The dinosaur and the giant egg

Theo, a young diplodocus with a long neck still a bit clumsy, loved exploring the steamy valley where his herd lived. One day, behind a giant fern, he found an egg twice his size, all alone, with no nest in sight.

No one in the herd could tell whose egg it was. "It needs to be kept warm until its parents come back," Theo decided, and he settled right beside it, day and night, to keep it warm with his big body.

Days passed, then weeks. Theo told the egg stories every evening, just in case whoever was inside could hear him. His friends teased him a little — "an egg can't listen to stories!" — but Theo kept going anyway, patient as ever.

One morning, the egg started to shake, then to crack. It wasn't another diplodocus that came out, but a tiny, frail, feathered creature that let out a small, sharp cry — the distant ancestor of birds, lost far from its own nest.

Its species didn't matter: Theo had kept it warm as if it were his own, and it climbed onto his back at once as though it had always known him. That very evening, it fell asleep nestled against his long neck, lulled by the stories he kept telling, just like before.