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The once-bright day was now marbled with clouds, the sun dimming behind them.
“Aim for the striped one, Mikey.” Raph’s voice was barely a whisper. The breeze had shifted while the two turtles lay in wait. It stirred the cycad fronds as the grazing Leptoceratops meandered closer. When rooting about the underbrush on all fours, their spiny tails swung lazily in the air, creating a forest of undulating white spikes. Soft, contented grunts rose from the small herd.
While a scattering of boulders still hid Michelangelo and Raphael from their view, the changing wind would soon be likely to carry their scents down to the wary herbivores, sending them bolting away. Their time had just about run out. The Leptoceratops milled, chewing quietly, a little farther away than Raph would’ve preferred, but it would have to do.
Under Renet’s tutelage, Raph’s skill with the atlatl had improved substantially, but Mikey was still the better shot of the two. And it was Mikey who held the hunting weapon now, eyes keen on the dinosaurs that they hoped would be their dinner.
Mikey’s eyes were made keener by hunger. The handful of sour berries, the couple strips of dried Anzu meat, and the few chugs of well-boiled water that had been the turtles’ only breakfast hadn’t exactly “stuck to their ribs,” as April would have put it. The long walk south from their lakeside camp had sapped the brothers’ energy and ignited their appetites.
It didn’t help matters that everything the turtles and their Timestress friend caught and foraged in this bizarre Cretaceous world was divided between food for now and food for later—“later,” in this case, meaning the years-long frigid post-impact winter left by the oncoming meteor-apocalypse. Donnie was responsible for the salting and drying processes that would preserve their food for storage in the cool limestone cavern to their north. But that just meant less food to eat now.
If they could bring home a Leptoceratops today, one of the good-sized ones, it would be plenty to satisfy Donnie’s almost obsessive need to salt and dry meat for the coming cataclysm, at least for this day, and still leave plenty for some Leptoceratops steaks.
Raph could almost imagine them now over that night’s fire, the fat from the meat dripping, sizzling into the flames. It made his mouth water.
Shell. Was this what they’d come to? Salivating over some overgrown lizard-thing? Man, what Raph wouldn’t give for a triple-sausage pizza from Bosino’s on the Westside.
Mikey had shifted, his muscles tensed and ready to burst into action. His distinctive atlatl-throwing technique required a hopping lead-up that would cut down the amount of time to aim. They’d have one chance at this, and that would be it.
“It’s that striped one, Mikey. See? He’s the one. Looks like he’s maybe got something wrong with his right eye? Might give ‘ya a little more time before he sees your ridiculous dance-move ‘ya perform every time ‘ya throw.”
“You’re just jealous ‘cause I got some panache,” Mikey defended staunchly. His eyes scanned the Leptoceratops and their mottled grey-green hides. Mikey gloried in the bright scarlets, rich saffrons, and shimmering teals of so many of the feathered-and-scaled dinosaurs they’d encountered here. But these Leptoceratops certainly seemed to be exceptions to the general flamboyance. Imperceptible different shades of mud didn’t do much to impress Mikey’s artistic eye.
“Whaddya mean the ‘striped one’? They’re all variations of greige-on-greige.”
“That striped one, ya doof! The one that’s closest to us,” Raph yell-whispered fiercely. “I gotta define what stripes are for ‘ya?”
“You are delusional, bro.” Mikey shook his head mock-sadly. “Seeing things, seriously. There are three lizard-things that are close to us, but a grand total of zero of them have stripes.”
Raph turned on his brother. “It ain't funny, Mikey!” he growled, working hard to keep his voice low. “ I actually wanna eat tonight, but you clearly wanna hang out here all day messin’ with me and end up with more’o those sour crap-berries for dinner.” Raph darted his arm out to give Mikey a quick thwack across his skull, but Mikey ducked back, ninja quick and laughing. “Missed me, dude!”
It might have been the flash of movement. It might’ve been the sound of their voices carried on the wind. But suddenly, one Leptoceratops lifted to its haunches, front legs tucked into its front like a kangaroo, suddenly alert. Looking in the turtles’ direction, its wide nostrils flared. Three more heads rose. The first one bleated a quick, panicked warning.
