Author's note: Well, I recently got back into The Land Before Time series after I heard about the fourteenth movie (which was pretty good) but after I re-watched all of the movies and the TV series, I noticed how Cera has never been the main protagonist in a movie or episode of the TV series, while Littlefoot, Ducky, Petrie, Spike, Chomper, and even Ruby have been the main focus of a movie or episode at least once. That realization is what served as the inspiration for this fanfic I'll be writing.

If I stick to my plans, this will be a more serious story, maybe even with some tragic scenes in it, more akin to the first movie and sequels such as Journey through the Mists, The Mysterious Island, The Stone of Cold Fire, and The Great Longneck Migration, but with even less humor than those examples. Not much else to say, so here's the first chapter.

Prologue

The world was a much different and more dangerous place today eighty million years ago than it was today. Most places they traveled, leaf-eating dinosaurs had encounters with sharpteeth. Encounters that usually ended badly for lone dinosaurs or small herds.

The luckier dinosaurs made it to The Great Valley, where there was more than enough food for them all and, most importantly, there were no sharpteeth. The mountains that surrounded The Great Valley did not hinder leaf eaters from entering, but they did make it next to impossible for Sharpteeth to find a way in.

That was not to say that dinosaurs of The Great Valley hadn't had their share of misfortunes in their utopia. Forest fires, swarms of locusts, droughts, and even thankfully uncommon intrusions of sharpteeth through previously unknown entrances into The Great Valley. Entrances that had been sealed off with rocks to prevent such things from happening again. Still, most residents of The Great Valley said they were fortunate enough that no one had died in any of those Sharpteeth encounters.

There was a young Longneck by the name of Littlefoot who knew firsthand the tragedy of losing a loved one to Sharpteeth. In his first month of life, his mother died from injuries inflicted by a monstrous Sharptooth while protecting him and a Threehorn called Cera from said Sharptooth. But Littlefoot had avenged his mother along with Cera and other friends he made on the way to The Great Valley by sinking Sharptooth into a pond with a boulder.

Littlefoot lived with his grandparents and didn't know he had a father until the previous spring. His father, whose name was Bron, had left what is now called "The Mysterious Beyond" before Littlefoot was even an egg to find a safer home for them all. But when he returned, an Earthquake had destroyed everything. He didn't learn of what happened Littlefoot's mother until he met the very dinosaur, Rooter, who had consoled Littlefoot after his mother's death. But Rooter hadn't had any word on what happened to Littlefoot after they parted ways. Littlefoot only happened to meet his father when he and hundreds of other longnecks had migrated to a distant valley in the Mysterious Beyond. Littlefoot had almost left to live with his father, but decided to stay in The Great Valley at the last minute, knowing he couldn't just leave his grandparents or friends. Bron understood; he'd bring his herd over to The Great Valley for a visit every few minutes when it was possible.

Littlefoot's closest friends were Cera the threehorn, Ducky the swimmer, Petrie the flyer, Spike the spiketail, Chomper the sharptooth, and Ruby the fast runner. When they first meet him, most wonder how Littlefoot and his friends (other than Ruby, who was born in The Mysterious Beyond not far from The Great Valley) could be friends with a sharptooth, especially when it was a sharptooth that killed Littlefoot's mother. Until someone explained that Chomper was inadvertently saved from egg stealers as an egg and later raised by Littlefoot and his friends until Chomper's parents had come looking for their son. Chomper and his parents later returned the favor by saving Littlefoot and his friends' lives from another sharptooth on the island they had become stranded on while the herds had left The Great Valley to look for a new temporary home after locusts had made it inhabitable for them all.

After the land bridge that had been sunk by the earthquake re-appeared from under the ocean, Chomper and his parents left the island. That was when they met Ruby's family and came to good terms with them, even letting Chomper spend time with Ruby, thinking it was good for him. Ruby was intelligent, especially for her age, and Chomper's parents had thought it would be good for Ruby to share her knowledge with their son. But because of the common enemy they shared in Red Claw and his fast biter followers Screech and Thud, Ruby and Chomper were separated from their families, and later came to live in The Great Valley. Ruby had only seen her family once since being separated (they lived at a distant mountain in The Mysterious Beyond called "Hanging Rock") but Chomper hasn't seen his parents since that day.

