Chapter 1: The Prairie’s Silent Sky
In the heart of the endless Prairie, where once thunder rolled and lightning danced in the grass, the wind had gone missing. Not a breeze dared to stir the emerald sea of waving stalks; not a cloud dared to bloom more than a suggestion on the canvas-blue sky. Skylar, the youngest and perhaps boldest storm chaser the prairie had ever known, refused to believe the world had surrendered to silence forever.
She crouched beside a homemade weather vane, soldered together from biscuit tins, crow feathers, and a compass scavenged from a forgotten attic trunk. Her notebook—a battered, rain-stained ledger—overflowed with wild, looping storm maps, sketches of prodigious squall lines, and formulas for measuring the speed of ghost winds. Today, however, her pencil hovered idle. There simply was nothing to record but the hush, the same hush that pressed against her ears and made her heart ache with longing for the riot of weather.
Skylar’s imagination spun on, refusing to let stillness mean defeat. "If I were a lost cloud," she mused aloud, "where would I go hide? Maybe the grass knows. Maybe it’s whispering secrets and no one's hearing them. Or—"
A sharp glint in the dirt caught her attention: a print, too large to be any prairie dog, canine, or cattle. It was rounded and shaggy at the edges, like an oversized, fuzzy pillow pressed into mud. Next to it, half-hidden by a spray of wildflowers, was another footprint—narrow, deep, with oddly archaic lines, as if pressed there by a shadow older than the hills. Skylar’s pulse quickened; someone, or something, had been out here seeking answers too.
Determined, she gathered her kit and followed the trail. Here, the grass seemed tender, curling around the prints as if cradling a memory. The prints wound up a gentle rise, and at its crown, nearly camouflaged against the soft golden tufted backdrop, huddled a large, quivering lump of brown fur.
It was Mammoth—a gentle beast with dull blue eyes, curved tusks dusted with pollen, and a wildflower wreath stubbornly tangled around his horn. He startled at Skylar’s approach, shrinking down so his ears nearly covered his face.
"Don’t worry," Skylar said, voice gentle, "I’m only here for storms—if you’ve seen any, maybe we can find them together."
Mammoth peeked over a trembling trunk. "No storms. Not even a drizzle."
Skylar noticed Mammoth’s patchwork garden: wilted daisies, thirsty violets, and a mournful patch of crocuses. She crouched beside him. "If the rains are gone, maybe we can chase them down. Or figure out why they’ve left."
A sibilant, sparkling giggle zipped overhead. From a tangle of grass leapt another child—freckled, wide-eyed, and practically humming with energy. They wore a pouch, shimmering with dust that winked like a pocketful of galaxies. This was Star Collector, famous for climbing fence posts to gather fragments of shooting stars and notorious for attracting trouble like a magnet in a scrapyard.
"You’re chasing storms, too?" Star Collector’s eyes went wide, as if Skylar had announced she could lasso lightning. "Careful. The skies are shifting. Last night, I saw shadows—real ones—circling the horizon. Even my constellations won’t stay put! Something old is waking up under all this grass. I can feel it." Star Collector sifted stardust through restless fingers, casting motes of light onto the ground.
Mammoth shuffled anxiously. "No storms, no rain, but I heard a new kind of growl underground—gave my roots shivers." He hesitated, glancing at the dry blossoms. "If someone’s making them leave, maybe it’s not safe anymore."
Skylar’s resolve flared brighter than a summer flash. "Stories don’t end just because the last page is blank. Let’s find out who’s turning the skies quiet."
So, with a nervous gentleness, Mammoth hoisted his gardening basket and agreed to join her. Star Collector bounded ahead, tossing pinches of dust to check for hidden star-paths. They crossed the open prairie as the sun slipped lower, shadows stretching like whispers stretched between worlds.
At a lonely fold in the land, where the grass grew tallest and oldest and the wind—if it existed—might quietly linger, the group spotted someone crouched by a stone. He was as still as the boulder itself, wrapped in a faded pelt, stark and silent as a legend breathed into the present: Prehistoric Man. His skin was earth-brown, his hair wild and brambly, and his eyes deep-set and kind. He did not speak; instead, he knelt, using mud and a broken stick to sketch shapes on the ground.
Skylar, accustomed to solving riddles in weather patterns, knelt beside him. The others gathered close. With gestures as patient and grave as dawn, Prehistoric Man drew a series of images: clouds torn from the sky; a mighty lizard—sharp-fanged and cunning—slipping thunder and rain into a sack. Then: a prairie, cracked and shivering with thirst. His gestures ended with a soundless question—what was to be done?
"The storms were stolen?" Skylar asked, interpreting aloud, feeling a tingle run up her spine. Prehistoric Man nodded, then pointed toward the east, where the prairie pooled silver in the evening sun, and painted an arch—a path, a journey, a promise.
Star Collector leaned in, dust sparking on the sketch. "Nothing’s missing forever, not if you chase it hard enough. Count me in!"
Mammoth hesitated, his trunk trembling. "But the one who stole them... is he still hiding out there? If it’s someone big—a Dinosaur?" He shrunk down a little further.
Prehistoric Man met Mammoth’s anxious gaze and offered a gentle, stone-steady smile, tracing a spiral—a sign of courage found on the journey, not beforehand. With a sweeping gesture, he showed Skylar how even the smallest hands might draw thunder from sky to earth once more.
Skylar rose, fire lighting her chest. "A dinosaur or not," she said, with bravado she meant to believe, "we’ll outsmart whoever thinks they can own the weather. If we stick together, we’ll bring back the wind, the lightning, all of it."
The prairie seemed to listen. In the hush, even a shy breath might waken something ancient. The party, equal parts anticipation and unease, set off eastward, Prehistoric Man tracing cryptic arrows in the loam beside them, Star Collector throwing stardust markers that winked in the setting sun, Mammoth lumbering nervously but never turning aside from the cause.
And Skylar, who had imagined storms so often the sky itself felt like an unfinished story, led the way. Her notebook now held not just empty maps, but the first hope that—just maybe—storms weren’t lost; they were only waiting for someone brave enough to bring them home.