“Aw, shell,” Raph muttered as the herd wheeled away from the turtles. “Go, go, go!” He pushed Mikey, who was already leaping over the low boulders and raising his arm for the throw. Mikey skipped into his strange, hopping run. In a swift motion, Mikey had the dart ready, slotted neatly into the hook at the atlatl’s base.
The retreating Leptoceratops ran on their back legs alone, their front legs tucked to their chests like reptilian kangaroos. For all their seeming awkwardness, they were fast.
However, Raph thought for a moment, as Mikey’s dart sped through the air with a sharp hiss, that the obsidian point would strike home. The brightly-striped Leptoceratops that Raph had indicated to Mikey had delayed. Noticeably slower than its companions, it took a moment to blink blearily at Mikey’s form before twisting its body away to follow the others.
Yet it was the space next to that Leptoceratops that Mikey’s obsidian-headed spear struck, exactly where an entirely different, faster animal had been a moment before. The obsidian point stabbed into the bare earth, sending up a small spray of dirt, while the striped creature lumbered away, gaining speed.
Reloading was useless. They were simply too fast. By the time Mikey loaded another dart, the creatures were obscured by a great plume of dust rising into the air, marking their retreat back toward their defensive burrows.
Raph clutched the top of his head, fingers digging into the skin of his skull. He thought of the steaks they would not be eating tonight. The fat that would not be dripping, sizzling, into the fire. The feel, oh, that glorious feel of a sated belly—full of food, that he would certainly not be experiencing any time soon.
“Raaaaaaaaaugh!” he yelled upward into the lowering grey sky.
Mikey gave his brother a long, calculating look, then jogged ahead to retrieve the spear and obsidian point from between the fresh Leptoceratops footprints. He examined it carefully for fractures as he walked back to where Raphael stood. Raph’s hands were still on his head and elbows jutting out. He was inhaling deeply through his teeth.
“So…” Mikey dropped the hand with the atlatl dart loosely to his side and gave a playful shrug that Raphael did not see. “How about the next words out of your mouth are: ‘Man, Mikey! That was so close; what an astonishing shot!’ You really almost had ‘im. It’s one for the pre-history books.”
Raph lowered his hands. He hung his head, teeth still gritted.
From behind the boulders, Mikey retrieved the Triceratops skull they’d taken turns wearing as a predator defense and slung it, backpack-like, over his shell.
Then the turtles fell into step, starting the long walk back to camp.
“Um, okay, so you could try something like…” Mikey took on a rough, exaggerated Brooklyn accent. “Ya might not’a brung home the lizard-bacon today, bro, but ya got what counts in my book, and that’s grit.”
No response. Raphael still shuffled, seething silently, at Mikey’s side.
“No? How ‘bout this one?” Mikey cleared his throat then lapsed into a rough Scottish brogue. “They may take our lives,” he yelled to a distant, wheeling pterosaur, “but they’ll never take… OUR FREEDOM!” Mikey’s fist punched the sky.
Raph’s hand shot out, lightning fast, and landed the firm thwack on the back of Mikey’s head that he’d been aiming for before behind the boulders. But the side of his mouth twitched into a reluctant half-smile as he shook his head.
“You could not actually be more annoyin,’” Raph grumbled.
“Hm. Is that a dare?”
Raph simply huffed in response.
A drop of rain splattered heavily against the top of his head.
By the time Mikey and Raph staggered back into camp, the rainstorm had dissipated. But they were drenched, exhausted, and completely famished.
Velma, Mikey’s adopted baby Tyrannosaurus Rex, looked up from her lizard hunting in the shaggy perimeter of ferns, her amber eyes bright. She gurgle-screeched in delight upon seeing Mikey and hurtled forward to jam her feather-stubbled head into his thigh bone in aggressive affection.
Donatello, who’d been peeling tubers with a chert blade, snorted at the sight and shook his head. “That’s right, Velma. I’ve been feeding you fish strips all day, but you just abandon me as soon as Mikey shows his face. My feelings aren’t hurt at all. It’s fine.” Donnie sighed heavily, mock-forlorn, but a smile lit his face as he looked at the little dino nuzzling against his brother.
