “You… you were here the whole time?”

“Uh-huh. You never looked back. Not once.”

Trika laughed so hard that she fell over on her back and kicked her legs in the air.

“Oh, I can’t breathe! Mister Maybe-Not! Sneaky Mister Maybe-Not! We’re playing again tomorrow!”

“Maybe we shouldn’t?” Rexik smiled.

“We should!”

That evening, Rexik came home.

“So, did you make a new friend?” asked Mom.

“How do you know?”

“Mom’s ears hear everything,” Mom smiled. “And you can hear Trika all the way across the river.”

Rexik put the striped pebble on his shelf. It was his very first treasure from his new friend. Then he snuggled down into his nest.

Tomorrow Trika will look back for sure.

Or maybe not.