Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org

@trinsec, thanks, but I don't think I quoted anyone—or at least I didn't mean to!

A dinosaur fairy tale
--------------------------------

Once upon a time, a mother _Spondylosoma_ had three chicks. When they were young they played happily together, and all were much alike. But as they grew older they became quarrelsome, and no two of them could long be in the company of the third. Their mother grew tired of their bickering, and called them all together in a forest clearing one last time.

"We can no longer live as a family," she said. "You must each choose where you will go."

"I shall go out to the plains," said one, "and grow huge and mighty."

"I shall dwell by the river," said another, "and have many children who shall live their lives in many different ways."

At last the third, who had long been the most quarrelsome of all, was ready to speak. "I shall live on the plains, and by the river, and here in the forest, and even in the sky. While you two eat the plants that grow in your new homes, I will stay true to our mother's teaching, and hunt for my supper. Your children shall regard mine with dread, and mine regard yours as food."

When they heard this, the siblings who had spoken first ran off to the plains and the river, to begin their lives anew. The third stayed there in the clearing, to speak with their mother for a while longer. Finally it was time, and she gave her last child leave to go.

But to this day, no one knows which of them was the oldest, which was the middle, and which was the youngest. For they were all hatchlings together, you see, and the order in which they broke out of their eggs is lost forever, like shell fragments on the forest floor.

The End.

Nonfiction, because they're still describing what we observe, even if what we observe is made up. For example, literary criticism is nonfiction, even though the subject itself is (usually) fiction.