“It’s okay, girl. Did I leave you home with mean ol’ Donnie? Did I? I’m so sorry. That guy’s the worst,” Mikey told her soothingly, scratching under her chin. Velma closed her eyes at the attention and vibrated with joy. “Who’s the best girl? Who’s the best dinosaur?”
“No luck, huh?” Don took in his brothers’ empty hands with disappointment.
“Nah, we might as well a-taken the little monster with us.” Raphael gave a chin-nod toward the baby T-Rex and collapsed beside the fire, his back to a log. “Mikey scared off the whole bunch of ‘em before we could get a shot in.”
“Hey, I was defending myself from an unprovoked assault.” Mikey had stopped scratching Velma momentarily to raise a finger in the air, but she reminded him assertively of her existence with an insistent chirp and sharp head-butt.
“Not the way I remember it. Way I remember it, you were goofin’ around.” Raph leaned forward to take a lumpy tuber from Donnie’s pile, then slipped his own stone knife from his belt to start peeling. “Leo and Renet at the lake?”
Donnie nodded. “They’ll do a little fishing and stop by our new cisterns on the way back for the rainwater.”
“Good,” Raph said approvingly. They wouldn’t have to boil it, and rainwater tasted better than the lakewater, anyway. And a couple of fish would really hit the spot. Not nearly as good as Leptoceratops, though… “We coulda been having steaks tonight, but Mikey aimed for the wrong lizard-cow. I told ‘im to go for the striped one. But would he listen to me? Nah…” Raph took a tentative bite of the raw tuber, but his face immediately squished into a sour grimace, and he spat it into the fire.
“I’ve told you they’re not good raw!” Donnie chastised, poking his knife in the air in the direction of Raphael. “Don’t come crying to me if you give yourself a stomach ache.”
“How was I supposed to know which one you meant, Raph?” Mikey’s voice was plaintive. “None of them were striped!”
“Yeah, ‘cept for the striped ones!”
“Which is none of them!?”
“Which is like, at least a quarter of ‘em! You should get your eyes examined. There’s the plain-lookin ones, which are probably the girl ones, right, Don? And then there’s the striped ones. This was a striped one.”
“Um…” Donnie gave Raph a perplexed look. “What striped ones?”
Raph’s shoulders fell. “Oh, not you, too?” His tone turned defeated. “What is it with the two-a youse? I don’t know why ya think this is funny.”
But a crevice had formed between Donatello’s brow ridges. “So, Raph… Can you tell us more about the striped Leptoceratops?” Raph rolled his eyes, but his brother persisted. “Humor us. Humor us for a moment. What do they look like?”
Raphael gave a long-suffering sigh. Plopping one pale, peeled tuber into Don’s cedar bowl, he reached for another from the pile. “Fine! There’s the plain ones and the striped ones. Except for the babies; looks like all of ‘em have stripes, but a lot of ‘em lose them when they grow up. Some of ‘em don’t.” He shrugged wearily. “I don’t know what else ya want me to tell you. The stripes are fatter along their backs and thin out toward their bellies, I guess. I thought it was like, you know, a male-female thing. Like deer antlers or whatever.”
“Sexual dimorphism, yeah.” Donnie nodded thoughtfully.
“See what I mean, Don?” Mikey chimed in from where he was feeding another log into the fire. “He’s gone a little cuckoo.” Mikey waggled his head. Velma at his side watched him closely and made a curious hissing gargle.
“Raph,” Don spoke slowly, “I’ve never seen stripes on a Leptoceratops.”
“Well, that’s just crazy, Don, because I’ve been with you when we’ve been lookin’ together at the same Leptoceratops. Stripes ‘n all! Like that one Renet took down—I don’t know—five, six days ago?”
Donnie’s eyes were wide now, and he was lapsing into that excited professor voice he got when something really intrigued him. “I’m not saying I’ve never seen a Leptoceratops with stripes, Raph. I’m saying I’ve never seen stripes on a Leptoceratops. It’s different.”
