The tyrannosaur gripped the pencil between his claws and stared at the paper.

It was blank. It had been blank for the last ten minutes, because he couldn’t think of what to write.

He sat splay-legged on the floor, behind a tall desk just right for his height. On it was a sheet of paper. The story didn’t have to be a long one, so there was only one sheet, but it seemed larger than it should have been, vast and empty, a wide white nothingness he didn’t have a hope of making a mark in.

At the front of the room, at a smaller desk, the pterodactyl also clutched a pencil in his claws, but he was scribbling so fast that his huge wings rustled constantly. Shusha-shusha-shush. He used his foot to flip a completed sheet over and reached for another. He seemed to be having a wonderful time.

It would be very satisfying to stamp repeatedly on him, but the teacher had made it clear that they were all here to write. They didn’t have to get along, but anyone who picked a fight would fail the class. And that was not going to happen to the tyrannosaur. Especially since he’d got a D for the previous assignment, and he suspected the reason for that grade was that no one in their right mind gave a huge apex predator an F.

He nearly started to chew the top of the pencil, but caught himself just in time. He’d done that once before, and his teeth had sheared off the eraser. Then he had accidentally swallowed it, which meant he couldn’t erase any of his mistakes either.

The iguanodon who shared most of the middle of the room with him didn’t have a pencil, but that was because she used a fountain pen instead. She wrote steadily, with regular pauses while she ate some of the leaves she’d brought with her and read over what she had written. She had to be confident about her writing if she used a pen, the tyrannosaur thought with a mounting gloom.

Abruptly the pterodactyl flipped his pencil straight up in the air, then launched himself off the ground. His wings unfolded, great fans propelling him swiftly up, and his beak snapped shut around the pencil. Before the tyrannosaur could do more than wonder what in the world he was doing, the pterodactyl wheeled in a tight little half-turn and flew straight over the iguanodon’s head towards the back of the room, where the velociraptor was writing with a fat blue crayon. The pterodactyl’s wings closed and he dropped to the floor right before the pencil sharpener. He turned his head just enough to push his pencil in.

The tyrannosaur studied the sharp point on his own pencil, thought about skewering someone with it, and tried to ignore the muffled grinding sound of the sharpener as he turned his attention back to his paper. An idea, he needed an idea. All stories began with an idea of some sort, so as soon as he found one, he’d be fine.

The only problem was that the more he struggled to think of one, the less inspired he felt.

The teacher sat at a small desk at the front of the room, reading what the tyrannosaur guessed was a romance novel, because its cover was a reddish-pink like freshly exposed flesh and the author’s name had some curly flourishes. Would a romance work? No, he had no idea where to start with that, and one of the first things he’d learned was to write what he knew.

What about a writer having difficulty with finding a story? At least he knew all about that. Then he decided against it. Don’t write about writers, the teacher had told them, unless you’re Stephen King. The tyrannosaur wasn’t Stephen King. He wasn’t even Stephen King’s brother no one had ever heard of.

The pterodactyl scrawled “THE END” in letters so large the tyrannosaur was surprised a final sheet of paper wasn’t needed for that alone. With a flourish, the pterodactyl swept all his work together, deposited that on the teacher’s desk, and strutted out past the tyrannosaur with his beak in the air.

The tyrannosaur ground his teeth and clenched his pencil between his claws until he realized he was in danger of breaking it. He relaxed his death grip with an effort. Oh, he was going to write a story if it killed him—or, preferably, killed someone else—and he was going to write what he damn well knew. He breathed in deeply and began.

The tyrannosaur ducked his head to clear the doorway and stepped out of the learning center. He stopped when he saw the cluster of pterodactyls in the parking lot.

Pterodactyls, in case you didn’t know, are noisy scrawny little beasts that don’t care who they’re flying over when they defakit defocait shit. They also think they are very good writers.

Of course, these pterodactyls were too busy yattering at the tops of their lungs to notice the tyrannosaur, but that was all to the good. He’d put in some hard work and could use a light snack.

The only problem was, as stupid as the pterodactyls were, they had wings. He needed to take them by surprise, before they had a chance to flap off, and as it so happened, he had a clever plan…

His story got a C+.