Still, Chomper figured he was fortunate enough that the majority of, if not all, of The Great Valley's residents had come to accept Chomper as if he'd always been one of their one. (Technically, he was, since Chomper was born in The Great Valley and briefly raised by five of its residents.) Even Cera's father, who was usually not so quick to hear anything about sharpteeth, had come to like Chomper, despite having lost relatives to sharpteeth before finding The Great Valley.

Ruby and Chomper gasped as they disappeared into the nearest bush at the same time. They were thankfully to have found any hiding place after the others took the best ones, but Chomper thought a bush wasn't the best place to hide during a game of hide-and-seek.

But there was something that Chomper hadn't noticed while Ruby did. She turned tail to part the back of the bush, revealing a small opening into the secret caverns, where both Ruby and Chomper had been allowed to live since they had no proper family in The Great Valley. (Although both Littlefoot and Ducky's families had offered to take them in, Ruby and Chomper had said they wouldn't want to be a burden for them.)

"This is our real hiding place," Ruby explained. "Cera will never think to look for us here."

"Let's hope so," Chomper said with a nervous smile. "Cera's the best at this game, at both hiding from and finding us." He followed Ruby into the tunnel and crouched down by her side.

It was a tight squeeze, but at least this tunnel was a good place to hide. Like Ruby had said, Chomper could now understand why Cera probably wouldn't think to hide or look here during a game of hide-and-seek. That was saying something; as long as they had been in The Great Valley, no one had out-done Cera at this game. Some could say that hide-and-seek was Cera's game.

Ruby and Chomper nearly gasped when they saw Cera stick her head out from a bush at the other end of the clearing. They suppressed the urge, knowing that any sound they make could give away their hiding spot to Cera.

The threehorn looked around the area, then down at her feet. It was not long before she noticed a few sets of sharptooth and fast runner footmarks heading toward a cluster of bushes…

Then circling back? Cera thought to herself.

She thought about it for a minute, but Cera realized this was Chomper and Ruby's attempting at confusing her into searching somewhere else for them. But it wasn't that easy to trick someone like Cera. Their attempt was what gave Cera an idea of where they were hiding. Silently, the threehorn tiptoed over to the bushes where the foot marks went.

"Think she fell for our trick?" Chomper wished. He and Ruby couldn't see Cera anymore.

"Nope!" a familiar voice said. It wasn't Ruby…

Cera's head shot into their hiding place suddenly. Chomper and Ruby first screamed in surprise, then the three began laughing.

"That's why I'm the best at this game!" Cera gloated. She backed out of the bush. Chomper and Ruby followed her. "No trick is good enough to stop me from seeking someone out."

"Have you found the others yet?" Chomper asked.

"Not yet," said Cera, "but I will. There's not a place in The Great Valley they've hidden before that I haven't found them hiding at yet."

Cera turned to head off in the opposite direction to continue seeking out her other friends when she, Chomper, and Ruby heard a familiar voice that made them all stop where they were.

"Cera!"

Oh…now what? Cera thought. It was like her father couldn't leave her alone for one minute ever since the two horns above her brows first sprouted. That was one thing about her dad that had never changed: The older Cera got, the more he seemed to follow her around. Cera couldn't wait until she found a boy threehorn she loved just so she'd have an excuse to move out of the nest. She couldn't understand how Tria put up with her dad.

Cera started going again, hoping to make it seem as if she hadn't heard her father calling. He didn't fall for it.

"Cera," Topps said again. "There's something we must talk about—"

Cera spun around. "If it's about my choice of friends just because I'm best friends with a sharptooth, you can stop right there. I don't want to hear anything you have to say about Chomper."