Raph threw a half-peeled tuber at Don’s face. It bounced off his beak and went rolling through the dust. The rolling motion must’ve caught Velma’s attention because she pounced on it with both feet, tearing it to small wet shreds with ferocious grunting noises.
Don looked at it, exasperated, then back at Raph. “Really?”
Mikey made an expansive gesture. “See what I’ve been dealing with all day, Don?”
Donnie put down his knife. He gazed at Raphael intently. “Raphael, what color are the stripes?”
“Huh?”
“What color are the stripes? The stripes on the Leptoceratops… What color are they?”
“I don’t know! They’re bright, ya know?”
Mikey leaned suddenly forward, eyes narrowed. “Answer the question, Raphael,” he said in a T.V. detective-interrogation voice. “What color are the stripes you claim to see?”
“They’re… they’re… Oh, I don’t know.” Raph stabbed his knife into the tuber he was peeling and put it back on the pile, suddenly disconcerted. “It’s one of the colors without a name. You know?” He looked to Don.
“All colors have names!” Mikey crowed, triumphant.
“No, not all of ‘em!” Raph bit back. “There are lots that don’t.”
“Oh, yeah?” Mikey gave a narrow grin. “Name one!”
“That’s my point, ya dingbat; they don’t have ‘em!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Donnie intervened, placing the tuber he was peeling in the bowl and putting his palms out to calm his brothers before violence could erupt. “Mikey,” he winced and sighed sadly, “this will be hard for you to hear.”
“What?” Mikey asked in confusion.
“I think Raphael is a tetrachromat.”
Raph snorted. “Speak for yerself, ya noodle-brain!”
“No, no, Raph. It’s… It’s not an insult. It just means that you have an extra type of cone cell in your eyes. Almost all humans and, well, Mikey and me. We’re trichromats. We have three kinds of color-absorbing cells: red, blue, and green. We can see lots of colors using those cells in combination. But Raph…” Donnie shook his head, gazing at his brother in a strange mixture of sadness and delighted awe. “Raph, I think you have four types of cone cells. Based on what you’re telling us, I think you can see ultraviolet light.”
The entire forest was silent for the space of a heartbeat. And then…
“WHAAAAAT?!” Mikey’s cry rang through the trees, sending a pair of startled Avisaurus wheeling into the sky and raising the feathers along Velma’s spine so they stuck out in a shocked-looking crest.
Raphael just sat there, slack-jawed and confused. Gradually, his eyes narrowed.
“Raph can see ultraviolet?!” Mikey’s voice was still several octaves too high and loud enough to echo. “Raph can see a color that I can’t see?”
But Donatello was shaking his head slowly, his voice as quiet and amazed as Mike’s was loud and horrified. “No, Mikey. No. Raph can’t see one color that we can’t see. Raph can see hundreds of shades that you and I can’t even imagine.”
Michelangelo’s wail of despondence resounded through the clearing. He collapsed heavily near the fire, burying his head in his arms while Velma nudged him with concern.
“Wait, wait, wait…” Raph finally spoke, but he was skeptical. “How does that even work?”
Don looked thoughtful for a minute. “Raph, remember the book ‘The Color Kittens’?” When they were small, Splinter had scavenged the Little Golden Book from a trash heap. Its cover had been ripped off by some overzealous toddler, but the insides were intact.
“Yeah, yeah, two cats try to make green. I remember. Lotta paint cans.”
“So, did it ever seem a little…limited…to you?”
“Uh, I guess?” Raph shrugged again. “I don’t think I ever thought about it too hard.”
“Well, my cone cells can absorb red light when I look at your mask for instance. And also red and blue light to make purple.” Donnie pulled lightly at his own mask. “And your eyes can do that, too, but they can also absorb red, blue, and ultraviolet to make ultra-purple. Or just red and ultraviolet to make rurple. Or green and UV to make gruple. The combinations are practically endless. Your color palette is just leaps and bounds beyond anything we’ve ever experienced. Beyond anything Mikey and I ever can experience.”
