Linden pressed his palm flat against the fern-fossil display. The museum walls dripped. Dripping mud. Green-gold light pooling between the glass cases. Hot river water rolled over his sneakers, and the whole hall groaned into something ancient and wet.
A triceratops calf blundered past, spraying hot river water over his sneakers. He gasped, clutching a frond dripping with turquoise pollen. His lips shaped the words — don't leave yet — but the wetland crumpled. The sand folded over him. Gone.
His fingers found the next exhibit — a curled ammonite spiral, cold and smooth. The humid jungle shattered. Cracking white. Heat pressed flat against his face. He staggered back as the desert swallowed the museum one tile at a time.
The ground shook. Staggered. Shook again. A herd of stegosauruses thundered past, their plates clacking like wooden shutters on a summer porch. Linden threw his hood over his eyes and howled — a raw, bright howl — while the sand swallowed the scene grain by grain. The stones beneath his toes went cold. Then colder.
He tugged himself back just in time. His hand slid over the oldest glass case — a tiny curved shellfish fossil sealed in dark blue resin. Then the seafloor opened beneath him. No land. No sky. Only endless black water, and a single lantern-glow far below.
A shrimp no bigger than his thumbnail snapped its tiny claws at him. Click. Click. It looked right at him, and he yelped. The water blinked. The glass hummed. One breath later, the museum was back: rows of lit cases, quiet carpet, the tick of the clock.
The overhead lights flickered off row by row. Dark swallowed the hall. In the last display, a slab of pale ancient bone under violet glow, a hum began. Slow. Steady. Linden knelt, one fingertip on the cold stone, and the hum swelled until the whole silent hall rang with horns and plates and the wet snap of tiny claws.
The display exhaled a faint blue mist — river mud, sea salt, sun-baked sand — and the warmth settled on his open palm the way snowflakes rest on a thumb. He curled his fingers around the cool stone, closed his eyes, and stayed very still. The nightlight buzzed. The hum thinned to a whisper. His hand, even in the dark, was no longer cold.