i hope she knows that she is so loved. i hope she knows that 500 million years later in a dorm room there are two girls huddled around a computer looking at her fossils and reading her story and tearing up thinking about the life she might have lived. i hope she swims in the stars and twitches her feelers when she hears us say how we wish we could have known her. i hope she understands that while we may be separated by half a billion years and countless evolutionary differences we came from the same spark of life and we are lucky to have once shared a planet with her. separated by time but alike in the fact that we were both once alive, that we both existed, that we both enjoyed the cool touch of water and the rush of exploring our surroundings. i hope her death was a peaceful one, and i hope she sees how beautiful she looks in fossils and in recreations we see today. i hope there is a place where she can swim eternally, where she can know how adored she is 500 million years in the future. i hope she takes her mantle of the first known apex predator serenely and proudly, i hope she rests easy knowing her job is done, that she served the earth well, and that a little piece of her lives on in all of us.