A low howl came from Michaelangelo’s huddled form. “It’s not FAIRRRRRRRRRR. Donnie!” Michelangelo’s head emerged slightly from between his arms to look pleadingly at Donatello. “Donnieeeee, it’s not fair. He doesn’t even appreciate it!” Without even looking, he flung an arm expressively toward Raph, then reburied his head into his folded elbows.
“Hey, I can appreciate it. I appreciate things.” Raph’s brows were furrowed, his arms crossed, but his look was thoughtful. “I just didn’t know it was somethin’ to appreciate. I didn’t know I was any different.”
“I shoulda tested us,” Donatello said apologetically. “I mean, I checked us all for color blindness when we were eight, but it just didn’t occur to me… There’s not really a popular test for tetrachromacy. I mean, it is practically nonexistent in humans. But in turtles? That’s a whole different story.” Don wrinkled his beak. “I should’ve thought of it. It’s actually extremely common in turtle species.”
“I mean, would it have made a difference?” Raph asked.
“I guess not.” Don smiled sadly. “I coulda broken it easier to Mikey, though.” They both looked at their despondent brother.
A sniffle came, and then actual words, pitiful and faint. “Are they beautiful?”
“What?”
“The colors!” Mikey poked his head out from under his arms again, this time, his sharp eyes scrutinized Raph closely. “Ultraviolet. And, I don’t know. Gruple. Are they beautiful? What are they like?”
“I mean, yeah, I guess they’re nice. Most of ‘em.”
“No! I’m not asking if they’re nice! I’m asking what they’re like.”
“I don’t know… what is any color like? Most of ‘em are just fine. Some of ‘em, not so much.”
Mikey shook his head in abject pity. “Pearls before swine, dude. Pearls before swine.”
Donnie shot his arms out, extending them over the bowl of tubers before Raph could grab any to throw at Mikey. “No more throwing food! We don’t have enough as it is for you to go around throwing it.”
“But he called me swine!”
“What about just the Leptoceratops stripe color, dude?” Mikey tried again. “What is that like?”
Raph grimaced. “I don’t know, I guess it’s a… a warm color? It’s the same color as the leaves on Master Splinter’s Bonsai tree in the fall. Now that I think of it, it’s the exact same color as Leo’s face-stripes.”
Mikey and Donnie gasped simultaneously, their jaws dropping open like landed fish.
“Face-stripes?” Donnie choked out.
“Leo has face-stripes?” Mikey echoed.
“Yeah.” Raph nodded soberly. “This is news ta you? He’s got ‘em right here.” He ran two fingers down sides of his own face from temple to chin. “Sorta crescent moon-shaped. They match the speckles all over the back of his shell.”
Mikey gaped at Raph another moment, then turned to his other brother, his soul clearly crushed beyond repair. “Donnie? Raph has ultra-superhero color vision, and Leo has really radical face-stripes.” He paused for a moment, looking lost. “What do I have?”
Donnie scooted over to gather Michelangelo into an encompassing hug, shushing him softly and patting his shell while Velma hopped around them, bleating her concern.
“You’ve got…” Donnie thought desperately, his eyes wide. “Uh, you’ve got the best sense of rhythm in the family. And the best skateboard moves, for sure. And the best…” He looked to Raph for help, but Raph just smirked. Donnie stuck his tongue out at him before continuing, “And your atlatl-throwing is way more accurate than Raph’s.”
Raph rolled his eyes.
Donnie persevered. “And you’ve got the best singing voice out of all of us.” Raph shook his head behind Mikey’s shell and silently mouthed, “Leo does.” Donnie fiercely, silently shushed him.
“And you may not be able to sense the color gruple,” Donnie admitted, his voice low and comforting. Mikey gave a sniff. “And neither can I,” Don reminded him. “But you can always sense when I’m getting frustrated with a project, and you’ll come and dig me out of it and force me to play video games or help you with an art project to get my mind off it for a little while. You can always sense that I’m hungry before I realize it, and you push a sandwich at me. You always know when I’m feeling lonely and cooped up. Mikey, in a lot of ways, you’ve got the best senses out of all of us.”
