Lost World: Extracts from the Professor's Diary. Saurions we did not call dragon §3:the Tyrannosaurs

[jack]

...impressive, if we had heard of any dinosaur, we had heard of the tyrannosaur. Nearly fifty foot high, many of the armoured herbivores were larger, but none... The one that pursued us to the river never came close to us, but it was intimidating from the horizon. When it fixed its eyes on us we shivered and urged our stegoi faster, as though it could close that distance in seconds... We saw one close to only briefly, but the terror will never leave us, we saw it, and then it was on top of us, a twenty foot wide swathe through the trees levelled instantly, and a stegoi hurled into the air and snapped in half in seconds... guts sucked...

...bound by the most forceful souls, they could not support the level of intellect some of the more fleet footed saurians could, but served as terrible command posts, driving the hunt for us on, marshalling scouts into the air and attack raptors into ungainly but deadly ambushes...

...terrifying, but one glance from their eyes had nearly the same effect, you felt that alone could stop you dead... that brutal force of will made us think them the true dragons, but their own name was itself so well entrenched even "dragon" could ne'er displace it.

Comments

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

Every time I read more of this, I think what terrific fun it must be to write :)

P.S. Is ne'er very common in archaic prose? I can just about imagine it in speech, but can't quite imagine, if I were an archaic person, that I would write it down like that, with the apostrophe and all... Just a thought, anyway :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Every time I read more of this, I think what terrific fun it must be to write :)

:) Yes, indeed. Each one being a throwaway means I only write what I really want to (even only those parts of the sentence I want to :)) so it's pretty much all good.

Feel free to join in if you like :) I can't claim much suzerainty over it :)

P.S. Is ne'er very common in archaic prose?

I'm afraid I've no idea, that marks the point where I gave in to whimsical overwroughtness and I was unable to resist. It doesn't mean I know it to be accurate, it's just as likely not to be unfortunately :)

In the last post I did mainfully restrain myself from describing the flammable liquid in the air as an "aerosol" (in the chemical meaning, not the "aerosol can" meaning) when I felt I had to check and it was coined in the 1920s, but I felt the loss.

I just checked and "ne'er" is used in things (eg. Dante) but mainly in poems, so probably not.

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

Feel free to join in if you like :) I can't claim much suzerainty over it :)

Wow, thank you! :) I'll have to think hard, but if I have some time I might have a chance to contribute (though wouldn't do so without doing my homework, of course[1]).

[1] It would be so handy in that respect if all the entries had a 'lost world' tag *hint hint* ;)

Shame about aerosol, that would have been nice :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I'll have to think hard, but if I have some time I might have a chance to contribute (though wouldn't do so without doing my homework, of course[1]).

*hugs* I definitely think you should stick to the "write what you feel like writing all at once", and not try to plan stuff, but it's up to you, I'd be curious to see what you'd do if you have a chance.

[1] It would be so handy in that respect if all the entries had a 'lost world' tag *hint hint* ;)

LOL. Whoops. *most* do. I think they all have "fic". Maybe I should turn on the "allow other people to tag your entries" :)

Shame about aerosol, that would have been nice :)

:) Yeah.

It's possible: it might have been in use in scientific circles before it made it into an etymological dictionary. And the time is notionally something like late 19th century, and the women may come from points scattered a bit about that.

But I was sure if I used it, it would look fake, so I resisted :)

Just wanted to say

[(Anonymous)]

Very nice!!