The Girl and Rhino

The Girl thinks that there is something inherently ominous about birds, even the small chirpy ones. She wonders about evolution and the theories linking birds to dinosaurs. If those theories are true (and she tends to think they are), how did evolution wipe clean all of that gristle and violence, all of those teeth and gore? The obvious answer, she tells the Rhino, is that it did not. All that stuff is still there, she says, just wrapped up in a different form. That though their dinosaur bodies are no more, evolution has granted them a mutated form of the power of they once held. She's not sure what it is yet: ESP? telepathy? telekinesis? but she feels its presence. It is a rain drop hanging on an eave -- waiting to strike the nape of her neck, to yield the most unpleasant of shivers. With the heel of her bare foot she pokes at the leather of the Rhino's side, whispers into his flickering ear, Can't you see it in their eyes? The Rhino knows, as only the Rhino can, that her inklings are correct. Spot on, spot on, he wants to say, but instead he shakes big his head no. Some things are still too dangerous for her to know.