“Yeah, shell-for-brains,” Raph contributed, kneading his knuckles into Mikey’s skull. Mikey and Donnie looked at him. Mikey’s eyes were wide and wet, but he was smiling tentatively. “You can always sense when I need to rough someone up!” And with that, Raphael tackled both his brothers in the direction away from the fire and the bowl of piled tubers, sending the three of them toppling to the ground, wrestling and giggling in the dirt.
It was during this mad tussle that Leo and Renet burst into the clearing of the camp, winded and wide-eyed.
“What’s wrong?” Leo cried, his katana out and at the ready.
“We heard, like, a lot of yelling all the way from the lake!” Renet added.
“Leo!” Mikey extricated himself from his brothers and bounded to his feet, vaulting toward Leonardo. “You have stripes! You have stripes! Did you know you have stripes?” Mikey’s fingers smoothed the planes of Leo’s cheekbones as he scanned searchingly. Was that slight variation in the leaf-green leading to Leo’s temples what Raph was talking about?
“What is going on right now?” Leo spoke out of the side of his mouth to his other two brothers, who had clambered to their feet.
“Raph told Mikey and I that you have face stripes,” Donatello explained.
“I have what, now?”
“Oh, thank god, dude,” Mikey breathed in relief. “You can’t see them either.” He gave Leonardo a tight, empathetic hug. “It’s okay, bro,” he told Leo. “You’re not alone.”
Conversations that night over a deeply unsatisfying dinner of boiled tubers ranged from the probable olfactory senses of the scavenging pterosaurs that spun in wide arcs overhead to the sonar-scape of bats (which hadn’t even evolved yet).
“See, Mikey,” Raph said, aiming for consoling. Firelight and shadow played across his face. “It ain’t about better or worse. It’s just different.”
“So says the guy who can see five zillion colors that I can’t,” Mikey sniffed.
“Just think about Klunk, Mikey,” Donnie mused. “He can’t see the color red or taste sweetness, but he doesn’t miss those things. His world is rich and complex just as it is. Just like yours is. Or mine. Even without ultraviolet.”
“And,” Leo added, “Klunk’s sense of smell is a whole lot better than ours. Think of everything he can perceive just with his nose.”
“I don’t know if that’d be an asset,” Raph scoffed. “We live in a sewer, Leo.”
Leo shrugged. “I don’t hear Klunk complaining.”
“What about you, Renet?” Mikey asked the apprentice Timestress, who sat near him on the log.
“Me?” Renet swallowed, looking up from her roasted tubers.
“Yeah, you’re, like, an alien or something, right? Aren’t you from a different planet? Maybe you can taste with your fingers or sense electric fields or something cool like that?”
“Oh, well, fer sure, I’m from another planet, Mikey!” Renet giggled. “But I’m still, like, totally human.”
“Yeah?” Raph cocked his head. “How’s that work?”
“My home ‘planet’ is actually just this mondo-big, way-harsh asteroid that was terraformed by humans who settled there, like, eight thousand years after you were hatched. So, no special eye-cells here. I’m a trichromat, same as you.”
“Alright, Team Trichromat! High-three!” Mikey reached over to slap Renet’s raised hand. “Looks like you’re way outnumbered, Raph. Team Trichromat’s got five members: me, Leo, Donnie, Renet, and Velma. You don’t stand a chance.” Mikey ruffled the feathers of the little Tyrannosaur curled in his lap. Velma gazed up adoringly at him.
“Hm. Well, I can’t know for sure, but I think I have some bad news for you, Mikey.” Donnie cocked one speculating brow ridge at the little dinosaur.
“She’s only got two types of cone cells?” Mikey looked appalled.
“No, that’s not it.” Don shook his head. “My guess is she can probably see Leo’s face stripes just fine.”
Raph snickered.
“Noooo!” Mikey howled. “ Another tetrachromat? I am betrayed by my own dinosaur!”
The fire popped. Sparks rose, twirling, into the Cretaceous night. As they floated upwards, they shed infrared light along with warm yellows and golds—and just a touch of ultraviolet—before winking out among the stars.