Topps ignored her tone. He wasn't here to scold Cera about her choice of friends or her behavioral changes. This was more important.

"Cera, this has nothing to do with your friends," he said. "I want you to come back to the nest. It's important."

"What is so important that you think you must drag me away from my friends when we're having fun to tell me?" Cera asked her dad with a sarcastic bite.

Topps wasn't sure how to answer his daughter. What he wanted to tell her made him feel guilty that he hadn't told Cera soon, even if it had been with good intentions that he hadn't.

"Cera…" Topps began with uncertainty. "I think it's time you need to hear this." The bitter, annoyed expression on Cera's face changed to one of worry. She'd never seen her father, a bit of a loud mouth, so nervous to say something before. Something must be wrong, she thought. Really wrong.

"Yes…?" Cera asked.

"I haven't been completely honest with you," he went on. "I know what fate befell your mother and sisters on the way to The Great Valley. I always have…" Cera gasped; her eyes grew wide with shock. She couldn't believe where this was going. "When Pterano convinced half of the herd that he would get them to The Great Valley faster, your mother was among those who believed him. And because he'd had a falling out over my views on longnecks at the time, she took your sisters with her.

"She was with the part of the herd following Pterano when he led them into that canyon. Pterano later told us that only he survived—and that he saw the fast biters surrounding your mother and sisters before he flew off. He remembered hearing their screams, but he never looked back…"

"D-Dad…" Cera stammered. "I can't believe you! Littlefoot's grandpa told my friends and I Pterano's story over a year ago. How could you wait all this time to tell me this when you always knew?'

"Cera, I—"

Cera turned tail. She didn't want her dad to see her in tears. "I don't want to hear anything else you have to say," Cera sobbed. "You've done enough for one day. I just want to be alone…"

"Cera, please—" Topps pleaded.

"I hate you!" Cera snapped. "Just leave me alone!"

Cera ran off, ignoring her father's desperate pleas for her to hear him out. She didn't even glance back; Cera couldn't stand the sight of her dad right now. He'd broken her spirit, something that happened only one other time in her life. On their way to The Great Valley. Cera was attacked by three territorial domeheads. The others scared them away and saved Cera, but when she realized that she had led Ducky, Petrie, and Spike the wrong way and nearly got them killed, Cera lost her reason to go on and she'd stayed behind in the cave to weep. Cera felt that same way now as she ran, not thinking about where she would go.

Cera ignored anyone and everyone who tried to stop her to ask what was wrong, until she reached the edge of the bubbling goo surrounding the sheltering grass. Cera looked down first, then she carefully jumped rock-from-rock until she was at the other side.

Her dad would never think to look for her, or anyone, at the sheltering grass. No one would since Cera and her friends all nearly lost their lives here when they were young, but were saved by Littlefoot's grandfather before it was too late. But just to be sure, Cera went on into the taller grass to get out of sight. There, Cera lay down; she buried her face in her front legs.

Cera didn't understand it. Why would her father wait all this time to tell her why her mom and sisters never made it to The Great Valley with them? That wasn't something a dad should keep secret from his daughter. At first, Cera thought may be her dad believed he'd been doing what he thought was best for her, but she decided against that. If he did want what was best for her, then her dad would have told her what he did sooner, not wait until she's growing the horns on her forehead!

Of all the things her head could have done to make her feel hate toward him, this was something Cera never would have predicted. She would have expected her father to try and isolate her from Littlefoot or Chomper before he would withhold information like this from her. What kind of dad could do that to his daughter? She was all he'd had up until Topps was reunited with Tria and they had a daughter, Tricia.

The usually strong-willed threehorn cried herself, literally, to sleep.

Author's note: I'll point out that the title being "The Land Before Time XV" is only temporary until I think of a proper and good title for this story. Also note that this is my first actual The Land Before Time fanfiction, so I'll be trying my best to keep all of the characters in character and behave realistically to how they acted in the movies, while also showing some character development on top of that.